Crossing the First Threshold
The Death of the Old Identity
On the morning of my 49th birthday,
I dropped to my knees in the dark and whispered,
“Have Your way with me.
This life is no longer working.”
I didn't know then,
but that prayer cracked the veil.
A month later, my body broke.
A health crisis that brought me face to face
with my own mortality.
I didn’t know if I would make it.
And in that liminal space between breaths,
I made a vow:
If I live… I leave.
Come what may.
I had poured 25 years into a marriage
that demanded my silence and sacrifice.
I had built a career, raised my sons,
and now, with my nest empty and my soul bare,
the truth rose like fire through the fog.
After surgery, synchronicities struck like lightning.
Sometimes we must leave not to escape,
but to return to ourselves.
Betrayals surfaced.
Shocking revelations shattered the illusion
I had worked so hard to maintain.
The idealism that had kept me loyal
was scorched away by pain.
And I saw —
with piercing clarity —
what my counselor had gently been trying to show me
for years.
I asked for a divorce.
It wasn’t a clean cut.
It was a battle — long, hard, and ugly.
Eighteen months of unraveling.
Six months into the separation,
I drew a line.
I told my family:
I gave him 25 years.
I don’t want him in my life.
It was the first time I had ever truly
set a boundary
and used my voice.
And they didn’t honor it.
They invited him to a family gathering
without telling me.
I walked in unknowing,
my heart still bleeding,
and found him there —
laughing with a beer in hand, present,
as though nothing had changed.
It was a dagger from behind.
A betrayal that split me open.
My sister said,
“You don’t get to choose who comes to family events.
You’ll have to get used to it.”
But I didn’t.
I walked away from my family of origin that day.
From the patterns.
From the silence.
From the false belonging that required my erasure.
That was the leap.
That was the threshold.
No negotiations.
No compromise.
Just a single, sovereign vow:
I will put myself in a safe place.
I will honor my boundaries.
Even if I must do it alone.
I moved into a remote cabin
offered by the woman who had been
my vault, my witness, my sacred friend.
There, in the quiet,
the old identity began to die.
The divorce was relief.
The family betrayal was the real death.
The real crossing.
The burning of the bridge back.
And though I trembled…
I did not turn around.