Sasha1972

I had a junior colleague come into my office the other day, kind of distraught and a wreck because she and her husband had just decided to separate, they have a two-year-old with medical issues, no one in her family has ever been divorced before, and she doesn't know how she's going to get by, financially and otherwise.

Knowing a little bit about her, I think she is ultimately going to be fine. She's extremely smart, hard-working, someone who thinks everything through before acting. But she doesn't see herself as someone who is going to be fine.

I shared that I had divorced the father of my child when she was young, and that it was really rough at first. I didn't even mention the addiction and mental illness pieces because TMI. She said "Oh my God, thank you for telling me that! If someone like you can go through this and then go on to be, well, someone like YOU, maybe there's hope for me". She sees me as successful, confident, independent, well-respected, etc.

I don't always see myself this way. I think I am a mess, currently stuck in perpetual crisis mode, and then I feel sorry for myself and envious of other people who have everything together. I need to remember that just like my colleague can look at me and not see the mess, then when I'm looking at other people and envying them because they have everything going right, there's probably a lot of mess that I'm not seeing.