After my separation I literally fell off the map...for years!

I hardly kept up with any of my old friends, and even when I did, the contact or the communication was very brief and usually inconsistent.  Thinking back on it, I felt a lot of shame and anger and grief about my marriage ending and how my friends would take me and what they would think!  (Honestly: I was also flat out overwhelmed with just basic day to day things like raising kids and working full-time.)

And so, apparently, my way of working through all those feelings (while keeping a job and raising good kids) was to become a bit of a hermit, and re-discover myself in solitude.

As in, what was it like to be me, with as little outside influence as possible.

I had to really get confident and straight about what was working and what needed to be let go of.  I needed to break it all down, way back to the very beginning, and just find myself again.  Or actually, find myself completely for the first...