Divorced Before 30

This morning, I gave my first-ever Toastmasters speech. I recently joined the club to brush up on my communication skills for an upcoming professional speaking gig. When you join, your first assignment is “The Ice Breaker,” which is a four- to six-minute speech meant to get your feet wet and to share some information about yourself. I thought about sticking to something vanilla like my interest in running, but in the end, I decided to talk about this here blog.

There were approximately ten other people in the room, most of them older than me by a generation, and nobody moved a muscle after I delivered my opening line: “Five and a half years ago, on an otherwise ordinary Tuesday, I left my husband on my lunch break.” When I got to the part about hitting rock bottom, I surprised myself. My hands started to shake, and my voice wavered. I almost started to cry. I write about this experience so often—so matter-of-factly—that I didn’t think I had any tears left.

During my speech, I not only felt some of the pain anew, but I was incredibly conscious of all of the eyes on me. Did they think I was flaky? Immoral? Foolish? What did all those blank stares mean? As my story came around to the pick-myself-up-by-my-bootstraps part, the group loosened up, and so did I. My slightly self-deprecating jokes inspired the intended laughter. All in all, I was pleased with my first speech, and now I don’t need to worry about whether or not to share this part of my life—my story, this blog, my book—with these people. They know.

When I received my evaluation after the speech, the sweet woman who had been assignment to evaluate me had an interesting piece of advice. She said that I needed to show more expression. She said that she wanted to see that I was receiving all of the love that was coming my way. The thing is, I was too busy feeling self-conscious to recognize the support and encouragement that people were trying to show.

Talking out loud about my story today was an empowering experience. In the two years following my divorce, I talked things out a lot with my running buddies, my therapist, my parents, and to a certain extent, my boyfriend. In the past three years, I have written about it from nearly every angle imaginable, and while writing can be cathartic, there’s something different about letting it out verbally. And while it’s awesome to “preach to the choir” here on Divorced Before 30, it was rewarding to speak about it in front of other people. They may not have been divorced, but adversity is universal.

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I Want to Know

Have you talked out your divorce? With whom? Would you ever give a speech about your experience?

Did you catch my two posts on the Huffington Post? If not, check out “The Right to Choose One’s Marital Status” and “How Being Divorced Has Helped My Second Marriage.”

Would you like to tell your separation or divorce story? Divorced Before 30 takes submissions! Visit me at my other blog, emmasota or find me on twitter @emmasota. And, if you haven’t already, please connect with Divorced Before 30 on Facebook!