I was raised in Piatra-Neamt, a small little town in the mountains. I grew up a free spirit, roaming the hills, with the wind blowing in my hair, daydreaming all the time and reading for hours.
My childhood books were about romantic love and knights and princesses, and they flooded my brain and soul fully. I wanted my life to be just as in my stories, with serenades under the balcony and the burning love with the all of the intensity and the drama that comes with it. Oh.
When I came to college in Bucharest, I was a simple country girl, dressed in cheap cotton and wearing thick tacky sandals. But I had an open heart and I was searching for my love.
Very soon I have met my future husband, a tall handsome boy with a wide smile and perfect teeth. He was a foreigner but he spoke my language of romantic love and knights and princesses.
I had no choice but to fall in love and to give myself completely. I’ve surrendered totally to being in love just as I learned from my books. I have decided on an unconscious level that he was my one and consciously I would do anything to have him and for him to want me.
Nobody and nothing was more important than my own image about relationship and love. Not even him. I had no idea back then that I was more in love with the idea of love then I was actually loving him. How would I know to make the difference between the concept of love and the human involved? I was 21, he was 25. He was completely in love too, and our love story it was indeed a true fairytale story.
I had no idea for a second about where I wanted to end up with him, or who did I want to be next to him. So now that we have found each other and that we love each other – now what? What are we gonna do? What are we going to build together? Where will I be in 5 years? What do I want outside of my relationship?
Well, I haven’t asked myself these questions before entering this relationship that transitioned into marriage. I didn’t ask these questions not when I was falling in love and certainly not when I was married.
I always had the sensation that I was confused, that I had no idea where I was exactly and where I was going towards. I felt like I was waiting for something and I had no idea what it was.
I later understood that I have never done my homework, that I hadn’t asked these questions not because I did not want to. But because I didn’t know to ask them, in school there was no class that would be called *relationships or *marriage. I had no class with the name *who am I and what do I want from life and why and also I had no class with a name *what else could I be wanting and *what do I do to know myself to figure out who I am what do I want.
When the idea of the man that you want becomes more important than the idea of the woman that you want to be or you want to become, then you know for sure that any story you begin it will end up with a divorce or a break up.
Things started falling apart real fast the moment I got pregnant the first time, and I remember he already moved out of the house temporarily when I was being pregnant with our second boy.
When you go into a relationship without having a clear idea of who you are and what you want outside of the relationship, certainly you will end up losing big chunks of yourself on this journey of “us”.
Of course you keep on going. You get married, you have kids, you take vacations and you are raising your kids.
But those big holes from yourself that are filled with whatever your partner wants, these holes end up howling and screaming incessantly in the background. And you constantly and quietly have that feeling that you are not happy and you can’t really say why. Even if everything that he is giving you is pretty good quality, even premium, and the life with him is elegant, abundant, full … something is chronically missing and it really hurts. Because it’s his life and it’s about him. And less about you.
We completely separated when both our kids were less than two years old.
There was a period that everything was a blur, gray and sinister, I was struggling to handle a break up, common custody, two small kids, no job, no dreams, not knowing who I was anymore, what do I want and where am I going.
Hi, this is Oana and my heart was broken in thousands of pieces. Because of this, my heart is now much bigger, much stronger and healthier. Just as it happens in the gym with any muscle that you put too much pressure on, it first rips apart, it hurts and then it becomes bigger and much nicer.
What recommends me the best it’s my own experience more than any schools and life coaching certificates that I have.
Additionally, I am exercising since I was 3 years old, I read since I was 5, I travel since I was 9 and I journal before I was 11 years old.
There are more than 16 years since I got separated and then we divorced. There are the same amount of years of studying, of therapy and thousands of coaching hours to be able to understand what happened so I can make things differently. So I can have the life and the relationship I have never stopped wanting and to learn to build them step-by-step.
Exercise helps me to discipline my mind, my books and my continuous learning help me grow and evolve, while traveling feeds my soul.
The fact that I write constantly for so many years helps me clear my mind, so I can understand myself better, to realize what is important for me, to dream, to create, to have what I dream of, to be grateful – to live a little bit better every day.
That doesn’t mean that all my days are ok, but I have learned to have some really good bad days.
Practicing constantly all of these behaviors and activities I have managed not only to go through a divorce, but to fully reinvent who I am, to have the courage to live just as I dreamed when I was a child reading stories about strong people who lived fantastic lives filled with love, adventure and honor.
My story does not have an ending, but it does have a purpose. I feel a quiet and constant feeling of contentment that looks a lot like that happiness I have looked for a lot of good years..
And if I can do this, so can you. You just need to want it badly enough.