A couple of weeks ago, I took myself off to spend a week at a yoga retreat in the Bahamas. The retreat was at an ashram and along with lots of yoga, I did daily meditation and attended workshops on a bunch of topics, from mindfulness to forgiveness. I so often thought about you, always looking for things to bring back, like a mother bird flying around looking for worms to take back to the nest . . .

Forest Bathing, in Japanese, Shinrin Yoku, is a therapeutic practice that was developed in Japan and is now being taught around the world. It’s not just a walk in the woods. It’s about going out in nature and really connecting . . .

Depending on where you are in your life, opening yourself to growth means pushing yourself to do those things you know are good for you, even if they seem hard or scary. It means starting to say, “yes, sure” instead of “no, I can’t.” And then, one day, you’ll wake up and realize that all that work you did on yourself has made you strong and resilient . . .

One of the themes that wound through our talks at the Sedona Retreat this year was how many of the women felt ashamed. It was taken for granted that it was more valuable to be married or in a relationship than to be divorced.

Many women feel tremendous frustration due to the fact that their husbands just vanished without any proper conversation or explanation. It leaves them hanging - longing for closure . . .

Women have often asked me whether it is necessary to forgive their ex-husbands in order to heal and that’s a question that has stymied me in the past. But in researching forgiveness, I’ve come up with a fresh approach, complete with a healing technique, that can help.

Although there are many aspects to wife abandonment, the primary one which every woman struggles with is understanding how someone who cared for her so profoundly could just stop loving. How could that light go out of his eye? . . .

What is the meaning of a wedding ring? As a universal symbol, those few ounces of fine metal and precious stone are supercharged with significance. You received it at a pivotal moment, the heart of your relationship, when you were filled with love, excitement and anticipation. And every day after that, every moment if you wore your ring constantly, it signalled your position as a wife and as someone who is loved . . .

When something happens that doesn’t fit the pattern, we don’t let it penetrate. That new odd piece of information just skitters off our brains and we reject it. It takes time for us to be able to let it in, particularly when doing so threatens our sense of security . . .