Ancient Greek mythology tells of a mythical bird called the phoenix that was associated with the Greek God, Apollo. According to the tale, the phoenix would bathe in cool water every morning at dawn. When the sun god heard it singing, he would stop his chariot to listen. Mythology stated that there was only one phoenix.
When the phoenix felt its death approaching about every thousand years, it would build a nest of aromatic wood and set it on fire. The phoenix then died in the flames. A new phoenix sprang forth from the pyre. It embalmed the ashes of its predecessor in an egg of myrrh and flew with it to the city of the sun, Heliopolis. The Phoenix would then offer the egg as a gift to Apollo, the sun god. The phoenix is a symbol of immortality and life after death. The Greeks, Egyptians, Hindus and Chinese often depicted the phoenix on their sarcophagi. Judaic lore mentions that the phoenix achieved its unique status as an immortal bird because it refrained from bothering Noah as he prepared for the Flood.
We Stay At Home Moms, who have experienced the deaths of our marriages and have lost so much during and because of the process of divorce, must learn to fly again. The belief that we must have in ourselves is what will give us the ability to survive and be better than fine. That is indeed, is the wind beneath our wings!
As I lived through this process, I was given a gift, one of many. During one of many sleepless nights, I had a dream about the Phoenix. I woke up and jumped out of bed and knew that my prayers had been answered. What could be more apropos regarding the idea of the survival of stay at home moms, recovering from divorce, than the phoenix? The word is used a lot and in many different venues but none more, in my opinion, than the one exemplifying a stay at home mom who survives the death of her marriage and not only gets closure but thrives and soars!
