Some were clich\u00e9d. Some were novel. They all served as a salve for my shattered self. <\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s OK to feel broken. It\u2019s OK to feel overwhelmed,\u201d soothed R.M. Drake, one of my favorite creators. <\/p>\n
\u201cHe\u2019s not running from you, babe, he\u2019s running from himself. Let him go,\u201d Stephanie Bennett-Henry, another go-to source, wrote. <\/p>\n
These two-to-four-line snippets became my lifeline of support, especially as months went by and I felt embarrassed to keep telling my friends that I still felt devastated and raw. They had shown up for me like an army protecting a crumbling castle, but even with their love, I still hurt. I was crying every day. I still didn\u2019t know how to navigate life without the person who had been beside me for my entire adult life. <\/p>\n
Was my marriage perfect? No. But as a wife, mother, and human being, the sentiments I now clung to reminded me that I deserved better than what I had been put through.<\/p>\n
Those daily doses nourished me at a time when I could barely bring myself to eat \u2014 when acid churned inside my stomach and my overactive brain kept me up at night. I rifled through them like the index cards I once crammed with while studying for college exams several decades ago. <\/p>\n
They supported me more than the divorce support group I joined, which at one point warned \u201cdumpees\u201d like me to abstain from sex, drugs, and alcohol in our \u201cvulnerable\u201d states.<\/p>\n
\u201cGod was my rebound man,\u201d testified a divorc\u00e9e in one video, leaving me less than inspired. (I eventually quit the group, which I should have realized was a bit too religious for me from the start.) <\/p>\n
Those words of comfort helped refocus my grief during morning swims when my mind would wade into the past, salty tears commingling with the strong chlorine.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou can\u2019t make them love you by loving them harder. And you can\u2019t save the relationship if the other person is not willing to save it as well,\u201d R.M. Drake comforted.<\/p>\n
I began to think of those nuggets of wisdom as my in-house therapist, only infinitely cheaper and more available. They held my hand as I mourned the loss of part of me \u2015 my \u201cwe\u201d\u2015 while still having to function \u201cnormally,\u201d go to work and engage with my children. <\/p>\n
When I\u2019d feel guilty for weeping while folding laundry in front of my boys who were home on college break, a Facebook page titled \u201cJoker: Motivational Quotes\u201d (yes, an odd name) gave me succor.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf you don\u2019t leave your past in the past, it will destroy your future. You\u2019ve got to live for what today\u2019s offering. Not for what yesterday took away from you,\u201d read one post. But \u201cyesterday\u201d also gave me my kids. I found it hard to separate my lasting love for them from my failed marriage. I kept trying. <\/p>\n
![\"The](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/65f224832200001f004b7ee4.jpeg\")
The two remaining memes on the author’s fridge. “You can see the sticky residue spots where older memes used to be posted,” she notes.<\/p>\n
Courtesy of Stephanie Vuckovic<\/p>\n
All the while, I was acutely aware of how cynics<\/a> perceived these types of motivational quotes, as well the entire industry of self-help \u201cinfluencers\u201d who have made it their business to \u201cempower\u201d people like me who are facing some kind of tragedy or hardship. Their fortune-cookie-esque bits of advice are seen as overly simplistic and idealistic, distracting from the actual work people need to do to better themselves, and self-help nonsense that keeps people, especially women, from healing. I understand that and believe there is some truth to that. <\/p>\n However, taken together with my support network of friends, colleagues, my sons, my few relatives and my therapist, these posts served to amplify and anchor me. They boosted my fractured self-esteem, as studies <\/a>have shown them capable of doing for patients with chronic illness. They helped remind me of my strength, resilience and the good things in my life. So as cringy as I might have once thought looking for solace in these quotes was, I\u2019m not cringing anymore. I\u2019m healing.<\/p>\n \u201cHealing doesn\u2019t mean the damage never existed. It means the damage no longer controls your life,\u201d a \u201cMindful Methods for Life\u201d post so wisely reminded me.<\/p>\n Almost three decades spent with someone is not easy to shake off in a little over a year \u2014 or maybe ever. But I am now officially divorced and starting to rebuild, melding old friends with new, working toward financial security, and even laughing a bit at the banality of being 56 and \u201cnewly\u201d single. <\/p>\n I\u2019m feeling better, so I don\u2019t reach for my phone every morning or night in search of words of support. I\u2019ve taken down most of the quotes I had pasted on my fridge, sticky tape residue a lingering reminder of their pivotal role in my convalescence. <\/p>\n I hope to make even more progress, however that happens \u2014 whatever it takes \u2014 but I no longer need those posts the way I did in the thickest parts of my grief. Still, I\u2019m grateful I had them and I no longer see them the way I did before they came to my rescue.<\/p>\n Recently, I had to put up just one more, this one from Emily Maroutian: \u201cYou will know that you are completely done with something when you give it up, and you feel freedom instead of loss.\u201d <\/p>\n Stephanie Vuckovic is a program manager in Washington, D.C., and the mother of two college-aged sons. She harkened back to her journalism roots during COVID and began freelance writing. She is working on a novel about a failed marriage that began as a love story in Russia and a memoir about using food to cope with dysfunction while growing up in an Eastern European immigrant family. Her writing is featured on her website, www.giantsheetcake.com<\/a> and on instagram @giantsheetcake<\/a>.<\/p>\n This piece was previously published on HuffPost and is being shared again now as part of HuffPost Personal\u2019s \u201cBest Of\u201d series.<\/p>\n Do you have a compelling personal story you\u2019d like to see published on HuffPost? Find out what we\u2019re looking for here<\/a> and send us a pitch at pitch@huffpost.com.<\/a><\/p>\n