How to eat an elephant

How do you eat an elephant?

One bite at a time.

Let’s  put aside the disgrace of actually eating an elephant and focus on the metaphoric value of this little aphorism.

Many of us experience divorce as an “elephant in the room” that somehow takes over the whole house. Digesting the meaning and impact of this runaway elephant is not likely to be a one-gulp kind of experience. Depending on the facts of your particular elephant, you could have hunks stored in the deep freezer for years after the fact (sitting alongside your wedding cake, perhaps), to be unpacked, examined and consumed as you have the capacity to do so.

You don’t have to comprehend it all at once. It’s simply not possible to take in something so panoramic, so close up, in one sitting.

The fine tradition of wedding-cake-face-mashing seems like it could have its uses on the other side, as well. Rubbing each other’s nose in a bite-size piece of “elephant” could be a way to initiate each other into the feast of your grief. So that together you can begin to release and heal.

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