A Story of Hope: Collecting my Broken Pieces after Divorce

Self-profiling is an outcome of self-reflection. It includes a critical inquiry directed at yourself to determine where you have been, where your life is in the present, and the direction your life is going. That is your future aim. To date, you should recognise that every decision you have taken has been driven by your value system, your beliefs and your life principles. This self-reflection must lead towards a profile of the self, and it includes the character traits you must retain because they will help you attain your future aim, while some traits must be left behind because they will hinder your success. You will also need to adopt other traits that you believe will be needed to achieve your life goal. It is always easy to profile someone else and we can spot positives and negatives in others quite quickly. The dilemma each one of us faces is that self-profiling means you must stand in front of yourself and define the good, the bad and the worst in yourself in the most honest way. If you do this properly, you may be left with feelings of discontent, failure, discomfort and, at times, happiness. To put it simply, you must ask yourself: What is the impression that you intend to leave with those you encounter as you journey through your life? It is about understanding what drives your life determining whether you are influencing yourself or others and attaining the impact you seek. Whether consciously or unconsciously, how you see yourself determines your daily decisions, informs your response to your interactions with others, and provides the tools you use to navigate the world around you. 

Through self-profiling, we can learn more about ourselves and what drives us. This can help us grow as people and if done right, self-profiling can help us feel more satisfied with our lives. 

However, the process can feel painful during and after encountering what we deem bad people or bad situations. If the results are good, you find yourself excited. Like the day my matriculation result arrived, elated is the only fitting word I can attribute to that December day in 1988. The other side of the coin is dangerous, especially if you are a novice and have no tools to manage life experiences. Self-profiling can strip you bare and leave you unstable, unsure, and perhaps even standing on the edge of a mountain, ready to jump towards something that you believe may give you some relief. 

In keeping myself honest, I looked in my own mirror and this is how I profiled myself: I am 26 years old, a divorcee, a mother to three children and a failure. I have no plan for my life; I am clueless as to how I move forward from here. I feel stuck and helpless, angry and unhappy; however, I do not want to be unhappy anymore. The irony of life is that, apart from myself, no one really understands my predicament. Those in my community who know that I am a 26-year-old divorcee profile me as a loose woman, including my peers, and their parents alike hate me immediately because they believe I will definitely be a bad influence on their children. Some think my divorce betrays the memory of our ancestors, yet very few, if any, think I have taken a progressive step. I, for one, have mixed feelings, mainly about the failure of my marriage. I am plagued by thoughts of what people will think, and most times I feel unworthy and doubt whether divorce was the correct step at all. On the other hand, deep down in my 26-year-old self, I know this was the right move, especially for my children. I know it in my gut, though I have no idea where this resolve comes from or what my next step will be. What gives me comfort is that I have a feeling that the ground I am standing on here and now is where I am supposed to be. I must tell you; I don’t even know what I mean by that; however, I am resolved that I am right at least this time.

Read more in A Story of Hope: Collecting my Broken Pieces after Divorce by Gloria Nomvuyiseko Noganta, published by Reach Publishers and available in all good bookstores and online.