About The Book
These straightforward words “I love you, but I am not in love with you”. In a blink of an eye, it can change the logistics in a relationship, and it can impact an entire family with long lasting pain and loss.
My journey of rejection and abandonment left me deeply hurt and lost. I felt punished for feeling the pain. Abandoned not once but repeatedly left me gracefully broken. Going through a not so amicable divorce in my fifties was challenging and more so being a migrant Christian Indian woman with sound religious beliefs. This cannot be happening to me I thought “what will people say, or I am such a failure, and in my culture to get divorced will put a label on me”.
Some people call it “the Grey Divorce” Blindsided after 30 years in the marriage, I sank deeper into depression and anxiety over the years fighting to remain sane and obedient. This caused my physical health to decline. Until one day my eyes opened to the truth. Why was I fighting for someone who did not want me? I crawled myself out the darkness on my own. While I began healing the memory of the abuse and while others played innocent, the damage lingered deeply in my thoughts causing me to isolate myself. Finality, decided to let go and push past the stigma of mental health and chose to put me first and grab onto peace. Through courage and faith, I I no longer allowed my diagnosis or circumstance to limit me. Coming full circle, I chose not to remain silent but use my voice in platforms to encourage and equip women that walk alone in this journey of divorce and rejection. Whilst trying to hold a career, or addressing my physical health, I leaned on my expert lived experiences to offer me hope and sanity.
Learning to shift from suffering in silos and to open the gates to talk to others with similar lived experiences provided me with an opportunity to share my journey of recovery orientated rehabilitation that is authentic and faith based. Elevating the voices of people with lived experiences, this book offers coping strategies and functional support to develop more with less. This book will teach you to accelerate community-based approaches, strengthen functional recovery goals, with the hope of advancing lived experiences that offer culturally sounded solutions to balance one’s confidence. There is opportunity to address the feelings linked to your trauma and live with total freedom and free from any shame.
People with lived Experiences wear their stories as a badge of strength that offers resilience and power. My voice today is not mine alone but those of my friends and mentors.
About Lorna
Lorna Archery is a mother of two adult boys, single Christian woman with leadership in her skillset, a Clinical Nurse in primary health care and with a strong focus on mental health. Lorna was born in South Africa, Durban and migrated to Australia with her family in 2008. Lorna commenced her academic studies in Australia and qualified in her bachelor of Nursing degree and is currently completing her Masters in Nurse Practitioner Mental Health. Lorna chose to help and serve others in nursing as a profession to integrate her lived experience in her community to extend her faith-based interventions with women that experienced, grief, trauma, loss, divorce and separation. Most of all Lorna uses her intensive rehabilitation strategies in her lived experience to build trauma informed care and adopt recovery orientated approaches to address mental health challenges.
In 2021 Lorna went through a painful end to a 29-year marriage that left her rebuilding her career in her later years, her financial loss and moving cities and into the unknown. She shares her experience, her setbacks and offer hope for the women who walk alone to re-ignite hope, trust, self-care and even a chance at finding real love again. Her passion is to improve physical health in women, brain health and encourage women to learn to be continent in loneliness. To choose to see beyond the rejection, loss, and to embark on a journey of immense faith, deliverance and she recommends women that walk alone to focus on learning to live past the scars of trauma, divorce and abandonment and give themselves a break. A break to re-discover the real you. She addresses trauma bonds. Breaking cycles and patterns of narcissistic abuse and how to break family cycles.
She now lives in Brisbane City, works in a community mental health intense rehabilitation. setting She is experienced in trauma informed care, recovery orientated interventions and working towards Dialectical Behaviour Therapy. Additionally, she is a chronic disease nurse and has a strong interest in educating women that having a poor physical health affects their mental health. Lorna plans to use her story to empower women to create a tailor-made work – life balance tools to suit their circumstance, building faith and resilience to accept life challenges. Lorna plans to use her testimony to speak on platforms, produce podcasts and workshops to deliver practical tools to overcome abandonment and loss from divorce.