The Green Side of a Woman

By Kerstin Dahlin Hedenblad

In The Green Side of a Woman, author Kerstin Dahlin Hedenbladbuilding on her own experience of divorce following thirty years of marriageshares the best of her interactions with women around the world. Here, she focuses on her conversations with married women in two very different countries, Sweden and Kenya. Through these meetings, she found many common patterns in their stories, as well as great differences. Among the women, she explored universal themes of faith, hope, love, strength, commitment, and dedicationas well as fatigue, pain, struggle, forlornness, and signs of resignation.

She shares the stories of three women from each country to celebrate the power of the universal female spirit. Their stories are meant to serve as wake-up calls to women of the world, especially those who have allowed themselves to be diminished in their marriages. With humour and empathy, she offers up courage, joy, pride, strength, and trust as inspiration for those still searching for their inner bliss. She hopes to inspire women to encounter reality as it really is and to give way to the power of the present. When you can accept the past and appreciate the gifts of the moment, nothing can stop you from creating new possibilities.

Are you going to make yourself the source of your blame, or are you going to rise above it and thrive?

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Aug 28, 2013
• ISBN: 9781491704424

Kerstin Dahlin Hedenblad

Kerstin Dahlin Hedenblad enjoys the finer things—wine, French cuisine, nature, gardens, fine art, literature, and the beauty of the human heart. She has a degree in Swedish and French literature. Happily divorced, she is the mother of two adult children. She lives in Båstad on the Swedish Riviera.

Book preview

Contents

Acknowledgements

The new me

Introduction

Exodus

Property Dissolution

Social Life

Loneliness

Intimacy

Woman in Red

Cultural Differences

Woman in Yellow

Invisible Women

Woman in Turquoise

Finances

Emotions

Kenyan Women, Laws, and Taboos

Male Status

Woman in White

Woman in Cerise

Relation Scrutiny

My Side of the Story

Suffering versus Pleasure

The law of Jante

Now and Forward with Tenderness

Physical and Mental Health

Bonding

Finalising the Divorce

The Past or the Present

Best Wishes for the Future

Notes on Swedish Culture

Blurb

About the Author

Acknowledgements

I want to express my gratitude to all the people who, in different ways, made this book come true. My special thanks go to four of them.

Thank you, my dearest sons, for your love and your support and for being there. I love you unlimitedly and unconditionally.

I thank you, Victoria Rikede, for your inspiration, contribution, support and for lifting the book to a higher level.

Finally I say thank you to my ex, who stimulated my insights.

The new me

My present life is built on love, trust, consideration, respect, happiness, pleasure, and honesty.

1. I believe in life, God, the Universe, love, and the law of attraction.

I trust the flow of life, and I am prepared to let go of the past.

I look at the big picture.

I dare to follow my wishes, and I trust that everything is fine.

I dare to meet my partner with communication.

2. I value myself.

I take care of my body: my face, my hair, my feet, my hands, my skin, and my muscles. I practice good hygiene. I think about the food that I consume and the energy that I expel and how that food affects my skeleton and my inner organs, including my brain and my heart. I take care of my clothes, my shoes, my bags, my glasses, my jewellery, and my watches.

I take care of my soul: believing in and practising love, trust, consideration, respect, happiness, and honesty. I am concerned with meditation, affirmations, positive thinking, and presence in the now.

I listen to my feelings, and I attempt to calibrate with them. I act from my heart and intuition.

I appreciate, use, and take pleasure in my senses. I take pleasure in music, art, wildlife, food, beverages, flowers, candles, perfumes, scents, massages, spas, swimming, saunas, the sunshine, dancing, walks, movement, rest, interior design, and my personal belongings.

I am honest: I communicate with others clearly, lovingly, and with focus.

I am pleased with and proud of my own positive achievements by neither overvaluing nor undervaluing them and by recognizing the power of the Universe and other people’s efforts.

3. I value other people.

I show respect for and consideration of other people with regard to their bodies, their time, their souls, their mental space, their commitment and their commitments, their positive actions, our communication, our community feeling, and their contributions to my life.

4. I strive for a life of balance and harmony.

I achieve balance between my female, receptive, introverted, and caring side and my male, acting, giving, extroverted, and developing side.

I gratefully accept offers of other people’s efforts, and I appreciate and value them. I receive them, and I am prepared to make efforts for others with my talents, time, and strength.

I practice physical balance.

I raise my energy level with happiness, love, activity, commitment, rest, sleep, peace and quiet, the ability to let things happen, and with space for opening up to ideas, events, people, and objects.

5. I value my personal belongings and my surroundings.

I clear away, give away, and take care.

I go for quality, beauty, comfort, and pleasure.

Introduction

With this book I wish to infuse hope and to encourage others to encounter reality as it is and give way to the power of the present. I also want to inspire others to accept the past and to appreciate that it has brought us to this very moment, in which we create new possibilities.

I have been fortunate that women from Sweden and Kenya shared their experiences and thoughts with me, and I found lots of common patterns in their stories, as well as great differences regarding basic, material conditions. Reoccurring were faith, hope, love, strength, commitment, and dedication—but also fatigue, pain, struggle, forlornness, and signs of resignation. I wish to let three women from Kenya and three women from Sweden speak here.

Exodus

It is the thirtieth year of your marriage, and it is the fifty-sixth year of your life. Your children are now grown, with their own lives and careers. You have recovered from a few stressful years including a period of illness, money has poured into your company, and you have left your job outside of this company to fully go for your new life together.

That’s when you get dumped.

Blame

Now you have one big and crucial decision to make. Are you going to look to yourself for the source of blame?

You may accuse yourself of neglecting yourself. Then again you may try to look back upon the lives of you and your husband and see what you could have done in order to please him. Maybe you will direct an attack on your partner for not realising what you have done for your family, for not appreciating you, and for not wanting to share his successful life with you. Another option is to accuse your parents: your mother of being a weak role model and your father of not warning you about male wolves in sheep’s clothing. Finally, you may rage against both biology and society about gender injustices. For your assistance you may use your female friends, your therapist, or various activist groups.

To find out if any of these options are the right way to go, please check by posing and answering these questions: Am I going to feel strong? Will I come to dwell in calm and harmony? Will my actions bring out eventually my wish to smile and give? Will I ever permit myself to enjoy the flavour of a fresh apricot with my eyes shut? Will I laugh in elation? Will I allow myself to meet people who wish me to be happy? Will I be overcome with the beauty of a bright, white moon against a dark blue sky? And talking about beauty, will the route I take to recovery counteract the lines on my forehead and around my mouth?

I realised that anger strengthens the guts—at least in the short run. I also realised that—in the long run—anger breaks you down. I understood that I would have many opportunities to laugh, even an exhilarated laugh. However, I was aware that most laughter would come out of spite, aimed at somebody else or at myself. The laughter that means that life is fun and that bubbles from within out of a feeling of abundance and is reflected as a shining light of kindness in one’s eyes—that kind of laughter could not be accommodated along this road.

To all of the questions other than, Will I laugh in elation? the answer was no, without hesitation. Consequently, I chose another way. On that road my marriage was