The pain of abandonment is huge. The partner you loved and cherished for so many years has decided you are no longer required. Past your sell-by date. Of no use to them anymore, so tossed out like a piece of garbage. Abandoned with barely a backward glance.
Having been an abandoned wife herself, Pat Backley knows how deep the pain goes. She also knows that unless people have been through the same trauma themselves, they can never understand just how awful it is and how hard it is to pull yourself together and get your life back on track.
Four years on, now that the rawness and shock have subsided, Pat realised that her experience could help other women.
“To know that I have survived and even flourished, despite being dumped unceremoniously by my husband of 26 years at the age of 67. I have now become the woman I was always meant to be…. a strong, resilient survivor!”
Pat Backley
The Abandoned Wives Handbook is a gentle guide to one of life’s great traumas. In an attempt to keep this gentle read light-hearted, each chapter is divided into letters of the alphabet, rather like a dictionary of distress, something you can dip into at any time.
Anxious. You will feel anxious, in varying degrees, at different times. Sometimes this anxiety will be slight. At other times, it will be huge, threatening to engulf you. Try to learn to just go with it. Worrying about feeling anxious will just make it worse. You have so much else to contend with at that moment.
Inadequate. Even if you had been a very confident, outgoing person before, being abandoned can make you feel incredibly inadequate. It may take time, but you will eventually get your confidence back. Just because he has chosen to abandon you does not make you a lesser person. He is the inadequate one for not realising the treasure he had in you.
The extract below is from Pat’s book on the letter ‘P’
PEOPLE
People will never cease to amaze you.
The people you thought you could love and
trust (like your husband) have let you down.
Friends may drop off the radar, unwilling to spend
their precious time with someone who is no longer
part of a couple.
Other people, quite unexpectedly, will be there
for you, helping you through this difficult time in
different ways. Those people should be treasured.
It is easy to be a good friend when life is going well,
but not so easy when you are traumatised and not
at your best.
PERFECT
Life is not perfect. We all know that, yet somehow
it is what we spend our lives trying to achieve. A
perfect life.
Once you have been abandoned, you realise it
is all an illusion. What you may have thought was
the perfect marriage is no longer even a marriage.
Suddenly perfect is no longer that important, you
just need to get through this awful time and emerge
at the other end. Perfect can wait.
PENNILESS
You may find yourself penniless for a while, and it is
a horrible situation–particularly if you see your ex
out there, seemingly financially stable and getting
on with his new life.
PRECIOUS
Despite everything, you are still surrounded by
precious things: your family, your children, your
friends. At the end of the day, the people you love
are all that matters.
In time, once the shock and sadness has subsided a little, you will be able to appreciate even
more precious things you still have. No-one can
ever take away your memories and they are the
most precious thing of all.
POWERFUL
In the early days of abandonment, the most powerful emotions you feel are probably sorrow and
sadness. This is perfectly natural.
As time goes by, and you get stronger, you will
realise that actually you are pretty powerful. You
are a strong woman. You have been through one of
life’s great traumas and lived to tell the tale.
Extract from: The Abandoned Wives Handbook by Pat Backley, Pat Backley Publishing, RRP $15.00
About the author:
Pat Backley is an English woman who emigrated to New Zealand at the age of 59.
Her first book Daisy, a historical family saga novel, was written and published during lockdown in 2020. Since then, she has also published her memoirs From There to Here, With an Awful Lot in Between and has co-authored a best-selling coffee table book The Warrior Women Project: A Sisterhood of Immigrant Women. She has also published The Second Daisy.
In 2022 Pat published Seventy Years’ Worth of Travel, a travel memoir, and the novel, Valentine George. She was also invited to include short stories in the anthology, Relatable Voices: A Drive to Make People Smile.
‘Having found my perfect career at the age of 70, I now intend to write until I die!’ says Pat cheerfully. Pat lives in Auckland.