Milestone celebrations

By Hillary Livingston

Milestone events in our lives aren’t always the ones we expect them to be.

Certainly many of us can vividly remember details from our graduations, weddings (even if the marriage didn’t last), births of our children, loss of a loved one, and the other events we commonly associate with life-altering moments in time.

But then, among these dramatic landmark events, there are these beautiful and often unexpected moments, experiences, and seemingly ordinary days that are just as boldly imprinted in our memories.

One of these experiences for me occurred in September 2022, six months after giving birth to my daughter and nine months post separation from my soon to be ex-husband.

To celebrate our birthdays (I’m an August Virgo and Bethany is a September Virgo, in case you needed to know that), Bethany and I decided to invest in a serious self-care experience. In addition to celebrating another year around the sun, we were also celebrating how far we had come on our own unique journeys of divorce.

For me that journey included a very sudden separation (think narcissistic discard), uncovering evidence of infidelity, giving birth partnerless, selling our family home, moving back to my hometown to live with my parents, among all the other things involved with dismantling a marriage. Simultaneously, I was trying to figure out how and why my marriage failed so miserably, and care for my young son and newborn daughter (you can read more about my story here).

While Bethany’s journey was very different from mine (read Bethany’s story here), we were unified in the experience of divorce and served as each other’s lifelines through some of the darkest and hardest times in our lives. We were battered, but not broken. And most importantly, we had helped one another keep our inner lights shining, even when they were too dim to see for ourselves.

So, to celebrate our progress, we treated ourselves to a spa day at the Four Seasons in Baltimore. It was one of the most luxurious self-care experiences I’ve ever had and while it was definitely pricey, the memory of that day will forever mark a turning point in my life.

Bethany and I had no idea that the photos we took that day would become the images we would, in the not so distance future, share with the world to represent our story and our mission to instill hope and optimism into the lives of those experiencing divorce, separation or the end of a long-term partnership.

We hope that by sharing our memory of this day, it will inspire you to pause and acknowledge how far you’ve come in your own unique journey. However you to decide to invest in this celebration, we are confident that it will be something you will carry with you forever.