The dictionary defines 'epiphany' as 'a sudden revelation or insight into the nature , essence or meaning of something': and that's what I experienced just a while ago !!
I was in the car with my father as he was driving me back from some place and he was his usual real angry self. I was thinking of my mother who has been suffering...very much...with the horrendous , crazy anger in which he mostly behaves with her. And I thought, if it were me, I would have walked away ages ago and not suffered for years. And then it hit me: Unlike her, I AM FREE. I survived when my mother could not have had because of my ability to rebuild my life, thanks to my education, work, talent, etc.(all this was impossible for me to have imagined in the early years of separation)
I had a huge shock and very long suffering when the ex left me for another woman. But today, when I look at myself, my life, I realise that the end of a lousy marriage is so much better than living in that same lousy marriage just so that I can feel secure. The end of marriage has made me (though it was not easy) to walk into a new life : the epiphany: the end of marriage is NOT 'the end'...life really does go on and one can really find peace. After having undergone a very severe case of major depression...after thinking I would never be able to get back on my feet again...never be able to feel alive again... if I can say this, this healing can TRULY happen. It takes time.. there have been tears... but today I am at a much better place--much better than the marriage where I had to bear being treated as dirt. The epiphany, again, is that things really do get better...that I am better today, where I am, than in the marriage, the end of which, at one time, I had thought was the end of me. Not so ! :)