After a 27-year marriage, Encinitas resident Rachel S. Ruby suddenly had to face the “fear, uncertainty and self-doubt” of going through a divorce.
“But at some point I began to realize that, far from being a catastrophe, this could be a time of incredible growth and life-changing epiphanies,” she said. “If I opened my heart and allowed that growth to happen.”
Ruby’s new book, “Divorce to Bliss,” shares her experience and the lessons she learned along the way, aimed at readers who are going through a divorce.
Ruby, who grew up in Los Angeles, and her ex-husband had been together for 30 years total before divorcing in 2021.
“This book was born from my experience going through that,” said Ruby, who once worked in family law and was a certified divorce mediator. “It is really a personal journey, but it’s also how I was able to heal from divorce and become the happiest I’ve ever been in my entire life. I wrote this book to help teach people, because a lot of people when they are going through divorce are very unhappy and there are a lot of negative feelings.”
There are married couples who endure relationships that are not salvageable because of the pressure to stay together.
“You really have to learn to reevaluate who you are,” Ruby said. “The me outside of the we, and what you want and what your goals are and what your desires are and how you see the rest of your life.”
She added that one of the most difficult parts of divorce is that “when you’re going through it, as I did, there are a lot of people who will tell you that you shouldn’t do it.”
“It is possible to have an amazingly happy life after divorce,” said Ruby, who has also worked in real estate. “There are a lot of negative and societal stereotypes, especially about women who divorce. There are a lot of rules in society that we’ve all grown up with that say divorce is bad, wrong, it’s negative. ”
She added, “There’s also a lot of fear in divorcing. People can definitely, definitely learn to be happy.”
Ruby said she’s always been a writer.
“I wrote a novel in 2003 that I never published, which I plan to do one day,” she said. “I wrote a book on options to foreclosure when the housing market crashed in 2008, and I wrote a children’s book in 2018.”
“Divorce to Bliss,” published by Beverly Hills Publishing, is available in hardcopy and ebook formats. For more information, visit divorcetobliss.com.
