Despite being on holiday in beautiful Noosa, today has been a tough day.

The reality is that sorting out your financial settlement post divorce, and extricating yourself from joint international tax difficulties* is hard work – intellectually and emotionally.

I’ve had to sit through a teleconference involving both my family lawyers and my tax lawyers, and I just can’t help thinking that there must be an easier, quicker and more efficient way to do all of this.

And of course, there is. I can forgo my right to legal representation, and just sign all the documents that I’ve been sent by my ex husband.

There isn’t a day that I don’t wish that’s what I had done. This process has been way more complicated, and has taken a much greater psychological toll than I had ever anticipated. But the reality is that I spent most of my marriage with my eyes shut, or open just enough to only see the things that didn’t make my stomach twist and my heart ache, and I promised myself that I would come out of it with my eyes wide open, and having ensured that I was aware of all the facts. For the first time in my adult life I wanted to make an important life decision in possession of all the relevant facts.

Right from the moment that I made the discovery that led to asking my husband to leave, there has been a part of me that wishes I could have allowed myself to continue my life in blissful ignorance. But I know that the path to real happiness – to joy perhaps – to go through your life journey properly present, aware of all its pains and its pleasures. And I made a choice, in the moment that I said ‘you will have to leave’, to do that.

And lately I’ve also started to really understand that how I deal with these issues is also a choice, that there is not much point in choosing presence if my default position is always to allow myself to fall into distress when I experience an upset or a reminder. It’s unrealistic to expect it not to hurt, to not feel sad, angry, frustrated. But that I need to acknowledge these feelings and then work to move on from them.

The best way I’ve found of doing this is to walk determinedly, a little too fast, for as long as it takes to make it all feel a little better. It’s unrealistic not to feel these things, but I’ve discovered that walking, outdoors, preferably somewhere beautiful, does the trick about 98% of the time. And if you can do this with someone you love, and who loves you back, all the better.

And for the other 2% of the time there is Moet.

*Yep. I totally get that this is a bit of a first world sort of problem. It’s not as international as say, a Mossack Fonseca style problem, but for me, it’s still been a big headache…