Journalist, Peter Greste, has revealed that he is dealing with a kind of re-birth experience in the light of his release from an Egyptian jail.
He is processing mixed feelings which no doubt include immense personal relief and gratitude as well as a version of "survivor guilt" for being free whilst his two colleagues remain incarcerated.
Although he is not saying as much, it is probably also likely that, as an adaptable person, he had adjusted to the restrictions of life behind bars and that freedom will demand debriefing and re-adjustment so he can fully resume executive responsibility for his own life.
Peter Greste's experiences have common features with those of Cheryl Strayed as depicted in her biographical, Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail and played by Reese Witherspoon in the movie, Wild, currently in Australian cinemas.
Strayed wrote about her epic journey - essentially alone and on foot - across the PCT (the 1000 mile Pacific Crest Trail which is closely aligned with the Sierra Nevada and Cascade mountain ranges and runs between the US border with Mexico and that with Canada through the states of California, Oregon and Washington). This was her self prescribed healing process after losing her mother prematurely and reacting with self abuse through drugs and promiscuity with the result that she also lost herself.
Strayed dared to ask the questions: "What if I could forgive myself?" "What if all those things I did were the things that got me here?" In walking, she was trying to find the girl her mother always believed she was when she advised her to, "Find your best self and when you do, hold onto it forever". In Strayed's words, "After I lost myself in the wilderness of my grief, I found my own way out of the woods".
This was Cheryl Strayed's re-birthing experience. Peter Greste is also experiencing a re-birth subsequent to 400 days in his own "wilderness". Both experiences are powerful and positive and neither would have been possible without a prolonged period of deprivation, self-discipline and extension of personal limits.
How do you plan to re-birth after you come out of the tunnel of grief and adjustment associated with separation and divorce?
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