{"id":270,"date":"2014-12-15T03:41:18","date_gmt":"2014-12-15T03:41:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/howgreatthoupart\/?p=270"},"modified":"2014-12-15T16:05:50","modified_gmt":"2014-12-15T16:05:50","slug":"can-a-decorators-divorce-makeover-heal-your-wounds","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/howgreatthoupart\/2014\/12\/can-a-decorators-divorce-makeover-heal-your-wounds.html","title":{"rendered":"Why I Want to Chalk Paint My Life: Decorator Divorce Makeover"},"content":{"rendered":"

My friends \u201cTrixie\u201d and \u201cLoretta\u201d are moving stuff around my house. One grabs a chair and scoots it towards my fireplace. The other grabs a lamp and places it on the piano. They are decorators who in the loving friendship of divorce have offered to give my home a makeover. <\/p>\n

Loretta scopes the room as she \u2018mind shops\u2019 my existing belongings. She perches each in a new found home within my home. Each time I feel a spring in my step. No, scratch that. I feel the laser precision of an awesome internal face lift.<\/p>\n

In between the shuffle we alternate laughing and solving the worlds (at least my divorce worlds problems).<\/p>\n

\u201cI turned off life last night,\u201d says Loretta.<\/p>\n

Trixie laughs.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou can do that?\u201d I inquire. \u201cCuz, I wanna, no I need to do that right now.\u201d<\/p>\n

We all laugh.<\/p>\n

\u201cI can\u2019t believe you are doing this for me,\u201d I say. \u201cThis is one of the biggest things that has ever been done for me.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s because you\u2019re a wound licker,\u201d says Loretta. \u201cThe chickens all line up to get their wounds licked from the wound licker. You need your own wounds licked now.\u201d<\/p>\n

Trixie nods. I take everything in. The kindness of friendship. I start to tell them that I have been writing notes for a column on thanking all the wonderful friends who have helped me through divorce. <\/p>\n

\u201cSomeone once told me to think of friendship as a stable,\u201d says Trixie. \u201cWe need all kinds of different friends in our stable throughout life.\u201d<\/p>\n

Loretta swipes paint with soothing brush strokes across my weathered mahogany dining room table. The victim of a girl\u2019s Christmas party gone bad with a catered food sterno fire. Loretta sands down the one wound of my table. She then sweeps Annie Sloan Chalk Paint in Coco, across the entire surface. It dries and then she distresses it and waxes it. <\/p>\n

Suddenly, what is old is new again. What is old is more beautiful than it was. There is hope welling. If not for this old chick at least for anything and everything that I can slather with this flipping amazing chalk paint.<\/p>\n

I get choked up and hug them. I am happy that my stable houses these two friends. I am also grateful that they too are fellow wound lickers. And that somehow they let me knock the other chickens out of the barn to be first today in their friendship, wound licking line. <\/p>\n

Oh, and you owe it to yourself divorce or no divorce to check out Chalk Paint.<\/p>\n

\"4313\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\"4308\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Follow me on Facebook @Colleen Sheehy Orme
\non Twitter @colleenorme
\non Pinterest @colleensheehyorme
\nE-mail: Colleen.Sheehy.Orme@gmail.com
\nwww.colleensheehyorme.com<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

My friends \u201cTrixie\u201d and \u201cLoretta\u201d are moving stuff around my house. One grabs a chair and scoots it towards my fireplace. The other grabs a lamp and places it on the piano. They are decorators who in the loving friendship of divorce have offered to give my home a makeover. 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Born to my native Brooklyn parents, I have a love of all things city and all things country. I found myself in the town of Scranton, Pennsylvania, which prior to The Office, nary a soul could envision less you found yourself on the hills of Interstate 81. I was held up there while I pursued my B.S. in Business. I have two passions: Business marketing and writing. The two are not so terribly different. Why? Cultivating a brand is in essence the story and the connecting of the dots of a corporate entity. I write features for various magazines and newspapers and I am a national divorce columnist (what can I say things didn\u2019t turn out quite the way I thought they would). I am also a former business columnist. For more than fifteen years, I spent my summers on the Jersey Shore in what I call my \u2018out of state\u2019 clothes once again magnetized to the northerners I find so familiar. If I were to brand my writing, I would say I write of LOVE. That is the core from which I begin most stories. I find myself drawn to dig for the moments in the story that are the passion that drive the message. It may be the love of what originally started a business or an authentically motivated personal profile, or simply the love of a subject being investigated which compels me to write. My forever favorite form of writing is the human interest essay or what I call, \u201cAn Interview With Life.\u201d The average day that is explored and somehow once again instills in us a joie de vivre\u2026..a joy of life. These human moments are the Hope Virus that spreads amongst us and can\u2019t help but propel us into better human beings with a larger sense of the world.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/howgreatthoupart\/author\/corme"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/howgreatthoupart\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/270","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/howgreatthoupart\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/howgreatthoupart\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/howgreatthoupart\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/575"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/howgreatthoupart\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=270"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/howgreatthoupart\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/270\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":277,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/howgreatthoupart\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/270\/revisions\/277"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/howgreatthoupart\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=270"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/howgreatthoupart\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=270"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/howgreatthoupart\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=270"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}