COMP CLOSED | Book Giveaway | The Abandoned Wives Handbook

A gentle guide to one of life’s great traumas

The pain of abandonment is huge. The partner you loved and cherished for so many years has decided you are no longer required. Past your sell-by date. Of no use to them anymore, so tossed out like a piece of garbage. Abandoned with barely a backward glance.

In an attempt to keep this gentle read light-hearted, each chapter is divided into letters of the alphabet, rather like a dictionary of distress, something you can dip into at any time.

I am not an expert, merely someone who has survived one of life’s great traumas and has come through it as a stronger, more resilient person.

‘Anxious. You will feel anxious, in varying degrees, at different times. Sometimes this anxiety will be slight. At other times, it will be huge, threatening to engulf you. Try to learn to just go with it. Worrying about feeling anxious will just make it worse. You have so much else to contend with at that moment.

‘Inadequate. Even if you had been a very confident, outgoing person before, being abandoned can make you feel incredibly inadequate. It may take time, but you will eventually get your confidence back. Just because he has chosen to abandon you does not make you a lesser person. He is the inadequate one for not realising the treasure he had in you.’

‘Powerful. In the early days of abandonment, the most powerful emotions you feel are probably sorrow and sadness. This is perfectly natural. As time goes by, and you get stronger, you will realise that actually you are pretty powerful. You are a strong woman. You have been through one of life’s great traumas and lived to tell the tale.’

Author Note:

‘Having been an abandoned wife myself, I know how deep the pain goes. I also know that unless people have been through the same trauma themselves, they can never understand just how awful it is. How hard it is to pull yourself together and get your life back on track.

So, four years on, now that the rawness and shock have subsided, I realised that perhaps my experience could help other women. To know that I have survived and even flourished, despite being dumped unceremoniously by my husband of 26 years at the age of 67.
I have now become the woman I was always meant to be…. a strong, resilient survivor!’

About the author:

Pat Backley is an English woman who emigrated to New Zealand at the age of 59.

Her first book Daisy, a historical family saga novel, was written and published during lockdown in 2020. Since then, she has also published her memoirs From There to Here, With an Awful Lot in Between and has co-authored a best-selling coffee table book The Warrior Women Project: A Sisterhood of Immigrant Women. She has also published The Second Daisy.

In 2022 Pat published Seventy Years’ Worth of Travel, a travel memoir, and the novel, Valentine George. She was also invited to include short stories in the anthology, Relatable Voices: A Drive to Make People Smile.

‘Having found my perfect career at the age of 70, I now intend to write until I die!’ says Pat cheerfully. Pat lives in Auckland.

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