Have you lost hope or given up as a result of a broken heart or over the despair of a relationship not working out?

I believe that we all go through stages of losing hope and suffer feelings of despair when things don't work out.  At the time we don't see a way of ever recovering when we hurt so much. Having spent so many years in broken relationships, I know what despair and disappointment taste like and I desperately wanted to find a way out of my pain and find new meaning to my life.

Author Adam J Jackson has released a book this year called The Flipside, which looks into the phenomenon of how every problem, however big or small, contains an equivalent or greater benefit or opportunity. Now this doesn't subtract that painful, sad and injustices happen and hurt. The fact is life is difficult and there is plenty of suffering. Yet I have been encouraged to read that science has taken a keen interest in why some people seem to find the hidden opportunities in life when they have been faced with insurmountable pain, problems and obstacles.

What this book looks at, and with the help of scientific evidence to back up the results, is that it is how people respond and perceive those difficulties, which makes a huge difference to their recovery and how their lives are shaped thereafter.  Stories are told of how people have faced serious illnesses, lost physical abilities, endured insurmountable setbacks and letdowns and yet claim these experiences brought and taught them success and a quality of life that was not there before.

These people have found the flipside to their problems.

If you have suffered through relationships, can you find the flipside to your experiences? Can we indeed find triumph after an abusive relationship, heartbreak or a consistent pattern of broken relationships? Is there a flipside?

This really depends on how you perceive what you have been through. During suffering we only see our pain but eventually if we look for the flipside, we will see it offers us the opportunity to learn how to end abuse. It provides us with a new direction in life, to learn how to become strong, to educate our children so they know that love does not hurt. The flipside wants to teach us that that the opinion we have about ourselves is much more important than the one we have listened to from our abusers. The flipside may result in you being an inspiration to others who are struggling with what you have been through, it may lead to you making a new discovery, or a new way of problem solving, or how to have peace after such turmoil, who knows?

My flipside resulted in finding faith in God, learning how to say no to abuse, figuring out who are safe people, finding a new life direction and starting a business that supports women how to break free too. This is the flipside to my broken relationships, what is yours?