Seven years after our divorce, my ex-husband gave me the gift I needed most.

A few years before, I’d had a sort of come-to-Jesus moment. A lot of people I knew were getting married, and at their weddings, I…let’s just say I couldn’t handle myself. I drank way more than I care to admit, which was unusual for me—anywhere else, I barely drank at all. Clearly there was something about weddings that triggered me.

My friend and mentor, Sheva, suggested that maybe this was the symptom of some issue I had with my own wedding. When she said that, it made me look closely at what I was hiding. There were things I needed to be honest about, things that I’d tried to bury, but needed to come to the surface.

Sheva encouraged me to reach out to Bob. We’d been divorced almost seven years, and I hadn’t spoken to him in at least four. I’d heard he was remarried and already had kids. I was with Stephen, and though I loved him, I had trouble...