The day began the same way every day had for nearly a year, with me waking up in tears. Often I’d continue to cry all day, on and off, and sometimes I’d even howl like a wounded animal.
For that’s what I was: wounded. My 20-year marriage had ended the year before and I was still experiencing shock, loss and the pain of intense grief.
Shock at the betrayal of my husband of 20 years, Rui. Grief for the love I’d lost and for the happiness that being with my soulmate and our two teenage children had once brought me.
Not knowing how to channel that grief, I’d tried to run away from it, embarking on a period of decadence and hedonism. After all, friends kept telling me that divorce marked the start of my ‘freedom’ – that I should see it as a chance to spread my wings and ‘treat myself’.
Well, I’d certainly done that. In the nine months since our split in June 2018 I’d blown around £45,000 on designer clothes and foreign jaunts. There was the £9,000, last-minute dash to an exclusive beach club in Mykonos ‘because I deserved it’, and the £1,500 pair of Christian Louboutin boots I bought myself as a ‘divorce present’.
There were Yves Saint Laurent sunglasses, handbags from Stella McCartney and Mulberry, and thousands spent on expensive lingerie.
I’d thought this cathartic blow-out would herald in the new spirit of fun and freedom that everyone kept promising me was on the horizon.
In reality, it left me with no savings, steeped in £15,000 debt and at the point of emotional collapse.
Gilly Da Silva and Rui wed in Las Vegas in 2000, but after about a decade the trust had broken down and, in 2018, Gilly says she got a text from him that ended their marriage
Gilly says instead of dealing with the pain of her divorce, she ran away from it by going on a spending ‘rampage’ – buying items from Christian Louboutin boots to a £9,000 Mykonos trip
And yet I kept on running. That evening, in March 2019, I went for dinner with friends at the Groucho Club in London – one I really couldn’t afford – where I got talking to a couple who asked if I fancied joining them on a skiing trip to Verbier.
‘Just give me enough time to organise a babysitter and I’ll be there Monday,’ I said.
I used my last £500 – actually, it wasn’t even mine, it was just the last £500 I could sneak on to my groaning credit card – and booked the flight. Everything else, I figured, I’d make up as I went along.
This trip would prove to be my last bid to party away the pain before the reality of my desperately sad – and cash-strapped – situation hit home. The following year, I would find myself a penniless divorcee, reliant on benefits to pay the rent.
It also marked a turning point because it led to me finally seeking help and finding a way out of the pit of self-destruction into which I’d cast myself – to acknowledging that the pain of heartbreak is as real as any physical ailment and should be treated as such – a message I am keen to spread to help others heal.
And, utterly unexpectedly, it also sparked a chain of events that led to me doing something I never thought possible: falling in love and, crucially, trusting again.
Of course, there was a time when I couldn’t imagine a life without my ex-husband Rui. We’d met in 1998 when I was 26 and had moved from the UK to Lisbon, Portugal, where he was an aspiring music producer.
Not long after, Rui got his first No 1 with a track he’d produced and composed and we went from scraping a living on my waitress’s tips to criss-crossing the globe with a flute of champagne in hand.
By 1999 we’d moved to London, started our own successful record label and Rui was making a name for himself as a celebrity DJ. Life was one big party. Weekends started on a Thursday and finished on Monday morning, often in a different country.
Our wedding in Las Vegas in 2000 summed up our relationship perfectly. We were wild, fun and blissfully in love. We were also a terrific team. I managed the business – and Rui’s career. Things had to change, however, when we had children.
Our son, now 24, was born in 2001 and our daughter, 22, followed two years later. I could no longer travel all over the world at a moment’s notice; they had to come first. For Rui, however, it remained business as usual. I found myself looking after both him and the children, managing the home, the school run, the grocery shopping and the bills, while he was as free-living as ever.
By 2010, however, our music business had started to wane as new acts crowded on to the market – though thankfully I found I could make good money buying foreign properties and renting them out as holiday lets.
Gilly was invited on a skiing holiday to Verbier, the Swiss resort loved by celebrities and royals. ‘All reason went out of the window,’ she writes, ‘I used my last £500 and booked the flight’
After her divorce, Gilly travelled extensively – from Crete, to Mykonos and Ibiza – staying at exclusive resorts (pictured in Lisbon, Portugal, in 2019)
Cracks were starting to appear in our marriage, too, ones I tried to ignore at first. I felt vulnerable and became hyper-sensitive, over-thinking everything Rui said and did.
By 2017 there were rows, horrible ones, frequently in front of the children – never a good thing. I tried to spell it out to him: how our family was on the brink of collapse, all that we stood to lose.
I was on my way to meet some friends for lunch in June 2018 when I got the text from Rui that ended my marriage – and nearly destroyed me.
I snapped, telling him to pack his bags and go. I couldn’t be with someone I couldn’t trust. I don’t know how I got through that lunch. We were driving away, my friend at the wheel, when she pulled into a petrol station and I stepped out of the car and collapsed on the forecourt, howling and retching in pain.
Over the next year I began unravelling. I tried to accept the narrative being peddled by well-meaning friends (and card shops – I’d never noticed the ‘congratulations on your divorce’ cards before, but suddenly I was seeing them everywhere) that I was about to step into a new period of freedom and self-discovery.
That, as I was no longer shrinking and moulding my life to fit around my husband, I could go and have some fun and rediscover ‘me’.
The only problem was, ‘me’ still felt like a happily married, 46-year-old mother of two. This so-called freedom actually felt like a punishment.
Over the next nine months, I went on something of a rampage as I bowed to the pressure to be different to my married self. I travelled – to Crete, Mykonos and Ibiza – staying at exclusive holiday resorts and piling everything on my credit card.
I’d buy a £1,000 designer handbag with the same abandon you’d buy a pair of tights, convincing myself it was just the pick-me-up I needed.
This was my time, I told myself – my treat. After all, I’d never spent money on myself like that before. When I was married, the family had come first. But it just left me feeling all the more empty. Far from rejuvenating me, I’d never been more miserable. I was running away from the pain instead of dealing with it. I awoke crying every morning – and not just because of the hefty debts building up on my American Express card. None of my friends intervened, which I think was wise, as I wouldn’t have listened if they had. In fact, in my fragile mental state I think it would have had the opposite effect.
I really shouldn’t have gone on that final skiing trip to Verbier in March 2019 – but of course I did.
On my return, I discovered I was £15,000 in debt. I couldn’t go on living this way any more. Finally, I booked myself in for some therapy and over a course of six sessions I was able to see that I was experiencing trauma.
Looking back, I realise I would have been better off spending my money on therapy rather than luxury holidays and fancy clothes.
For there were plenty more challenges ahead. In the 12 months that followed, Covid struck, crippling my rental properties business and leaving me – a woman who once travelled first class – a penniless divorcee, saddled with enormous debt and no income. It forced me to reassess everything. I had to swallow my pride and ask for help. I signed up for Universal Credit to pay the rent on my London flat.
But when you hit rock bottom, life has a way of sharpening your instincts. You look at opportunities differently, become braver about saying yes to things you might have turned down before – and learn quickly that you’re more resourceful than you realised.
And so, I took out a loan, which I used to work on a business idea that had been at the back of my mind for some time: ‘divorce and grief’ retreats for those devastated by loss, just like me.
It felt like I could use my experience to help others navigate this painful and difficult path, when you suddenly find yourself, in your late 40s, single again. My advice to other women going through financial hardship after divorce is to cut back where you need and don’t be afraid to ask for help.
But most importantly, start thinking about what you can build next rather than what you’ve lost. If you keep thinking negatively, you’re blocking anything positive from coming your way.
I don’t see it as a coincidence that around this time Justin came my way. After my return from that skiing trip, some friends I’d met out there invited me to dinner and introduced us.
Gilly says her relationship with second husband Justin (pictured at their wedding) has allowed her to do many things she never had before, as she’d been putting Rui’s wants and needs first
Now Gilly runs a business called Mending Hearts – offering retreats where people can process heartbreak and rebuild confidence in a supportive community (Pictured in Morocco)
A no-nonsense entrepreneur with his own property business, and a divorced parent like me, Justin was the polar opposite to Rui. We became a couple in 2020.
The pull was instant for both of us and with him I’ve been able to do so many things I never had – because my entire focus had been on Rui and his wants and needs.
Like me, Justin loves to travel – not from party venue to party venue, but hiking, exploring and diving. Suddenly it was time to discover a new me – not the brokenhearted me, prowling Selfridges with a credit card and tear-stained face, but a me who climbed the highest peak in Madeira and went trekking through the mountains of Chiang Mai. Slowly, too, my Mending Hearts retreats business took off.
Our first retreat was in East Sussex in 2020 and we’ve since expanded worldwide, hosting sessions in Spain, Greece, Morocco, Portugal and Thailand, attracting women and men from all over the world. What started as a place for people to process heartbreak has grown into something much bigger – a supportive community where people rebuild confidence, form genuine friendships and begin the next chapter of their lives together.
I’m even thinking of launching a men-only retreat. I’ve found many men will bounce from relationship to relationship after a break-up, without ever really addressing what’s going on underneath. I want to change that.
With my divorce settled and my equilibrium restored, Justin and I married at a villa in Ibiza last year. My son gave me away and my daughter was bridesmaid; they absolutely adore him and look at him as family.
I’ve forgiven Rui for his betrayal. In fact, I even thank him. Unexpected as they were, his actions have given me a fantastic life.
It’s not the ‘freedom’ that my friends – and all those divorce congratulations cards once promised – but I feel so much freer for having left that period behind me.
- The next Mending Hearts retreat takes place in Koh Samui, Thailand, from May 4 to 10 (mendingheartsretreat.com). Prices from £3,550 for six nights.
- As told to Julia Lawrence
