Since My Divorce ...

The injustice of divorce

2010-03-10T20:48:26Z

Divorce for anyone is a time of upheaval and change. How much change varies from person to person. My divorce happened at the same time I was going through a career change – I can’t say that one was caused by the other but the two were definitely connected. I was approaching 50 and on a quest to find happiness.

The Divorce Encouragist was 27 when she got divorced. She started relishing life after divorce from her husband of 20 months (they’d been together for five years). She also started her blog – The Divorce Encouragist. DE’s parents were divorced and she says her experience of divorce as a child and then her own divorce left her noticing the injustice that happens with divorce. She’s on a mission to change that …

***

When I was 13-years-old, I overheard my parents talking about their separation. I heard my dad say,

“I know you’re the woman and I know you’re automatically going to get everything, so I’m not going to bother fighting you and going to court. You can just have the house and the kids. I’ll go away and take them every other weekend.”

At that point I thought, that really sucks. It shouldn’t be like that.

For a long time I toyed with the idea of becoming a divorce attorney. Then I got a bit closer to divorce attorneys through my process and through my boyfriend’s divorce and I decided I didn’t want to be one anymore. Then I started looking into being a mediator or a family therapist or a divorce coach.

This passion has been in me for a long time. A couple of years ago I started collecting books on the topic. When I realized I was happy about getting divorced, I went looking for books about divorce being a good thing. I loved The Good Divorce: Keeping Your Family Together When Your Marriage Comes Apart by Constance Ahrons. She has a really good outlook on the whole process and talks about how different couples handled things and the difference outcomes.

I read her follow-up book, We’re Still Family: What Grown Children Have to Say about Divorce and her subjects said they were still a family years later, that their parents were divorced but they still came to weddings and birthday parties for the kids and that they still felt they had a family.

Well, that’s how I feel too. So then I started looking at bad divorces and parental alienation syndrome and co-parents fighting and bad things happen to kids in those situations.

A friend of mine was going to court one day and invited me to join him because he knew how passionate I was and he knew I would value the experience of being there. It was very educational.

Then I started listening to motivational CDs in my car and I was listening to Better Than Good: Creating a Life You Can’t Wait to Live by Zig Ziglar. He said, if you’re really passionate about something, you should move towards it and immerse yourself in it. That’s why I started the blog.

I’m enjoying it. A lot of doors have opened up and I’ve met a lot of people. It’s been a great experience. I didn’t really have any expectations for the blog and I’m still learning. But I’ve gotten a ton of positive feedback from people and that means a lot to me. People have enjoyed what I’m writing. People have found it helpful and that makes me feel so good.

***

The Divorce Encouragist is now working on becoming a divorce coach and in my last post in this series, she’ll tell us what a divorce coach does.

I love the passion DE has for working to make divorce a better experience. While all the women I’ve interviewed have said they’ve come away from divorce with some valuable lessons about themselves and life, no one says it’s easy. Divorce is always painful but it isn’t the end of the world and if we can make the process less traumatic, then I’m certain that will make the years that follow better.

BTW … if you’ve had the news on the last few days you will have heard about Amazon summarily firing all it’s affiliates in Colorado because of a change in Colorado’s sales tax law. Not that I was making any money from Amazon, but I was an affiliate and as of now I won’t be linking to them an more. The links above go directly to the author’s site and that’s what I’ll be doing from now on. I probably won’t be buying from Amazon anymore either. I’d love to remove all the old links but that’s some housekeeping to do unless someone has a nifty little plugin to do that.

Relishing life after divorce

2010-03-10T00:45:06Z

Yesterday, the Divorce Encouragist (@dvrcncouragist) shared how adjusting to less money after divorce was a challenge. I think having less money after divorce is the one universal truth about divorce – is there ANYONE who has more money after divorce?

I think it’s an easy assumption that if you have less money, it means doing less. For the Divorce Encouragist though this wasn’t the case. Looking back on the three years since her divorce, she says her most significant accomplishment was to rebuild her life into something she wanted to participate in. As I listened to her, I could hear how she was relishing her life now. Here’s DE…

***

When I was married, I was depressed and I was tired all the time. I got up and went to work in the morning and I got home from work, slept on the couch and watched 90210 reruns on the soap opera channel. I didn’t do much. I guess I was trying to sleep it off. I was getting through the days by sleeping and throughout the days I was thinking the sooner I go to sleep, the sooner this day will be over.

Then, when I was moving into my place, I had this epiphany. My dad helped me move in a new stereo and we put on this old Pink Floyd record. I sat down on the floor, I didn’t have any furniture yet, and I just laid back and realized I was in this space that was MINE. It was an a-ha moment. I was going to fill it with whatever I wanted and I was going to do what I wanted. I had my life back! I was very happy and I started laughing until I was crying. My dad didn’t know what to do.

I don’t sleep on the couch anymore and now I’m staying up till one o’clock in the morning every night.

I’ve done so many things since I left. I went back to school and finished my Bachelor’s degree. I took a yoga class, I took a photography class, I took a parenting class and I’ve made new friends.I moved closer to my job so I don’t have to commute so far. I have a boyfriend now and we go out, we go snowboarding or out to dinner. I roller-skate. I didn’t do anything at all before.

I have more energy now and I’m much happier. People tell me I seem much happier and that I seem like a different person now.

***

Do you remember that feeling of being drained of energy? I do. It almost didn’t matter what it was, it always seemed like work and I certainly wasn’t enjoying it. Then, when we separated, I felt taller, and could literally feel the energy rushing through my limbs.

DE’s divorce has changed the path of her life – obviously. She wouldn’t be going by “the Divorce Encouragist” otherwise. More than just a twitter identity, DE has the Divorce Encouragist blog and is working on becoming a divorce coach. She’ll be sharing more about both of these topics in the last two posts of this series so I hope you’ll be back to visit.

Photo Credit:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/gomisan/ / CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

Making do with less money after divorce

2010-03-07T18:36:51Z

Hi everyone! Happy Monday morning! Hope you’ve all had a wonderful weekend. I’ve had kind of a lazy but social one – been out for spur of the moment coffee three different times, saw Alice in Wonderland with my son (loved it!) and enjoyed a blissfully quiet Sunday morning while my kids snoozed late.

One of the friends I’d called for coffee explained she’d been feeling depressed and would otherwise have curled up for a nap. My call was serendipity and sometimes there’s serendipity in blogging. Like right now … this weekend I saw a tweet from @TsQuest and @Runpippirun about getting together to help Single Mom Says celebrate her fortieth birthday. I’m also at the point in the Divorce Encouragist’s story where I asked her what was particularly hard for her after her divorce. The two might seem unconnected but DE answered my question with “adjusting to having less money.” Before I tell you more about the send Single Mom Says to Vegas movement, here’s what DE said living with fewer dollars after divorce.

***

I don’t want to say it was difficult but it was definitely a change. It was something I wasn’t used to, not that I’m a big spender or irresponsible with money. However, my budget was suddenly cut and I had to downsize everything. So where I used to be able to go to Target and spend $150 and it wasn’t a big deal, suddenly it was a big deal. I can’t just go do that.

My husband and I had a used car business. I had been driving a Volvo and then an Audi and then I had a supercharged Grand Prix. Now I have a 2003 Saturn Ion. I really like cars so that was a bit of an adjustment but that was the car I asked for because I knew it was practical and something I could put my dogs in.

My house is half the size of the house I left. That wasn’t really difficult but it was a noticeable adjustment. I picked out new furniture that I could afford and it was this nice, big cushy couch and loveseat but it barely fits in my tiny little living room. I hadn’t thought about that!

It’s definitely an adjustment that I’m conscious of but it’s not making me miserable. I left so much misery behind. I’m so much happier now. Every sacrifice I made has been worth it.

***

I like DE’s perspective on this – the material possessions matter less, the functionality of items matter more because what matters most is being happy and if that means less money then it means less money.

My post-divorce life was an adjustment for me too but I can’t say it was solely because of the divorce. I was also in the middle of a career change and had decided I would do whatever I could to be at home in the afternoon for when my kids finished school. I am fortunate that I have a chunk of savings to live off and I’m working part-time to stretch those further. The job also gives me health insurance which is a huge relief. But I’ve trimmed back discretionary purchases significantly, and have become quite the comparison shopper.

Now the connection with Single Mom Says. I don’t know much about Mindy Mom of Single Mom Says - I do know she’s mom to four daughters and Bank of America (shame on you) has been giving her quite the run around with a rate modification on her mortgage. All the time, she’s paying her mortgage in full and on time. I know how frustrating that is – for a while I was carrying two mortgages and the bank on one of the mortgages refused to modify my loan rate because I had too much debt. Duh! Does it ever occur to these people by lowering the monthly payments, it lessens the chance of default?

Now it’s Mindy’s fortieth birthday coming up and she’d love to celebrate it with a getaway but that’s not really in her budget. Two bloggers, T and Pippi (read T’s Quest here; Pippi’s story is coming soon) have started a movement to send Mindy to Vegas ‘coz we know that being a single mom is hard.

I’m supporting Mindy for a couple of reasons – if a lot of us get together, it’s a small amount from each of us and I can certainly forgo a few of lattes to do my part. The other reason I’m in is truthfully, I’m really curious to see if the power of social media can make this happen. Are you curious? Can you empathize with Mindy? Could you support Mindy? Pippi’s post, Vegas or Bust for Single Mom Says has all the details about how YOU can help.

Not disappointed with divorce

2010-03-05T03:40:28Z

Did you visit The Divorce Encouragist’s (@dvrcncouragist) blog ? In one of her recent posts, she shares that she’s Cultivating Capabilities and recently attended a training course on becoming a divorce coach. That will give you some idea of the possibilities DE started to see once she was out of her marriage.

Her marriage was a short one – just 20 months although she and her ex had been together for about five years. I know when my marriage ended, I was disappointed – I had always envisioned this long-term marriage with a partner for life so I asked DE if she was disappointed when her marriage ended. Here’s what she said…

***

I wasn’t disappointed. It’s funny because when I was in the marriage and I thought about leaving, I imagined it was going to be a disappointment. I thought it was going to be a disappointment for everybody. But it wasn’t.

My parents were divorced and when it happened, I hated the idea of it for the first few years. I thought I would never get divorced, even though my parents had a good divorce. I got a little bit older and I relaxed a little and thought, ‘Maybe I will get divorced. Who knows?’

I don’t know why I felt I couldn’t back out of the wedding. We didn’t have this big day planned, we didn’t have all these guests that would be disappointed. It was really that I felt I didn’t have a good excuse not to. It was the typical thing - he makes good money, we’re starting this business, it’s going to be successful, he doesn’t beat me … It was what I was supposed to do. I’d been living with him for so many years, there was just no good reason to say no at that point.

Then when I actually went through the divorce, I wasn’t disappointed in myself, I wasn’t disappointed in us. I was just very happy because I knew it was the healthiest thing for me in particular and really for both of us. We were both in the marriage and we were both unhappy. I knew it was best to end it and start over.

My parents were fine with it. My mom had just moved 500 miles away and I called her to tell her. She said,

“You’re stronger than I am, and if I can do it, I know you’ll be just fine.”

That really propelled me through the whole time. Even now, I look back and remember what mom said to me and means so much.

***

The message in this part of DE’s story for me, is the importance of listening to our inner voice and not doing things because they are expected of us. OK … there are times when I think it is important and correct to follow social expectations. Off the top of my head, I’m thinking that you should attend funeral services for friends and I believe in dress codes, for example. But I don’t believe people should get married because it seems like the next step or your parents were expecting you to.

That lesson also applies to marriage – why do we stay in relationships that aren’t working because we think that’s how marriage is? It also applies to life after divorce – it’s such a time of change and upheaval and even though it is difficult, it is a prime opportunity to create the life YOU want.

The second lesson in here is the importance of parental support – even when we’re fully grown adults, a few words of belief and encouragement from mom are so powerful. So moms, don’t wait for your child to have a crisis before you tell/show her you believe in her

I’m a Grown Up left a comment on yesterday’s post that she also fell into her marriage – she’s writing her story on her blog currently – I’ve only just started following her so I’m not sure how it all turns out. For the better I hope :0

Photo Credit:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/pikaluk/ / CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

An unhappy marriage is not the end

2010-03-04T00:04:33Z

Today, I’m excited to start another series. Let me introduce you to The Divorce Encouragist – I’m going to abbreviate that to DE for convenience. DE is a fellow blogger, blogging at, you guessed it, The Divorce Encouragist. Don’t jump to conclusions … she’s not advocating divorce over marriage. She is however, advocating divorce over slogging it out in an unhappy, loveless marriage.

DE was with her husband for almost five years, married for just 20 months. They were divorced three years ago when DE was 27. It was one of those marriages that was wrong from the beginning. I asked DE what she’d learned about life since her divorce. Here’s what she said…

***

I’ve learned there are options. If I’m really not happy, then I CAN change my circumstances. I CAN find something better.

I had been very unhappy since before I got married but I didn’t see a way out. I thought this is what people do, they live together and then they get married.

Things had been very bad between us, I had been sleeping on the couch. He came home one night and said he thought we should separate. At first, I was livid. I was yelling at him and I was so angry. He told me he’d discussed it with his parents and I said,

“How could you talk to your parents about it before you talked to me?”

“Isn’t this what you want? Don’t you hate me anyway?” he said.

Then, the light bulb went on in my head and I thought, yeah, this is what I want. I don’t want to be here. So I said,

“OK, let’s separate!”

That wasn’t really what he wanted to hear from me. He spent the next two weeks trying to change my mind, telling me he really wanted to work on things and maybe he’d spoken too soon. But I kept pushing for it.

Conveniently, we owned two houses and one of them was vacant so I moved in there. We drew up a separation agreement and we were signing it at the business we owned. I was just saying to him, “Let’s go out and celebrate, I feel really good about this,” when a woman walked in. I could tell just by the way they looked at each other that she was his girlfriend. She introduced herself to me and said she was sorry things didn’t work out. I asked her if it hadn’t worked out because of her and at first she said no but then said they’d been seeing each other for about a month.

That meant my husband was seeing her when he suggested we should separate. When I realized that, I was extremely devastated for about 20 minutes. I was driving and crying and pulled over. Later, one of my friends said that the girlfriend was not a replacement for me but a toy. She thought my husband wanted me back. I said,

“Well, I don’t want to come back and I’m really not upset about it. I’m glad he has another toy to play with because it will give me enough face to get away.”

They say that when God shuts a door, he opens a window. My husband’s affair was the closed door and the open window I so desperately wanted to jump out of. I jumped out the window and I’m so much happier. At the moment my husband said “isn’t this what you want?” I finally felt very free. I felt there were all these possibilities for me. I had been unhappy for a long time and I realized, I don’t have to be here. I’m going.

***

I’m always sad to hear about people who fall into marriage because it seemed like the next step or because they felt there was no way out of it. Perhaps the silver lining is there are often no children involved and there’s still plenty of time to start afresh.

I’m sure we’ve all known a married couple who’ve you’ve wondered why she stays with him? The Divorce Encouragist’s situation reminds of this and makes me realize that sometimes we’re immobilized simply because we don’t see the opportunities or can’t see a graceful way out.

Hope you’ll be back to read more about The Divorce Encouragist’s story. You can follow her at her blog and also on Twitter – @dvrcncouragist.

The Wisdom of a Broken Heart – review and giveaway

2010-03-09T03:36:33Z

One of the perks of this blog is that I get to review books. When a book catches my eye and seems like it would be a good resource for people dealing with divorce or if one of my interviewees mentions it, I contact the publisher for a review copy.

The book I’ve just finished reading is The Wisdom of a Broken Heart by Susan Piver. The title immediately grabbed me – I think I’d just interviewed Carolyn (see Leap and the Net Will Appear series) and the heartache of her story of losing your husband to your best friend just kept playing in my head.

What Susan describes here is counter-intuitive for me but I totally buy into it and will be keeping her book on my bookshelf for future use

You can read the rest of my review in my review section.

Now for the fun part! I have two copies of this book to giveaway. All you have to do to be entered to win your own copy is to leave a comment on THIS post about what helped you mend your broken heart. It could be something that helped you then or even something you’ve learned since then.

- You get one entry for each comment you leave.

- You’ll also get an entry for each tweet you send about this giveaway. Be sure to leave a comment here to tell me you’ve tweeted.

- The giveaway will run through midnight (MT) Monday March 8.

- You must be a U.S. resident to win.

- I’ll be using random.org to select the winner.

Looking forward to reading the comments

Finding yourself before love after divorce

2010-03-02T00:09:11Z

Today, I’m wrapping up my series about Lora and for me, this is the most powerful part of her story.

Lora’s been divorced for nine years now and during that time she has dated. Her youngest is now 15 and is just now beginning to be OK with the idea of her mother dating. So up until now Lora’s arranged her dating around her parenting time – I haven’t dated since my divorce and managing it around my kids is one of my mental obstacles but that’s besides the point.

What Lora had to share about dating was that when she left her marriage, she was looking for someone to be the ideal partner and that was her focus. While she hasn’t found her ideal yet, she has discovered herself, bringing her an inner happiness that will sustain her with or without Mr. Ideal. Here’s how she tells it.

***

I thought I would be dating all the time and that didn’t happen. That gave me the opportunity to realize that I am the source of my own joy. Not in the sense of coming from my head, what I think, but more in sense of coming from the heart.

I want a good relationship but it’s not something I’m needing or desperately seeking, like I was in the beginning.

I think a lot of people jump into a relationship and they have all the lust and initial attraction. When that goes away, they realize they’re in their old marriage again because they haven’t done the changing.

I feel fortunate that nothing has worked out. I found out the man I was with right after my marriage is a terrible alcoholic. I would have gone out of the frying pan and into the fire. I had no idea! He hid it, he never drank around me.

I was heartbroken when I met him and he was what I needed then. Now I have more trust that the more I do that I love, the more I write, the more I dance, that I will meet the right person. Before I was like, “I don’t care about the dance, I really want a love.” Now that I’m really starting to appreciate the dance, I feel that the love will come in a bigger way than if it was my focus.

I was a dancer in my 20’s but I stopped in my thirties. I didn’t do much even when I got divorced because I was teaching full-time. When I was about 43 I began training again and my body started responding, remembering everything. Ten years ago, I never thought I’d be dancing with 40 Women Over 40 or the companies I’m dancing with now. All of that just blossomed. I had a gift but if I were too focused on the joy coming from a relationship I would have missed out on all this other stuff going on in my life.

I had a relationship that just ended. It wasn’t really a relationship – he was too young. He was 14 years younger. We met at a party, he didn’t notice my age and I didn’t notice his age. We both thought we were much closer in age to each other, maybe five years apart.

He was pretty much everything I ever imagined I would want. Mind, body and soul, I never thought I would encounter someone like that, not in my wildest dreams. But he wanted a family and I already have two children. I was OK with that because really, it’s not like there’s just one person out there for me.

That’s another way my thinking has changed. I used to be a huge romantic, thinking there’s ONE soul mate out there for you. Now I think we encounter wherever we ourselves are at.

Now I’ve experienced that type of love, I realize it’s actually out there. But I could not have encountered that had I not come to this place of discovering myself.

***

As I haven’t dated since my divorce, I can’t relate my experience to Lora’s. However, what Lora says is consistent with what a number of other people have told me. To mention a few, when Anka spent some time in therapy after her divorce she realized she was always picking the wrong man, because of she wasn’t listening to her own needs.

When T talks says divorce isn’t a failure, she’s agreeing with Lora that the type of relationship we get is a reflection of just where we are in our own development.

I also liked Jacque’s comment on Lora’s search for authenticity – growing up we develop these ideas of what life is supposed to be like and we follow those ideas. We don’t do the work of finding out what the life is we truly want until we’ve hit a crisis. I’m tucking this one away because I know I’m going to be able to use it with two teenagers.

It’s also a similar message to Karen Salmansohn’s in her book, Prince Harming Syndrome.

A question I have though is if this self-learning is possible within a relationship? Are the couples that stay together the ones that have figured out how to grow together?

Photo Credit:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/dwinton/ / CC BY-NC 2.0

After divorce, holidays are a retreat

2010-02-28T19:09:35Z

This current series is about Lora – she’s been divorced for nine years now. Her two daughters were aged five and nine when Lora and her husband of 18 years divorced. Compared to many ladies I’ve interviewed, Lora’s parenting plan is very open and that includes how the children spend school vacations and the holidays. I asked Lora how they typically work those out …

***

We don’t really decide ahead of time. It’s been strange and lucky – somehow, we’ve never both wanted to take the children at the same time. Christmas has been hard for me. He has his entire family come into town every year. They all stay at his place, like 18 relatives and cousins! My family is very segmented and nobody ever comes here, so it’s very quiet for me.

I think now the kids are older and they enjoy their cousins more, they realize I could go away and then we could have Thanksgiving together. I’m still available if they want to come over and get away from the house full of people but there’s not a lot of tugging or pulling. It’s all fallen into place.

I’ve changed the way I perceive holidays. They’re more of a retreat for me these days – a meditative time because it is very silent for me. I was serving wine in the Catholic church up until about seven years ago and I was steeped in Christianity. Now I’m not at all. Zero. I love my roots and I love what Jesus represents but I’ve made a complete break and changed so radically. His family, they’re all going to church so I think it’s more important for my children to celebrate Christmas with their father on Christmas Day.

***

I have what I think is a more typical parenting plan – it does spell out which holidays are spent with which parent and what happens during summer vacation and so on. I’ve liked having that spelled out because I think it has saved some disagreements. It’s a fall back, a safety net. I don’t think having an open parenting plan would have worked for me, at least not at first.

Now, after three years, I think we’re getting to where we can be more flexible. We did a little bit of weekend swapping so I could go to the Blissdom conference, for example. Our plan calls for the children to be with one parent for Christmas Eve and with the other for Christmas Day and then the rest of their school vacation is split 50/50. That arrangement makes it challenging to go away and I’m hoping we could be flexible on that in the future.

A friend of mine has a parenting agreement that calls for her children to spend her birthday with her. Birthdays aren’t covered in my agreement. For the children’s birthdays, my ex and I start with asking our children what they’d like to do (remember my kids are now 16 and 14) and then we take it from there, making sure that both he and I get to have a birthday celebration with the child. It doesn’t matter to me if my children aren’t with me for my birthday but it does matter that we celebrate it together at some point. My ex grew up in a house were birthdays were just like any other day so it’s not a big deal for him. Me? I like to make birthdays special.

I think that flexibility my ex and I now have has come as we’ve adjusted to our new roles. We’ve learned to trust that we’re supporting each other in our parenting roles and we recognize that we each have a valuable role to play in our children’s lives. It’s like Holly said, Parenting after divorce gets easier with time. Well .. maybe what I meant by that headline is that partnering with your ex on parenting issues gets easier with time – the parenting itself definitely gets harder as the children get older … but that’s another story.

Photo Credit:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/allerleirau/ / CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

Coparenting that works

2010-02-26T01:05:59Z

Yesterday, I introduced you to Lora who left her 18-year marriage at the age of 40. With two girls, aged five and nine at the time, I wanted to know what impact the divorce had had on them. Lora explained that she and her ex had agreed they would stay within 20 miles of each other and that decision had kept them both actively involved. Then she got talking about why their marriage had ended and what else made their co parenting work. Here’s Lora …

***

My divorce is weird because it’s hard to put a finger on why I left and why I had to leave. I don’t have a single regret, there was no big reason, it was more just flat and dead for me, but it wasn’t for him.

I chose him at a time when I was really broken. I’d been going to counseling twice a week for two years and with hindsight, I was just developmentally not ready to be married at 22. He’s the most loyal, kind, generous, great individual but now, I just wouldn’t have chosen him.

He has a very limited degree of intimacy. I think there’s terror around relationships. At one point he said, “Why do I have to understand you? Why can’t we live next to each other.” He’s a bit of a workaholic and I don’t think he knows how to back off that. So in the marriage I felt very lonely. I think he’s learning how to communicate better but there were a couple of times when he hit a wall or something. He NEVER hit me or hurt me but he would get so frustrated trying to stop me talking. He wasn’t willing to learn to communicate or go to counselors until I wanted a divorce and by then it was too late.

Leaving was not easy. It’s really tough with kids. There’s the whole societal you shouldn’t leave because of the kids and that was his biggest thing – how can you do this to the kids?

Yet, I think my girls have fared fine because we’ve been amicable and because he never took anything out through them. My youngest was five when we split up and if she didn’t want to spend the night with him, he didn’t take it personally, he said, “You need your mommy.” He was so understanding and I feel that we have that kind of relationship.

The only time we had trouble was the first two years. I was devastated, he was devastated but he was devastated in a way he couldn’t even look at me. He couldn’t be around me and I understood that, so I gave him lots of space. In the beginning, if he was at a piano recital, I couldn’t be there. It was too hard for him and I wanted the kids to have him in their lives, so I would leave. Now, nine years out, we can be in the same room together. I never would have expected it to be like this now but my daughter just had a surprise party and we were both there, laughing about things.

If he’s having a hard week, I’ll take his laundry to the Laundromat and make his dinner and leave. I don’t ever eat with him – he wouldn’t want that but I make him dinner because that’s what we do. That’s what co-parenting is about.

Some people say it’s not healthy but I think it’s not healthy if we’re not letting go and not moving on, if there’s some sort of fuzziness. If there are clear boundaries and you’re there to help each other, that’s part of co-parenting. My girls can see that we can see that there is still love there. That’s why they’ve fared well.

***

When I was considering divorce, I did wonder if I could stick it out the eight years or so until our children were in college. It wasn’t a difficult decision – my body just screamed “no.” I knew I was already withdrawing into a shell and I couldn’t conceive what another eight years would do to me – there was no way I wanted to be approaching my sixties as a bitter, unhappy, old woman.

I’m glad I made the decision I did. Like Kristen, I think it’s wrong to stay married for the sake of the children.

What I love too about Lora’s story here, is the conscious decision she made early on that she wanted her ex involved in the lives of their children and that she was willing to compromise to facilitate that. I’m convinced that those decisions early on are a big reason why their children have coped well with their parents’ breakup.

Photo Credit:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/penmachine/ / CC BY-NC 2.0

The search for authenticity

2010-02-25T01:26:28Z

Today, I’m starting a new series and I’d like you to meet Lora. Lora and her husband were together for 20 years, married for 18. They divorced when Lora was 40, nine years ago. At the time their two daughters were five and nine.

Lora says her most significant accomplishment since then is becoming authentic. It was a theme that was interwoven through our conversation and you’ll see that thread in these posts. Let’s start with the beginning of her journey, a journey that Lora says she didn’t understand she was on. Here’s Lora:

***

About a year before I got divorced, I remember driving close to home, coming over a peak and seeing the Rocky Mountains and the Continental Divide. I had this moment where I said this prayer. I wanted to turn over every rock in my life and shine light on the shadows. I didn’t really understand what I was saying, I just knew everything had to change. I was asking for a vision quest, no matter what the consequences.

A vision quest is a Native American rite of passage. They go out in solitude for a few days when they are about 12. I don’t know why I asked for whatever I asked for but it was like I knew I wanted to come to a new level spiritually. I wanted to be at this other place and I realize now it’s related to authenticity.

It wasn’t a dark marriage – there was no abuse or alcoholism but I just knew I had to get out. I knew I was going to die within the marriage. There was a lot of trauma around the ending of my marriage because my ex asked that I tell the children that the divorce was my choice and after that I developed pneumonia because I was punishing myself.

I did go to a traditional counselor for a year after the divorce. He used techniques that really took a lot of the trauma away. I also saw a spiritual mentor. What I learned from her was that we spend a long time in our lives in our egos and I think I was very controlling – things came from my head. I justified who I was by my degree, my professional training. She taught me to trust my heart instead and I think ultimately that led me to be more connected with other people.

I had a friend say once she felt I was behind glass – she could see me and hear me but there was a barrier. I think that was about not knowing who I was and not having developed the vulnerability to really connect with people.

Now, I feel so much lighter. I’m playful, I’m younger, I’m more creative. I went back to dancing, started training again and now I’m performing with companies.

Had I gotten to that peak and been told what I’d have to go through on this vision quest, I probably wouldn’t have done it but I’ve become more authentic and that’s been my greatest accomplishment.

***

I don’t know if it’s being in a long term marriage or reaching forty or both, but lots of women whose marriages end, speak of losing themselves and the journey after divorce to find their true selves again. I felt the same way … somewhere along the way, I lost my sense of humor, lost my sociable nature and my sense of fun – I’m still working to find them all again – it’s a gradual process. Jessica Bram talks about the same in her book Happily Ever After Divorce.

Does this sound like a familiar story to you? How are you staying true to yourself now?

Photo Credit:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/joiseyshowaa/ / CC BY-SA 2.0