Divorce Diaries, Log #6 - Baby Steps

In the months leading up to my divorce, my husband and I would have long talks that went nowhere. I asked him once, "was it all bad? Was it so bad?" He looked right at me and said, "It was 95 percent good, but the five percent I couldn't live with." I lost my marriage and my husband over five percent? How could that be? How could he walk away from the woman he loved and his three beautiful, innocent children for five percent of happiness? As the months dragged on, we were all left feeling pretty worthless. I began to question how my kids and I could be so disposable after so many years of being loved by a man who was good, and smart, and kind for so much of our partnership. I really couldn't understand how he could sever himself from us and start anew, but that's what he did. So, the hard work of piecing my life together began with finding a new purpose and value in our lives.

Divorce causes a complex set of issues that need to be carefully and methodically thought through during a time when I was emotionally very fragile. One wrong decision exacerbates the entire situation, not just for me, but for my kids too. I remember thinking 'fix one problem at a time.' I have found that my life is exceedingly more manageable if I am not trying to fix everything in my life at once. So, I began to think about how I could feel more valuable and give my life new purpose. I knew early on that my recovery was intimately connected with my children's ability to thrive.

So, I began to look for new job opportunities that stimulated me in ways that I hadn't felt in years in my current job and would financially help me go it alone. Not that I didn't get support from my husband, I did, but married or not, there is just never enough money to raise three children. And then out of the blue, by G-d's mercy and blessing, I got a phone call from a colleague who said he was looking for a writer to join a local nonprofit. I had always wanted to work in a nonprofit and had seriously thought about leaving my job of seven years as an editor at the Baltimore Sun. It seemed like divine intervention, a chance to turn the page on my new life, so I went on the job interview and one week later, I was generously given a new purpose. I was going to get paid to help at-risk youth across the country with my voice through this new platform as a grant writer. Within weeks, I was surrounded by a new family of smart, funny, engaging people whose mission was to make the world a safer and more loving place for children.

Next fix. Giving my children the same chance to find purpose. My goal was to create a safe, secure, and loving environment for my kids. Check. With me, they were always loved and safe. My total focus was on them. My eye was keenly aware of every physical and emotional bump and bruise. Especially for my youngest son who had a propensity to keep all of his feelings inside. He needed to learn to mourn the loss of his old family. It was hard for him. I remember sitting by the bathtub during his nightly routine, and it looked as though he was holding his breath, but he was looking straight at me. I said, "Baby, let it go. You can feel sad. You can cry. I am going to be right here." He replied, "I don't like to cry. It hurts." I told him, "You have to cry. You have to let the pain go. Please just let it go. I am right here." And he did. Loud. Excruciating. The kind of cry that makes a mother's heart burn from the inside out. But it was over as quickly as it started, and he had moved an inch forward in his healing...and I in mine. Then the water washed the tears away. I scooped my little baby out of the tub and knew we were on the right path.

I wanted my children to know how loved and more importantly how valued they were during this time. It's a hard concept to introduce  because they were only 6, 7, and 8. But, I knew they were feeling lost and hurt and worthless just like I was, only they didn't have the years of coping skills that I had developed. So, I did two things right during this time that gave my children the life skills to survive this detour in our lives. The first thing I did was get a puppy. My children needed something to nurture and love. They
needed unconditional love from something that couldn't hurt them. And, I needed them to feel something positive. Immediately, I saw them channel their energy and their hearts into something positive to love. Our new puppy was something they could safely invest in emotionally and physically. It gave them endless joy and determination during this difficult time.

And the second thing, was volunteer work. We had already been working steadily over the previous year or two at the Pearlstone Center, a local educational Jewish farm not far from our house, but I reached out to inquire about a weekly service opportunity on Sunday nights to help my children feel purposeful in a meaningful and consistent way. We fed and put away 100 chickens at sunset. We milked, herded, and played with the goats. We cleaned up and collected eggs. We were useful. And we were together doing good. It filled our souls and gave my children purpose. We continued to do this service every Sunday night for four years, until my children started Middle School. The children looked forward to it every week. We often brought their friends with us to do our weekly chores. It gave them a sense of pride in themselves. It was a time that encouraged them to be purposeful and encouraged them to problem solve, to be social with friends, to find goodness and simplicity in the world. It allowed me to watch them grow emotionally and spiritually.

The puppy and volunteerism on the farm, truly saved us in the beginning and proved to be worthy experiences that would teach us, heal us, and guide us on this journey to a new normal.

Divorce Diaries - Log #5, What Happens Next?

When my husband first left the house, I was heart broken and sad for my children, but a part of me was relieved. I felt tortured at the end of the marriage and when he left, the weight of the situation dissipated for a short time. I no longer had to be what I thought he wanted me to be to save the marriage. I no longer had to suffer under his oppressive judgment and resentment. I no longer had to be the target for all his hate every single day.

Divorce is excruciatingly painful. The person who promised to love me forever, turned into a man who no longer considered me at all. I was nothing to him anymore. One day his wife and the mother of his children, and the next irrelevant. Hope for happiness in my life again seemed hopeless. Friends and family tried to empathize and comfort with their epiphanies and words of wisdom in the first few months, but over time they disappeared. I woke up alone. My partner was gone. Parents gone. Friends and family busy with their own lives.  I went from having this full life filled with joyful routines, Shabbat dinners with friends every week and family vacations, to a shattered, fractured life, trying to piece it all together for the children while my husband went home to his newfound bachelor pad free of the responsibility of caring for anyone and anything.

I remember thinking 'how am I going to explain to my seven-year-old daughter that Daddy was no longer going to tuck her into bed and read her bedtime stories every night?' Daddy wasn't coming home for dinner anymore. Daddy wasn't going to love mommy anymore. Daddy wasn't strong enough to work through his own personal insecurities and demons to fight for us. The answer is, I would never tell them. Because no answer would stop the pain that they were going to have to endure.

So I threw myself into the routine of our lives. Wake up. Get kids ready for school. Dressed. Fed. Packed. Shoes on. Out the door. Soccer practice. Homework. Dinner. Bath. TV-time. Bedtime. Repeat. And in the drives in between, I cried. I thought. I reflected. And I cried again. I was trying to figure out how to survive the new normal that was forced upon me. I tried to hide my pain from my children. I wanted them to see a strong, yet vulnerable mommy and one that accepted their Daddy and stilled loved him despite his choices. My children were going to know what love looked like and felt like, no matter what had happened in the marriage.They deserved that.


So, I focused on my three children (ages 6, 7, and 8) and made sure they were okay with Daddy leaving. One night after school, right after my husband left, we sat them down at the kitchen table where I had

Mommy's favorite photo: Happy times: Henry, 6, Stanley, 4, Audrey, 5

prepared this very simple presentation out of poster board that visually explained the separation in very simple terms. Henry and Audrey showed complete understanding and looked sad but strong. Stanley burst into tears. He understood what was happening, but it hurt him deeply, and he couldn't understand why it was happening to him.

The next few years were tough watching my beautiful, smart, happy, carefree children grow up too quickly. The emotional trauma that they had to endure because I couldn't fix the marriage was brutal at times, I really did think of getting in my car several times and ramming it into a brick wall for the first year. The pain was so severe, I just wanted it to stop. I don't think I had felt that kind of pain. My children were hurting and confused. And there was nothing I could do when they were crying out for Daddy, except tell them "you are gonna be okay. we are gonna be okay." And we WERE gonna be okay...and I was gonna figure this out. I started by just waking up every day and focusing on the routine of our lives. The routine was the beginning of figuring out the new normal.  

Divorce Diaries, Log #4 - The Cancer

When my husband told me that he didn't love me anymore, it was like our marriage was being diagnosed with cancer. Except marriage cancer consists of emotional and financial stress, regret, fear, animosity, exhaustion, and resentment. It was a massive tumor on the marriage. I was scared, not just for myself, but for my children. Initially, I was in denial, shocked at the severity of the situation. I couldn't believe this was happening to me, but when we returned from vacation, I knew I was going to fight for the cure.

Over the next eight months, the cancer grew despite all my efforts to eradicate it. No treatment was working. It was an uphill battle for which there was ultimately no remedy because when your marriage gets cancer, you both have to work to banish it or it just keeps spreading. I fought, I fought hard. I tried to be the best wife, the most compassionate friend and lover, the perfect mother, the full-time working spouse helping to support the family. But nothing mattered. My husband was checked out of the marriage, the cancer was taking over his life and he was left with very little feeling or empathy for me. He was dead inside. He was waiting for the marriage to die.

I cried a lot in that final year trying to resuscitate my marriage.  Almost every single day. The disease was tortuous. Every time, I thought we were working things out, I found the cancer was back again. His resentment towards me grew and the cancer was weakening me. In the end, it seemed that he was waiting for me to give up on the marriage, so he could be free of his unhappiness. The more I tried, the more he hated me. But I couldn't help trying, I loved him. And I loved our family. So, as he gave up, I dug in. This only made him resent me even more. As his anger grew, he began to treat me like an unwanted, ungrateful, stranger in the marriage which turned me into a person I no longer recognized. I was beaten. The cancer had taken hold of him and their was no treatment left.

In the final months of our marriage, I felt defeated and sometimes a little crazy. I couldn't accept the fact that my family was broken. Then one day, almost eight months after the confession in Phoenix, I was paying my gas and electric bill online as I did every month for years, and I saw an additional bill for another residence. Immediately, I called my husband at the office thinking someone had hacked my account, and asked him if he new anything about this new bill. There was a long silence on the other end of the phone. I was completely naive and blindsided. He said, "I got my own apartment."

He was actually leaving the marriage, me, and our unsuspecting children. I hung up the phone...angry. He tortured me with this cancerous marriage for months, unresponsive to any remedy, and then just gave up, gave in, no longer able to fight the cancer that had been growing inside the marriage for 12 years. Looking back now, I realize that the marriage was sick for a long time, but we never stopped to pay attention to it, and in the end, it was just too late to save. I told him if he wanted to leave, he could...and he did. April 2012.

Divorce Diaries, Log #3 - The Confession

Most marriages have some challenges over a period of time, but mine seemed to be riddled with loss and suffering from the start. Still, I always thought that we would persevere. I thought our problems were normal problems. I thought we would have time to work things out eventually, but my husband began to disconnect himself from me and our problems before I had a chance of stopping the irrevocable erosion that doomed the marriage.

I didn't realize the extent of his true frustration with the marriage until we went away for our last family vacation to Phoenix, AZ. I knew that he was not happy, he wasn't talking to me the way he used to, he began working late every night, he was more judgmental of my decisions, he looked worn down and tired all the time. He started to do things on his own, like taking trips by himself to beautiful places, and over exercising, biking, running. He was more argumentative at home and seemed overly stressed about little things. I was preoccupied with the kids and the family member living with us at the time who was battling her addiction and draining me of my energy. Still, I thought it was a phase in our marriage that we would work through, but ultimately, I was wrong. It wasn't a phase. He was unhappy.

2011-Phoenix, AZ, Last family vacation

We arrived in Phoenix, AZ and on the first day of the vacation, I noticed that he seemed absent emotionally. After a day of hiking and the pool, we started to get ready for dinner. I got the kids settled and watching television in the hotel. I jumped in the shower and told my husband to join me. He did. We stood there in the shower like we had so many times before, but something was different. I looked at him and asked, "What is it, Honey? What's wrong." He hesitated, and standing their in our most vulnerable states with my babies (ages 5, 6, 7) in the other room, he replied, "I just don't think I am in love with you anymore." For a split second, I thought I didn't hear him correctly, so I asked him to repeat what he said. And he did. I was in shock. I was not expecting that answer. I asked him to leave the shower, and as he walked out of the bathroom, I crumbled, heart broken, crying, shattered. My life was about to change forever...and I knew it.

Divorce Diaries, Log #2 - The Back Story

To understand my journey through divorce, I think it's important to get the back story. In 1999, I thought that I was marrying my soulmate. He was smart, handsome, funny, and seemed to love me completely. I thought I had found my beshert, and I would live the fairytale life. We were both young, 29 and 32, successful, and ready for a family. And on our first wedding anniversary, we were pregnant with our first child, Eleanor Ava Dansicker. My life felt like a dream. But just six months later, our baby girl was born and never took her first breath. It was an unimaginable sorrow that began a series of realities that took a toll on my marriage.

Year two my father died. In years, two, three, and four, we got pregnant again and again and again, with our miracle babies, Henry, then 15 months later, Audrey, and 11 months later, baby Stanley. Three babies under three, all in diapers, all with rough starts that eventually were treated and corrected. I was working part-time at home, raising my instant family, and trying to be a good wife. Year five. My mother and older brother died. Year six, my husband open up his own business and we took a considerable salary decrease. Year seven, my husband's mother died. Years eight, nine, and 10, I had three little ones in preschool and was working full time. And, in year 11, just when we thought the hard part was behind us, we took in a family member struggling with addiction.

During the 13 years I was married, we experienced a lot of loss. We struggled like all working couples with multiple children to balance it all. The money. The decisions. The parenting choices. Intimacy. Career moves. We had great days, and we had bad days. To everyone looking at us on the outside, we had made it through and looked happy and stronger for having been through it. And even in the hardest times, I thought we WOULD make it. Divorce was never a thought in my mind. I always thought, despite the challenges, if I loved my husband as much as I did, we could work it out. I didn't realize as it was happening, that my husband didn't feel the same way. Looking back on it now, I can see how the stress of life changed us and changed how we treated each other. But I was too busy being a mom, a wife, a daughter, a friend, and a colleague to slow down and invest more time in myself and my marriage. I would have never believed that my husband would quit the marriage and walk away from our life. But in year 12, he did just that.

2011-Our 12th year, a year that would change these smiling faces forever

That 12th year was the most difficult of all the proceeding years, and that is where my divorce journey really begins.