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.