The tricky thing about telling the truth is that there is no single truth. A diamond has endless refractions, and so do the events we live through. How we dig a moment up, shape it, and polish it influences what we can see and feel at any given time. But this process is in constant flow, as we are. The way … Read More
Stepping off of the merry go round of disappointment
Locked into a dynamic defined by opposing camps of “Disappointer” and “Disappointed”, there’s not much room for anyone to find new ground. Trying to get something that has never been attainable from someone who was never equipped to give it in the first place is like being on a merry-go-round and expecting to end up someplace different. About six months … Read More
The Co-Parent Carpool
When I returned to full-time employment, my new job’s hours were exactly the hours of my son’s preschool. Which meant that I would need to be commuting to work at the times I would otherwise be transporting my son to and from school. I negotiated a daily rhythm that had me coming in an hour early and leaving an hour … Read More
Claim Your Own Independence Day
Once, a man I had just met at a seminar casually mentioned that he was celebrating his own, personal Independence Day. When I inquired, he explained that he had decided to quit smoking 14 years ago on this day. Every year, he celebrated this choice and its related freedom. More than two years after Pete and I split, I was … Read More
Trying to Act Normal When Nothing is Normal
When he was not quite two, Teddy and I embarked on the very first foreshadowing of his independent life away from his parents: a weekly Mommy and Me class. I enrolled with the idea that we’d make some friends in the neighborhood who Teddy could play with in the next few years until his school days officially began. The first class met … Read More
Fresh Kill
My cat Valentino has a nightly ritual — one that he has had his entire life. He “kills” something for me while I am sleeping and then carries it, meowing in a series of wild howls, into my bedroom. In his early years, his kill was what was lying around: socks and dog toys. These days, he has a wide … Read More
Separation before the age of story
The world, it occurs to me, is woven together in story. We create our context and our identities through the stories we tell ourselves about who we are and what our lives are meant to be and mean. Family, too, is a net of story. When ours gave out, our son was a year and a half old. His life … Read More
The Surprising Gift of Office Life
I was working from home by day, mothering by night. My big outings were walking the dogs and taking my son to school — neither of which required showering, dressing, or interacting with humans for more than a brief exchange. I had been depressed and exhausted for so long, I had lost my reference point for how a happy and … Read More
Saying it and meaning it
The way I talked to Pete when I was upset never served me–or us, or the problem I was trying to solve. My constant disappointment, carried far and wide by my tone of voice, served primarily to cement alienation in our marriage. And things weren’t improving much in divorce. It became obvious that if I wanted our dynamic to change, … Read More
Sick
My body makes its own memorials. When I am ravaged by a sadness I can not solve, eventually I go to the calendar where I find a fact to back up the ache. Two years after the second baby I will never have left me–taking me with her right out of my marriage, I become deeply infected with the grief … Read More
