I’ve recently been thinking about divorce, family, children, and how relationships deteriorate and sometimes cannot be put back together again. Also the thought comes that I have almost no women friends who are not or have not been divorced. What does that say about us. There tends to be a stigma even in this day and age about not making a marriage work. My first instinct is that I can’t even imagine having stayed married in the circumstances I found myself in and I thank God every day for living in a society where we have the freedom to choose and move on. I suppose that freedom to choose came about with the women’s‘ liberation movement and yet we still count it as a failure rather than a choice we were allowed to make to move on to freedom. Obviously there were consequences, however, not all bad. I long ago stopped blaming myself for divorcing my spouse and the difficulties that my child had in his early years. At some point we all have to take responsibility for who and what we are irregardless of the circumstances in which we grow up. The older I get the more I also believe that the best lesson we can give our children is exposure to hardship and the knowledge that life has as many if not more down times that up times. Hopefully enduring those hardships will give them the resilience to manage the down times in their own lives.

So, this is an invitation to join in and write in this blog about your own broken relationships, divorces,deteriorating relationships , reasons for staying or leaving. Maybe all of us who have “been there” can offer some sense of the freedom that came with unlocking the chains of the shoulds and oughts that we grew up with and stepping out of “Disneyland”. The real world is so much more exciting.

I was fortunate to have a mother who had had her share of broken relationships with men and told me in her own succinct way “when its over its over, pick up the pieces and move on”.

Adios
Peggy