answers

So that was us 4 years ago...and maybe the happiest day we shared as a family. Simone was turning 2 and she can hardly remember it.

Two things have amazed me as an adult, pregnancy/motherhood and divorce. I have never understood how millions of people do this all the time, everyday and no one KNOWS how amazing and miraculous the first one is and how much like dying alive the second one is...you only truly know it until you have gone through both.

The end of a relationship you heal but the end of a family, I am not sure you can. I am a complete non-believer of divorce...I think I surrendered to that reality only when I saw that I was dying even more by staying than by leaving. I guess I chose to be happy and loved, even if it meant my daughter would always be carrying that pain in her heart.

I often wonder if it will ever make sense...if I left when there really was nothing more to do. Many around me would agree that I held out long enough. Nevertheless it kills me when my crying 6 year old asks me if I know that there is always sadness in her heart because her parents aren't together. When she asks what made us think it was OK to separate when she was only 3...or when she tells me, like she did tonight, that when she sees families she feels like that is a club she can't belong to.

I remember telling my ex-husband that as much as I loved my daughter I was only 29 and deserved to be loved and that I would not stay in the marriage for her. I have always been quick to criticize women who would put their children's happiness before there own and who would hold on to a marriage for their sake...now I am not so sure. Or maybe is just my ache for my daughter's broken heart that is not allowing me to see clearly. I know as woman that I have to be well in order to be a good mom and to teach my daughter determination and courage and self respect. Maybe she would have been the first to tell me to leave if she had been older...

My heart is full of doubt. I want to give her a family so bad, I would have more kids in a second. I somehow want to know that it was alright, that despite my mistakes and my responsibility for the end of my marriage I made the right choice when I left. That there was nothing else for me to do or give, I had given all of myself to such an extent that I was lost....maybe we were all just too wrong for each other and hanging unto a co-dependent relationship that enlarged our insecurities and fears rather then making us better people. At the same time I feel we owed it to Simone to have figured this out together and transformed ourselves and our relationship to build a home and family for her.



Maybe I will never have the answers, maybe I have always known the answers...maybe I just have to surrender to my story and continue to believe that there is a purpose for everything and that if I hold out long enough, never giving up on my faith and dreams I will experience a miracle larger than the pain I ever went through in the lesson. Now I just have to have the wisdom and love to teach this to my child....