If you are following along, you may have noticed there was a missing post yesterday. While I aim to blog once a day, I recognize the need to always give myself grace. And there are just some days when nothing comes to mind and a post would really serve no true purpose. That is not to mean I will not ever post random ramblings, because I feel like that could happen.

I have been contemplating all the topics I could cover in my blog, and truly there is nothing off the table. For now though, this blog is the start of a conversation if you will. A way you get to know me in my entirety as a person. It might be a one-sided conversation for now and maybe for a long time, but I am okay with that too. So, I thought today I could introduce myself as the divorced mother of two.

I was married at the age of 21, had my first son at the age of almost 26 and my daughter at 30. And I was divorced at 34, 13 years after marrying. It always feels strange telling people that I was married for 13 years and have been divorced now for 5 years. I definitely don’t feel old enough to have that much life experience in a marriage. And people often are surprised as well, thinking the same.

Tonight I was watching the most recent episode of ‘This is Us’ (may be some slight spoilers if you need to wait to read the rest of this), and I loved what was said by Kate right after she and her first husband Toby signed their divorce papers (I warned you of the spoilers!). She told him “Just because our marriage ends, it doesn’t mean that our story ends. We were meant to be together, and now we are meant to be apart.”

I know this is a fictional dramatic, emotional television show meant to pull at our heartstrings and end up with everything and everyone exactly in the path they are meant to be. But I definitely feel like this part is my story. Believe me, I didn’t always see it that way. I, like Toby in the show, wasn’t sure I could ever see it that way. I might have had a great deal of hope and desperate longing to reach this point of mutual understanding and respect, but when it all was happening it was like an unreal night terror.

I know this isn’t every person’s story too. For some, healing doesn’t bring reconciliation. For others, safety of one’s physical and mental wellbeing requires distance. So why is it different for me? Luck. That’s it. I was going to say God’s protection and blessings, but that really isn’t right either. God doesn’t choose to protect my relationship with my former spouse and ignore others. It’s not that we are more enlightened as human beings, or better people. We just are lucky. We have two amazing children with two engaged parents who are now meant to be apart. We are better apart. And how weird is that?

Whenever I am on a first date and the man asks me, “So, why did you get divorced?” (btw, men should not be focusing on exes ever on a first date), I always respond, “We just couldn’t make decisions together anymore.” I guess I don’t know how else to explain it. It was more than that, obviously. But that is the most concrete reason I can come up with. Whenever any decision, big or tiny, we needed to make as a married couple came up, we found ourselves on opposite sides of the world. Compromise wasn’t even a possibility because any “give” from one person would “take” it all away from the other side.

However, today, I would say we do exceptionally well in making decisions. It really wasn’t about the decisions. It was about us, feeling free to be who we really were in our core. I couldn’t be who I was without feeling like I was infringing on his ability to be who he was, and vice versa. It took me learning exactly who that person was over several years to realize this, and to realize that we were meant to be, just not anymore.

I don’t think I will ever be the ex-wife who wears matching jerseys with my ex-husband and his wife or goes on joint Disney vacations with both families. I know they exist, but that is the exception. I am grateful that I am the ex-wife that can have a twenty-minute text conversation about what exactly we can do with our 8 year old daughter’s hair that gets so tangled we spend hours getting the knots out, or sending a sweet picture of our kids being silly just to share the moment. And that is what we have become. We had a great marriage for a time when we needed it, and now this is us.

And here you were, thinking you wouldn’t get a random ramblings post!!