While
I became officially divorced just ten months into the 21st century,
I received the news that my marriage was over at the end of the 20th. I faced Y2K and The Millennium as a divorcee.
The implications of the end of the world as we knew it, and the promises of a
new start, were both frightening and unfamiliar.
I’d
had my suspicions about a possible breakup for several years before that summer
in 1999, but I was still blindsided when it ended. And while I was not shocked
when my ex-husband began dating (and eventually married) one of my then-closest
friends, it was a staggering conclusion.
I
had married somewhat young just before my 21st birthday. We were
well into our 27th year as a couple and had achieved college
degrees, witnessed the births of three daughters, and had moved many times around
the country and the world. We had nearly three decades under our shared marital
belt.
I hadn’t ever seriously thought about the
reality of being single again. In fact, a few years later, when I checked off a
box on some various form declaring myself as “single,” I shook my head in
quizzical disbelief. “Wow, that’s weird,” I thought.
Those
messy, topsy-turvy years are now well beyond me and I happily celebrate my
tenth anniversary of remarriage this month.
I hopefully am on my way to another 27 or more years of marriage. That
said, when a newly-published book about surviving divorce appeared on the “new
non-fiction” shelves, it caught my fancy. Sometimes I just need to validate that crazy
time in my life and at the same time look for ways to help others survive it.
Mid-Life
Ex-Wife by Stella Grey was one such book on the New Books shelf this summer. The
version we have in Norwood is actually the American edition of a book by
British author; it was originally published in a column format in the Guardian,
the UK daily paper. The name Stella Grey is a pseudonym, of course, and the real
author began to write for the Family page of the Guardian in 2014. Eighteen
months of columns were published as a book in England titled The Heartfix. In
May 2016, the American version was published as Mid-Life Ex-Wife.
The
woman behind the Stella Grey name began her journey when her husband asked for
a divorce. He was, simply, in love with someone else. They had no children and
Stella was left dumbfounded and alone. In the first paragraphs of the book she
writes that the sudden and unexpected news was “rather like that scene in
Alien, in which John Hurt is sitting contentedly eating spaghetti … and then
the infant monster burst out of his chest, leaving everybody [sitting with him]
shocked and splattered.”
If
this description brings a smile to your face, a nod to your head, or a tear to
your eye, so will Stella Grey’s book. It’s shocking, funny, witty, cringe worthy
(at times) and maddening. She documents her wild ride through the jolting and twisting
of life after divorce.
Stella
Grey was just 50 at the time and she wasn’t writing herself off. Yet.
I
laughed and cried along with Stella’s whose experiences were unfortunately so
familiar. Who thinks they will endure a first date again? Or a blind date? Or a
bad date? Certainly not Stella! Or me.
Stella
writes “When somebody announces that they’re leaving you, it’s a physical
shock. It starts in your brain and reverberates through your bones.” The good
news, though, is that it is, in fact, treatable and not terminal. Stella Grey wrote
eighteen months of posts – a quest to find love again, one that naturally included
her journey through dating and singlehood. Stella then met Edward and eventually
shared her news about starting fresh, half of a new couple, over a year ago.
In
the first few months of my separation, and eventual divorce, I consulted my
library and read many books such as The Healthy Divorce and Helping Your Kids
Cope, but very few practical and honest books about starting over.
But then I found Crazy Time – Surviving
Divorce and Building a New Life by Abigail Trafford. Reading it, I realized
that the roller coaster ride was a natural process. There were guffaws of
laughter, sighs of relief, and sudden realizations that sunk me in my chair. Amid
the “aha” moments, there was fear and grief. Amid the tears, there was hope and
optimism.
Trafford
first wrote Crazy Time in 1982, the second edition followed in 1992, and the
third in 2014. It was the 1992 edition
that I read. One reviewer on Amazon wrote “Who told {Abigail Trafford] all this
information about me?” That the beauty of this book. It is your reality, your
roller-coaster, and your survival that Trafford writes about. I gave copies of
the book to my friends who were facing that same “crazy time,” of divorce.
Today,
of course, there are more-recent self-help books about divorce - of building a
new life, learning to date again (Internet and otherwise), surviving
financially, and all the other sociological and psychological aspects. These
titles include The Optimist’s Guide to Divorce by Suzanne Riss and Jill
Sockwell (2016), A Judge’s Guide to Divorce – Uncommon Advice from the Bench by
Roderic Duncan (2007), and Divorce – Think Financially, Not Emotionally by
Jeffrey A. Landers (2015).
I
don’t want to ignore books written specifically for me men who are going
through a divorce. Sam Buser and Glenn Sternes wrote The Guys-Only Guide to
Getting over Divorce in 2009 and Sam Margulies wrote A Man’s Guide to a Civilized
Divorce, published in 2004.
Margaret Atwood wrote
“A divorce is like an amputation. You survive it but there’s less of you.” It’s learning to navigate the world before and
the world after with fear, humor, courage and joy that can be made easier by
the experiences of others.
