Life After Divorce: Our Personal Experience
Jen:
A child of divorce has no say in much of anything – especially while it’s going on. My parents split up during the summer of 1995 and did not finalize their divorce until 2002. I was a little girl when it began and an adolescent when it was over. I didn’t know anyone else who had divorced parents in my circle – I felt like a freak, embarrassed and ashamed. I barely talked about it to my friends. I wanted to keep it a secret. I wanted to protect my family from gossip. I wanted our family to be like all my friends’ families – happy, “normal.” All the while, I had to be the caretaker of my younger sister and myself. I had to learn independence and how to stand on my own two feet, because I could not rely on my parents −they were too angry with each other to see what was happening to their children. For a long time, I resented my parents for putting me in that position. I felt like I was being punished, because they couldn’t be married to each other. I resented the way they handled themselves. When you’re so young and all this strife is going on around you, you are left with only two options: sink or swim. I decided to swim. During high school, my greatest escape was studying. I excelled at school and got into a top university. As I began to experience the power of accomplishment, I began to block out the pain and anger that was the backdrop at home. This experience has served me well and continues to shape my decisions and viewpoints. I know I’m mature for my age and that I did not have parents to teach me important life lessons growing up. I do not know how I learned them, but somehow I learned them on my own.
Randi:
When I was a young girl I remembered seeing couples at restaurants and other places looking so sad or bored or something definitely not resembling happy or alive. Sometimes one of them only spoke to the other with quick, sharp comments. Sometimes couples never talked to each other at all. I would ask my mother why people stayed together if they were so miserable. She would say, like everyone said, “for the sake of the children.” When I got married I was in my early 20s and madly in love with my husband. After I had been married for a while things began to unravel in our household. Without getting into too much detail, let’s just say the environment in which we were raising our two sons was fast becoming dysfunctional. It was clear to me that if my boys were to emerge healthy and emotionally strong, we had to leave. So I guess you could say I left “for the sake of the children.” What a twist on that rationale. I maintain a relationship with my ex-husband because of our children. There have been countless heartbreaking moments in the 12 years that we’ve been divorced. How could there not be? But I keep growing and learning. For every difficult conversation with my ex about the kids, or vacations, or money, there are joyful moments. Those are the moments you hang on to, because they get you through the bad ones. One of those joyful times was the catalyst for this website.
The Story of DivorceCandy.com
Jen:
It was a beautiful spring morning, and I was in a great mood. My Aunt Randi was taking me to buy wedding shoes – her gift to me. So there we are having a wonderful time chatting away in the car when my cell phone rang. It was my dad. He wanted to know (sort of kidding) whether, if I got two sets of dishes from my bridal registry, he could have one. He was in the midst of his second divorce and his ex took everything. I’m thinking – my dad? A successful periodontist and he has no plates? How sad is that? I felt the pain of divorce all over again. Thinking of your dad in an empty house is not a great feeling. It occurred to me then that divorcees should have a gift registry just like people getting married. Everybody in their circle feels bad for them. They want to do something to help, but what? I’m thinking, why not help them rebuild? That was the genesis of DivorceCandy.
As a child of divorce, I knew all too well the pain of loss. The stigma associated with a “failed marriage”. The shame I felt as a child, not wanting my friends to know. My aunt and I continued to talk and share our ideas about a site for divorcees. As a young divorcee with two little boys, she had her own long struggle to rebuild her life while keeping her children intact. There was a need for a site full of articles and forums designed to inject a little humor into your day, to share practical tips, resources, and current expertise on a variety of relevant issues. A place to write, chat, rant or rave. Sharing stories and concerns is an important way to work through the thoughts that plague you, keep up to date with current laws and trends, and to heal.
Our car ride that afternoon resulted in a gift better than all the shoes in the world. It resulted in a great idea to build a community for divorcees. And that’s the site you’re on right now – DivorceCandy. We hope we live up to our promise to you and we hope you’ll help us by sharing your story.
We are living proof that divorce does not have to remain a hopeless, negative experience. Both of us have moved on and are thriving in our new lives – though there were days when we wondered if that would ever happen. We are just two people out of many who have thrown off the heavy weight of divorce and taken back our lives – now it’s your turn!
