Hi friends – well, this week’s column is pretty personal, and a little special. It’s been five years since my husband left our family life. This is a little about the things I’ve learned and lived through. . . It’s an unusual column for me to write, so I’ve decided to paste it in in its entirety, as well as share the link with you.
I want to thank all my readers for all of your support over the years, and for so often sharing your stories with me!
My column/Chicago Sun-Times
In a few days, I’ll mark the 5th anniversary of the afternoon I watched my husband finally walk out of our family life after 17 years of marriage. This time, he wouldn’t return to it. The kids were 10, 8, 5 and 3.
So many folks over the years, both men and women, have shared their own similar stories of heartbreak with me.
I suppose I myself could fill a book (whether anyone would read it is another matter!) on the things I’ve learned from all this about life, and people, and being single with four kids. Most important from my point of view of course is how my own (and to me, my amazing) children have done with it all. I can’t write their story yet. But I can tell a little piece of my own, in case it’s helpful to anyone else.
Five years later I have discovered that life goes on in incredibly wonderful if totally unexpected ways, and that I have found a new richness and texture and happiness in life, even amidst the adversity in its many forms, as well as the joy in its many forms, of the last several years. It’s grown into a tapestry which has surprised me. Meaning, for instance, that when my children ran through our house when I was married, chasing each other and laughing, it was music to my ears. But considering their story, when they do it now in the home I head on my own, it’s the New York Philharmonic to me!
Yes there’s no doubt I’m incredibly fortunate in all this in countless ways, considering my many dear friends, my work, health, family, you name it. More than anything else, my Christian faith has allowed me to see my circumstances as a calling with a purpose.
But I also know now there was something built into me as a child that has been instrumental in allowing me to face all this: simply put, no one ever kept me from scraping my knee as a kid. I was the youngest of five. For starters and in contrast to today’s parents (yes of course I’m going there!) I wasn’t protected from disappointment. Not making the school play or being left off the list for the cool girl’s party, hardly trauma in any event, was a cause for dusting myself off and going on to the next thing, not self-pity.
And I was regularly allowed to figure things out on my own or with my friends: how fast do I want to careen my bike over that edge? (really fast); will that branch 20 feet high actually hold me while I eat lunch? (answer, yes); and how exactly do I get off the commuter train in downtown Chicago and find my dad’s office in the “Loop” by myself – At age 10? (Seriously.) In summer I was expected to be home when the street lights came on, and not much before. That left a lot of time for successful if sometimes “dangerous” exploration. Add into the mix three (wonderful) older brothers, who tormented me on a fairly regular basis which did not seem to offend my parents much at all, and I think one has a recipe for resiliency.
So, even early on in facing my new life as a single mom, even amidst the grief and the loneliness and the anger, there always seemed to be a basic and optimistic sense of “well okay, of course I can figure this out. In fact, it might be a kind of unexpected adventure.”
I’m not sure how I’m doing yet on giving that same sense to my own kids. I do know that as a culture, we no longer typically raise resilient children built to rise to a new challenge, but too often overprotected, entitled kids built to become paralyzed in the face of adversity, disappointment, or loss.
Yet ironically, if our children don’t become resilient adults, we leave them vulnerable after all.
I would never wish my family’s loss on anyone. But I do know that I hope so much to raise children who could face similar difficult and unexpected circumstances, and the so many things which would be so much worse, with a sense of, “well of course I can figure this out — and naturally, I’ll keep a lookout for joy in the process.”
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Cheers! Sandra. R.