When Divorce Strikes Your Family

This past year was the first time divorce has hit our family. None of us knows how to navigate through the myriad of emotions and stressors and tears.

Something Bookguy and I learned in college is that people respond so differently during trauma. Some people say awkward things. Some people run away. Some people cry, a lot. Some people react with anger. Some people are administrative. Not only is the divorce painful, the way people respond to it requires serious amounts of grace, because most of us aren’t acting out of our best selves—we are acting out of our sorrow, insecurity, or fear.

That said, I guess I post this with a new understanding and heartbreak for those of you out there who have experienced divorce in your family. Because I didn’t know. I couldn’t relate, and even now, the way I relate is my own experience, in my own way of responding.

Bookguy and I escaped to the Gaslamp District of San Diego this past weekend. (THANK YOU to our friends who shared their timeshare with us!) There are so many mommys out there that I know that will not leave their children—they don’t have childcare, and they don’t have money, and they don’t have time off work. And I get it.

But there are also mommys out there who hide behind their children (or their job) so they don’t have to face their marriage.

If a weekend alone with your husband sounds undesirable (What will we talk about? Oh, no, he’s going to want to have sex. Whatever will we do? I would have more fun being by myself.), please oh please confide in a counselor or lay pastor or trusted friend. Do not give up fighting for your marriage. Choose to try.

Watch this video by a new Yates & Yates client. I thought it was so well said.