Divorce: Toughest Talk To Have w/Your Kids

I don’t think anyone can truly “prepare” for what it’s like to go through a divorce.  Especially when you have kids.

Even though the stats say almost 50% of adults will have to figure this out at some point in their lives, when I went though it, when it happened to me, it felt incomparably unique.  Painful.

Rhythm and routine.  For me, family was (and still is) a micro culture.  The one of a kind finger print of family structure and marital relationship.  Divorce erodes what was.  The severing of a limb to save a tree.  A transformation that’s distinguished more by coming undone than becoming.  For the first time she and I had to move into something that is, by general interpretation, meant to be done alone.  We went through divorce alone, together.

Going through the divorce we didn’t see a therapist together, but wise counsel close to me, warned that because of the kids, I/we had to be especially careful.  Looking back and now learning that my body’s response to what I was going through was scientifically normal, but it didn’t make sense to me then.  My body had come to recognize her as an enemy, elevating my heart rate whenever she and I were in proximity to one another.  A therapist would later tell me that this reaction occurring at the slight thought of her was actually a physiological response to threat.  Like a bulimic whose body learns to regurgitate food without the slightest tough of a finger, our nervous systems learn to force out the other.

These involuntary biological alarms might get you ready for battle and combat, they also come at an expense.  I had never heard the term, diffuse physiological arousal (DPA), which is a mix of bodily stress responses.  Coupled with an elevated heart rate, DPA is identified by an increase in stress hormones.  The result is the inability to think communicate or even hear clearly.

Unconsciously, I struggled with psychological, physiological, and emotional hurt.  At the same time, I was still had to make critical decisions, single parent, find new job, find a new place to live, and steer through the grief and loss of what I had envisioned as my future.  My life came undone faster than I could rebuild it.

At some point while going through all of this, someone shared a talking point from an article they had read, a sound bite that seemed pretty intuitive at the time when I superficially processed the statement.  But remember replaying the comment in my mind when my daughter came back to me under the temporary custody order in place. 

children exposed to “great marital hostility” have markedly higher levels of stress hormones than children of parents with stable marriages.

I remember realizing that my baby girl was a ball of mixed emotions herself, inside, even if she never said a word about it to me.

Still a work in progress, I began trying to find ways to become aware of her feelings.  Taking notice of her body language, her tone of voice, and her eyes.  Trying to dig beneath the surface to think what she might or might not be saying in her actions.

I’ve intentionally tried my hardest not to project my feelings and thoughts, and tried to do more listening than talking, and when the opportunities present themselves, let her know that I can tell that she’s got some feelings and emotions bottled up, and then working with her to vocalize what she’s thinking/feeling.

She and I have had some deep conversations that I would never have imagined to have had with an 8 year old little girl.

The heartache of divorce is as vital as air.  Being able to breath through it and moon is both the last and first stage of ending one chapter of your life, and starting your next.  I’ve read articles that indicate that the narrative that we write, speak, and live from will have a significant impact on our the adult that our children will become. How we as parents make sense of any significant experience, as a child or adult, has the ability to shape the adults that our kids have yet to become, and so on for their kids.

How I share the the rationale of that marriage falling apart has and will likely continue to evolve, and as it is, just as I have accepted the role that I played in it, I’ve come to see myself as neither the victim nor the villain.  While it’s still a work in progress, the aim to so to view my ex from a similar perspective of grace.  Nobody gets married with the intent of having their heart broken, and nobody intentionally has kids wishing that their family will fall apart.

With the goal of narrating the evolution of our family dynamic from a place of empowerment will prayerfully influence every interaction with my daughter, from the new way that we go about our same daily routines to the new family traditions and memories that we make ever day.

Photographically and in our conversational moments, together my daughter and I remember, share, and talk about where we’ve been, and my intent is to use that as a map of sorts to point where we will go in the years to come.

My story is her story, so it’s gotta be well written.