Letters to a Divorced Kid Part VI

Dear Friend,


I've been thinking about you a lot recently.  Often, it is easy to forget the trials that others are going through.  They go through it day after day, minute by minute, while we go on with our lives.  So, I try to remember what your life is dealing with today.  I remind myself you may be dealing with this trial for a while, or off and on like a roller coaster ride.  That while my life happens each day as it normally does, you may be swimming in a sea of uncertainty, in a life that is unfamiliar to you. A life that you have to embrace because it is now your reality.



Today, I want to encourage you this: Life will become normal again.  Even though it feels like your world was turned upside-down, and may feel that way for a while, it will eventually start to right itself again. Your parents live in 2 separate places, you have 2 different homes. This can be confusing, even disorienting, and it takes time to get used to.  It is different.


There is a grieving for what was.  I think of my life BD and AD: Before Divorce and After Divorce.  Sometimes, playing a memory from my childhood in BD time, when both my parents lived in the same house and loved one another, can be really difficult. There is a bittersweetness to remembering Christmases and Birthdays and snow days and warm summer days before my parents were divorced.  Having both parents be in the same memory, happy.  I cherish those memories, but miss those times terribly.  


It took a lot of time to accept the fact that things would be different.  Holidays would look different.  My living arrangement would look different. Our financial situation would be different. My relationships with my parents would forever be different. Different can feel uncomfortable, like a shirt that is the wrong size.  Different can make you sad or angry.  Different, initially, hurts. 


But as with physical wounds, the hurt our hearts encounter when faced with divorce does heal. It won’t happen quickly or all at once, though. Healing happens over time.  Your heart heals slowly, but it does heal. Sometimes we just need to hear that, to be reminded that we won't always feel this way.  That life won't always feel disorienting.


Because not too long from now, you will start to feel normal again. It won't be the same as before.  You'll embrace a new kind of normal.   Normal now means that your parents live apart, that divorce is part of your life, that there is grieving and adjusting.  But a new normal also means that you've faced something hard and survived it.  New normal means that although there were wounds on your heart, you now have scars because you've healed. New normal means you are strong in ways you never thought you could be.  New normal means you've developed character in ways you could not have otherwise.  New normal means new memories, new relationships, new opportunities.  


New normal may be different, but not bad. New normal is healing.


It just takes time. 


This week, I hope you are encouraged to stop fighting your new life and find ways to begin to embrace it.   Even if it has been years, it is not too late to begin to heal, friend.


Have a good week. More to come.




Yours,

If you missed the last few posts, you can find Letters 1-5 here. To learn more about my story as a teenager dealing with my parent's divorce, you can read the Divorce Memoirs.