A conversation with my adult child, the divorce I don't want to talk about, a death in the family, and thoughts on women's freedom.

I took my newly adult child to the airport this morning for their first solo trip across the country to visit their grandparents and have some fun in the sun with cousins from their dad's side of the family.

The tears came to my eyes as I hugged them goodbye, and then watched them leave to go through airport security. I had been waiting for the tears to come. I've been asked dozens of times since they turned 18 and graduated from high school, if I had cried buckets of tears. The answer so far has been no. I have not. What does that say about me? I have been wondering. Mostly, I have felt relief for them to be an adult and to experience the kind of freedom they more than deserve after all we've put them through.

Before arriving at the airport this morning, and shedding unexpected tears as it all finally hit me in the face that they've grown up, and are now adventuring out on their own as an adult human, we hopped in my car and drove to the new local coffee shop. We ordered our coffee and breakfast items, and then found "our spot" in the two green chairs against the wall at the back. It's the only place we've sat together thus far, and they expressed that it's the only place they want to sit because "It's where we sit," and my heart filled with joy, and that's probably where the tears started building.

We talked about everything. Friends. School. Utah and our old home there.

We talk so easily these days, it didn't used to be that way, and it is only this way now because I finally left their father over 4 years ago. Before the separation, we still enjoyed time together, but I couldn't so easily be myself with my children. I was often reprimanded for how I spoke, even if it was my version of sarcasm and humor. It was frowned upon. It wasn't something I noticed until afterwards, when it was just me and my children, and my humor slipped out, and there was no one there to say my name in just that way, with an undertone of disappointment, and instead, we laughed together.

Since that moment, my oldest and I have grown incredibly close, and it is only with retrospect that I see how much my previous marriage stunted my ability to be close to my children. Now, we talk about everything, and I mean every single thing. There is nothing off limits, and our emotions run free, and we can piece together how we feel, how we used to feel, and how we want to feel. It's lovely.

After coffee and breakfast, we got back in the car to continue our journey to the airport, where somehow the divorce came up, and the moment we sat the kids down to tell them their parents were separating. My oldest, now adult, child confessed that they felt relief, and that they had the thought "finally, it's happening".

I had never considered that it would be a relief to my children to have us be apart. I only worried that I was breaking my family into pieces and sacrificing them for my selfish desire to get the hell out.

What a new perspective for me to have today, as they travel on their own for the first time and go out to explore the world on their own terms, as their own person, rather than as the child of me or their father.

That's the relief I feel. They get to make their own choices, and are not trapped in choices either of us makes for them.

Thank God, or the universe, or whatever energy exists in this world.

Maybe this is where the tears come from. Relief.

I have been very closed-off about my divorce, and there are a few reasons for that. Some fear, or rather a lot of fear, and some new perspective that was thrust upon me as I met and developed a relationship with a man whose ex-wife has created a whole side hustle about their divorce and how she was freed. It's opened my eyes, to say the least, to have multiple perspectives about what divorce is for each person involved. The husband, the wife, the ex-husband, the ex-wife, and now the kids.

There are so many people involved, and so much blame to be cast in every direction. We all screwed up, well, the kids did not screw up, but all the adults in this story definitely screwed up, but some have the perception that they did nothing wrong, and I'm fascinated by it.

I had a conversation with a woman recently who shared so many similarities with me when I was first going through the ideas of finally leaving this man who made me miserable, and my short conversation with her opened my eyes a bit more. It's a very scary thing for a woman with no education and no career prospects to think of trying to be both a full-time mother and someone who can financially care for herself and her kids. The world isn't set up for people like us. The thing that kept me literally fighting for my relationship was the fact that I was terrified of being on my own. I had no family to run "home" to, and no education or career to fall back on. I had no idea how to make life work. I felt trapped, and so I was bound and determined to make this man understand me, and figure out how to salvage what was very broken. We didn't love each other, and had not loved each other for quite a long time, if ever. I truly believe, now that I have years of looking backward at all the fighting, we did not ever love one another. We were never meant to succeed, and I have a lot of words for the culture that ingrained the idea of marriage and children into us at such a young age (I'm looking at you, Utah).

And I have even more words and feelings about the culture that told me as a young woman that my value was in being a wife and a mother, rather than helping me figure out how to care for myself or even be myself and explore relationships and my own identity.

To the women going through it now, I deeply feel your pain, your fear, and your misery.

I know I have been quite privileged, all things considered, to get a divorce despite not having an education or a career when I made that decision.

I have had women tell me, "I can't afford to get divorced," and that hits me in the heart every time I think back on it.

As I watch my child go off into the world on their own, and be supported for who they are and create a life they want to have, rather than being pushed into the expectations of the culture around them, I am quite envious and again, so relieved. They have the support to focus on themselves, get an education, grow a career and learn what matters to them. So maybe one day, if they find themselves unhappy with a choice they made, they might have the freedom to make a different choice rather than be trapped and fighting for something that doesn't make sense.

Now, with the years passing, and the conversations I get to have with both my adult child and the women I meet every day, I'm starting to understand that my divorce story matters quite a lot. Not because I want to throw my ex-husband under the bus (which would be lovely, but I'll try to refrain), but because I want to share what it was like for me to be as terrified as I once was to leave a situation that was clearly causing not just me misery, but my oldest child misery, too.

As I sit down to write the books I have planned in my head, I keep telling myself "do not write about your divorce," and then I keep hitting a wall. The topic continues to come up, and I'm starting to understand why, and also why it might be necessary to go with it.

I was 19 when I got married, and 20 when I had my first child. I was still grieving the first death in my family that truly rocked me and I didn't understand any of my emotions, and then immediately after I got married, came more death in my family. Only months later, one of them was a suicide that ripped my family apart. Two years later, it happened again, and four years after that, it happened again, but this time it was my mother.

The foundation of my first marriage was built on the deaths of my family members, and the grief, loss, confusion, regret, and chaos that lived within me. It wasn't just the foundation of my marriage, but it was it also deeply impacted my identity as a mother. My little ones came into my life at a time of great turmoil and emotional disruption.

And so I find that I can not write my story without also writing about my first marriage, the divorce that was so obviously and painfully inevitable to everyone but me, who sat in denial, fear, and absolute rage over the injustices of the world.

I, as a human being, as a wife, and as a mother, have never been meant to succeed at life, because life as I have known it has been wrought with grief, loss, and confusion.

And I would love to say that the deaths end there, but just about two weeks ago, my cousin died unexpectedly, and I found out on Facebook, of all places. Although I've come to understand that I cannot attempt to grieve his death (it is not my place and I am truly sorry for his wife and children), I also had the stark realization as I watched my other cousins on the live YouTube broadcast as they talked about their brother and his life, that I have never had the chance to grieve the loss of my family as it was ripped apart by all the deaths that came before his.

I sit here now in a bit of a daze over it all.

What is family?

What is grief?

What is loss?

What is motherhood?

What is marriage?

What is identity?

And what the hell is the fucking point of it all?

My life has been strange, and what I want to is to write books about all of it, and not hide from any part of it.

My new husband, of nearly a year now, has changed my perspective on a great deal of everything I've ever experienced. I know without a doubt in my mind that if I had been married to him instead of the first guy, I would have had the support I needed to learn how to cope with and move forward through my very intense grief.

But on the same note, I also question if he and I both needed to go through our similar challenges with our previous partners, and the grief we each faced before we knew each other, so we could come together and be what each of us needs for the other in the ways no one else could be before. We are so very similar in our experiences that when things happen now, or as we talk through what happened in each of our "past lives," as I tend to call it, we can relate to one another, and that alone is very powerful.

The ability to relate to another person's story and simply know you're not alone...

Maybe this is why I felt so alone in my first marriage, because he couldn't relate to anything I was experiencing or understand how absolutely broken I was.

Death was thrust into my lap at the age of 17, just as it has been thrust into the laps of my cousin's children who are now embarking on their adult journeys, and good God, I feel for those kids.

To build an entire life on the grief you can't name, and try to suppress for the people around you who don't understand... That's so painful.

I will try to find the words for my books.

I think it matters, and I think more people can relate and understand than we might realize.

My conclusion for this post is that after all of these recent experiences with my child growing up and flying from the nest, another death in my family that has me looking back at all that I lost before, the chances to hear new perspectives that I haven't previously considered, and talking with women who share my story all has me rethinking what my books will look like, and I like that.

It all feels more authentic now, and I'm less afraid of sharing because I am starting to see how it all matters. It feels important again, and I'm not going to put mental walls in front of myself or my words, because then I'll be stunting someone else's ability to relate and find hope.

I think I had to get that all off my chest before I sit down to write the real first draft of my next book.

Wish me luck.