Dear Little Sister.

Dear Little Sister,

I know you are angry. I know you have made up your mind and you are bound and determined to leave your marriage. I know because I reached that threshold and there was no turning back for me once I crossed the line, or more accurately, hecrossed it for the last time. I only wish someone would have warned me of the heartache to come, had I not been so focused on being free.

Dear Little Sister, you will cry like you never knew possible. When you think the river of grief has finally dried up, you will realize there are still more tears to come. You will see pictures on social media–even though you have blocked your soon-to-be-ex-husband–that will stick in your throat when you see the places he is taking your kids without you. You will wonder what they are eating and if the children are washing their little hands and to whom he is exposing them this week, this month, and next.

You will fret over the kids’ car seats and obsess over whether or not they are getting enough sleep on his time. Your heart will ache with hollowness to know you are missing precious minutes and hours of their little lives you will never get back. You will be left out of major milestones as they grow up on his court-appointed hours. You will miss so many new expressions, wonders, and experiences with your children because they are at their “dad’s house.” You will cry for the cohesive family unit you once were.

Dear Little Sister, you will die a small death inside the first time he takes the children back home to see his family without you. You will wonder how they are doing while they are playing at the parks you all once visited together; you will stress over the sesame oil your allergenic daughter is being exposed to when grandpa is eating Chinese food. Your heart will ache when you first learn of the first new woman in his life who is holding your small daughter’s hand to cross the street, riding bikes with your boy when his training wheels come off, and tucking them into bed at night.

You will cry after leaving school assemblies where you have seen them all together, a new makeshift family, your children with another woman. You will dissolve into a flood of tears in your new man’s arms, knowing you don’t get to cuddle your little people for several more sleeps. Your boyfriend, while supportive and kind, will have nothing to offer you in the way of reassuring words, because there are none to ease the ache. This is life post divorce and your new reality, Dear Little Sister.

You will come to compromise so many of the values for which you once stood so devoutly–for the sake of chasing “happiness”, a fleeting and arbitrary notion. The ideals you once held so close to your heart will be forever lost to the system that now commands how you will parent. You will have little control over how your children are being raised not only as dictated on his time, but also as outlined by the judge overseeing your case. The dissolution of your life as you knew it will be assigned a case number, and you will often be reminded of the stamped documents, “Final Judgment“, burned into your brain.

You will, years later, look at images of your children and wonder if the pictures captured the kids in a state of “BD” or “AD”–were those the innocent faces of Before Divorceor the heartbroken ones After Divorce? Were they genuinely happy? Were their smiles in those photos authentic in the secure world they knew Before Divorce, or were they forced in their new reality of the After?

Dear Little Sister, all of the work you did for those children while married, when you felt so underappreciated and undervalued, will be amplified as a single mother. All the years you felt alone will come to fruition as actuallyalone when you are left getting small children out of bed in the early dark of morning, getting them dressed and ready for a long day of school and aftercare, packing their lunches, working an agonizing eight-hour office day, racing the clock to pick them up, only to fall into an exhausted heap at home on the couch before having to start your “second shift” as the short order cook to feed small mouths, the maid to prepare the week’s worth of laundry, and the tutor for the homework that still needs to get done. You will wearily climb into bed at night, defeated and alone, wondering how your world came to this.

And, Dear Little Sister, even if you find a new partner to help shoulder the load, it will never be equal because he will never love your children as his own. He will try, putting his best foot forward–especially in the beginning–to show you his unwavering love and support, but when push comes to shove, he will always choose his children first. Their academic award ceremonies will come before those of your kids; their commitments and obligations will precede any of your kids’ sports banquets and music recitals.

He will feel bad, knowing you are sitting in the bleachers solo for your son’s football game, but he just can’t take the afternoon off of work to attend with you because he already did for his son’s soccer practice earlier in the week. You will go to the game alone, worried the whole time your ex will show up with his new flame, because this is life post divorce with children.

Dear Little Sister, no one will understand you the way your ex did where your children are concerned because they are your flesh and blood together. No one will join you in a unified front raising your kids as he did. As patient and loving as your new partner may be, he will not know how to support your idiosyncrasies and insanities over kid craziness like your ex did. You will try desperately not to compare them, but your new partner will pale in comparison in so many ways; you will often miss your ex and think back fondly to the way your life once was, to how much simpler everything was, before you walked away to seek your own “happiness.”

Perhaps we would all be better off if we could just understand and come to accept that happiness is a fleeting thing. It is a farce to think you will always be happy. If you can be happy most of the time, then you are better off than most people, and happiness is what you conceive of in your mind and subsequently exude in your attitude. Happiness is truly only as we imagine and perceive it in our own heads and hearts. It cannot be found in the next partner or the next job. It does not come with a new car or live in a bigger house. You won’t find happiness getting your nails done or buying new jeans; happiness is not at the bottom of a bottle of rosé.

Happiness cannot be contained in a Louis or even found in a second marriage. It is only cultivated from within, regardless of what your bank statement reads or how you feel about your husband right now, because those feelings will ebb and flow.  The resentment you feel now, I promise you, will only grow when you see him out enjoying his life with a new woman and you are saddled at home alone with two sick kids.

Dear Little Sister, I was once angry as you are now. I was furious. I found fault with everythingmy now-ex did, especially near the end. I was convinced his every move was malicious and with mal intent to injure me–and sometimes his actions were, but I realize now it was only because I had injured him, too. When I look back, I suppose this made it easier for me to leave, to talk myself into his bad behavior amplified so I could stop straddling the fence and finally walk away, a decision that took me years to come to at last. My heart breaks to this day to think he so desperately wanted to save the marriage but that I was just too far gone to even entertain that possibility. I was convinced life would be sweeter on the other side without him.

And so now as I walk the empty halls of my house, my children at their father’s house, I open the doors to their vacant rooms and feel gripped by the sadness of their clothes in small heaps on the floor. Their rooms seem to always be in a state of chaos, not because they don’t clean them, but because their lives, in many ways, are simply in a state of the same unrest. Their disheveled rooms merely reflect the transience they live.

My kids have figured out which items to pack and which to abandon from one week to the next, bouncing back and forth between two houses. As organized as they are and as tidy as they prefer their rooms, they have learned to leave some items in the traveling laundry basket untouched because it is just too much trouble to unpack and repack again. The blanket my son still sleeps with doesn’t stay on his bed; he snuggles it at night and then tosses it into the basket on his floor again in the morning, afraid he will forget it when he leaves again in a handful of days. The little black flats my daughter packed for my house this week have not moved from her basket. Perhaps she really had no intention of wearing them, but was fearful to leave them at her dad’s just in case.

Your kids will be fine. Children really are so resilient. They learn to roll with the new “norm” that becomes their world of overnight bags and two Christmases and birthdays split between two homes. While not ideal by any stretch of the imagination, they come to understand that “people grow apart” and “sometimes mommies and daddies just can’t live together anymore.” This really isn’t about them. It is about you, and I am here to tell you divorce will forever change you, and not necessarily for the better.

While you will find your footing in time, you need to put on your battle armor because you will go through war first. Beyond fighting him in court over finances and arguing how you will share the children, your heart will go through hell, long after those papers are filed and the honorable judge determines what is rightfully yours. You will forever question your decision to leave, particularly when there was so much gray.

You will always wonder if you could have ridden the wave and flowed with the tide until your heart felt “happy” with him again–not because you are worried about the happiness of your children, but because you will not finally feel happy in his absence. There is no relief once the divorce is final. You will still find your heart obliterated for many, many years. In my experience, you will only be truly happy when you feel accomplished as your own person, and this, in my experience, comes only when you carve out your own identity in your career in parallel with your position as a mother.

Everyone sings the praises of independence. All of the women’s movements will have you believe you are “so strong” for leaving him. “You got this.” “You are better off without him.” Perhaps you will be. What no one tells you is the living hell you will first endure to get through the fire, and that inferno will devour you whole if you are not cloaked in uncompromising courage with the resolute decision to end the many conveniences of your life as you now know it. I only wish someone would have warned me just how difficult it would be, years later, even with a supportive partner.

Dear Little Sister, I implore you to think long and hard about your final decision, not for the sake of your children, but for your own sanity and for the sake of the sadness that lurks on the horizon just ahead of you, life post divorce and your new reality.

Maybe, just maybe, there is reason to still try.

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