Framing Motherhood & Estrangement as a Chapter

It occurred to me recently that my old life, being married and having children in my 20s and 30s, was just a chapter in my life. It's similar to graduating from school, once graduated, you can't go back. It would never be the same. Periodically over the years I've had dreams that I was back in school or at my old job that I had during my twenties. It's a strange experience when it happens and I realize that the me now no longer fits in any of the past chapters. I think of it now as something I got to experience. Now it's done. Maybe this is the way to view estrangement.

Last year going on vacation to where I stayed with my former young family nearly twenty years ago, I was there with seasoned eyes. I knew there would be no way to recapture what was. It was good for me to be there though. I went to that locale before I was in that marriage and had those children. I have been there post divorce as a single mother, with my mother and daughters and many more times over the past thirty-five years. And I was there last year staying in the same complex I was in twenty years ago, when my sister passed from cancer back home. I was with my current husband in that sacred place seeing it fresh through his eyes and also feeling all of the previous seasons.

Being there at the beginning of my own cancer journey last year, I remembered and felt what it was like being there with my sweet little girls. I felt a completeness in the passage of time. I'll always have the memories but I may never return to that place and time again when my children were young. And when I do in the present, I see it through wiser eyes. It will never be the same as it could have been if my family had not disintegrated nor would I want it to be. Those memories belong to that time.

From the point of my separation and divorce, the memories of those years was tainted by grief and pain for a long time. Remembering the beauty was tainted with pain. It took time to be released from fear and grief. Thinking of those times as chapters in my life helps. Ninety-five percent of the time I don't live in that space of grief anymore or live in the definition of estranged parent. I am grateful that I got to experience motherhood, a role that I loved and was good at. Now I am on my journey of new experiences in my empty nest life and this season albeit health challenges is wonderful. I am seasoned crone, a grandmother, and an adventurer in the second half of life.