Navigating the River of Life or Rocks, Branches and Killer Fish

I booked a kayaking trip down the river for our family vacation this year. Small issue. I am completely afraid of rivers. Rivers will kill you. Currents will sweep you down to the inevitable dam that is always there and you will drown. You’ll get sucked into a whirlpool and drown. Your kayak will tip over and you will drown. You will be crushed on the rocks in the rapids and drown. Fish will attack you and eat you and you will drown. I know, completely rational reasons to avoid rivers, right? But for real, rivers scare me to death (if you couldn’t tell.) You can’t see what’s under the water (at least not in an Iowa river) – there are tree branches and rocks. There are scary fish – well, all fish are scary – but river ones are ugly and have teeth (they do!) So scheduling a kayaking trip down a river made perfect sense. But I knew my kids would like it and I like the IDEA of kayaking – other than the tipping over, not being able to steer, drowning and dying parts. Super glad I signed us up. Deep breaths…

I informed the main guide that I was deathly afraid of rivers but hey, it will be alright, right? Right?! I’m sure she was very excited to get to work with someone who was barely hanging on to her hysteria. Everyone was excited for this trip! It was the moment and I got into my kayak and pushed off from the edge and immediately started breathing fast – 4.5 miles of this? Can it be over now? And where are my kids? Oh my gosh I am leading them to their doom on our vacation!

I started paddling with a mission. I wanted to keep up with the guide but not go in front of her because I didn’t know where I was going. (Um, it’s a river – there was only one way…) I snapped at Moose when his kayak would accidently bump into me – didn’t he know how hard I was trying to have fun here and he was freaking me out! Thankfully he knows that when I am scared, I get a little irrational. In his helpful way, he pointed out a rock in the river to avoid. Huh? I don’t see a rock at all. It’s just brown water everywhere and the next thing I knew, I was stuck on this rock I never saw coming. Stuck. Everyone else was in front of me, going around a bend, and I knew, this was my time to die, on the Skunk River in Story County, Iowa. Kind of anticlimactic, but we can’t always choose how we go. I hoped my kids would remember me fondly, as I frantically worked my paddle to dislodge me from this damned rock. I almost tipped over and decided, no, I would just sit here in this kayak for the rest of my life and die a slow death of starvation (the water was maybe 2 feet deep here) versus being eaten alive by fish when I fell into the water. And then, I felt it. The water started to shift my kayak and I was glided off the rock naturally. Somehow I had survived this near death experience and despite my initial scream when I lodged onto the rock, I tried to nonchalantly catch up with the rest of the group, cool because, hey everyone knows how to get off rocks when they get stuck, right? No big deal. Where is my paper bag to breathe into?

Then our guide announces that there were “ripples” up ahead. Ripples?! Oh, like tiny mini rapids she says – like its no big deal. WHAT? I barely survived a rock in the water that I couldn’t see and now we were going through class 10-Z rapids? (I have no idea if rapids have ratings but 10-Z seems like it would be pretty serious.) I watch my Squirrel just shoot right through without issue. Great, I’ve got this – if he can do it, so can I. I survived the boulder attack in the water earlier, I can do this. And then the Moose gets stuck. Then my guides get stuck. And I’m in full out panic mode inside and because I can’t help it, I hit both my guides’ canoe and Moose’s kayak. I am helpless. I feel the water rushing around me and know that no, THIS is actually my time to die. I feel my kayak start to move and then it flips me around and I am now going down the ripples backwards. I am going to go to my death peacefully I thought so I just stopped paddling and let the river do its thing. Within a few seconds though, I was able to turn around and face the right way again, grinning. I had let go and just let nature take its course and I came through great. I was beyond proud of myself, ignoring the complete meltdown I had had on the inside seconds before – no one saw it so it doesn’t count.

After that I stopped paddling frantically to finish the river and instead just floated and took it all in. I love nature. I love seeing my kids in nature. We were surrounded by trees. The weather was amazing. I was thankful for this amazing moment. And it was so quiet, it was hard not to relate this experience to life.

Up until my husband filed for divorce, I could not imagine my life without him. Our marriage wasn’t good but I always thought it would get better. If I made more money. If I could afford for him to get a new truck. Once the kids moved out and we had more time together. If I could make him happy, he would be happy to be married to me. I worked so hard because life without him was unfathomable. Was I happy? No, I wasn’t but I clung to the hope that the season we were going through was just that – a season. I didn’t know that my marriage ended long before he filed papers. Immediately I was dropped into a river of sorts – a place I had tried to avoid with all my heart. I couldn’t see the hidden dangers under the surface – many had shown their faces in the past year and were terrible surprises. I couldn’t steer the direction my life was taking – I was going to be a single mom no matter what I wanted. I was scared to death and didn’t want to fall out of my kayak and drown as I navigated this new river of life I found myself in.

I didn’t know what else to do so I paddled. I paddled so hard. I did all of the homework my lawyer gave me. I found therapists for the kids. I shored up my finances as best I could. I continued doing my work in therapy. I cried to my friends. I worked to find my voice – just my voice as I was speaking for just me, not us, now. I had been an “us” for so long that I didn’t know how to even be a “me.” And just like the ripples, life pushed me through and now I was on the other side. Here I was at one year after the divorce, having this amazing vacation with my loves, and now it was time to just relax and float a little bit.

What I learned on the river kayaking and in the past year is that I’m not always going to know what is underneath the surface of the murky water. I’m going to get surprised, scared and stuck sometimes. But I learned that I can get myself off the rocks when I get stuck. I may end up going backwards for a bit and have no idea what I am doing, but I’ll figure it out. I can do scary things. I can navigate this life as a single mom and I can navigate a river that frightens me. And that makes me breathe a little easier, relax a little more and enjoy the ride as I float down this life with my loves.

That's Not the Plan or Stop Shuffling the Damned Playlist

You see, I had a plan. Get married, have a career, have kids, live happily ever after. Fool proof – all I had to do was keep my husband, boss and kids happy and everything would work out. But it didn’t and about 20 months ago my husband of 20 years filed for divorce. So I made a new plan. Make my house into a home, create a new family unit of 3, make the kids okay despite having a “broken home” and try to recover financially. I spent all of last summer making the house mine, establishing a new culture for our family and trying desperately to heal my boys. Next on the list – finances. I’m not sure if you know this but divorce is expensive and so is being a single mom. My brain was constantly moving with ideas of how to save money and make money so my kids would be protected and still get to do everything they had when we were a family of four.

And then, like so many times before, my life took a detour. I met a guy. He knew it was my first date since being divorced – my first “first” date in over 25 years. I informed him I wasn’t looking for anything – I was just fine on my own thank you and that was how I intended to live out the rest of my days (great start, right?) Besides, my focus was on fixing my family and making us financially secure and there could be no deviations from the plan. I had work to do and people to take care of. I had RESPONSIBILITIES. I had no time for play. Yet he kept hanging around. I got used to him being there. He patiently kept waiting for me to give him something I didn’t have available.

I think every season gives us challenges to overcome and opportunities to grow. You would think by now I would have learned that I don’t get to create the playlist for my life. Learning how to walk again and accepting my body’s limitations (*work in progress*) after major surgery – not on the playlist. Trying to save a marriage – not on the playlist. Divorce – definitely not on the playlist. Doing it on my own – not on the playlist. Who picked these shitty songs?

But after about 4 years of surprise twists, I thought I was finally in charge of the direction my life was going to take. I could move things anywhere I wanted in my house. My kids and I could make plans on our own. My house was safe from conflict and anger (sibling rivalry excluded.) When I checked my bank account, I knew where my money was going. I was in control. And then someone hit shuffle on the playlist and a love song came up and I didn’t know what to do with that.

I look at all of these people on Facebook and Instagram and they make falling in love look so easy. It looks like such a happy time for them – bliss, belonging, finding their person. I was so jealous. I, on the other hand, was like a bull in a china shop, bumping into the shelves, breaking expensive dishes, looking frantically for the exit so I could get the hell out. Love equals fear for me. Love means I have to do a bunch of healing work I didn’t know I had to do. It means confronting memories and challenging what I thought to be true. And there is no plan. There is no neat and tidy list of items for me to tackle one by one. These traumas pop up out of nowhere and I usually take one look at them and say, no thank you, I’ve had enough – let’s just tuck that feeling back inside and go for a run. (Please see paragraph 3 about major surgery – clearly I couldn’t outrun my feelings anymore.)

I questioned whether it was too soon. I told my therapist I just wasn’t capable of loving someone – other than my kids, friends and family of course. I was positive that I was broken and really, why inflict that on someone who is a good person. My therapist would counter with words of wisdom like, “how long do you plan to stay in that prison you’ve created,” and “so you’d like to keep getting the same results in life.” (My therapist is amazing and unfortunately she is not taking new clients.) And probably because she knows me so well, she knows I don’t back down from a challenge. Yes, it may take me some time to get there, but telling me that my choice is the easy way of status quo or the hard way that sucks but will give me a different kind of life, I’m going to choose the hard way. I will choose pain and discomfort over fear any day. And I was scared to death of love.

Love meant I’d have to confront the yuck that is stacked in my brain like a bunch of apples – when you take out one memory, the others tumble down too and now you have a bunch of bruised apples and an angry grocery store clerk. But I knew that I’d have to start sometime and whether it was now with a great guy or 10 years later, the hard work had to be done. I don’t step away from a challenge if the prize is worth it. And people seem to think love is worth it. Slowly I started to lean in. I challenged what I knew to be true and it turns out it wasn’t.

My goals this year were supposed to be financially and professionally driven – areas where I felt confident and in control – that was the plan. Instead I started the work of figuring out how to trust and love. So far it has proven to be harder than starting a new business but I’m hoping it will make me richer in the end. It has taken all of my extra mental energy that I have left over at the end of the day. I have put other goals on hold to work on this one that I never had on my radar. I have cried more than I ever expected I would as I rumbled through the mental scar tissue and created new truths. But one of my mantras is nothing worth doing is easy. I ask a lot of questions. I do a lot of thinking. I am rewriting the messaging. It is taking me some time. But people say love is worth it. I am trusting they are right.

Jenny’s Life Soundtrack Playlist
Fix You – Coldplay
Unstoppable – Sia
Titanium -  David Guetta and Sia
Dig In – Lenny Kravitz
Lose Yourself – Eminem
Run the World (Girls) – Beyonce
I Should Have Known It – Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers
You Can’t Always Get What You Want – The Rolling Stones
Beautiful – Christina Aguilera
Praying – Kesha
Glorious – Macklemore
Today – Smashing Pumpkins
Nobody But You – Blake Shelton featuring Gwen Stefani

Cautiously Grateful or Lessons for Normal

Friends, it’s been a year. A year of adjustments, balancing, finding a new normal and finding a new normal again. It’s been a year of finalizing my divorce and figuring out how to handle the quiet when my loves aren’t in my home. It’s been a year of discovering love and trust. And just when we got that figured out and the Squirrel and I stopped fighting about how terrible divorce is and we celebrated our first holidays as a family of three together, the Moose broke his leg. Oh my heavens that was a challenge. The physical pain, the emotional pain and the mental pain was a journey. My days went from worrying about being a mom and work to worrying about how I was going to get my 250 pound baby up the stairs by myself. I didn’t sleep for weeks. But we learned how to find the good in challenging situations. We did it.

And just when we started physical therapy and life started to get back to normal again, the pandemic hit. Now that we can actually go and do things with Moose, we can’t because of tiny little germs that we can’t see and that I have a difficult time convincing the Squirrel exist. And now we are in a new normal, one I could never have imagined in a million years. For the third time in 11 months our lives came to a screeching halt and took an immediate hard left into unknown territory. Fortunately  (or unfortunately depending on how you look at it), I am perpetually lost (please don’t watch me find my car in a parking lot) and I am comfortable with having no idea where I’m at or how I’m going to get home. Thank goodness these past few years have taught me that I have no real control over many of my circumstances and that I can find the lessons and get back on track if I just stop, look around and pause.

These past three weeks have been full of disappointment. Spring break was a drag. I’m not presenting at a conference in Florida anymore. We don’t get to go to soccer games or taekwondo testing or concerts. The family vacation to Florida that I worked so hard to take the kids on (with Grandma in tow!) is postponed indefinitely. Postponed indefinitely – oh my gosh how sick are we of that phrase? Can I just ask what the hell is going on with the toilet paper thing? My birthday and the one year anniversary of our new family won’t be celebrated at restaurants or at amusement parks. Heck, we don’t even know if we can go on our annual family vacation to Ohio. Working from home has been challenging as the boys are stir crazy with no outlets for their energy, social needs or (ahem) “creativity.”

This has been taxing. Just last week after getting tired of being the referee in the “who hit who first” game between two children who KNOW HITTING IS NEVER OKAY, I sent the kids to their rooms and told them to settle the argument themselves and to come downstairs when it was over. It worked in the Parent Trap when the camp director sent the twins to live in a disgusting cabin when they were fighting. Apparently movies aren’t real. You guys. Two hours they yelled at each other. And then they came downstairs and the three of us argued for another hour. A three hour standoff that ended with me threatening to use all of my vacation time to babysit them instead of taking us on an actual vacation…sometime. I don’t even know how it ended. I just know that in the end we finished the last few episodes Schitt’s Creek that night and I crawled into bed exhausted.

I was thinking about how I’m going to make adjustments to week four of quarantine so it is better than week three. Each week I make tweaks – work earlier before the kids get up so I can take more breaks during the day to interact with them, plan more organized activities, maybe start reading the emails from school, stop reading the tweets from school. This week we will have milk and cookie breaks every day and read Harry Potter. We will take one “play” break each day – nerf gun fight, ping pong, dance party, walks, family yoga (okay that one might be a pipe dream of mine.) We will keep working our way through the Marvel movies – we have watched 12 of them so far. How is that even possible? I started wondering when would we get back to Normal? May? June? The Squirrel already had his June camp canceled. Will we have our vacation to Cedar Point? Will things be Normal by July?

And then I remembered Normal. We don’t get daily ping pong or nerf gun fights in Normal. We don’t have milk and cookie breaks in the middle of a work day in Normal. Movies every night in Normal? No way. If we are lucky, we are all home one night a week in Normal. If it isn’t a sport or music activity then the Moose is at a party or the Squirrel is running off with friends. A family dinner during Normal is at 8 p.m. not at 6 p.m.

Maybe this isn’t SO bad. I’m not saying I like this staying in place thing. I don’t. I miss my gym, I miss my friends, I miss teaching yoga and seeing my students face-to-face. I’m mad I don’t get to do my plans because as much as I’ve learned how to adapt these past few years, I’m a planner and a doer. I am so glad I have a job and I’m trying desperately to find a balance between work, my babies and my sanity. I’m not there yet - I’m getting closer each week but it still sucks. My kids are still going to fight and we will all probably have weekly stand offs with each other. I’m tired of trying to be a fun yet productive mom and at the same time be 100% present at my job. But you know what? I’m going to miss this imposed family time too. When we get back to Normal and are running in three different directions each night, we are going to look back and remember when we were forced to slow down, hang out as a family because we weren’t allowed to see anyone else and go for walks because it was the only place for us to go. Maybe when we get back to Normal, we can try to take a few lessons with us from the Quarantine Months - family walks, helping our neighbors and washing our hands. We may just all come through this a little bit closer, more generous and cleaner (and with a full closet of toilet paper.) And that's not a bad thing. 

A Decade Review or Just a Couple of Chapters in the Book of Life

What an amazing decade we just finished up! I mean, what a roller coaster. I was happy, then sad, then depressed, then happy again, then heart broken, then angry, then resolved and now I’m back to happy. I ran, I laid around, I crutched, I learned how to walk again. I loved, I fought for love, I lost love, I gave up on love, I REALLY gave up on love, and then I found love (plot twist!). I went from being a DICK to being SICK but feel richer than ever. I found new friends and lost old friends, I lost family and found family, I had a husband and lost a husband but I gained a dog, several cats, several hermit crabs and even a few frogs (may they rest in peace.) I’ve lived in two houses and worked at two jobs. I sat at soccer fields, basketball courts, track fields, football fields, swimming pools, music concerts, tae kwon do studios, doctors' offices and lawyers' offices. I loved deeply and lost deeply. I felt alone and I felt surrounded by support. I cried hard and laughed hard. I felt proud, humbled, humiliated, joyful, hopeless, blessed, stupid, smart, thankful and loved. If you had told me at the beginning of 2010 what was going to happen over the next 10 years, I never would have believed you. Yet here we are.

At first blush this decade may seem like a shit show. I had major surgery, major depression, a major divorce. But I wouldn’t give any of that up for a second. That is where all of the good stuff came from. No story is interesting without the drama, no growth can come from living the status quo. Without the tragedy, I would have no comedy and where’s the fun in that?

This decade I learned what I was made of. I lost my mojo and found it again. I consciously made boundaries and discovered what my true values are. I found my tribe, I found family, I found God. I found out how to be a better mom and a better friend. There is not one moment I would take back from this decade. Every step made me the person I am today and I really love that person. I don’t apologize for who I am anymore but I also try to step with more kindness, compassion, patience, tolerance and grace than before. While I wouldn’t mind a less action-packed decade, I know every good story needs a plot. These last couple of chapters had twist and turns that even I couldn’t predict. But they were just chapters in my story and my story is long. I can’t wait to see what happens next.

Love Epiphany or Ready to Win Again

Today I had an epiphany. A love epiphany. You see, as much as I believe in love, I believe in love for my family and friends. Not romantic love for me. Not ever again. Because that did not work out so well for me before. In fact, when asked if I would ever get married again, my quick response was “Fuck. No.” I have been known to compare marriage to food poisoning. Sure the meal tasted great going down but you are going to be puking your guts out for 7 hours and wish for death. So, no, no marriage, no love for me.

Then I had two conversations with my Squirrel this weekend that all of a sudden completely changed my mind. The first conversation was when the Squirrel (who adamantly does not want me to remarry which I have reassured him wouldn’t be an issue) stated matter of factly, “Well if you get married, you’ll just get divorced.” Huh? That’s actually not how marriage is supposed to work. You are supposed to get married and NOT get divorced. Does he think that marriage equals divorce? That’s not good at all. In fact, it’s kind of disturbing. What have I modeled for him? That love is temporary and marriage is short-term?

Next, the Squirrel was going to test for his yellow belt in taekwondo. He was so nervous. I looked at him and asked, “What’s the worst thing that happens if you don’t pass? Nothing. You just try again next time.” I walked upstairs to finish getting ready and paused. Now I have some beliefs that guide my actions and motivate me. First, nothing worth doing is easy. Second, if you fail, you just get back up and try again the next day. You get 24 hours for a pity party and then you find another way to reach your goal. You don’t quit.

And that’s when it hit me. While I use these guidelines to reach my professional and personal goals, for some reason it never occurred to me that these would apply to my love life. I felt like such a failure in marriage and I swore off of love and relationships. I was going to focus on my kids, work and other goals but love was not one of those. I didn’t need it and it went so poorly why would I ever try that again? I learned my lesson the first time. But I realized that I do hard things. Anything worth doing is hard. And isn’t a life filled with companionship supposed to be worth it? And I had failed at things before and I never let that stop me. I’ve run 3 marathons – do you think all of that training was easy or successful? No, but if I bombed a 13-mile run, I’d shake it off and try again the next day. I didn’t quit just because it didn’t work the first time or was hard. I tried again because (for some reason) running 26.2 miles is an amazing feeling. This is how I do everything. Why wasn’t I applying this to love too? Maybe because love is so personal. Maybe because love was so incredibly painful – I still cry sometimes. But I’m not someone who gets knocked down and stays there. What was I doing? It has been way more than the alloted 24-hour pity party. Maybe it was time to start opening my mind and heart to future possibilities.

For the first time in a long time, the idea of marriage and love did not completely repulse me. In fact, my only reason for not opening up my heart and mind was because I felt like I was bad at love and I was afraid of being hurt again. I don’t like to hold myself back because of fear. And I know that failing once does not mean you are bad at something – it just means you need to try again.

I don’t want Squirrel thinking that marriage equals divorce. And if I’m encouraging him and Moose to do things that are scary and to try again if things don’t work out, I need to apply that advice to the one area I’m scared of too – love.

I haven’t felt this much peace and openness in two years. My heart feels lighter – not because I’m getting married ANY time soon – it’s not even on the radar – but because that heavy sense of doom surrounding my heart has lifted. I’m not a failure. It just didn’t work the first time. That’s all. Not that I’m giving my heart away freely but I’m not going to stop it from flying if it wants to.  Just because love didn’t work out before doesn’t mean it won’t work out again. Marriage does not equal divorce. You can’t win if you don’t try. And I like winning.

Hygge Day or Snuggles, Sofas and Stew

You guys. The fall. It is SO MUCH. It is the first day of school, new classrooms, new teachers, new friends, birthdays, football season, school conferences, so many fundraisers, Halloween, Thanksgiving, Tae Kwon Do, school pictures, show choir, apple orchards, jack-o-lanterns. Now I love fall and fancy coffee drinks and beautiful trees as much as the next person. And I really do love football and the new school year and apple orchards. But whenever you cram so much into three short months, no matter how much you love all of it, it is still overwhelming. And now that I only have my loves every other weekend so it’s even harder to do all of the mom things I want to do with them.

So when I found our first free weekend in months, I wanted to celebrate. Do we go to the movies and dinner? Do we visit friends? Do we have friends over for a party? Or…do we have an intentional weekend of nothing? But not planning anything - that's not quite how I do things. So in true Jenny fashion, I’m making this free weekend into a holiday – a Hygge-Day to be exact.

I’ve been in love with this idea of Hygge since I heard about it a few years ago. From what I’ve read from non-educational websites, it’s Danish and is the art of being cozy, comfortable and chill. Supplies? Blankets, loungewear, comfy socks, candles, hot cocoa, books, movies, board games, pastries and stew. This sounds like exactly what my family needs. So much of the time I feel like all we are doing is running from one thing to another, crashing in bed, getting up and repeating. I know I’m preaching to the choir. We need a weekend to reconnect, reset and recharge. We need a Hygge-Day.

I told the boys about my grand idea. Hmm…reading? No screens? I’m not getting many fans. But then I mention comfy blankets, candles, board games, family movie time, candles, popcorn, hot cocoa, pajamas, candles, stew and pastries. Did I mention candles? (For some reason, candles are really important for Hygge!) I should have just led with the pastries. We are all in. Ok, they aren’t 100% sold on the reading time, but I am. And we can do art, writing (okay maybe just me) and Legos too. We are all so excited  for this Hygge-Day.

What’s awesome about Hygge is that it is celebrates being happy with what you have – you don’t need fancy blankets or socks. Now I do have to do some prep work for our Hygge-Day because naturally I’m going to make a production out of our weekend of nothing, but even I am going to try to keep it simple. I’m going to run out and get the required candles, hot cocoa, marshmallows and tea. I’ll swing by the Bake Shoppe to make sure we are stocked on pastries. Friday night everyone will make their pile of books and we will find games we all want to play and movies we all want to watch to eliminate the stress of the inevitable fights we always have. And I’ll pre-cut all of the veggies for Moose’s favorite chicken stew because this is a chill day for me too.

If this goes according to plan, this might become my favorite tradition that we break out more than once a year. Because even my kids are craving downtime from the wicked schedules we keep. Snuggling on the sofa all day as a family is exactly what we all need before going into the holiday season – especially this year as we all navigate the new life we have together.

So if you can’t reach us next weekend, we will be unplugged yet plugged into each other. Phones and tablets will be powered down but we will be recharging. Doors shut, hearts open. Lights off, Hygge on.  

My Advice for Navigating Your Friend’s Divorce or Divorce is Not Lord Voldemort

I just read the Pema Chodron book, When Things Fall Apart, Heart Advice for Difficult Times, and it says that when bad things happen to us, it is a gift because it teaches us empathy and compassion. And that is so true. When I got divorced, I realized how much I’ve been doing it wrong with my friends who have gone through this already. So here are my tips for you when your friend is going through divorce. Hopefully you’ll be a better friend than I have been.

1. You can ask us about the divorce. I know you are afraid we are going to fall apart. And maybe we will. Maybe we won’t. Think of it like playing the lotto. You won’t know if you will win unless you play. I have talked for an hour about the divorce completely dry eyed and I have broken into sobs in a Subway talking about Christmas traditions for 3 minutes. It is possible that your friend feels out of control and that feels awful. Please just bear with us. We hate feeling this way but it is better when our friends hand us a tissue if we are losing our shit. Divorce is not catchy. If you acknowledge it, you won’t catch it. I promise. But pretending that a huge earthquake has not crashed through our world is kind of annoying. Some of us feel embarrassed that we failed at marriage. We might have made promises to God or to our families that we couldn’t keep. And the reasons for our divorce are often embarrassing too – cheating, addiction, finances. I know this requires you to step up in front of shame and that is hard and awkward for everyone. But please do it anyway.

2. And we may not want to talk about the divorce! Isn’t that fun? I tell you to ask us about it and then tell you we may not want to talk about it. I know. I am putting a lot of responsibility on you as a friend. But I don’t know anyone who has gone through divorce that hasn’t felt completely fragile and we know we don’t make a lot of sense. But sometimes we just want to hear all about your life and your kids and your job so we can pretend we live your life for a bit. You’ll have to feel it out. We appreciate your patience.

3. Ask us how we are TODAY. That last part is important. Because if you ask us how we are, we will say fine. Every. Single. Time. Because we know that’s what you want to hear. And we really do WANT to be fine. But we probably are not fine. If you ask again and you ask how we are TODAY, we might give you an honest answer. Asking how we are TODAY acknowledges that how we feel changes weekly, daily, hourly and by the minute. We could have an email from our lawyer or text from our ex that totally changes our day. So even if we really are fine at 8 a.m. we might be a disaster by 4 p.m. Is that messy? Sure is. We hate the roller coaster of the emotions too. It is draining.

4. Friends, divorce is scary! So scary! There is paperwork, signatures and finding a lawyer you can trust. There is the MONEY – lawyers are expensive and we don’t know how to pay for that. And divorce means we are losing something. We are losing time with our kids, we are losing financial security, we are losing family, we are losing friends and we could be losing our house. Imagine just one of those things happening to you and then put them all together at once. Some of us don’t know where we are going to live or how we are going to buy groceries. Oh, and we have no control over a lot of our circumstances. We are at the mercy of the courts and are fighting fighting fighting for what is most important to us. And we don’t know how that will go. We won’t sleep for months. We will lose 20 pounds because we cannot swallow food because we are full of fear. Or we will gain 20 pounds because food is the only thing that feels good to us. We know we should take better care of ourselves but right now, just the basics are all we can handle and by basics, I mean we got showered that day – that is a win. So if we are having a hard time focusing on being a good friend or concentrating at work, it is because we are in a heightened state of fear. Please have grace and toss us a mulligan.

5. Divorce is exhausting. There is so much to do – it can be a part time job. There are papers to read, meetings to attend, checks to write, decrees to go over with a fine-toothed comb, financial documents to gather. And your friend is doing this stuff alone – there is no spouse to help them with it. And they may be transitioning to single parent status which makes things more complicated. So maybe offer to drive their kids to practice or send them a Starbucks gift card. I promise you that they will appreciate it. They will thank you when they have the energy. But it may be a while.

6. Bring us casseroles and send cards. If your friend had a death in the family, everyone would rally around them. You guys, your friend DID lose a family member. And even if they are better off, it is still sad. No matter how much they didn’t get along or if it was abusive, the hope and dreams of the future are gone. And that is deeply sad. And it is so amazing to not have to worry about cooking dinner for our kids or to get a well-timed card in the mail. I can’t tell you the number of times I got a surprise card in the mail that literally got me through the next day. It may seem small to you, but even just a text about how amazing your friend is, can be just the thing they need to keep fighting.

7. Divorce isn’t fair. Like not in the “life isn’t fair” kind of way but IT IS NOT FAIR. Even if the ex cheated and gave your friend chlamydia, it doesn’t mean your friend gets the house, all of the retirement, full custody and the dog. Divorce is surprisingly black and white – add up the assets and the liabilities and split it. Child support is a formula. It will never feel fair to anyone. Telling your friend that she (or he) needs to fight more or get a new lawyer or whatever isn’t always helpful. Our lawyers know more than we do. And there are a lot of hard things to swallow that we don’t have control over. And we have to balance the importance of the question with the $150 bill that email will come with. Now, that being said, if we are feeling angry and indignant, we want you to be there with us – be mad with us! If we sound defeated, be supportive but please don’t make us explain why the ex who never saved still gets half of your friend’s retirement. It sucks and we don’t want to think about it.

8. Acknowledge the big days. We don’t suddenly forget when our wedding anniversary was when we sign the divorce papers. That first birthday single? That can be rough. Even if the divorce was a great thing for your friend, those days can still be sad. Don’t pretend that they should just be a regular day. Ask your friend how she is doing. Just recognizing that you are there can make that day a lot easier. We know we are strong. We know we are brave. But we are also sad and feel conflicted. Please don’t make us qualify everything with “But things are so much better.” Things CAN be so much better but that doesn’t mean it isn’t hard.

9. We can’t just throw out the wedding photos. Or maybe we can. Some things are easier to part with than others. Give us some time. There will be a day when we ask you to come over to help us get rid of the wedding dress and the other mementos. Or maybe we won’t. As many books, podcasts and articles there are about divorce, none of us go through it the same.

I’m not going to pretend that I know everything or that these tips cover all of the different situations your friends are going through. And we all handle divorce, react to it and feel about it differently. But this can at least help you get started holding their hand during one of the more challenging times they’ll face. None of this is easy. I am asking you to be brave. I’ve learned that instead of pretending nothing is happening, I will lean in to my friends’ pain now, no matter how uncomfortable it is. I will say the hard things that might cause a reaction, like, “It’s not okay, it never was okay, and you need to know that everything that happened to you wasn’t anything you deserved and someone needs to tell you that,” because those things need to be verbalized even if they make her cry because it is a truth she needs to hear. And I will check on my friends often, rather than treating the divorce like Voldemort – He Who Should Not Be Named.

Everything I’ve learned has been from my friends. I have amazing friends that know how to lean in to hard situations. They texted, sent cards, flowers and fun gifts, they called, they picked up the phone when I called. They lent their expertise. They drove my kids places. They didn’t shy away from the tears but instead gave me hugs and picked me up off the floor. They ranted and raged when I needed them to, they gave me hard truths when I needed them but didn’t want them. God bless these friends. They inspire me to be a better person. It is my turn to pass it along.