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Posts Tagged ‘new single mom’

Struggling in Iowa

12 Aug

Struggling Reader in Iowa,

Recently someone that we both know, we’ll call her Ms. D, told me that you have been going through a tough time right now. While I know how little this helps I am sorry to hear that you have been struggling. As I understand it you have been reading my blog, so you probably know by now that I am someone who hates the cliches and platitudes that we so frequently hear as we are trying to adjust to this MASSIVE change in our lives, even so I want you to know that you are not alone and that I can completely empathize with the struggle you are going through.

Am I correct in understanding that you are also adjusting to becoming a single mother? I don’t know about you, but it is an adjustment that I never thought I would have to make in my life. I have only one child and the adjustment to being a single mom has been tricky in ways that I both anticipated and don’t think I ever could have anticipated. Through it all my son has been my driving force. He has been my anchor and my greatest, and at times my only source of comfort. I imagine that most women going through situations similar to ours feel much the same way. How can they not?

I don’t know how much of my blog you have read, but I sincerely hope that it has helped you in some way. If in no other way I hope that at the very least it has helped you feel less alone and isolated, which are feelings that I have been struggling with myself. I do not know everything and I am still going through the process myself, but if there is anything that I can do to help I will.

I don’t want to give you unsolicited advice, however, if you will permit me I would like to say that I know just how easy it is to be hard on yourself while trying to navigate through everything that this nightmare involves. It seems like it is almost a default response, but please don’t allow yourself, or anyone else for that matter, make you feel like you are wrong in how you are processing this. There is no specific time table that you must adhere to and then you have to be ok and ready to move on. You are in the process of grieving. You have suffered a loss that is significant and the length of time that you need to process and adjust to that loss will be different from the amount of time that someone else might need. Do your best to give yourself a break. If you ever feel like you want or need to talk to someone I am more than willing to listen.

You are not alone.

 

Out of my nightmares and into reality

17 Apr

One night before bed in the early Fall of 2013 my husband, a man whom I have loved for going on 16 years, told me that just a few nights before he had allowed himself to get drunk and in doing so to have sexual contact with another woman. (His only regret being that none of it had happened while he and the other woman were sober and therefore capable of doing more.) It was difficult to hear, to accept, to know how to react and so on. I spent, as one would imagine, the next few days trying to figure out what to do next. In the end I decided that despite my hurt and anger that I still loved this man who I had devoted my life and love to and wanted to try to save my marriage. I stated my desires and intentions to my husband only to be informed that he had decided he wanted a separation and most likely a divorce. My pain, anger, fear and desperation only doubled with this newest revelation.

All of this happening within a couple of months of my husband requesting that we start trying to get pregnant with our second child and having actually starting to try!

Eventually I stopped fighting against what he was forcing on me, and our young son, since my wants and desires were of no importance and no longer mattered to him.

This blog, which in most cases will generally be written in letter format, is intended to help me come to terms with what I am currently going through (not just the separation, impending divorce, but also the fact that I am now a single mother), make sense of what I am feeling, coming to terms with a situation that has been painfully and callously forced on me and, hopefully in the long run, even move on.

 
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