Why our home will never be broken….

Over the years I’ve become very thick skinned when it comes to the Internet, taking every comment with a pinch of salt, every mean spirited jibe with an eye roll, and every one-sided argument with a shrug. Only this morning, with a to do list a mile long, I fell down a rabbit hole reading a thread about “broken homes” and whilst I really shouldn’t have allowed it to, it triggered a response in me which led me to be sat here, the to do list cast aside, writing this blog post.

Thirteen long years ago, my marriage broke down and for those who haven’t heard my story before, let me tell you that it was one of the hardest things I have ever had to go through. Bearing in mind I had already been through the unthinkable of losing my child, going on to lose my husband broke me in a way I will never really be able to put into words, and there were times when I look back and question how I ever survived it. So there I was, just twenty eight years old, a single Mother to a four year old son, grieving for the two year old I should have had in my arms, and wondering how I would ever piece back together the fragments of my broken heart.

It’s very easy to sit here now and use the word “broken”, to say that my marriage was broken, that my heart was broken, and when I tell you that I was broken as a person that is absolutely true. I was destroyed. After eleven years together, despite our highs and lows, I was still very much in love with my husband when our marriage ended and I think it is always a thousand times harder for the one who wanted to stay. I felt physically and mentally crushed, losing not only the life I had planned for myself but the life I had wanted for Lewis.

At four years old it was a huge upheaval for Lewis and although he appeared to take it in his stride, when the split became acrimonious he was admittedly affected in a number of ways. “You need to work things out for Lewis’s sake.” family members would tell me. “You can’t let Lewis grow up without his parents together!”, I was told. And at a time I already felt as though I was failing, a time when my entire world had been turned upside down, I carried so much guilt at the thought that I had failed the most important person in my life by being unable to give him the happy family he deserved.

And for a long time I allowed that guilt to eat away at me, carrying it like a sign of shame around my neck, wondering if in years to come Lewis would blame me in the same way I blamed myself. I felt judgement from others, those I knew and those I didn’t, painfully aware of their sympathetic smiles and their loaded questions, “How is Lewis coping with all of this upset?”. I spent hours scrolling through articles online, reading statistics and studies of children from “broken homes” who under-performed and under-achieved. I read countless stories about those who go on to have unhealthy relationships themselves, who have children and divorce and carry on that cycle where history repeats itself. I broke my heart over studies where children from broken homes were at higher risk of developing clinical depression and anxiety, of spiralling out of control in later years.

And all of it just devastated me, the stigma of it all, the sense of failure, the fact that my son’s future may not be the one I had hoped for. Never once did I come across a positive article, or a story with a happy ending. Never once did somebody take me to one side and say listen, it’s all going to be okay.

Sitting here now, almost thirteen years later, having spent the last decade creating a happy and healthy home for my son and his subsequent siblings, having helped to nurture an incredible relationship between Lewis and his step parents, having put aside all of my differences with my ex-husband to salvage a friendship for the sake of our child, I wish I could go back to that twenty eight year old me who carried the weight of the world on her shoulders and simply tell her this.

Sometimes things just don’t work out the way you planned, or the way you hoped, or the way you imagined they would in some childhood fairy tale. Sometimes people change, hearts break, marriages end, and there is nothing at all we can do to change it. Sometimes you can love someone with your whole heart and your relationship still isn’t healthy; sometimes you can strive to create the perfect family for your child and it still not be a happy environment for them to grow. Sometimes you need to take a step back and appreciate that whilst it goes against all of the plans you made for your future together, the most selfless decision you can make for your child is to raise them apart.

Sometimes it takes time and perspective to realise that the marriage you so desperately wanted to cling to was indeed broken, in so many ways and on so many levels, that no amount of love or hard work could save it. Sometimes we need to accept that staying together isn’t the key to teaching our children about healthy relationships going forward, but that in raising them apart, we can teach them that the healthiest relationships start with ourselves. Sometimes life throws us a curveball and in subsequent relationships we have the opportunity to do it differently this time, to make those changes, to create new hopes and dreams, and to teach our children everything they need to know about true love and respect.

And I wish I could tell myself, the single Mum who used to cry herself to sleep wondering what kind of person my baby would become, that thirteen years later my son would be the most well rounded, loving, respectful, intuitive, carefree young man I could ever have imagined. And despite that “broken home”, despite all of our fears and all of that stigma, his Dad and I, together with our partners and all five of his new siblings, have given him two wonderful homes where he has felt happy, and healthy, and completely secure for every single day of his life.

And his life is more whole now than it has ever been.