It feels so great to be writing about blended families, love, the realities of divorce, and especially alignment, again! I’ve been waiting and waiting for this new blog to be perfect before I post the first time. Waiting on one more photograph to be sent my way so it can be uploaded in place of what’s currently in the header, waiting for the developer to make the necessary copy edits, waiting for all the posts I have on tumblr to be populated here so that it didn’t look as though I hadn’t blogged since June of 2014… meanwhile my fingers have been drumming my desk… tick, tock, tick, tock… weeks passing… even months.
What was I thinking! The time is now. It’s always now. Plus there’s so much provocative stuff to write about and share with you! Perfect isn’t a thing. I’m certainly not perfect so it makes sense my site and photographs won’t be either. In fact that’s why I love this platform. It’s an excellent canvas for imperfection.
And speaking of imperfection, let’s talk about the painful D word – divorce. It’s ok, you can say it out loud. Divorce! It. Sucks. I’m well on the other side of it and blissfully remarried, so I can look at divorce through a different lens now than I did in the beginning [of the end]. If children are involved – it’s way more complicated that’s for sure. And there are endless opportunities to be imperfect parents pre and post divorce unfortunately. Even the happiest and healthiest of marriages with children find ample ways to screw it all up.
But there’s also plenty of opportunity to get some really important things right during and after divorce. Here’s one: kids need both parents and they need (plenty of ) time with both parents. They just do. My girls are so lucky their dad and I understand and support this philosophy with total fluidity. They are so at ease around all of us. Their dad is very comfortable around my husband and in our home and the same is true for me around their dad’s girlfriend, and their home. It’s just so nurturing for the girls and their little hearts, minds and souls. There’s so much love in this blended family. Thank God. If I’m being completely honest, thank us. We made these little babies and by golly, we’re going to do what’s best for them.
The girls know they can count on all of us and that their dad and I are completely aligned in our parenting. IT IS NOT EASY. Of course their dad and I battle it out sometimes – but the girls. never. ever. know. The co-parenting relationship works because of one word: Compromise.
Our girls are becoming unintended beacons of awareness for other kids of divorce they know; kids with parents who just can’t agree on anything involving their children. There’s so much unhealthy tug of war and gas-lighting. An incurable need for control. So many double standards, envy and lies. There’s even some legitimate crazy thrown in. That’s scary. But, kids are resilient and smart. When they regularly witness how it ought to be they become acutely aware that they’re repeatedly being dealt a really crappy hand.
On the bright side, life is not static. Circumstances and people can always change. I have hope.
More to come,
Tanya B.
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