The story of my mom’s death is no more the story of her life than the story of my divorce is the story of my marriage. It’s tempting to tell it that way because of the way it went down, because of my anger, and because it did end up with me no longer being married, but that wouldn’t be accurate or complete.
This book also isn’t really the story of my marriage or my divorce. This is the story of me believing I wasn’t beholden to the rules of patriarchy, growing up in the 1970s thinking (and often being told) I could “have it all,” and embracing that message, but not realizing that that meant I had to do it all, and I had to do it like a boy or a man would without any of the benefits of having a penis. This is the story of how I fooled myself for more than forty years, thinking if I just tried hard enough or hit on the right formula, I’d have it made. This is about me not paying attention to all the ways I was buying in to the system that was keeping me from being happy and fulfilled. This is the story of how I began to see how the system was stacked against me and how, once I saw it, I couldn’t unsee it.
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I took a memoir-writing class over a decade ago, and one of the writing prompts the instructor gave us was to write “a day in the life” as a way of doing a character sketch of ourselves. It was to be an extremely detailed account of all of the things we do in any given day, quirks and all, as though someone else was going to take over our body for 24 hours and they had to be convincing. I found it really great as a way to think about the things I do as a result of trauma and relationship patterns I learned throughout my life.
As I began working on this book, I considered revisiting that prompt because my day-to-day life has changed drastically now that my mom is dead and I don’t have kids living with me. Before I began, I tried to consider it through the lens of capitalism and patriarchy and it occurred to me that for most of my life, the vast majority of tasks I have undertaken in any given day are uncompensated financially. Some of that is purposeful – when I volunteer at the food bank, for example, or cook a meal to take to a friend post-surgery – but much of it is the way our society is designed, and I have simply accepted it without question.
It is an interesting thing to think about because, in all honesty, I wouldn’t really change much. I am the kind of person who pays attention when my beloveds speak. I will remember your favorite dessert or book or movie. I will check in with you on the anniversary of a big loss in your life. I will offer up my shoulder or ear should you need it. I don’t feel as though I need to be compensated for that; in fact, it feels gross to even think about it in that way. But I do think there is some sort of accounting that deserves to happen around the value of those things and an acknowledgment of what they bring to all of us. Living in this present reality means that we tend to only collectively value the things that enrich us financially, but what about all of the acts we engage in that build community and connection and make us feel beloved?
When I was in the midst of my divorce proceedings, I hadn’t worked full-time in over 15 years – paid work, I mean - and the part-time (compensated) jobs I had were centered around the hours my kids were in school and their lives. On paper, my earning power looked pretty pathetic, despite two college degrees and the fact that I continued to learn and take classes in a variety of subjects. But the fact was, if a hiring manager looked at my resumé, there was no way they’d choose me for a job that could support myself and my kids financially. Sean, on the other hand, had spent decades climbing the corporate ladder, building his own company (our own company; I say that not because I worked there, but because it was my tireless, uncompensated efforts at home that enabled him to build the company without having to manage the household or pay for childcare) and gaining credibility in the business world. He had tons of earning power.
I knew that the skills I had were important, but it was hard to figure out how to talk about them in a way that would translate into money, and frankly, with my mom struggling with Alzheimer’s and my kids close to graduating from high school and having a hard time adjusting to two households instead of one, I had no intention or desire to work full time, even if I could make six figures (I couldn’t). That meant I had to dig deep and advocate for myself to make sure the kids and I had security for several years following the split. It meant I had to get comfortable believing that the work I did was worth money.
In Evelyn Nakano Glenn’s book, Forced to Care, she writes about the fact that women are the people in this country to whom the unpaid labor of making sure our children and our parents are cared for falls. Several years ago, my friend Jodie started a private Facebook group for people who care for children and elders simultaneously. She asked me to co-administer it with her because we were both in that situation. Within a few years, the group had grown to nearly 10,000 people, the vast majority of whom are women. Almost none of them get any monetary compensation for the hours and hours of work they do scheduling doctor appointments, preparing meals, shopping, managing health issues, explaining diagnoses to elders and homework to children, transporting parents and children from one place to the next, researching care options and housing options, etc. etc.
The more I pay attention to the way I lived my life between college and my divorce, the more I realize that it doesn’t matter that I called myself a feminist and considered myself an activist. The more I look, the more I see all of the ways I was complicit with the larger systems of patriarchy and capitalism. It is overwhelming to think about the messages I absorbed (“Women can have it all!” “You can be anything you want to be”) and thought were important and empowering, when really all they were doing was putting more pressure on women to double the amount of labor they did and strive to be more like men. In the years since my divorce, I have begun to understand that I blindly accepted ideas about baby steps toward equality for women and what was considered “doable” versus what it means to actually challenge the systems and structures put in place by white men that have crept into the collective consciousness and settled there like stones on a riverbed.
DARKNESS
This is a story of severance. Not only the end of a marriage, but the end of a set of illusions I had about the world. In the years since my divorce proceedings began I have also investigated cutting ties with alcohol, capitalism, competition, and rage – with varying degrees of success. It is difficult to break away from something that you’ve known most of your life, especially if it has worked in your favor, and if the vast majority of your friends and family and colleagues are still connected to it. Given that we live in a culture that relies on systems of patriarchy and capitalism, trying to live outside of those structures is nearly impossible. And given that most of us have been deeply immersed in all that comes with these things, imagining a different way of being takes a concerted effort that is consistent and intentional. I have had many setbacks along the way and I expect many more. The difference is, now I understand that setbacks are part of the process, that relapse is part of recovery, that we learn by living, paying attention, opening up to what really is happening and leading with curiosity as opposed to shame and denial. When I remember that, it’s easier to feel the dips and twists and know that I’m safe, that this is all part of the ride and if I don’t come to a screeching halt and demand to get off the cart right now, I get to keep moving forward and see what else is ahead.
Mary Oliver wrote, “Someone I loved once gave me a box full of darkness. It took me years to understand that this too, was a gift.” The first time I read that, I had some sense that it was true in some deeper way, but I didn’t make any attempt to decipher it. Now I know, coming back into the light is a gift, but even before that, when we’re in the dark, there is an offer of rest, of stillness. Biologists know that we need rest in order to grow, even if we are taught to ignore that fact. Being in the darkness, without the tools or pressure to DO or fix or produce is a gift. We can relearn to just be, to sit and use our other senses, to begin to trust that the light will come again. It is a powerful thing for me to remember that for some portion of every day, there is an invitation for me to rest and just be.
One of the biggest gifts I’ve gotten from learning to rest in the darkness is curiosity. When my mind isn’t pulled in different directions, I can begin to wonder “what if.” In the years since my kids all left home, I have had more time to sit and imagine, create a relationship with possibility, challenge some of the old beliefs I had and, as Alnoor Ladha says, “practice making the familiar strange and the strange familiar.” For some reason, for me, the darkness creates a sturdier container for this kind of inquiry and allows me more freedom to push up against things I’ve always taken for granted. Building out new possibilities requires a willingness to sever ties with the old, and that can be scary as fuck, especially when you’re sitting alone in the dark. My divorce was the thing that pushed me in to that space of rest and aloneness, and while it was one of the scariest times of my life, I am tremendously grateful for the opportunity and my ability to stay with it, to know it wouldn’t kill me, and to explore what might be possible for me.