Becoming an official single parent following your divorce can affect the entire landscape of your life. Parenting is challenging enough when shared, but on just one pair of shoulders it can be overwhelming. However, when single-parenting is the result of legal separation or divorce, you’re also dealing with a second, gigantic upheaval in the paradigm of your daily life. And it can feel like someone has taken everything you own and turned it on its top, sending all of your carefully set existence into confusion and chaos. When this happens, nothing is normal, nothing is routine, and everything is scary and numbing. At this point, the question becomes, “How do I create a normal, from the totally abnormal and unfamiliar?”
We have seen this before, many times, and we’re here to tell you that it happens to most everyone in your situation, and it’s fixable.
It’s usual to be frightened of the things we don’t understand. When life hands us experiences and situations that are entirely unfamiliar, we almost always experience fear and aversion. This makes the problems we’re experiencing even more intense than they may truly be as we envision the worst. We’re supposed to feel like this. it’s neurological, our brains are programmed this way for survival.
As children, we all had fears of something lurking under our bed – some unseen but awful monster or animal that would grab us if we let our legs or feet get too close or linger too long. And our natural reaction was to leap into our bed and keep our legs up so that the monster didn’t grab us. It was not to peek under the bed so we could have a quiet little chat.
But now we need to do that very thing; walk up to the monster, look it in the eye; learn its name and how to talk to it; make it our friend. So, how do we go about doing this?
Start by sitting down, grabbing a pen (maybe also a cup of coffee or even a glass of wine) and starting a list of all the things that your divorce or separation has changed, everything that is different and unsettled. Jot them down as you think of them: “Breakfast routine for kids”; “Doing the laundry”; “Homework and study time”; “Evening routine for me”; Interacting with their teachers”. Even if you think that you’re just listing what you already know, the experience can be very emotional. After all, we “know” everything has changed but “knowing” it and seeing it listed in front of us, line by line and in black and white, are two different experiences.
Now, write down your goals for a new normal. “Breakfast done and dishes washed by 7:30 a.m.”; “Homework done by 7:00 p.m. and study something new with kids twice a week”; “Read a book or listen to music by myself for twenty minutes every night”.
These goals are not a must-do list, they’re a hope sometimes-we-can-do-this list. It can help to piece together a glimpse of calm possibilities in the chaos. And most importantly, be gentle with yourself. Don’t use this to self-chastise or tell yourself you aren’t measuring up – none of us ever seem to measure up, because we’re comparing ourselves to a form of perfection that does not exist.
This is you, learning the monster’s name and engaging it in conversation – taking it from the unknown to the known and finding a way to work with it.
Finally, write all the things you weren’t happy with in your past life. You may feel ridiculous and petty putting them down on paper, even if they did drive you up a wall – we all have those: “Couldn’t stand the way they chewed”; “Hated those sweatpants they always wore around the house”.
Sometimes they will reveal how leaving that environment created large shifts of energy in your life: “They were mean – I never have to be put through that ever again”; or “I now come home to a safe and calm home now”.
This one may feel healing and painful, simultaneously. You’re coming back to life – try to lean into the pain. Even though your entire life is different, and in most ways became much more challenging, there is a freedom as well. There is sometimes new potential following the loss and a gift in the heartache.
This is you, making peace with the monster.