Wednesday, March 15, 2017

Then and Now


A few weeks ago in one of my classes, two women happened to write about ex-husbands. The prompt had nothing to do with spouses, though it did ask about people’s relationships to love. What is auspicious and amazing is that, out of 28 students in all my classes, only these two wrote about ex-spouses.
What’s also amazing is the difference.
One person, student #1, wrote about her ex-husband, from whom she split only a few years ago. The other, student #2, about her ex-husband from over twenty years ago. With their permission, I am sharing part of their writings, to really show what a difference time makes. 
These are very different women with very different former marriages; I don’t mean to imply they are the same. Yet something about the two of these side-by-side really spoke to me. It’s hard to know when we’ve had enough time to have perspective on difficult things in our life – even if it hasn’t been enough to find equanimity, we should still write about it. But it is also hard to keep a feeling of connection, even if we have found some balance. With distance, we can neuter our story, make it seem benign; if we are too close, it can feel very strong and we are unable to get out. Both of them have found middle ground between proximity and distance, with time, of course, but also a lot of work and reflection and compassion for themselves and their former spouses.
 What I love about the writing from student #1 is how much she has gone back to own her own past and patterns. This is a powerful exploration of how we got into situations like the one she was in, without blaming herself. She's still struggling, mind you, but she's opening to herself a lot. 
I'll let student #1 tell you: