The Kids Are Alright

I have written this a dozen different ways but there is no way to say it other than Lori and I are no longer partners.

What happened? That question has been asked of Lori and I a lot over the last week.  It is a question we have asked ourselves.  We arrive at different answers. We  arrive at the same answers but for different reasons.  We arrive at the same answers for the same reasons.  Friends and family want to assign blame and align.  Chose a side.  If we are breaking up someone must be at fault.  Someone has to be the villain.  Someone has to be the victim. Right and wrong has to be in place.  

For Lori and I, there is no victim.  There is no villain.  We are both responsible for our falling apart.  I love Lori tremendously.  She is my family, my co-parent, my friend.  She and I cannot continue as partners for reasons only she and I will fully understand.  We love each other despite the shift in defining ourselves as partners.

Because of the love we still have for one another, we have decided to focus on the commitments we made to one another as family and as parents.  We have decided to continue to live together so we can raise our kids without  having to divide them between us. We function in amazing ways when we are operating as parents.  Operating as family.  

We told our kids we were separating holding each other's hand, crying and assuring them, and us, that our love as a family would continue.  Just because we were breaking up as partners does not mean that we have to break up as a family. Our kids, initially cried out, and then were soothed to find out our divorce would affect them very little.  Holidays, birthdays, day-to-day interactions and even vacations would not be any different for them than they have in the past.   They would never have to chose between us.  Lori and I would never be apart from them.  The kids are alright.  The kids will be more than alright as we live out our words.  Showing them that families shift but that does not mean you stop loving one another.   Our family is changing.  We are loving differently.  We are defining divorce without dividing.  We have really hard days.  We have really good days.  We stumble.  We rise.  

Our family could never be defined as normal but this is not how I imagined living my life.  Living with someone I am not partnered with.  Divorced.  I have felt extremely broken.  I have felt dreams lift up and disappear.  I grieve the loss of Lori as my partner.  The new space has been awkward in spots.  Familiar in others.  Lori and I are trying to configure this new identity with one another.  I think we are doing as well as one can hope.  Brokenness permeates.  Hope is on the perimeter.  Hope that we can love each other better as family than we were doing as partners.  Hope that our kids will have the stability and peace on this side of our journey that we were unable to sustain as partners.  Hope that Lori and I can nurture one another in ways that we had lost in our own blame and hurt.  

I write this because it is too hard to tell this story over and over again.  I write this knowing Lori and I are in a new space and unsure how it will unfold, but trusting we can bridge hurt and build on the love that remains.  I write this for accountability.  I write this out of brokenness. I write this out hope that Lori and I can do this differently than we have experienced it in our own lives. I write this out of need to put words to a hard, scary space where words are not serving me well. I write this because I need to write this. I write this because, in many ways, I do not know what else to do.