Life Labels

It’s 2019, which means I have officially been out of high school for almost 16 years. The amount of time someone has to be alive for our society to find them responsible enough for a driver’s license is how long it has been since my biggest responsibility was getting an A on an exam I didn’t study for, because I was too busy talking on my cordless phone with my boyfriend. I mean, I had a cell phone but if we didn’t have mobile-to-mobile, then we couldn’t risk all those minutes until the weekend! That’s how long I’ve been adulting.

The clean slate feeling of a New Year has always been a favorite of mine. I’ve spent the last week reflecting on the many things I overcame last year, the blessings of life {our wedding was epically perfect}, and the memories made. But I’ve also been thinking about the labels I’ve acquired. Some things don’t get wiped clean when the calendar starts over.

Is divorce something you ever truly leave behind? So often, I find myself correcting people who call me by the last name of my children, or explaining that I have four children because I was married to their father prior to my recent wedding {I shouldn’t give a shit either way, but I have an urge to let strangers know this fact due to my own insecurity}. I have to correct insurance information for the children at medical appointments. The various parental adults have to be categorized on any forms requiring designations of access for treatment and care of the kids.

Divorced is attached to my name like an unwritten suffix. It is a life label. I used to think of this as a bad thing, but I’m starting to feel as though I should embrace it. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t want to advocate for people to bail on their marriages! Hell, I intend to stay in my current marriage until one of us is no longer breathing. I had better outlive my husband, because I’m pretty sure that’s the point of marrying younger! But what if, instead of seeing the fact that I’m divorced as a life failure, I see it as experience cred? Maybe instead of a suffix, it’s a qualification…

One of the most beautiful things about our struggles is that they give us perspective. Getting engaged to my new hubs and planning a wedding made me feel like my life was again legitimized. That may sound silly and anti-feminist to some, but when most of your adult life is spent as someone’s spouse, being married becomes part of your identity. In a way, I felt I was getting the chance to reclaim a piece of me that I had sacrificed. On the other side of things, I now see and am embracing that my identity is wholly made up of all of my experiences, culminating in a person that I am proud to be.

All this to say that I have a strong desire to share more about my life post-divorce, as a Mrs. again, in a blended family, peacefully co-parenting with the father of my four littles. My hope is that I can use my experiences to help others who feel isolated, hopeless, or any number of yucky things that weigh on you when you’re in the thick of it. I also really want to encourage others to embrace their life labels, believing that the shittiest parts of life can help you develop a view of the world that is uniquely suited to helping others who think that no one can possibly understand them!