Thirteen.
Notes on a Different Kind of Celebration
Today would’ve been my thirteenth wedding anniversary.
My divorce was finalized in March of this year, which means the news is still new to some people. Every so often, I run into someone who hasn’t heard. Their face changes while they take it in, and then they offer the response people have been taught to give.
“I’m so sorry.”
I usually smile and say, “Oh no, congratulate me.”
That tickles me every time, but I mean it.
I understand the instinct to offer condolences. Divorce wasn’t what we intended when we stood at the altar thirteen years ago. It wasn’t what I imagined for our marriage, our children, or the family we were building. There was grief in accepting that the life I had planned wasn’t the life I was living.
Still, the ending doesn’t feel recent to me. I grieved the marriage while I was still in it.
Long before anyone filed paperwork, I was already coming to terms with what had changed. I mourned the future I thought we shared and spent years trying to understand what could be repaired. I asked hard questions about the marriage and about myself. Eventually, I had to accept the answers.
My healing began before March.
I’d been in therapy, praying, examining my choices, and paying attention to the patterns that shaped my life. I was learning to trust myself and take responsibility for what belonged to me. I had to become honest about what I needed, what I could change, and what I could no longer carry.
And maybe that’s why I’m still surprised when other people are surprised. They’ve only just received the news. I’ve been living with the truth for a long time.
There are details about my marriage and divorce that I won’t share publicly. We’re raising children who may one day read what I write, and I want them to encounter care in these pages. Some parts of the story belong to my girls. Some belong to their father. Others belong to me, God, my therapist, and the people who held me close while I found my way through.
Privacy doesn’t require me to erase myself from my own story.
Audre Lorde wrote,
“Your silence will not protect you.”
I’ve returned to that sentence often because it reminds me that truth doesn’t require exposure. I can honor what’s private and still speak clearly about my own life.
I was married, and now I’m divorced. I’m raising my girls across a new rhythm of weeks and homes. I’m still their mama every day, including the days they aren’t sleeping under my roof. I’m doing well. I’m parenting, creating, laughing, loving, and living a life that feels honest.
There’s no shame in that.
You can’t shame a woman
who’s unashamed.
I know that now.
I’m not ashamed that my marriage ended. I’m not ashamed that the plans I made changed. I’m not ashamed that I chose my well-being or that I’m grateful for the life I have now.
I don’t regret the woman who said, “I do,” either. She was hopeful. She loved her family and believed in what she was building. She made decisions with what she knew at the time, and I can honor her without asking her to remain in a life that no longer held her.
That marriage gave me three of my girls, and they remain one of its greatest gifts. I get to love them, learn who they’re becoming, and help them understand their own lives. Our family is finding its rhythm, and there is still joy here.
Last year, I realized it was the first anniversary when I wasn’t disappointed. I didn’t have any expectations left for the day, and that realization brought me peace. I’d stopped asking an anniversary to prove something about a marriage I was already grieving.
Today, I feel the same peace.
I don’t know what June 29 will mean to me in the years ahead. It may always make me pause, or it may quietly become another date on the calendar. Today, it holds thirteen years of history and the closing of a chapter that shaped much of my adult life.
That closing deserves to be acknowledged.
So yeah, when someone tells me they’re sorry, I receive the love behind their words. Then I ask them to congratulate me.
Actually, come celebrate with me.
Perhaps you know what it is to reach the end of something and discover that your life is still waiting for you. There may be a date, a place, or a version of yourself that you’re learning how to hold with new meaning. I hope you give yourself room to notice what survived.
Today, I’m not holding a funeral for the life that ended.
I’m bringing flowers to the woman who lived.
This gave me rolling chills. Thank you for sharing. Happy to be in the orbit of your honesty💚✨