I grew up with the threat of divorce, and I’m still not sure which is worse: growing up with the threat or actually being in a divorced family.

When I was about 11, my mother had had the last straw. Crying on the phone in her bedroom (for privacy, even though everyone could hear her) she told my grandmother her news. She was getting a divorce.

Perhaps to my mother’s surprise and SHOCK, my grandmother confronted her after a long pause with, “Oh, no. You’re not coming to live here with two children and no way to support yourself.”

Ultimately, to my grandmother’s credit and to my mothers’, this “rejection” created an unanticipated opportunity.

I have no idea what, if any, support she had at the time, especially since this was before the Internet or FWW, but she made some big decisions and formed a plan: she’d return to college, finish her degree, find a teaching job, divorce my dad, and then support us.

I was horrified. I though at 35, my Mother was certainly too old to return to college! These days, most colleges have programs for people to resume their studies, like Columbia University’s School of General Studies, www.gs.columbia.edu for one example. But back then there wasn’t much out there.

With her study muscles a bit atrophied, school was very challenging for my mother at first. But after time she successfully graduated and went on to easily find a teaching job.

The Punch line:
During and after these years and this process, my mother became so involved with her own life that she no longer felt a need to get divorced.

And while still not entirely happy (with him or with herself), her newfound independence, self-respect, feelings of self-worth, and love for her work, all allowed her to turn down the volume of her rage.

So, when is the right time to leave a marriage? It's really an individual choice. But sometimes, in the words of Borat, “Divorce? NOT!”

Thinking of all of you,
Judith