Take my hand, we'll make it, I swear...

I'm in Oregon, as I occasionally am; eating ice cream, as is often the case; in a giant floral muumuu, which is a special treat bringing me inordinate amounts of joy.

I just drove from San Diego to Portland and stopped at nearly every thrift store for the entirety of that stretch. The muumuu was purchased in the last thrift store on my last day of this endeavor to collect clothing for a vintage one-layer-modest clothing line, and it will always be a treasured memento.

As for the trip, north of San Fransisco I drove almost exclusively on the 101--which is gorgeous and quirky and I highly recommend it for road tripping fodder. South of San Fran it was the 1 (or PCH) for as much as I could manage. What that means is that I basically just spent the last two weeks careening my way along rocky cliff sides overlooking a vast ocean, then popping into the redwood forrest, then hopping back out to the Oregon coast in time for sunset lit lighthouses and blustery evenings of cold noses. Oh, Oregon. You're so silly. Don't you know beaches are supposed to be warm? : )

Anyway, I just wanted to check in to say:
1. I'm alive, and quite well, thank you.
2. I haven't forgotten you, or my divorce, but...
3. 18 months divorced (oh my gosh, almost 19 months! I didn't even realize that till I looked at my calendar just now) feels pretty dang amazing.

I am pretty sure it was the 18 month mark for me where I really broke free from the captivity of my post-divorce pain processing/wallowing. I hesitate to even call it wallowing because that word has such a negative connotation and processing is highly personal in its nature and time frame--but a girl knows when she has transitioned from sincere grieving and processing and into purely unproductive wallowing. Wherever I was at 17 months, I am not there now. In all honesty I feel like a completely different person. I don't miss him. I don't hate him. I don't think about him much. I don't wonder where we went wrong or wish we had only… I don't think we could have made it work and I don't wish I had never met him. I just see what happened, and I accept it for the absolutely soul killing adventure it was.

And I see it as over.

That chapter is complete. I've tried to close the book before, force the chapter to end, but there is a difference between slamming a book shut because you are sick of reading and naturally completing the chapter. I've finished up that section of my life by living one day after another. Some might congratulate me for getting to this better place, but the truth is, all I did was keep living one day at a time. Breathe in, breathe out, repeat. Some of those breaths were laborious. Some were filled with spite and regret. Others were zoned out and disconnected, but I have accumulated enough of them now that I have arrived at nearly 19 months divorced. I did it! I existed through that time, and now, here I am in my floral muumuu eating ice cream and not thinking about how sad it is to be a divorced lady. I'm excited for what the next chapter will hold. All the foreshadowing in divorce recovery chapter seems pretty promising. I can't wait to see what is about to happen. There are so many ways the story could unfold from here.

I know this process is highly personal, but I do want to offer every reassurance I possibly can that things do get better. I remember people who had come through it telling me that and how I didn't feel like I could believe them because they seemed so healthy and lighthearted. How could they ever have experienced what I had and come out the other end like that? There was just no way in my mind that could happen. No heart could ever recover that destruction...and yet, here I am--a surprisingly lighthearted Ghost of Christmas Future, to tell you this:

Don't you give up. Don't quit! Don't you turn your back on God. We need you and the faith and fortitude you are cultivating even now in the world and the church far too desperately. My brother, Jesus, is real and He is there--for and with you. He has been the whole time, even and especially the times you couldn't and can't feel it--He is, because He loves you and He always will. He will help it get better. He won't let it stay like this forever. He loves you too damn much.

Keep your chin up. One foot in front of the other. If it's a lay in bed kind of day or week, then let it be. It won't last forever. The sun shines down eventually. Breathe in, breathe out. Repeat.

The Deal Has Been Unsealed - Temple Sealing Cancelation

Photo Attribution here. 

Today we're going to talk about something that nobody likes to talk about: temple sealing cancellation.

I mentioned a couple posts back that The Mr. has gotten engaged. I received a phone call from his bishop asking me to write a letter addressed to the First Presidency of the church explaining how I felt about the idea of him getting remarried in the temple. The letter went something (a lot more formal than, but in essence) like this:

Dear awesome leaders of the church I love,

I'm supportive of The Mr. taking a second chance on love. While the speed with which he is pursuing marriage is concerning to me personally, I recognize that this is no longer any of my affair. I sincerely wish he and his fiancé happiness in their new life together. The prospect of being in what essentially amounts to a polygamous sealing with my ex-husband and his new wife against my will, however, is a concept that makes me more uncomfortable than I have words to express. May I please have a sealing cancellation? Thanks.

Love,

Frowfrow

I wasn't really sure why I asked them for a cancellation in that letter... I mean, it's not as if I expected them to write me back saying, "Sure thing, doll. Would you like fries with that?" But The Mr.'s bishop asked for my feelings on the matter and feelings he received.

I was then instructed that the proper channel is to go through my bishop here to start the process of officially requesting a cancellation, which I immediately did. He's a very nice guy, my bishop. He's got that simple, clear cut, straight forward thinking I admire so much. I explained my situation to him and he agreed. Why stay sealed with someone who you aren't married to anymore? Being a singles ward bishop and somewhat unfamiliar with procedure he went to the Stake President to ask what to do next and came back a couple weeks later to let me know that the Stake President had put the kibosh on the whole effort, saying, "That's not what we do."

There seems to be an idea floating around out there that there are blessings afforded a woman for staying sealed to a man in the temple, regardless of the state of their marriage (or non-marriage) and who did what to whom in the divorce. This has always struck me as absurdly illogical. The blessing I wanted was to have any and all ties with that life cut, quick like a band aid, the sooner the better. Being free from any other process I would have to go through to distance myself from him at a later date, knowing I am in absolutely no way connected to him and his damaging influence on my life, that's a blessing I understand. That's something I can sink my teeth into. That was what I wanted, and last week, aforementioned kiboshing of the Stake President notwithstanding, that's what I got. It was a letter in the mail. Unexpected. Maybe that's why it affected me so.

Dear Frowfrow,

The Mr. contacted us asking for a cancellation. Would you like fries with that?

Love,

Tommy Monson

Captain Amazing sat across from me, dumbfounded at why I was crying, saying, "But I thought you wanted this...? Why are you upset?"And the truth is, I was a little dumbfounded too. I did want it. I was grateful for it. I was relieved and happy and free and... alone and devastated and sad all over again.

It was supposed to be permanent. It was supposed to be serious. It was supposed to work out alright in the end, but this is the end...again. Yet another element of ending, and it's not alright, not my marriage to the Mr. And it never will be alright.

Today I'm grateful. At least in my mind I'm grateful. Logically grateful. Mind made up to be grateful. Feet set on a grateful path. I do not miss being married to The Mr. That time was so unexplainably painful. However, I do miss the person I thought he was and the husband I thought he would become. I miss our home in Long Beach. I miss being a wife and not having to sleep alone and knowing I would never have to date again and having a permanent buddy all the time. Most of all I think I miss the concept that something in life could ever be completely stable, safe, secure. I miss the feeling that I could be a part of a functional family, and that something and someone in life could be trusted.

To share, or not to share?

Photo attribution here.

So, the other day this thing happened. I started attending Institute here, which I've really been enjoying. The first time I walked through the doors (thank goodness I was early and the class was pretty empty) this senior couple who had served in my singles ward here three years ago was setting up the class and they totally remembered me. They walked up with slightly puzzled looks on their faces and said, "Wait, didn't you get married?"

When I was in phase one I was very, very open about my matrimonial history. One, I'm an almost absurdly open person to begin with and two, the beast that is divorce had overtaken my body, mind and soul to such an extent that it really felt like I didn't have a choice. It was the only thing in my head to talk about. No matter how uncomfortable it got I just kept opening my mouth and out would topple comments like, "Oh yeah, my husband did that too," or "Yeah, well the first time I got married I wore a vintage dress, but I don't know what I'll do for wedding number two," or, "Oh my gosh, I know. Making out is my favorite. I love it, even more than sex!" As you might imagine, this lead to many uncomfortable moments in my small, young singles ward.

During my epic road trip down here which transitioned me from phase one to two in my Get On With Life plan, I pondered extensively the pros and cons of going public with the fact that I was once married. When an LDS person finds out another LDS person has been married and divorced, it changes the way the once married person is viewed; there is no way around this. Eternal marriage is such a deeply integral aspect of our faith that, especially while one is single, everything seems to be viewed through this three part lens of married, single or divorced. Once divorce is admitted everything in the life of that person assumes a new hue.

We divorcees can feel this shift, which is why so very many of us remain silent. The righteously indignatious part of me wants to buck this system, which is another reason I was so loud mouthed about my divorce in my last ward. It's kind of a shock when people first hear it, the "D" word, but my theory was that the more people I could expose to a real live divorced Mormon, especially a devout one, the more stigma would dissipate.

However, in  order to achieve this noble aspiration, one would need to take upon herself every awkward moment she could in order to break the ice, again and again and again. In truth, I'm just not strong enough for that. Also, through my deliberation on the drive I decided such an "in your face" approach is probably not the most effective anyway to change perspectives or break the stereotype of the bitter divorced lady. Better to let a person discover the elements of me as they come and allow my divorce to be just one more layer of my fairly complex life story. In the early moments it was impossible to believe, but the truth is, I'm a lot more than my two year relationship to a man with whom I no longer speak.

Having settled on a "need to know"policy for when to speak about myself,  I have also settled on the decision to anonymize the blog. You may have noticed. Many of you know who I am and mostly I advertise this blog through facebook, but we're at about 5,500 hits now and coming up as #3 in Google search for "divorced mormon blog". I'd love to see us continue to grow. I'd also love it if we could just go with my nom de plum Imogen Frowfrow (there's a funny story here, as you can imagine) as my name. Sometimes it's hard to have strangers know your story.

As for your decisions, because you will have many to make about how much to say about what and when, here's my advice (since you so clearly asked for it). When the moment is right, do not be ashamed to admit your experience. Shame and guilt are tools of the devil if they are not motivating us to change. We cannot change what has happened, and we should not allow ourselves to be shamed because of it. Hold your head high when you speak about your divorce. It (hopefully) has changed you, ultimately for the better and brought you closer to Christ. It's an experience many of us share in silence. Sometimes breaking that silence can be a powerful and right thing to do. Also, you have every right to protect yourself, to establish boundaries, to decide how much of yourself to share and how much to keep. There is nothing wrong with giving yourself a clean slate, and in moments it will be right to stay quiet, omit, or even mislead. Your experience as a married person does not have to define you. There is more to you than this. God will let you know which moment is which.