Mom,
I feel terrible for the way I hated you. My ability to thrash hatred onto another person like I had with you was not at all limited by my age. Twelve years old; it is hard to believe I was capable of disowning my own mother and father at such a young age. I was astonishingly horrible, placing blame on people whose situations I could never have understood. The distance I put between you and dad was never your fault and though the daughter from your past haunts you and says it was, I ask that you try your hardest to ignore her acidic words. She is long gone. That little girl eventually wiped away the blinding shield of self-pity and revealed a rational image, one that portrayed the truth in how your decision influenced my life. My previous expectation on how that decision should have affected me was based on a phony illustration of an ideal family. Realizing my faults dug up a fact that I feel obligated to admit: your divorce was the best thing that ever happened to me. A beautiful outlook on my situation evolved from you and dad deciding to separate; I developed the ability to cope, an appreciation for both of you as individuals and came to realize that my life could have had a far worse outcome. The current appreciation I have for you making the decision to divorce is a product of my past experiences, and though you know just as well as I do the condition of our past life, I feel it is worth you knowing how I truly perceived those times before the divorce.
You may hope that I do not remember that you and dad used to fight, but I can assure you that I do. I remember how a heated discussion could spring into an argument within minutes, continually escalating until only screams escaped both your lungs. The sounds of your voice...
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...ou guys for what you had done. I guess my frustration originated from the realization that there was nothing I could do about your divorce; it became the first thing I felt hopeless in controlling. Until I realized that there was definitely nothing I could do to change the situation did I learn to cope. The frustration and anger became exhausting to keep up with, and thankfully caused me to give into accepting the truth. I have you to thank for my coping skill, which I now consider a strong essential. You once told me, “Life is always changing, and it wouldn’t be life if it wasn’t.” I now fully understand that line’s meaning. Your divorce helped me see that happiness is not defined by a title or ideal image, but made by fulfilling individuality. I saw this through witnessing my own parents transform from a single entity in marriage, into two distinctive individuals.
As a messy divorce loomed, each parent explained his version of the events and “irreconcilable differences” engendering a separation. Although the facts presented in each account matched, my parent’s respective interpretations of the facts differed greatly. As I listened to my parent’s rationalize their inability to get along, I realized that although my parent’s stories did not match, neither party was actually lying. Each parent simply presented to me his or her version of the reasons for divorce. I knew that somewhere hidden in the subtext of my parent’s explanations laid the truth.
Rich, P., and Schwartz, L. L. The Healing Journey Through Divorce: Your Journal of Understanding and Renewal. New York: John Wiley, 1999.
In this text, Deal (2014) explains that “one of the great ironies of divorce” (p. 130) is the need to cooperate with the ex-spouse, even if you hated him before the divorce. My family shows the complexity that divorce can bring to a family’s life, and the adults need to constantly monitor their own attitudes for the sake of the children. Deal encourages building communication and flexibility; however, his reminder to accept that neither co-parent can control the other’s household decision is one of
“For if happiness is what people strive for, one needn’t waste time trying to figure out what makes people happy. One must only look at what people do” (Porter 458). Doyle’s essay is similar to Porter’s essay. Doyle writes about marriage and the dramatic reasons to why couples get divorced. Couples are married for years and in a blink of an eye it could all be gone. Individuals should be happy with themselves before committing themselves to someone else. Married couples keep a strong bond when both spouses decide that divorce is not an option. When divorce becomes an option, it leaves doubt and a big hole in the marriage to where they went wrong. Happy marriages last a lifetime and people who get divorced throw years of sharing the same last name, paying bills together and waking up next to each other every day. They vowed to live life for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and health, until death do them part. Most individuals rather not work out their differences; instead they choose to run away from the problems leading them into a bigger problem which is divorce. A marriage takes patience, effort, love, kind, endurance, working together as one and includes plenty of tears, differences and disagreements. But in the end it is all worth it. If a couple cannot work their differences out, then they probably married each other for the wrong reasons. Some couples today hurry
While there is no such thing as a happily ever after, there is a cycle of stages that turned my relationship into a stronger connection. Our path taught us how to improve through the relationship stages reaching new levels of involvement and intimacy through difficult times. Others might see the dips of the roller coaster as reason to terminate rather than repair what they once had. True growth requires us to use the low points as a way to better appreciate the high points of our new reality. Continuing our relationship still today, we learn to cooperate through listening and receiving before responding in a harsh tone. Knapp’s cycle continues on a course headed towards repair or termination and John and I now work through our issues in a calm and rational way because learned through each difficult time.
It was 3 a.m., and I could hear the argument downstairs. My parents had to do this at 3 a.m.? I got up, walked around for a minute, and went back to bed- I had school the next day. This became an increasingly common occurrence, almost every other day the fall and winter of junior year. The argument had been more or less the same for the last month, centering around my dad's alcoholism and family's money troubles.
Divorce leads to happiness. As odd as divorce leading to happiness may sound, it contains truth. “Stone Soup”, written by Barbara Kingsolver, contains her personal experience with divorce, and the effects divorce had on her family. Kingsolver uses personal experience, to demonstrate that divorce frees the families from bondage.
I’ve never heard of any childhood quite like yours. I was shocked by the personality and character of your parents and how they raised you and your sibilings, “The Glass Castle”. I understand why people call your parents monsters. I will admit that the thought crossed my own mind on multiple occasions. However, I have also never read a book or a memoir that required so much thinking . With every page I read I was able to learn about the struggles & hardships you dealt with as a child and I tried to see a deeper meaning. When I did that, I saw your parent’s intentions behind everything they did. I began to understand what you saw and still see in your parents.
says which tell us that the dad likes a fight or two the poet recalls
Wallerstein, J. S., & Lewis, J. M. (2004). The unexpected legacy of divorce: Report of a 25-year study. Psychoanalytic Psychology, 21(3), 353-370.
Divorce should be harder to obtain due to the effect that it has on children the main effect it has on the children is depression. “ In the short term divorce is always troublesome for children Mavis Hetherington videotaped and scrutinized the workings of 1400 divorced families since the early 1970’s. Hetherington pinpoints a crisis period of about two years in the immediate aftermath of separation when the adults, preoccupied with their own lives, typically takes their eye off parenting just when their children are reeling from loss and feeling bewildered” (Hethrington 2). This article states that the short term effect of divorce affects the kid deep because they feel that they lost one forever and in those 1400 many of the kids felt the effect of the divorce. “Wallerstein has told us that divorce abruptly ends kids’ childhood, filling it with loneliness and worry about their parents, and hurting them prematurely and recklessly into adolescence. (Wallerstein 2).” This later affects the kids life because they try to think of happy memories they had but really all they can think about is the parent that they loss due to the divorce. “Contrary to the popular perceptions, the alternative to most divorces is not life in a war zone. Though more than 50 percent of all marriages currently end in divorce, experts tell us that only about 15 percent of all unions involve high levels of conflict. In the vast number of divorces, then, there is no gross strife or violence that could warp a youngster’s childhood. The majority of marital break-ups are driven by a quest for greener grass—and in these cases the children will almost always be worse off. (Zinsmeister 2)” this proves to me that when people get a divorce they most of the time don’t ...
Graham Blaine Jr. who is the Chief of Psychiatry at Harvard University health services writes a chapter in the book Explaining Divorce to Children. This chapter is entitled “The Effect of Divorce upon the Personality Development of Children and Youth.” He addresses this chapter to parents who are considering getting a divorce or are in the middle of the divorce process. The author uses a combination of Ethos and Pathos to support his theory on divorce. Blaine uses these strategies to highlight the mixed emotions a child may endure while going through such a confusing stage of their early lives. This then gives the audience a better understanding of the certain personalities children may gain while coping with sad situation of split parents. He also draws on his experience as a psychiatrist to give statistics as well as true stories to back up his reasoning.
“Sealed by a kiss and a pair of eternal rings” (How) is what soime people may think of when talking about marriage, while for others the first word that pops into their head is divorce. The topic of divorce is a nasty thing, it brings bad feelings and thoughts, and can often ruin a person’s day. What most people do not think about though, are the many different ways divorce can affect everyone, not just the spouses. Of course the first people the typical person would think of is the husband and wife as the ones effected by the split, but it touches many more people than that, in a number of ways, such as mutual friends and extended family. The process alone to get divorced can take a very long time and have a huge emotional toll most don’t
American Journalist, Helen Rowland said, “ When two people decide to get a divorce, it isn’t a sign that they don’t understand each other, but a sign that they have, at last, begun to” (1). Divorce means the ending of a marriage by legal separation, thus, a couple that were once bonded together have now separated for opposing reasons. Divorce has hurt and destroyed many families across the world and can cause a lot of negativity. Teens often do not know how to deal with the fact that their family is no longer whole and they will transition into a depression. Teens may experience emotional damage by seeing the two most important people in their lives fight constantly. There is a good side and a bad side to seeing parents go through a divorce as a teen. Quite often teens tend to see that, since they are so unhappy, that it is better for them to separate because they do not want to see their parents get hurt. Even when separated, they learn to communicate and bond between one another. The negative side of divorce is that families sometimes stay torn apart, therefore: There is a lot of anger, rage that happens because going through a situation like this is not something that is easy, and many emotions become involved. Dealing with their parents can be difficult for some teens, but for many others, they feel as if a divorce will make their family happier without seeing all of the fighting.
and I could still hear angry voices dueling back and forth. My brother was a