I just returned from a family trip with my three grown sons. It was a reunion of sorts, and we all spent the weekend meeting and reconnecting with long-lost family members, then spending some wonderful quality time with my mother.
At the end of the weekend, the four of us were on the plane headed home. I looked up and down the row at these three young men I had raised, each hooked into a headset and lost in his own world, unaware that I was gazing on them with complete and utter amazement.
How had this happened? Why was I so lucky? These three boys who were so severely manipulated during our divorce at the hands of their father, who were so badly damaged by the fighting, the lies, the chaos, who were so recklessly treated by the courts, the law guardians, the forensic psychologists who all insisted on involving our children in the divorce, how was it possible that they had not only endured that terrible treatment but had gone on to become the well-adjusted, empathetic, intelligent, kind and caring young men surrounding me on this plane?
Then it hit me. It wasn’t in spite of what they’d been through. It was because of it.
We all want to protect our children from the horrific things that happen in the world, including the divorce of their parents. But what we forget is that, through adversity, we grow as humans. I would have given anything to keep my boys from having to suffer through our divorce. But now that I know how they look on the other side, there is absolutely no doubt in my mind that we all had to take that journey in order to be where we are today, which am certain is exactly where we are supposed to be.
It’s impossible to believe this when you’re in the throes of divorce. But I am living proof that everything can work out better than you ever could imagine and that the best is yet to come.