Grief in One Hand, Gratitude in the Other
I signed my divorce papers.
Nearly twenty-five years, reduced to a stack of documents and a signature. It was both nothing and everything. The final act of a story I had been slowly realizing was over long before I admitted it. The legal process took three years, but the unraveling started long before that—years of detachment, of silence, of giving more than I got, of shrinking myself into something more tolerable, more acceptable, more convenient for someone else.
And now, it’s done.
It was surprisingly unemotional. I walked into my attorney’s office, signed the papers, and felt nothing. No wave of grief, no sudden relief—just the quiet knowledge that this part of my life was ending. Sinead O'Connor's "Last Day of Our Acquaintance" played in my head, a fitting soundtrack to something that had been over long before this moment.
Maybe I was a little in awe that this was my life now, that I had walked myself all the way to this ending. But my ex-husband hadn’t fought for this marriage—not in the end, not ever—and so it felt easy. What I felt most was gratitude. Gratitude for my attorney, for my own emotional and financial ability to do this for myself. The act itself required so little of me because I had already done the hard part—I had already let go.
After I signed the divorce papers, I hugged my attorney and left her office. I sat in my car for a moment, hands on the steering wheel, waiting for something to hit me. Grief. Relief. Regret. But nothing came. Just the hum of traffic and the absurdity of how ordinary this moment was.
I went to Starbucks and continued to look for a job.
So what do you do with twenty-five years you can’t get back?
How do you hold both the grief and the relief?
How do you make peace with knowing you gave decades to someone who never truly saw you?
And how do you reconcile the fact that you knew—and still, you stayed?
You find the good.
You find the joy.
You find the one thing that made it all worth it—
The thing you never let go of, even when you lost yourself.
You find the reward.
I used to have a recurring dream, starting in college. The grocery store was impossibly large, its aisles stretching out like a maze with no end. It was empty except for me, running, frantic, searching for something I had lost. Panic pressed against my ribs, an ache deeper than anything I had ever felt.
The air carried a biting chill, thick with the stale scent of frozen plastic and the faint, almost metallic sharpness of ice. The cold stung my fingers as I dug through frozen foods, my breath fogging the glass as I searched. The Cure’s "A Night Like This" echoed from overhead speakers, its slow, mournful notes vibrating in my chest. Fluorescent lights buzzed above me, casting a sterile glow. My footsteps echoed against the polished floor, fading into the stillness of the empty store.
I knew I would never find it. But I kept searching anyway.
The strangest part? The grocery store was one from my childhood, a place we only went when my father was on active duty with the Army Reserves. A place tied to my past, my parents, my early life—a connection I only later understood as part of something bigger. It was a connection to family.
From the first time I had that dream, at 20 years old, I understood its meaning even if I refused to admit it to myself. It was longing. It was absence.
It was the yearning for a child.
But I didn’t feel like I had the right to want that. My body had already told me no. No periods, no puberty, no roadmap to motherhood. And beyond that, I had been conditioned to believe that wanting a child had to be a decision made with a partner—that my own desire wasn’t enough. That longing stayed locked away in my subconscious, playing itself out in my dreams while I lived my waking life pretending it wasn’t there.
And maybe that was the first sacrifice I made. The first of so many.
Because I spent 25 years making myself smaller to fit a marriage that was never right for me. A marriage to someone who never deserved me. I learned, over time, to make myself smaller. To give without expectation of being given to. To suppress the parts of myself that longed for something more. I made sacrifices. I let go of things I wanted. I convinced myself that stability was enough, that companionship was enough, that I didn’t need more than what I had.
Except—I held onto one thing. The most important thing. I wanted a child.
For all the ways I silenced myself in that marriage, I did not let that dream die. I fought for it. I held space for it. And somehow, against everything I believed about myself, I got him.
The boy who was always meant to be mine.
My son's birth was dramatic, so we didn't have a lot of quiet time in the hospital. When we came home and I finally got to sit with him, to really look at his face, I understood something deep in my bones: this was the child I had been waiting for. This exact boy. Every time I saw his face, I felt it—the recognition, the certainty. It wasn’t just love; it was destiny. He was always going to be mine, and I was always going to be his.
And so, yes—maybe my marriage was a mistake in a thousand ways. Maybe I gave twenty-five years to someone who was never worthy of me. Maybe my mother and my sister saw it all along. Maybe I stayed too long, sacrificed too much, lost pieces of myself in the process.
But if that path was the only way to find my son, then I would walk it again.
I don’t have to understand everything about the past anymore. Maybe that’s no longer the point. Maybe the point is right now.
The divorce papers are signed. The past is over. I am standing here, holding grief in one hand and gratitude in the other, and I am ready to see what’s next.
Because for the first time in a long time, my life is mine to build.
I found him in the life I thought I had to live. Now, I can reclaim the rest of myself—my freedom, my identity, my joy—in the new life I build.