Memories Matter — Resist the Urge to Purge After Divorce

My ex-husband and I got engaged on Valentine’s Day. It may be a relationship cliché, but for me it was the perfect opening scene to what I thought would be our fairy tale movie ending.
My family has never done very much in honor of the Hallmark holiday, but his always goes all out. The children in the family receive special gift bags full of items designed to say, “I love you” in a way that is meaningful to a young heart. It’s a tradition, along with many others, that I continue to honor with our children.

One of their favorite stories is about me giving their Dad, a true fishing fanatic, a chocolate bass for Valentine’s Day one year. Unfortunately, by the time he got around to eating it there wasn’t much left but a fin wrapped in foil (Hi. My name is Theresa, and I have a chocolate addiction.)

What they love most about the story I think is it reminds them that their parents did have many wonderful moments that continue to be inside family jokes. Moments from the past woven into our current story remind all of us that the divorce wasn’t an ending — it was the beginning of a new family script.

My children have family pictures in their rooms that assure them they were created out of love. I still hang the personalized ornaments on the Christmas tree that show the four of us as sleigh riding penguins or happy little elves. I feel it’s important to remind them we are always going to be a family ‘til death do us part; we just define it differently now.
After divorce, many feel the urge to purge (or at least hide) objects in the house that serve as reminders of the marriage. Not me.

Happy memories serve as an anchor — they tether us to the past in a positive way. For those who insist that is easier said than done, of course it is. Very little in life worth pursuing is easy. But, at some point, in the healing process, you have to come to terms with the fact it wasn’t all bad or you certainly would have said I don’t instead of I do. We all decide what to remember and what to forget. I choose to remember the good and allow the bad to dissolve.
I surround myself and my children with objects that tell a story. It’s my story. It’s their story. At times, it’s a living, breathing Lifetime movie complete with props. Just because some of the characters have moved on to other roles, I’m still here. So are they. I see no need to erase the background and disrupt the set.

I confess that I am a hoarder of past relationship artifacts in general. I still have a valentine someone gave me in the second grade. I save significant emails, texts, cards, trinkets and other material memoirs. I immortalize them in albums or photo boxes. I don’t feel like I need anyone to stage an intervention though.

Perhaps there is a part of me that feels like if the objects disappear, so will the positive memories. Just because you can’t model a live broadcast of a healthy, happy marriage for your child, that doesn’t mean you can’t find creative ways to show them that at some point one existed. That too is a part of the story of us. All of us. They are not just children of a divorce, but also of a love story. A marriage. A family.

I think it’s important to make peace with all of your memories because they will be triggered by a multitude of things — certain songs, places visited, items you purchased together or favorite family movies. Free will means we all have the power to infuse our own meaning into any day.

Each year, if I can find one, I buy a chocolate fish for the kids to give their Dad on Valentine’s Day. It reminds all of us to keep swimming, and that the shore is always in sight. Positive memories, especially for children, function as a lighthouse to guide them home even when they have to navigate two addresses. Memories matter. Choose the ones that make you smile.

Do you share positive or funny stories from your marriage — or is everything you talk about negative? Which objects in your home remind you of a happy time? For Valentine’s Day, celebrate love by challenging yourself to remember at least one moment you treasure and honor that. Share it here-or perhaps privately with your family, friends or children. Maybe write it down. Life is a basically a series of moments. Which ones are you focusing on?

Source: https://www.huffingtonpost.com/theresa-sirles/memories-matterresist-the_b_6669402.html

Letting go of memories after divorce

Inspired by Russell Crowe I’ve decided to hold my own Art of Divorce auction. It sounds much more glamorous than a garage sale. A grand event to say goodbye to the pieces of a previous life and start anew.

"Here is my stuff," Crowe wrote in an amiable note at the start of the auction’s printed catalogue.

"Stuff I have worn, stuff I have bought, stuff I have admired, stuff I have loved, stuff that has made me laugh, stuff that I have sweated through."

He said the sale would mark a cathartic end to his amicable divorce proceedings from Danielle Spencer.

And I get that. Memories get caught up in all sorts of stuff. From sturdy leather jockstraps to chariots.

But alas, my catalogue won’t be as extensive as Crowe’s, no leather boots worn in Romper Stomper, nor violins from the 18th century, just the detritus, if that’s not too harsh a word, of a near 30-year relationship.

But where to begin? At the beginning of the end, nay, a few years before, for the beginning of the end is always further back than first seems. The amicable separation of furniture and saucepans and blankets and Tupperware that happens when you agree to set up two homes.

But now my stuff is mine. Stuff I have worn, stuff I have bought, stuff I have admired, stuff I have loved etc, but occasionally you’re reminded that some of that stuff that remains still reminds you of what has gone.

Every now and again I have purged, my minimal living even more pared back. The linen cupboard is as bare as it’s ever been, shelves too stripped clean. A box of cards and letters, many from him, was riffled through. Did I really need to keep anniversary cards from 1990 whose sentiment was no longer relevant? No.

But what about children’s drawings and wedding dresses and photographs of holidays and books once shared?

In her Huffington Post article Memories Matter - Resist the urge to purge after divorce Theresa Stiles found she couldn’t get rid of the stuff, nor the stories of what it all represented.

“My children have family pictures in their rooms that assure them they were created out of love,” she writes. “I still hang the personalised ornaments on the Christmas tree that show the four of us as sleigh riding penguins or happy little elves. I feel it’s important to remind them we are always going to be a family ‘til death do us part; we just define it differently now.”

She says happy memories serve as an anchor, tethering us to the past in a positive way. She admits sometimes that it's easier said than done. And it is.

On my son’s bedside table is a photograph of his father and I, from a wedding, not ours, caught laughing, long ago, that period where all your friends are committing themselves to love, to life. Sometimes I look at it and wonder what happened. More and more I look at it and my first thought is, was I ever that young? I think that’s a good sign.

Yet I remember one moment of acute heartbreak in the packing up process when my ex left behind a photograph he had taken of me atop a mountain in Switzerland somewhere. Our first overseas holiday. The view from that mountain, and of our life to come, stretched out beyond the horizon. That view wasn’t his now. I sometimes wonder if any physical memory of me has a place on a shelf somewhere in his new life.

Yet I’ve long been a believer that women are the keepers of memories. That we’re more likely to store stuff as well as stories, tucked away in corners of our homes and hearts. Part of me feels that the albums filled of photos of newborns and first steps and first days at school belong with me. That I was the one to hang finger paintings on the wall, file away report cards from kindergarten. The one to build our family story.

I know, on the good days, that it’s time for me to start building my own family story, making my own family memories. I know that all four of us will be forever intertwined but I’m at my happiest now when these new chapters are being written.

Holidays, meals, conversations, experiences. It’s different. Lighter in a way. More free. The children are older and that’s changed the core of it. I watch them make their own memories and I know I have to let go. Let go of many things.

Source: http://www.canberratimes.com.au/comment/letting-go-of-memories-after-divorce-20180410-p4z8t7.html