A Blessed Christmas
So I went to El Ex’s house early yesterday evening with gifts, pug puppies (food, wee-wee pads, deodorizer, treats), and the makings of my crab dip in tow. Since we split up nearly 5 years ago, it’s been our custom to spend Christmas Eve and Christmas Day together with our daughters. Now that we’ve both got significant others in the mix (his wife, Sherry, and my TechBoo), our celebration has grown along with us. To wit: adorning El Ex’s fireplace mantel, was not 4, not 5, but 6 beautiful stockings. Yes, Mike and Sherry, hung stockings for TechBoo and me, recognizing our roles in the girls’ lives. I couldn’t thank El Ex and Sherry enough. In fact, I’m moved to say once again, that I’m extraordinarily blessed to be a part of a co-parenting team, to be co-parenting with someone mature, thoughtful, and utterly devoted to our children.
I cannot think about this extraordinary blessing without my mind wandering immediately to the other end of the spectrum, to children for whom civil co-parenting is not a reality, to children who are suffering because their parents won’t put their differences aside to co-parent cooperatively. I know all too well what more “ordinary” co-parenting looks like. Too often, it looks like selfishness, insecurity, dishonesty, immaturity, and vengefulness. It looks like parents who fail to love their kids more than they hate their ex. It looks like lying to and manipulating children; it looks like kids in the cross-fire, afraid to feel, afraid to say how they feel. Sometimes it looks like kids who tell anyone who’ll listen, “My mom hates my dad”–and Mom doesn’t have a clue how her hatred destroys her kids inside, not her ex. Co-parenting is for kids’ sake, and all children deserve their parents’ extraordinary efforts on their behalf.
Nothing between Mike and me is or was so large or ugly or hurtful that we would sacrifice our children on the altar of our anger and disappointment. We respect and honor our children’s relationships with both of us as sacred, sparing them our adult shit. We let our kids be kids. We allow, encourage, and facilitate their loving both of us freely and without fear of upsetting us. Is it easier that we are on the same page? Hell, yeah, but two wrongs don’t make a right. Each parent is called to do his or her very best on behalf of their kids. Grown-ups know better than to blame their bad behavior and failures on others. These are children we would die for. Are we seriously saying to them, “Well, I bad-mouth your father because I know he bad-mouths me”? Seriously?
We let them down once by failing to keep the family in tact. The least we can do is partner and commit to their emotional health and peace of mind, to making their lives as drama-free as possible going forward. The least we can do is take responsibility for our actions, our failures, our choices, and our own healing. Instead of asking, “Am I justified in this behavior?” and always deciding that we are, the least we can do is ask, “Does this behavior add to or take away from the peace and sense of stability in my child’s life?”
Mike and I have healed in the aftermath of our break up, for our children’s sake as well as our own. For them, we’ve taken care of ourselves. For them, we didn’t pretend like divorce didn’t hurt; we acknowledged the hurt and went about the business of healing, as hard as it was. And we committed, and remain committed, to their ongoing healing and processing as children of divorce. Again, we let kids be kids, and we act like grown-ups. We don’t directly or indirectly ask them to pity us, comfort us, or take sides to justify us, just because we’d rather not walk through the fire of dealing with our own stuff. Grown-ups don’t ask children to shoulder burdens they find too heavy to bear.
Did we stumble along the way? We sure did. Do we still have to manage our differences now? At times, yes. We have our moments, but overall, we’ve faced the hurt, the truth, and have opted for a positive path forward, whatever bumps may come. We’ve chosen a sincerely positive path, not one with a positive façade that fails to hide a rotten, wounded core. Our kids deserve the real deal. Besides, kids’ bullshit detectors are quite keen, so we might as well be honest with them because they see right through us. Sometimes, they are just too polite–or afraid–to say so. Sometimes, they “believe” the lie because the truth–that Mommy or Daddy isn’t being honest or is not acting in their best interest– is just too painful to bear.
For all of this, for all that Mike and I have been able to do in spite of the problems that led to our break up, I am thankful beyond words. I don’t say any of this to sound superior or to say that co-parenting should be easy, because it’s not. I say all of this because I am thankful, but also because too many children are suffering because their parents are too selfish/insecure/bitter/petty or otherwise lacking in emotional resources and maturity to do the hard work on their behalf. And that saddens me. It’s like being thankful that my kids’ bellies are full, but knowing that so many others are hungry.
I’ll never suggest that the gold standard of co-parenting success be a stocking on the mantel for your ex-wife’s fiancé. I will suggest that we think long and hard about what we are modeling for our children in how we partner–or fail to partner–with the other parent. I am seriously suggesting that we get to a place of healing where we can at least control our tongues in our children’s presence and openly respect and encourage their relationship with the other parent, recognizing it as separate from our failed relationship with that person. Out of earshot of the kids, we can rant and bitch and bad-mouth until the cows come home; I’m suggesting we let that be enough.
Seriously, I didn’t intend for this to become a CoParenting101 post, lol. But I most definitely had our most recent post in mind. It’s penned by Mike, and I first got this surge of gratitude while editing it. It serves as a reminder of the blessing that he is, even thought things did not work out between us.