Great Marriage. Great Divorce.

In many ways, I’ve lead a charmed life, at least when comparing my life to that of other authors who’ve chronicled personal experiences, some unimaginable, horrific. Many of these writers have been women, and a surprising number of them young women especially when you consider the tragedies about which they were writing.

I’ve also had a charmed marriage which, as you know, I’ve written extensively about here and in my book. But life being what it is, conditions and people change, hopefully for the better. They shift gears, change goals, direction. And in close relationships–of any kind–we need to pay attention and face those changes, even if challenging.

In this, I failed. I got comfortable. I had a beautiful home, surrounded by art and music; I had my horses. I didn’t have to work full time. And I had this amazing and wonderful husband who has loved me like no other for over 30 years. I wasn’t willing to unseat my comfort.But celebrating my 76th birthday in 2018 was a wake-up call. Though I wasn’t planning on leaving this life immediately, I began thinking about all the things–the goals and purposes–I’d set for myself (some very early on), things not yet done. It was not a long list, but one that included items that at one time had captured my heart.

I didn’t consider these goals part of a bucket list, per se–truthfully, I hope to remain productive for another 20+ years–but I did see that certain things had fallen to the bottom in terms of priority; and if I was going to fulfill any of these things–let alone all or most of them–I was going to have to reprioritize, give more thought to and get into action beyond my comfort zone.

I did some soul searching; Charley and I talked at length. But despite giving it a great deal of thought, we couldn’t get our priorities to sync up so that neither of us would feel somehow cheated in the process, or that one of us would feel fulfilled at the expense of the other. We love and respect each other too much.

Ultimately, our decision was to divorce while remaining friends in support of one another.

So where’s the “great” part? Stay tuned!

Yours in love,

Tanii