Once upon a time, in another life, I was a thoroughly married, 20-something work at home mother/freelance writer & editor with three young children, spaced 6 years apart from youngest to oldest. We had a sweetly modest little house in a swanky-ish area of town, and a swingset in the backyard. We never quite had enough money, but we managed just fine. The children played hide and seek with the other kids on our street, and I wrote and wrote. I was convinced – happily so – that this was my life, and my course ahead thru the next 60 years had been set.
But of course, that wasn’t what happened at all. I never, ever could have imagined how that life that once seemed so certain would explode into bits, evolve, shapeshift, grow and expand to eventually bless me with the very happy, very different life that I have now, ten years later.
Over the decade that has taken me from there to here, I’ve experienced the greatest pain I could ever imagine – the end of my marriage, and the death of my oldest child – as well as the greatest joys imaginable – finding love with a good, good man whom I adore and respect, two blond baby girls to join our family, a career that continues to be wonderful.
Life is messy. And unpredictable. I know that now. But I didn’t then. I think that before, I believed that I alone had the power to determine how my journey would go, through sheer force of will and relentless optimism. That, of course, was magical thinking. I get that now.
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Back when I was living that “before” life, I had some dear friends whom I perceived to have a practically perfect life themselves. I met them thru my children’s school, and they were the cleverest, kindest, most wonderful couple. They were only 6 or 7 years older than I was, but together they had already built a very successful business that allowed them to live in a fairy tale -like historic house in the most beautiful neighborhood in our city. They had an adorable son one year younger than my eldest, and their business’s success allowed his mother, Deb – a beautiful, athletic woman who had studied ballet intensively before marrying – to focus primarily on raising him and running their wonderful home. They had good wine and cooked wonderful meals together. They bought a small vacation home in the mountains that they planned to renovate together. Life was good.
This couple seemed not only to “have it all” in superficial ways – like the house with the pool, and the ability to send their son to the best lessons and camps – but they also appeared to genuinely love and respect and enjoy one another. And despite their material good fortune, they had not one ounce of snobbery. This, I thought to myself, is what I hope our young family’s life will be like in a few more years. Happy, peaceful abundance. Stability. A trajectory that was relatively predictable, and un-scary.
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Deb’s life went on like this for some time, long past the time my own began to change so dramatically. In fact, her life – though not without the bumps and bruises that raising a child offers up – seemed to get even better! As her son grew into teenagehood, and she had more time, she began studying and teaching ballet again. She did the rigorous work to become ABT certified. She became a sought-after instructor in our area. Her young students loved her, and she was growing her own studio toward success. And all the while, her husband assured her that he was busy tending the successful business the two of them had created together early in their marriage. The beautiful house was made even more beautiful as the years passed. Life was pretty darn good for Deb, and by 2011, had been that way for more than 20 years. But then, well, things took what one can politely refer to as a decidedly unexpected turn for my friend.
Her marriage ended, and it did so dramatically, brutally, suddenly and bafflingly. The beautiful house in which she’d raised her now young-adult son had to be sold. She learned that she was, for all intents and purposes, about to be forced to start life over again at age 50 with almost no money – it had all been spent, apparently – and with no house, no “real” job, and no freaking idea what she was going to do. She was completely disoriented, as much of what she’d for so long happily believed to be one thing turned out not to be that thing at all.
But see, that’s when this gets interesting. Instead of seeing this incredibly painful mid-life explosion only as a terrible loss, over the months, as it all played out, Deb started to realize that it could also be something else. She could get a total and complete do-over. She could go live anywhere. She could do whatever work she wanted. She wouldn’t have to answer to anyone but herself for these choices.
She would, she ultimately decided, have herself a great big, old adventure.
And that, gentle readers, is exactly what Deb has done. Last summer, she packed up her now-minimal belongings, loaded up her car with her very large dog, Clarence, and then she drove away from Tennessee – where she’d lived her entire life – due North, to an old house in Vermont, where she’d been offered a teaching position with a small, well respected ballet school. Deb had never been to Vermont and knew not one single person where she was going, but she went anyway. She knew finances would be tight until she got her entirely new life up and running, but she was totally okay with that, even though she’d gone the previous 20 years never wanting for anything.
Deb & Clarence out for a walk near their new/old house in snowy Vermont.
When, after a year of dealing with her life here in Tennessee coming totally apart at the seams, Deb told me that this was her plan – to pull up stakes entirely and start over in Vermont, I was immediately in complete awe of my badass friend. THIS, I thought to myself, is how more people should live their lives.
And now, Deb has begun chronicling her Big, Huge, Amazing Life Do-Over she’s undertaken with a new blog, complete with freezing cold, first dates, snowplows, ballet, new friends, and all the rest of it. She’s a terrific writer, and I think that all of y’all will become very, very fond of Deb, and will want to follow her journey as it all unfolds.
Again, here’s the link to Deb’s new blog, called “Not How The Story Ends.” After you read some (or all!) of Deb’s story, I’d love to hear what you would choose to do if you were forced/able to/chose to hit the re-set button on your own life halfway thru. Imagine that you didn’t have a partner or young children to care for, a “real job” tying you down, and you found yourself with not a lot of money, no home of your own, and a world of possibility open to you.
Would you move north? South? Would you want to stay close to your current friends and support network or strike out anew? Would you go back to school? Take up some creative pursuit that previously hasn’t seemed like enough of a “real” job to justify doing it full time? Tell me what you can imagine yourself doing in my friend Deb’s situation (beyond the immediate reaction most of us would have of crawling into the bed with multiple bags of Oreos and a bottle of wine and then refusing to get dressed for the next 30 days… That’s kind of a given…
Is her name Tess or is her name Deb? I’m kinda confused.
Karen,
I first wrote my blog post with a pseudonym for Deb – “Tess.” But then I realized she’s using her real name on her own blog, so came back and switched out all mentions of T for her actual name – D.
Katie
Okay, I’ll go first.
I know one thing for sure; I’d move to a warm, sunny place either on the beach or very near. My top choices would be Santa Monica or similar nearby SoCal beach town, Charleston SC or possibly some place like Costa Rica, at least for a few years.
I think I’d make a go of writing full time to support myself. I have a novel rattling around in my head, and lots of essays yet to be written. I would try to live car-less and walk or bike as much as possible. Hmm… What else… I will have to ponder. I’d want to work gardening into the mix somehow. Maybe I could be a garden writer? Or at least give it a go
-Katie
Well, this did happen to me at 35. I decided to go back to graduate school and change careers. I’ve moved a couple of times but haven’t found ‘home’, yet. The only thing that worries me is retirement. I’m in my mid-forties now, and am limiting my job options to those that have pensions, since I have nothing saved for retirement.
I’m content. What I’ve learned: If you really love your life right now, expect it to change. If you really hate your life right now, expect it to change.
No matter how you feel about it, it will change.
@S
Yes. This:
“What I’ve learned: If you really love your life right now, expect it to change. If you really hate your life right now, expect it to change.
No matter how you feel about it, it will change.”
-Katie
Would it be wrong to say, I would re-think having children. Those are hard words to right but very honest. I love my children, but I believe somewhere I didn’t do a very good job raising them. ( one is a drug addict and because of my co-dependent ways, it really drags my life down with worry for her well-being)
So I would start way back and decide that first. I would either re-do having children or correct the mistakes I made in raising them
Please don’t hate me, these are just honest thoughts.
@bobbie
You are brave to say something that I feel 100% certain that many mothers think sometimes, particularly any of us who have experienced the unbelievable pain of feeling we failed at raising a child in some important way.
Love to you,
Katie
“I was immediately in complete awe of my badass friend.” I love this line, and I totally agree.
I think, if it were me, I would move to a big city. One with real public transportation and the possibility that you might not really *need* a car (although I’m sure I would still *want* one). Being a small-town girl, that’s always been the fantasy world in my mind. [I'd love to live in a beach house somewhere, but it would really suck to lose my house to a hurricane and have to start over yet again.]
I am in the midst of this, though I did not get to do it as dramatically as Deb. A little over a year ago my marriage ended and while I ended up with the house (and all the bills that go with it) I also ended up finding someone who wanted to share my adventure with me. So now the house is on the market and yesterday I put in notice at my job and we’re getting ready to get on a plane to Hawaii and from there we’ll see where we go.
I would never ever leave Knoxville. But I would like to live in a very small, old house in North Knoxville, with a garden. I would live very simply so as not to have money worried and I would write. I might go back to school just because I like school. I would probably be kind of a hermit.
I think most of us have wondered what we would do if this happened to us. I have always thought I wish I could be strong enough to do something so brave as to move far away and if I didn’t have grown children I probably could. I want to be close enough to my children although they rarely call at all. (I either rasied them well and they do not “need” me, I didn’t raise them very well and they are too self-centered to care, or I didn’t raise them very well and they don’t care enough to call me–sounds like two of three aren’t good–yikes!) and my grandchildren (someday). My mother lives 6 hours away and I wish she were closer to me. I also want to know my grandchildren. But, having said that, I think I would love to live somewhere in maybe a small town but close enough to a large town to get out of there if I wanted–ha! There are so many things I would like to do that I have never done.
Oh, and Katie, all of that to say, I really admire this woman and her strength to do something like this. I will continue to follow her story. Thanks for posting.
I, like Bobbie, have often questioned my parenting abilities. And like Bobbie, I also have a child addicted to drugs. This has led to frequent, and sometimes lengthy incarcerations that have bearing on how I live my life. I don’t know that I’d go so far as to re-think having children, but I would certainly choose a more suitable father for them. I’d get a better education, I’d learn to be more sociable, I’d find a useful hobby.
Thank you for posting this. I’m almost 7 months past marriage implosion, soon to be officially divorced at age 32. Riiiiight when I am coming into my own at my dream job and career. Starting over at any age sucks, and I wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemy. But all of this has taught me what many of you already know-plan all you want; life will unfold however it is supposed to.
So, I’m working on accepting that and finding happiness and joy elsewhere. In answer to Katie’s question, I’m struggling with this exact scenario now. Home to Chicago? Strike out somewhere completely new? Stay at dream job in current city? I honestly don’t know. But figuring it out gets less terrifying and more exciting by the day!
I would hightail it back to Paris (where I studied in college) in a second. I’d cry and blubber and do whatever it is you do when these things happen, but I’d do it while being in the most amazing city in the world which might not make it so bad after all.
Warm. Somewhere warm. The older I get the less I understand living in cold climates. Hate, hate, hate. Feels like I am wasting half the year. Somewhere warm and not in America. Small house. Near a beach. And a city. Spain sounds nice. Yeah, Spain. Near a big city but not in a big city. A village near a big city where I could walk everywhere. And have a big garden. And a small, breezy home. I’d write and garden and travel.
Go Deb!
Holy cow. I. Am. Verklempt. xoxoxo
Verklempt, indeed. You must have learned that in Vermont? LOL. Looking forward to reading your blog.
Katie, good blog referral. I got a kick out of Deb’s reaction to winter in NE. I’m so used to it (plus I live farther south where winter’s not as intense, or shall I say, Zone 6a, not 4b) that reading her reactions is amusing and refreshing. I have never heard anyone call their Outback a “Subi” before (and we also have Subaru for winter conditions) but maybe that’s a Vermontism.
As for that self-serving. crumb-bum of an ex-, let’s hear less about him. “He doesn’t deserve to rent that much space in your head” as people used to say. There’s a good website (well, cathartic) called Surviving Infidelity. It turns out that Crumb-bum is a common type of middle-aged male — a cliche, really. You could spend years trying to figure out what happened — or make better use of that time!
My heart broke when I found out that Deb’s marriage was ending but after I found out why I was so pissed. I was heartbroken and then pissed again when I found out that she would have to close her studio while her husband did his midlife asshole thing at her expense. When she told me she was headed to Vermont I was totally caught off guard. What a bold move. Since then I’ve been absolutely enthralled as she’s shared her journey with us, especially the part where she has a sexy chef boyfriend who makes her feel loved. Now that she’s blogging about it I feel like I’m reading a good book. I’m so psyched for my sweet friend and can’t wait to read the next chapter.
Lauren took ballet from Deb. She is exactly the way Katie described her, friendly and unpretentious. I had no idea she moved away, in fact Lauren wanted to take ballet from her, again after her surgery! In any event, I’m glad she is doing well. Sadly, I talk to women in our boat – women around the age of 50 that are suddenly single – on a daily basis. There are a lot of us. Mine ran away with someone 16 years younger than me a couple of months after my 50th birthday. I now struggle as a single mom that never gets child support. I’m glad she has found someone new. That’s pretty astounding. At this age, men look past me, something I’ve never dealt with before. In any event, I’m glad she landed on her feet and is enjoying her new life.
As they sing in “Tommy”, “What about the boy?” How is her son doing? That’s really why a lot of families somehow stay together, work it out if possible. Divorce can really hurt the kids, even the grown ones, and leaving their lives nearly completely is also a heart ache.
And, yes, there are many times, I’ve wanted to throw my hands up and leave for somewhere, anywhere and start over. Oh, how I’ve wanted to do so. But haven’t.
@Cath -
Her college-age son is doing great. He spends time with both parents.
And unfortunately, when someone to whom you are married tells you that he’s sleeping with someone else (and breaks it to you that this is not a first time occurrence) and says he is divorcing you, period, the situation really isn’t really of your own making or in your control. Additionally, in my view, sometimes standing up for your personal dignity and worth as a human being is more important than begging and pleading to save a marriage that the other person has violated and trashed.
However, I respect that everyone’s decisions around marriage, divorce and intimate relationships are uniquely their own. What’s right for one person in a particular circumstance may not be right for another.
-Katie
Preach it, sista.
I have a 12-year-old. I would have loved to have kept the family together but even when the new girlfriend threw him out he asked to stay “for a couple of days,” not even attempting to feign interest in reigniting our marriage. I guess he thought there were new young things of endless possibilities out there.
In the end, though, he did me a favor and I hate to say it but probably did the same for our child.
This seems to be a thing, lately, with men. Or is it that I now notice more? Men of a certain age have little use for their wives once they hit a certain age. Most of these older women never date again or fall in with men of dubious situations.
I left home at 20, so the whole “would you move away” thing is long-settled for me — I roamed around for 20 years, ping-ponging around the west mostly (with an early, miserable stint in NYC). At this point, if my relationship with Himself came off the rails I probably wouldn’t pack up and leave again, but then, I’m 5 years away from paying off my mortgage, and I’m dug in to the community here — have kids whose lives I’m involved in, good friends, several circles. Plus, this isn’t a families-only kind of town.
But the early part of the post reminds me of a lesson I learned at 13 — my family had already come apart — the baby brother died of cancer, dad left, no money, angry mom — and I sort of moved in with/idolized some family friends who seemed to have the perfect life. I wanted *them* to be my parents. And then my “uncle” had an affair and lost a lot of money and they had to move out of their house. I remember helping with the move while my “aunt” ranted at us girls all afternoon about how she should have married the other guy, the one who seemed boring at the time. Marry the boring one, she kept telling us as she bitterly carried items outside to the dumpster. You never know what goes on inside someone else’s family ….
Thank you for sharing Deb’s story. I have watched her grow up since age 5 and am so proud of her accomplishments and especially how she has handled this past year. We don’t know each other, but I have also followed your story. You are also one Hell of a Woman!! Jane
THANK YOU, Katie and Deb! I have been contemplating a life change for a long time. I realized that I have spent most of my adult life on things and people that have done nothing to inspire and energize me. I have recently gained courage and understanding that have put me on a new path. Will keep you posted….
I just took a biiiigg jump, but the hubs and I did it together. We have left the South for the Pacific Northwest, where we know no one, and our nearest relative is 1,000 miles away.
I think I’m going to love it here. the people, the climate, the scenery, all seem great so far.
On my own, I don’t know where I would want to live. Back to Knoxville or farther south to be closer to my family? Or stay here in the PNW?
Your friend Debs is a brave woman and I wish her well. Somehow I think she will come out of it all much better off than her ex.
It is scary that he could spend all their money without her knowing it. Always, always, have some of your own stashed somewhere (this for men and women, but especially women.) Even if you absolutely trust your mate, life can throw other curves at you and you need your own funds.
LouAnn, I agree with your last point, except that “stashed” somehow implies to me that it’s done secretly. Of course both spouses should have their own accounts (401k, IRA, Roth IRA, mutual fund, whatever.) This should be part of the family budget, up front and out in the open. (Apologies if you didn’t mean it that way).
Stashed was a poor choice of words. I don’t mean anything hidden, just that is in your name only. I believe in everything financial being above board, except for small amounts each person spends on what they choose without having to discuss it. (I don’t need to know all his hardware store purchases, and he doesn’t need to know every time I go out to lunch.) And if you’re a SAHM, or SAHD, and you are saving for retirement, be sure there’s an IRA or other investments equal to what’s going in your spouse’s, just in your name.
I’m stunned at the number of people who have houses, cars, etc., in one partner’s name only. Major purchases should be in both partner’s names.