Dear Girl

Written by guest blogger Mari Jo Vazzo

The below content is a very personal “letter” from Mari Jo Vazzo to her daughter, reflecting on her decision to get divorced and the impact of that decision on her daughter.

Dear Girl,

At only four years old, your light is so bright. You are beautiful, kind, smart, strong, brave, thoughtful and tenacious. I consider myself lucky to be your mama and I cannot wait to watch the woman you become. As I tuck you in at night, you cut through my facade and access my raw heartbreak with your request for a baby. You have no idea I’ve begun to wrestle with the notion of dismantling our family. Already so smart, you’re not happy with my efforts to pacify you with “maybe someday” or “let’s talk about this in the morning” – my feeble attempts to buy time as I fight back tears. You are so unaware of the depth and timing of the question. “How do you get a baby?,” you probe. You are a make-it-happen kind of girl and you love this life we’ve built for you. It only makes sense to you that another person, cut of the same cloth, would make it better. You, your older brother, your dad and me – it’s all you’ve ever known. For 15 years, it’s all I’ve known too.

The idea grips my heart. I don’t know how my life will be if I undo something I hold so sacred – the foundation of our home and family. It’s not simple. I love your dad. I knew I was going to marry him after our first date. We stayed up all night talking. I can’t tell you about what, but we sparked a connection, one that I valued enough to fight for. We were only in college but we married right after graduation. I wanted a spring wedding, my favorite time of year. The earth is ripe with new life, warm sun, beautiful smells – it seemed perfect to me. Well-meaning adults, who married younger than I was proposing, thought we should wait. I wasn’t having it. We compromised on a date in August.

I took vows, and I fiercely meant them. Of course, I was somewhat naïve about the work required to build a healthy marriage. I was in my early twenties and only retrospect can teach you about what you should have done. But I wasn’t frivolously entering into something. Some have wondered if we married too young. I disagree. Our first 10 years together were the best parts of us. We weren’t a perfect couple, but we liked each other and preferred the company of each other to others. We shared similar values, never fought about money and came to love working on home renovation projects together. Being together came easy to us. Creating life together was a shared journey.

When the time came, we struggled to conceive children. For three years, we supported one another through the medical procedures, grief and stress of infertility. We overcame a miscarriage and we finally welcomed your brother into our world. He contracted pneumonia just hours after birth and fought for his life. As a nine-pound baby in the NICU, he earned the name Hercules because he figured out how to lift his oxygen hood at just 24 hours old. We overcame that too – three of us now – maybe we even grew closer though it.

Sleepless nights, new parent stresses, balancing caring for a tiny human and ourselves added new pressures, and we managed. Maybe we didn’t do enough to strengthen the relationship in these early years of parenting. Maybe we assumed the vows would sustain us. I know there were times when we both were unhappy, but I never worried about the marriage ending. We faithfully went to therapy together to make things better.

Now I hold you, longing for someone to hold me, feeling more alone than I have ever known. I’m closer to 40 than 30, I’ve kept two humans alive for a combined 11 years, I own a home, I’ve experienced hurt and have seen the other side, and yet I feel small and ill-equipped to handle what I’m facing. I dreadfully want someone else to take my place. But no one else can feel the way my insides twist. I can’t eat and I’m so afraid of what’s to come. I desperately want to keep my family together, but at some point a shift happened. Circumstances showed me that there was an unequal balance of value placed on the relationship we created. Choices made reveal that I’m being treated in a manner that doesn’t honor my sense of self-worth and inherent value as a partner.

I try, for months, to convince myself that this is okay. But nothing feels okay. And then one day, this vision comes to me. It’s you and me, just like now, but we are both 30 years older and it’s you in anguish, asking me what to do. You explain what’s happened and tell me how you’re feeling. And I immediately know. Without question, I recognize that if I were to guide you, I would tell you to value, honor and love yourself enough to know that if you had done everything you possibly could until this point to save the marriage, without an equal response from your partner, that it would be okay to save yourself.

And then there was no question. My choice had been made. If my advice was good enough for you, it was good enough for me, too. Through my unconditional love for you, my desire for you to have the very best this life offers and to become the best version of yourself, I saw that I was also worthy of accepting the very same for myself. You shine so bright; you exposed parts of me that I was unwilling to honor.

Two years later, I am divorced. I feel the shame of the failed marriage and fear the effects this will have on you and your brother. Am I teaching you to disregard the sacred vow of marriage? Will you resent me for shuffling you between two homes? Will these hurts you feel when you’re so little keep you from opening your heart to the beauty of vulnerability – the growth that can occur if you’re willing to stare into the eyes of pain?

I cling to the hope that I’m teaching you to value yourself. Not more than you value another person or a commitment as earnest as marriage, but enough that you will not lose sight of who you are – ever.

You should never be constrained by someone else’s limited understanding of your importance. I tell you now because I needed someone to tell me that then.

With a bottomless love, The stronger, braver version of me.