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Brittany L. Bergman

Savoring motherhood, building marriage, and living simply

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Could It Happen to Us, Too?

Jan 9 2 Comments

I watched my family fall apart when I was 22.

My parents had been married for 24 years, but I was under no illusions that they’d all been happy ones. I remember the arguments behind closed doors and a handful of shouting matches when they thought I was asleep. If I braved a knock, I’d hear this response: “Mommy and Daddy are talking. We’ll be out later.” I knew not to knock again.

I would picture them on the other side of that door, pacing and then sitting on the bed and then pacing again. Their brass headboard was the backdrop of their marriage, their fights, and even the Sunday mornings when all five of us would cuddle in bed and watch Bozo the clown.

After these fights, my mom would always walk out with a tear-marred face, and I’d try to pretend I didn’t see, feeling embarrassed and confused that my parents were capable of hurting each other so deeply.  

Though I’d sensed that my parents’ marriage was not perfect, I also perceived it to be perfectly normal, since it was the only marriage I had witnessed up close. My dad’s father died when my dad was only five, and my mom’s parents divorced a few years before I was born.

For all I knew, my parents treated one another the way any other married couple would. I didn’t think twice about the way my mom spoke to my dad on the phone each night when he was traveling for work. She sounded exasperated and annoyed, and I remember asking her one time why she was always mad at him. It also never occurred to me that some men take their wives on dates more than once a year. My mom and dad were the two most constant forces in my life, and I believed with a childlike naivete that their marriage was unshakeable and their presence in my life unalterable.

As I grew into adulthood during college, I began to see evidence that my parents’ marriage was getting stronger. They became leaders at our church, went on vacation without us kids, and found community with other married couples. So it came as a blunt trauma that summer afternoon when they announced their divorce to my siblings and me. The words tumbled out of my dad’s mouth as he avoided our eyes while my mom wept quietly on the couch next to him—just a few feet away, but it might as well have been miles. I later learned that I’d been reading the signs wrong; they were not evidence of increasing strength but of a last-ditch effort to save their marriage.

***

The years that followed were marked by a gut-wrenching pain like I’d never experienced before, and through it all, I believed myself to be weak and overly sensitive. After all, young children experience this all the time—surely as an adult woman, I should be able to walk through this fire unscathed. What no one tells you about watching your parents divorce each other—whether you’re a five-year-old or a 25-year-old—is that it’s remarkably similar to experiencing a death. Both of my parents were still living, yes, but with the death of their marriage came the death of my security, my belief in love, and my deep trust in the goodness of God.

There was the vacuum of emptiness I felt on that first Christmas without my dad in the house, and the dissonance when my siblings and I awkwardly exchanged gifts with him in his new apartment.

There were times when my anxiety would become so debilitating that I’d throw up on my way to work and in the middle of my lunch break and at night before I went to bed.

There were many nights when I would weep uncontrollably, my sobs turning into hiccups until I fell into a fitful sleep.

There were countless moments when I couldn’t make anyone understand how badly I was bleeding, hemorrhaging memories and promises that we’d always be a family.


You can read the rest of this post over at Coffee + Crumbs, where I share more about how my parents’ divorce has impacted my own marriage and parenting. I promise that the ending is both hopeful and honest.

Will I end up divorced like my parents simply because I was too tired to do anything different? I knew I was supposed to put my marriage first, but having a newborn showed me the biological impossibility of that advice in some seasons. This is my story of trying and failing to put my husband first and why I still have hope for my marriage (and yours, too!).

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Filed Under: Marriage Tagged With: divorce, faith, fear, God, marriage, motherhood

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brittanylbergman

Brittany L. Bergman
This Very Cool and Very Silly little boy moved up This Very Cool and Very Silly little boy moved up to the early preschool room at daycare today, and he turns 2 in less than a month, and he says new words every day, and he pushes me away in the mornings so he can rest a little longer, and he’s outgrowing his 2T clothes, and he’s not really a baby anymore, and what I’m trying to say is I’M NOT OKAY.
Oh yes I did cry like a baby. 😭 One step closer Oh yes I did cry like a baby. 😭 One step closer to normalcy and very much feeling the weight of the trauma that has yet to catch up to us and the relief that’s coming on its heels. But mostly, feeling thankful for science and every single person who had a hand in creating this modern-medicine miracle. 💜💉
A poem in honor of #internationalwomensday. May we A poem in honor of #internationalwomensday. May we be a generation of womxn who embrace our humanity, our inherent power, and our purpose outside of the confines of capitalism. 💪🏼 🔥
✔️ Kamala shirt ✔️ Kamala pearls ✔️ Ka ✔️ Kamala shirt
✔️ Kamala pearls
✔️ Kamala mug 
✔️ Kamala curls

It’s a great day to witness the shattering of a glass ceiling, to embrace empathy and decency, and to breathe a collective sigh of relief.

The work is only just beginning, but today, we celebrate. Congratulations, President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris! 👏🏼🎉💙
What a beautiful, exhausting, festive, heartbreaki What a beautiful, exhausting, festive, heartbreaking, cozy, chaotic-but-strangely-quiet Christmas we had. ✨🎄✨

That’s a wrap for me on 2020—I’ll be off social media until sometime in January. May you be filled with peace and hope as we close this year but still wait for the close of this chapter in our history. 💜
I have faced Christmases full of grief and loss; d I have faced Christmases full of grief and loss; depression and rage; exhaustion and loneliness. But I can honestly say this is the weariest Christmas I can remember. I say that not to shine a spotlight on me, but to say that I have a feeling this might be your experience too. I’m with you.
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And so the words to my favorite Christmas hymn hit me different this year. They resonate in a place much deeper, more tender and true than ever before. I rejoice in the giggles of my meltdown-prone child. I rejoice in stolen moments alone in the dark, the room lit only by the glow of the Christmas tree. I rejoice in every video and every social media post I see of a frontline worker receiving the COVID vaccine, our ticket out of this nightmare. I rejoice in the vision that next Christmas might look more familiar than this one does. I rejoice in the hope of Christ, whose universal, creative, motherly love holds the whole universe together.
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On this Christmas Eve, I’ll leave you with this quote from Howard Thurman. I hope these words bring a slant of light to your day.
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“The symbol of Christmas—what is it? It is the rainbow arched over the roof of the sky when the clouds are heavy with foreboding. It is the cry of life in the newborn babe when, forced from its mother’s nest, it claims its right to live. It is the brooding Presence of the Eternal Spirit making crooked paths straight, rough places smooth, tired hearts refreshed, dead hopes stir with newness of life. It is the promise of tomorrow at the close of every day, the movement of life in defiance of death, and the assurance that love is sturdier than hate, that right is more confident than wrong, that good is more permanent than evil.”
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Whatever and however you celebrate at this time of year, I’m sending you all my love and peace. 💫
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Brittany L Bergman is a for-profit blog. Any company that I collaborate with is chosen by me and fits the theme and readership of my blog. At times, posts may contain affiliate links or sponsored content, which is never at any charge to you.

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