Family Beyond Divorce
Thirteen years ago, my former husband and I ended our marriage. Our children were three and six.
At the time, I could barely see past the pain in front of us. I certainly could not picture what our family might look like over a decade later.
Two years after we separated, the four of us took our first trip together, to a beach in Hawaii. We posted a photo on Instagram with the caption: "Together, but not together.”
Almost immediately, my phone started going. Emails, calls, and texts, all asking some version of the same question: How did you do that? Could we do that?
We have traveled together and spent our holidays together ever since. It was a choice we made early, and one we have continued to make.
This summer, thirteen years after our marriage ended, the four of us went on safari in Kenya. We watched elephants move across the land. We witnessed the Great Migration. We sat together in awe of a world much larger than our individual lives. At one point I looked at the four of us and thought, I could never have imagined this.
Still together. Still not together.
Our marriage ended. Our family changed shape. But it did not disappear.
I want to be careful, because photographs can make a complicated story look beautifully simple.
Divorce is beyond difficult. It asks you to grieve the life you thought you would have while you continue to parent, work, and build a future you cannot see yet. It brings up fear, anger, loneliness, and resentment. And when children are involved, you are asked to stay connected to the very person you are trying to separate from.
There is nothing easy about that.
Being a therapist did not protect me from the pain. It did not mean I always responded well or knew what to do. But my own life changed my work more than any training ever did. It taught me to notice sooner, to pause before reacting, and to come back faster when I lost my way.
I want to be honest about what these trips are actually like. Hard things still happen between us. Old dynamics show up. Feelings get hurt. The tools I share with others are the same ones I choose to practice myself—out loud, on the road, with the person who knows exactly where my edges are.
What has changed over thirteen years is not that we stopped rupturing. It is that we learned to repair. Sometimes within the hour. Sometimes by dinner. That is the part nobody photographs, and it is the entire practice.
My Lemonade Mantras developed over these years because I needed them in exactly those moments. Not as inspiration. As practices.
“Maybe, maybe not” loosened my certainty that I already knew how everything would unfold.
“Where's love and forgiveness?” reminded me to soften when frustration was taking over—and to offer myself that same grace.
“I can handle this” let the feeling move through instead of freezing in my body.
“I have a choice” reminded me that even with emotions running high, I could soften instead of tighten.
And on the good days in Kenya, “this too shall pass” was not a consolation. It was an instruction to savor it.
I want to be clear. Traveling together is not the measure of a good divorce. This kind of relationship is not possible or advisable for every former couple. Safety and emotional well-being come first, always. A family beyond divorce takes many forms. For some it looks like friendship. For others, respectful distance.
People ask why we keep doing this. This is why. We get to make more lemonade right next to the memories of a lifetime. My children get to watch two people who did not stay married keep choosing to grow, in front of them, imperfectly. That is the education I most want them to have.
The gift is not that our children can pretend the divorce never happened. The gift is that they know their family was transformed by it and not erased.
So thirteen years later, I want to honor more than a beautiful trip. The painful conversations that eventually became peaceful ones. The reactions we learned not to send. The boundaries we learned to hold. The times we started again. And the thousands of small choices that built something neither of us could have imagined at the beginning.
This is what making lemonade has looked like in my life.
Not pretending the lemons were sweet, and not calling the loss a gift. But letting the pain teach me, change me, and show me that an ending is not always the end of love.
Sometimes it just asks love to take a different form.
With love,
Elizabeth
Lemonade Mantras
Lemonade Mantras(opens in new tab) is a collection of simple yet powerful mindfulness phrases designed to help you shift from fear to freedom, reactivity to presence, and self-criticism to self-compassion. If you are in a hard season, take what you need from it.
The Four Agreements Course
Some of this work is easier alongside other people. Laura Wright and I run The Four Agreements Course as a small community, and it is a good place to practice this in real time rather than alone.
