This is not where my story ends

In midlife, untangling the threads of divorce, dementia caregiving and destiny.

Friends, welcome. It has taken me five months from creating this page on Substack to publishing my first newsletter. Change comes slowly to me but when it does, it is deep and life-altering.

Just over a year ago I made the difficult decision to leave my 33-year marriage, becoming part of a demographic trend of older couples in long marriages divorcing, usually after the age of 50. The most significant increase in divorce rates is among people 65 and older, rates that tripled between 1990 and 2021. I was 62 when I chose to end my marriage, again fitting neatly into the data, with women initiating over 60% of gray divorce.

So yes, I am part of a trend, but my story—like yours, like that of anyone going through a major life transition—is so much richer and more complex than any piece of data could ever convey. Over the past year I have been on my own very specific journey of knowing I had to end my marriage, if I was to have a chance of living the life I wished to live, to achieve the dreams I yearned for, and to be more wholly and fully myself.

How I came to know this—through fits and starts, the pain and the promise, the fear and the courage—is the first of three storylines that will unfold here weekly.

In truth, the seeds of this knowing had been growing inside me for years, but I couldn’t, or wouldn’t, hear the voice that whispered to me in the middle of the night, “Go. You must go.” It took me a long time to accept that wanting to go was enough. I did not want to inflict pain on my ex-husband, but I also had to finally acknowledge my own pain and unhappiness, and to recognize that this not only mattered but it was the only thing under my control.

In making the decision to leave a long marriage, I have had wise teachers and guides, frank encounters with parts of myself that for a long time I did not wish to know, and hard-earned experience that I believe can help other women on a similar journey—if only by creating here a place of connection and community and the comfort of knowing that we are not alone.

One of the many glorious sunsets on the Gulf of Mexico I am lucky enough to witness living in Venice, Florida.

There are two other equally important narratives in how I came to be “living in 3-D” that I will chronicle in these newsletters: Dementia and Destiny.

The first thread centers on caregiving for a loved one with dementia: how I careened from being newly divorced—still reeling from the emotional rollercoaster of ending a long marriage with all the hurt and bitterness and lawyers and anger and tears that entails—to becoming the full-time sole live-in caregiver for my mother with dementia. All of this occurred within the space of a few weeks in the fall of 2022.  

I love my 86-year-old mother dearly and we have always been close. My sorrow for Mom as her mind, her memories and her independence desert her is bottomless. And yet, while this cruel disease has broken my heart for my mother, it has also nearly broken me. How we caregivers manage this simultaneous gift and burden is what I will share in this newsletter, too, offering you my experience as well as the resources that have helped me navigate dementia caregiving.

The second thread is about my fierce hold on destiny: my conviction that a late-in-life divorce and sudden, overwhelming caregiving do not determine how my story ends. I like the spiritual teaching that destiny is opportunity—that we have no control over our fate but that we do have control over our destiny in our present life. I believe that my destiny is to learn, to share what I’ve learned through my writing, and to help others.  

In “Living in 3D” I aspire to the three-legged stool described in ShinBuddhism. The three legs are anchored in Buddha (enlightenment, what we aspire to), the Dharma (teachings to help us) and the Sangha (our community). Each of these three legs is as important as the others.

Here’s what we’ll do together: Paid subscribers to this newsletter will not only get my Tuesday weekly newsletter, but every Thursday you will also receive a selection of the many resources I’ve gleaned as a woman with an insatiable curiosity and desire to learn and grow.

I will bring you the insights of the teachers I’ve met along the way; some of whom I have had the joy to work with in person; others I know only through an online course or program, no less powerful for being a virtual connection. Just as often my teachers emerge from the pages of a book, the stanzas of a poem, a bittersweet song that guts me, or a conversation on a podcast that stops me dead in my tracks. Each week you’ll get a curated list of what I’m reading or listening to that worked its magic on me.

All subscribers will be able to join my subscriber chat, a conversation space in the Substack app—kind of like a group chat or live hangout. I’ll post short prompts, thoughts, and updates that come my way, and you can jump into the discussion.

Paid subscribers will have access to a monthly zoom call on the third Thursday of every month at 3pm Eastern Standard Time (I’m all about the 3s!) to forge deeper connection and community. And I am planning a book giveaway later this year for paid subscribers!

Each Tuesday I will share three songs that call out to me, music that has lifted me in my darkest moments. Eventually as a community we will build our own “Living in 3D” playlist. Please share in the comments below the songs that make you cry, the songs that make you want to dance, the ones that touch your heart so deeply that you don’t know what to do with feelings that big and scary. Isn’t it amazing how music can do that for us?

And each week I will also ask a question of you. I hope you will be inspired to respond in the comments, to share from your heart your own version of “Living in 3D.” It might be the same life-altering changes that I am experiencing, or something quite different. That matters less than how the big change is changing us. That is what I am here to explore week after week.

I am so glad you’re here!

#1: Three Songs for “3D”

Divorce: James Bay’s “Let It Go.”

The refrain, “Just let it be. Why don’t you be me/And I’ll be me? Everything that’s broke/Leave it to the breeze/Why don’t you be you/And I’ll be me?” captures for me the sweet blistering heartache of the end of a relationship.

Dementia: Dustin O’Halloran’s “An Ending, A Beginning.”

Often I listen to music without lyrics and I find it pierces my heart even more deeply, especially this evocative, beautiful, bittersweet work of art. Listening to it I think of my mother’s slow, sad, sweet ending, and my belated but bountiful new beginning, in this unpredictable dance of life.

Destiny: Sault’s “Stronger.”

This song, with its refrain, “All my life I’ve been holding on. It’s been crazy but still I’m stronger…If I was not meant to fly/You wouldn’t have made the sky” is the one I listen to as I walk the beach, holding my arms up to the vast blue sky, the billowy clouds, the horizon beyond the edge of the sea. Cleo Sol in her soaring vocals reminds me, “This is not where your story ends.”

#1: Question: What is the voice that whispers to you in the middle of the night and what is it trying to tell you?