After separation, Love observed her ex-husband embracing his newfound freedom. “Looking at him at the door each time he came to pick up the boys, I could tell by how he dressed himself up and the child-like smile on his face, reminiscent of when we first met,” she recalls. His eagerness to date and switch parenting schedules brought her unexpected relief, “reducing the guilt that I had carried for initiating the separation.”
However, solo parenting of five boys proved challenging, particularly the teenagers. A confrontation with her 13-year-old son over Wi-Fi access prompted deep reflection: “Why can I have great friendships with my friends, but I can’t have a respectful relationship with my own sons as they are getting older?” Love was determined to break the cycle, making it her “main priority to prove to myself and to my boys that I could have their love and their respect without the aid of their missing father.”
The absence of a male presence manifested in unexpected ways. “Somehow, I started to notice that many things began to break after he moved out—one after another, from the door handle on the fridge, the dishwasher, and worst of all, the heating furnace.” This crisis peaked during a brutal Chicago winter when the furnace failed in -15 degrees Celsius weather.
Forced to send her children to their father’s home, Love confronted profound solitude. “That night, after the boys were gone, I was struck by the quietness in the house. I walked from room to room, looking out windows at the barren winter landscape and was met by a sense of bitter loneliness.” The isolation felt particularly acute without someone to ask, “‘Are you doing ok? Do you need anything?’ or someone to hold my cold, shivering body with a spoon hug in bed.”
Her decision to keep struggles private reflected deep empathy: “I chose to not talk to anyone so they wouldn’t worry about me and feel helpless for not being able to help me from a distance. It was one of the worst experiences for me to see someone suffering and be unable to help.”
The freezing night triggered childhood memories: “Under layers of covers that night, I could still feel the pervasive freezing cold air, reminding me of the ‘homeless night’ spent with my second sister on top of the concrete slide.” Yet these past experiences had prepared her for present challenges: “I suddenly felt that many of my childhood experiences had been preparing me for this freezing cold, lonely night.”
Maintaining the house alone presented new vulnerabilities. “Being a single mother and woman, I did not feel safe and comfortable with male contractors in the house while the boys were at school, and I was alone. But I had no choice but to force myself to pretend that I was okay.”
The final challenge came in confronting physical remnants of her marriage. “The next challenge was to sort through nearly hundreds of unopened boxes in the basement from all the moving during the 17 years of marriage. Every box opened presented surprises for me—so many items and old pictures that brought back memories.”
As she sorted through these physical and emotional fragments, Love questioned her choices: “Tears came with the discoveries and reminders of precious times shared by a family that was no more. A love story and years of marriage are now gone. Had I made the right decision by choosing to face the world—my future—alone with a broken heart?”
Yet as the unknown author notes, “Brokenness is often the road to a breakthrough. Be encouraged.” Love’s journey through broken appliances, broken relationships, and broken dreams revealed that sometimes things must break apart for something stronger to emerge.
Experience more stories of resilience and renewal in “Grow in the Dark” by Amy Love. Available on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Google, iTunes & Kobo.
