Letting Go of the Living

One of the things no one really talks about with divorce is the loss of your spouse's family. I'm sure this loss may not be significant for some - maybe you never got along with your in-laws, maybe they resented you from the start, or maybe they have passed away. I loved my in-laws as much as my own family, and so for me, this loss was significant. In some ways, it was worse than the loss of my husband. My husband made the choice to betray me, and I am angry that his actions led to this loss. But I never had a problem with my in-laws. They aren't the ones who hurt me, who broke my heart. To the contrary, they were always supportive, loving, and accepting. His mom told me the following in a text on Christmas Day 2022: "Hannah I truly love you with all of my heart. We all do! You're a huge part of our family and always will be. The kids think you're the greatest aunt ever and they miss you like crazy. My prayers were also answered when C met and married you. All I ever wanted was for someone to love him and make him happy and you do all that and more. I'm blessed and so very thankful that I gained you as a daughter. Please don't ever doubt how much you mean to me and this entire crazy family you're now part of ❤️" On a more recent date, she told me I would forever be her bonus daughter. To go from being an integral part of the family to being just a memory is one of the most painful things I have had to go through.

Sometimes, I think it would be easier if I was dealing with death instead of divorce. At least with death, you have finality and closure. You know that you will never see that person again. They're not ever coming back. There's usually a funeral or memorial so everyone can pay their respects and say their goodbyes. But with divorce, you're grieving the loss of people who still exist. People you loved and cared about for years - decades in some cases - but who are no longer part of your new reality. There's no sense of closure. There's often no goodbyes. You just go your separate ways, turning into strangers when you used to be family. Maybe the drifting away is gradual, until you're two ships in two completely different bodies of water. Or maybe it's not a slow drifting at all; maybe it's a quick and unexpected storm that throws you on a different course. Either way, every ounce of you wants to pick up the phone, but you realize you can't, because things are forever changed.

It's hard to grieve people who are still alive. It's hard thinking that they will go on about their life, that you should have been a part of that life. It's hard not to be sad, and angry, and confused, and disappointed, and all sorts of things. I'm sad, because I lost people I considered my own family, people I genuinely loved and cared for. I'm angry, because I didn't ask for this nor want it. Someone else made a choice that ultimately led to the circumstances here and now. I'm confused, because I don't understand what went wrong. I'm disappointed, because their silence feels like another betrayal, another wound in my already injured heart. I wonder if they think about me as much as I think about them. I wonder if they see random things in public that make them think of me, just like chickens will forever remind me of my mother-in-law. I wonder if they lay in bed at night and cry feeling my absence, like I do theirs. Or maybe they don't think about me at all. Maybe I didn't mean as much to them as they meant to me. After all, they already had a huge family. I didn't - I'm an only child. I can count the family members I'm close to on one hand, and that's not an exaggeration.

That's one of the reasons I loved his family. It definitely was crazy and chaotic, but it was also fun. It was nice to feel like I belonged, like I was one of them. Before the divorce, I truly thought I was. I never considered that I would lose all of that. Naively, I thought we could still continue to stay in contact and have a relationship. After all, I wasn't the one in the wrong here, and they knew that. I created a fantasy world in which I would still be an essential part of their lives. I'd still be invited to birthday parties for my nieces and nephews. I'd still attend graduations and weddings. I thought they could support C, but be there for me too. After all, I was their bonus daughter forever, right?

Wrong.

These losses might as well be deaths. Because even though these people are still alive, they're not coming back. I will not see them again. I will not be in their house again; it is no longer my second home. I will not go on any more vacations or trips with them. I will not share any more meals with them. I will not buy any more Christmas presents for them. I will not be part of the family group chat. I will not tag them in Facebook posts. I will not be there for the birthday parties, the graduations, the weddings. For all intents and purposes, they are dead to me. And I don't say that to be harsh, because I still love and care for them deeply. I say that because, no matter how much it hurts, it's the truth.

That's not how I want it, but that's how it is. I can't delude myself any longer, can't convince myself that I'm still a member of the family. They were a huge part of my life for a season - 7 years to be exact - and for that, I'm grateful. But I am no longer in that same season of life. Just like there can't be snow in a desert, they can't be in my new life. They are part of the past, and my job now is to focus on the present and the future. My responsibility is to concentrate on healing, on ME.

They are also a reminder of the person who ripped my heart out and watched me bleed out. As family, they are forever connected to him - by blood. I was linked to them through him and him alone; I would not have known them if C's path didn't collide with my own. Now that I am no longer linked to him, it makes sense that I would lose them too. It took me a long time to see that. I wanted so desperately to believe that things could be different, that we could still foster that connection from afar, that we could still be invested in each other's lives and support each other. But the cold, hard truth is that their support is to their son, their brother, their uncle, their relative. No matter how much they disagree with what he set in motion, he is family and I am not. Not anymore.

I loved them intensely. I still do. But it's time to move on. Not because I want to, but because I have to if I want to heal. I can't keep holding on to something that's already gone. It's time to let go - of my mother-in-law, my father-in-law, my sisters-in-law, my brother-in-law, my nieces and nephews, and all of the other people that were only a part of my life because I was a part of his. Letting go doesn't mean forgetting them, or the memories we made, or the love we shared. Those things were real and will forever be a part of my history. Letting go means making peace with the past and accepting my new normal. I still wish things hadn't turned out the way they did, but I can't change that. I can only try to move forward in the hopes that it will hurt a tiny bit less each day. I am choosing to accept what is, rather than longing for what was, rather than crying about the unfairness of it all. I've spent enough time doing those things. There's nothing wrong with grieving - it's normal to grieve whatever losses your divorce is bringing/has brought you. But there's a difference between healthy grieving and choosing to wallow in your grief. By indulging in your grief, you are only hurting yourself even more. It's hard to cut ties, to accept these losses, but I find comfort in knowing that I loved them wholeheartedly and that no one can take away the memories that remain.

In memory of all the family I lost - thank you for letting me love you, and for loving me.

A, H, LH, H, B, G, J, R, H, W, L, R, A, Z, C, K, K, GN, D, M