Hi friends, thank you for the long-ago replies, it meant a lot to me even if I wasn't able to respond.

Today was a hard day. My kids went to their Dad’s for the first time in 2 weeks and their absence has hit me really hard. Last night we walked to the beach. It was an oddly humid and warm evening for this time of year and one child suggested we take a walk to the beach and another suggested we wear swim suits. We all grabbed a towel and headed down the road. It was one of those puppy-pile walks, hands and arms entwined. Laughter, smiles, discussion of the school day, a perfect sherbet setting sun. So. Much. Love. We walked to a log that was washed up in a storm last winter and at full tide the end of the log reaches to a deep part of the water. We have been meaning to jump off this log all summer. Last night was the night. We teetered out, all five of us, and then a neighbor and her kids driving by stopped to cheer us on as we dove into the icy water over and over. It was magical.

An older friend of mine emailed this morning to say that she lost her husband last week. And a young family in my community is in the process of losing their father/husband to cancer. This family is from India and the mother has no idea what she is going to do when her husband passes; her kids only know life in the US but she has no family here and has never worked.

The word ‘robbed’ has been floating in my brain all morning… I feel robbed of part of my children’s daily life, my friend was robbed of growing old with her beloved, and this sweet, kind, generous family is being robbed of their father and the only life they have ever known.

Don’t get me wrong, I am not one to dwell in too much victimhood, so the word ‘robbed’ isn’t in my daily repertoire, but in this moment I am so deeply feeling the suffering of others and by extension, my own suffering. I just need to cry on shoulders that know, so here you are.

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In other worlds, H and I are back working through our collaborative divorce after a summer’s hiatus (due to scheduling). Somewhere over the summer, I had a realization that the only way I am going to get what I need in 2, 5, 10 years is to petition for it now, hard. I have been exploring the ‘mental load’ that I have taken on in our M and reflecting on how much I really want to inherit post-D. Or how much I actually CAN inherit and still achieve my own professional and personal goals, which are ambitious but not unattainable, if I have the right financial and child-raising support. So I started writing lists of all the things I do in a day/month/year with regards to child rearing. And separating out what is personal (ie housekeeping/house holding) and what is obligatory child maintenance (dr’s appts, school supplies and paperwork, sports-related, etc). So that we can address and split those duties equitably between us. H is a capable human, a good (enough) father and there is no reason why he can't take on half of this responsibility.

But I am finding that the default in the divorce process is to silently let the mental load fall on the mother's shoulders. I am having to think on my feet, project years ahead of my current situation and advocate for myself. Why are there no guides or books for this sort of thing? Gerda, want to co-author something with me?

All this work I am doing advocating for myself, the financial 'right-sizing' and shifts in the mundane parental obligations still do not fill the empty hole of sadness I have of being left for another woman, of not being 'good enough' as a wife or partner, or that somehow for some reason I deserve to be a single mom to four kids who were created with love and intention.

I am working through all of these feelings slowly in trauma-informed therapy. My new IC specializes in narcissistic abuse and is absolutely amazing, but there are moments when I still succumb to the sting of being a LBS.

I hope to be more active on here. I, like some of the other posters on here with similarly disordered spouses, am concerned about my privacy due to some nefarious activity on my ex's part, but at this point, the support and conversation means more to me than the fear of being 'discovered' telling the truth about the end of my M.

With love, empathy and the strength to endure it all,
S