A Divided Life
On motherhood, divorce, and navigating life between two homes
The Second Act is a weekly newsletter packed with obsessively-curated recommendations and ideas—let’s get to it!
🎧 “Good Hang” Podcast with Amy Poehler: I’ve been listening to a lot of intense podcasts recently, so this felt like a breath of fresh air! Poehler invites friends and celebrities (mostly comedians) on to hang and chat, as the title promises. Start with the first episode, featuring Tina Fey, which feels like being a fly on the wall between them!
🎥 ‘Sacramento,’ in theaters: Rickey (Michael Angarano) convinces his old best friend Glenn (Michael Cera) to go on a road trip, under the guise of scattering his father’s ashes. Similar to the dynamics between the leads in this fall’s ‘A Real Pain,’ Glenn is living as a “grown up,” with a baby on the way, while Rickey is still figuring things out. The trip creates a forced closeness, where they each have the opportunity to learn from the other. A sweet buddy comedy with a great cast!
📺 “Hacks” on HBOMax and “Bingeable” Podcast: This series stars Jean Smart as a no bullshit, seen-it-all Las Vegas comedian who hires a twenty-something writer to help her freshen up her decades-old set. The characters are refreshingly multidimensional and, though it’s engrossing from the jump, one mid-season episode that takes place at a plastic surgery recovery spa had me laughing the entire time. It was the perfect series to watch solo last week while Jonah was out of town, and an excellent addition to the canon of stand-up comedies like “Crashing,” and “Seinfeld,” and the movie, ‘Don’t Think Twice.’ This series has been on my “to-watch” list since it came out in 2020.
I live a double life. Life is split almost in half.
It is divided midweek and Monday morning when I turn the care of my children to my ex husband. This was by design. I say this reluctantly, because I did not get married with the intent of getting divorced. When I became a mother it didn’t occur to me that I would be shutting my children back and forth between two homes if my fantasies included two homes they were both mine, I was rich and one was waterfront.
But I am not rich, they are not both mine but they do belong to my children. And like I suspect all single parents do, I try to dress up that pain point as a luxury. Two cozy bedrooms, extra Holiday celebrations, etc. While also acknowledging how shitty it all is. A delicate balance between pointing out the sunny side of things and not denying the reality. Because boy, oh boy can I commiserate.
But I did in fact orchestrate this new way. I will accept responsibility, although I think there is a strong case to be made for what other choice was I given, so I live two lives.
I’m a mother when I don’t have my children. Even when I wake up to a quiet home and time stretches before me. I am a mother. I can mostly fill it with what I want. A luxury that has come at great cost. One that is dotted with guilt and anxiety but also a peace that can only be born from acceptance.
I take walks, I read, I go to the bathroom without delay. I am in touch with my humanness in a way that motherhood’s relentlessness makes impossible. It still finds me, through school emails and extracurricular sign ups that don’t abide by a custody schedule and text from my ex husband. I watch part of my children's childhood play out in pictures and in re-told stories as he tries to describe a funny thing they just said. I’m grateful for a diluted version of a precious moments.
I’ve learned to become grateful for both halves of my life.
I suppose I could stay sad. I do frequently still cry, which helps quell my fears about being a monster, but I am a mother and a person and I deserve to find happiness in a divided life. To let go of what was planned and embrace what is.
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