Heather Armstrong, celebrated mommy blogger of Dooce fame, recently announced, via a blog post, that she and her husband are separated. For those of you not familiar with Ms. Armstrong’s blogging success, let’s just say she is the champion mommy blogger of all time with reported monthly ad revenue of $40,000. Read more…

These past few days Eva has had her friends over for various activities. There was the soccer party on Saturday and then on Sunday I taught a craft class in my art studio for a bunch of Eva’s friends. On both occasions I got to eavesdrop on the girls’ conversations as if I were a fly on the wall and they had forgotten that I was there. I learned all about the girls who dress like sluts, how much they like/hate school. How much they like/hate boys. And how much they like/hate just about everything else. And of course, they all love Zak Efron and some other music CD that Eva says she will love for all of eternity. (I can’t remember that one.)

Most of this talk I kind of tune out as adolescent chatter and let go in one ear and out  the other. ( I do, however, draw the line when I hear mean things said about other girls. I don’t care  how slutty they dress.) My ears perked up though when I heard Eva’s friends gushing over how much they liked our house. “You’re sooo lucky. You’ve got such a cool room. I wish I had a trampoline. Wow, what a cool art studio!”  Eva’s friends oohed and awed as they walked through the house.

And it’s true. Thanks to my handy engineer do-it-yourself husband with his passion for renovation, we do have an awesome house. There’s a gigantic great room with a large wall for projecting movies. An outdoor fireplace, a carport/game room complete with ping pong table and pool table, a hot tub, a trampoline and a separate art/craft studio (with radiant floor heating) that my husband built for me when we got married. Do my kids appreciate any of this? Not to my knowledge.

You see, I had to drag them kicking and screaming into this house. They. Did. Not. Want. To. Move. Period. The divorce was no where near as upsetting as the trauma of the remarriage and subsequent move. They missed their old house. We were a family there. Their dad had built them a play house in the back yard and they had chosen the colors for their rooms. They mourned the loss of what used to be and romanticized something that was never really that great. Mommy and Daddy weren’t very happy there. The standing water under the house made it moldy, the pastel pink that looked great on the paint chips looked like Pepto- Bismol on the walls,  and they never actually played in the play house because it was too hot and too small. Can I tell them that? Nope.

I think, I hope, that Eva got a different perspective when she heard how much her friends envied her. Sometimes that’s all it takes, a different point of view to make you realize just how lucky you are.

These articles on Divorce are by Vanessa Van Petten, youthologist and teen author of the parenting book “You’re Grounded!” She manages RadicalParenting.com, a parenting blog written by 60 teen writers, ages 12-20 to help parents and adults get a honest and open view into the world and mind of youth. Van Petten’s articles on her parent’s divorce have been featured in the Wall Street Journal, Teen Vogue, CNN, Fox News, CBS Miami and much more!
http://www.RadicalParenting.com

 4 Tips for Parents Dealing With Shared Custody
Divorce is difficult enough as it is, here are tips to make the back-and-forth of shared custody less painful.

Best Resources for Divorced and Separated Families I put together a comprehensive resource guide for all parents who are going through, have gone through or experienced divorce.  My teens and I reviewed books, websites, podcasts and blogs.

6 Unique Strategies for Divorced Families Here I give some new and unheard of tips for divorced and single parents.

4 Everyday Tips From A Child of Divorce
Here I talk about my experiences growing up in a divorced family and what parents can do to make their kids lives a little bit easier.

Jared, my ex-husband, took our daughter Eva and Paul’s son Mark to the  Giants game last night.They had a great time. Mark was delighted to be included and Eva was thrilled to have the company. Sophia did not want to go. Baseball is not her thing and she had other plans.

It is interesting to see how my ex-husband has become my step children’s sort of uncle. Read the rest of this entry »

Father’s Day, Mother’s Day and every other holiday in a blended family is always a day of negotiations, scheduling coordinations and emotional balancing acts. In our house Father’s Day is kind of like Christmas in terms of the many gifts we have to buy for the number of fathers we have to remember. My girls have one father, two step dads and two grandpas. We’d like to spend the day with all of them, but that is never possible. Grandpa Tom, my ex father-in-law,  lives in New Jersey. Pop Pop, Paul’s dad lives nearby and will be here for our family barbeque. Jared, my (gay)  ex, and his spouse, Keith have in years past spend Father’s Day with us, but this year have decided to do their own thing. They will take the girls, Sophia and Eva, out for brunch and bring them back this afternoon so they can celebrate with Paul, Pop Pop and the rest of the kids for dinner. Right now, Paul and I are off for a bike ride so we can have our own private celebration together. Then an afternoon of sailing followed by a family barbeque.

Happy Father’s Day to all you dads and step dads out there.

It has been called to my attention that if you Google “gay ex-husband”, my blog comes up first. Number One on the World Wide Web. Isn’t that something? This is my claim to fame — or notoriety, depending on how you look at it.  How many people would kill for that kind of ranking? All kidding aside, I am glad in a way. I wrote a separate page for my blog, My Gay Ex-Husband, because I knew there had to be other women out there who were grappling with the shock of discovering that their husband’s were gay and would have  no idea where to turn for comfort, support, answers and direction.  So in solidarity, I wrote about my experiences so these women everywhere would know they were not alone.

As you might imagine, I have had a lot of emails from women from all over the country. They don’t post comments on my blog, but they do write to me. I would never publish their letters and I never discuss what they tell me, even with my husband (who forgets everything I tell him anyway), but I would like to offer to my reading public the gist of  these letters since there is an uncanny similarity to all of them. Here are some of their frequently asked questions:

#1. How did you get over it? How did you get past the pain, humiliation and anger so that you could move on with your life?

This is a biggie. How does anyone get over anything? A failed marriage is a failed marriage and there is no guarantee that I would not have gotten divorced if I had married a straight guy. Still I was pretty pissed when you figure that if I had married a straight guy I might have had a better shot at staying married. I felt like I had no control over the situation, which was frustrating and, oddly, also liberating. It was not my fault. Given the information that was presented to me at the time of my marriage, I felt like I had made a good decision. I was given a free pass.

#2. How did you forgive?

This is kind of tied into the first question, but let me elaborate a bit. I think one of my best character traits (if I may so so myself) and  traits we as a democratic, civilized society can use a little more of, is my compassion, empathy and the ability to see through someone else’s perspective. Intellectually I knew that we live in a society that demonizes homosexuality. Rick Warren, the pastor who said the opening prayer at Obama’s inauguration, has likened homosexuality to bestiality and pedophilia.  It is no wonder gay people feel oppressed, ostracized and the need to closet their sexuality. In that context, I couldn’t blame my gay ex-husband, Jared, for attempting to deny his true sexual identity. It made me more understanding and hence, more forgiving.

#3. What did you tell the kids?

I told them the truth, warts and all. I told them I was sad, but I made it clear to them that even though I was down, I was not out. I firmly believe children take their cues from their parents and if I could recover, they could too.  I explained to them that we had to let Daddy go to be happy, which is the greatest gift anyone can give to anyone. Dad would still be in our lives, he just was not going to live with us anymore. (Although he came over for dinner many times those first few months.) I told them that there is nothing wrong with being gay, but many people do not share our acceptance and openness about it. To this day, the girls are very selective with whom they confide in about their father being gay.

#4. How did you find happiness again?

I found it mostly because I wanted to, but not until I had given myself sufficient time to grieve,which is a very important part of the healing process. When you avoid pain by not processing it, you can not get over it. After an initial scoundrel period in which I rushed into dating in order to fill the void in my life, I eventually realized that I needed time alone in order to come to terms with what I really wanted out of life and to discover what would make me truly happy.

#5. Where did you turn to for support?

My first action, after I poured my heart out to my friends, was to get professional counseling. I made a few inquiries and found a very supportive therapist who had experience in dealing with exactly what I was going through.  In addition, I searched the Internet and found The Straight Spouse Support Network ,founded my Amity Pierce Buxton, whose husband came out in the ’70′s. Amity was sweet enough to email me and I talked on the phone with members from the local chapter. I also read several books that were very helpful and made me realize that I was neither crazy nor alone. Here are a view titles: Pretzel Logic: A Novel , The Other Side of the Closet: The Coming-Out Crisis for Straight Spouses and Families, Revised and Expanded Edition and  My Husband Is Gay: A Woman’s Survival Guide.

It has been more than ten years since Jared, my ex, first confessed to me that he was gay, and quite frankly, I rarely think about it anymore. My days now are filled with loving and enjoying my new husband, our busy lives as a blended family, working on our family business and, now that the kids are older and more independent, fulfilling and pursuing my own dreams.

Years before I ever dreamed of getting divorced I remember reading about Demi Moore’s and Bruce Willis’ s divorce  and admiring both of  them for the really positive way they handled it. Every time I saw them photographed as a family, (now with really cool stepdad Ashton Kutcher), they all seemed so happy. Of course, appearances can be deceiving I know, but the very fact that they attend events together, like movie premieres, speaks volumes about their ability to settle their differences as a couple and still remain united as a family. The Willis/Moore/Kutcher clan are my role models.  I vowed to myself that if I ever got divorced, I would be like Demi and Bruce, and make sure my children’s happiness always came first. Now that I am divorced and remarried, here are some of the guidelines I suggest to help improve and keep family harmony: Read the rest of this entry »