Divorce is just the end of one story. What matters more is what happens next. 

When I was 37 my husband asked me for a divorce.  I had three children Marian, nine, Stephen eight, and Beth, three, and no money.  I was frightened as I had never been before, frightened about what I had to do, living in a big wonderful house with my children, a house that needed repairs in a million places, paying the bills, single parenting, and probably needing to find work.

In those days, divorce was like a jungle with fears of the unknown, sudden and unexpected dangers, predatory animals, issues of survival and the treatment of lawyers and judges, all male, with their smart suits, briefcases, and indifference to your fears and concerns about money.  But, I had no choice and slowly became reconciled to the idea.  With attorneys, we negotiated the terms of the settlement for more than a year.

The divorce negotiations were so intense and troubling for me that I finally lost any positive feelings for Charly.  I found out much later that he and a friend were in a relationship and that after the divorce they would marry.  Two couples and six children had been displaced literally and emotionally.  And Charly was trying to minimize the child support payments.  That startled me most of all.

The next step was to actually get the divorce.

At that time, the only cause for divorce in New York was adultery and the only two places available for me were Nevada or Juarez, Mexico.  I couldn’t go to Nevada which had a six-week residency so I flew to Juarez.

I met my lawyer and we went together to court.  Everything was in Spanish.  The only things I understood were the words Senora Rhoada Wald.  I took the divorce papers home and wondered if they meant anything, whether they were really legal.  I still have them and no one has looked at them since.

For me, the trip to Juarez was a new experience, flying to a foreign city and hearing a different language.  I came home with a sense of freedom, freedom that the divorce process was finally over, after a year of negotiating, and freedom to make decisions for my children and for me.  The world is a big place, could we, my family and I, explore some of it?

I told my children that the world could be an adventure and we should try to see what it was all about.  When summer came around, I wondered what could we do for a vacation?  We needed to get away, be together, have some fun, and put the terrors of the divorce phase-out of our minds.  The only thing I thought we could afford was to go camping.  When I asked friends and neighbors if they had any camping equipment we could borrow, the response was usually, “Are you crazy, you have never been camping before.”  True, but what else could I do with three children and no money?

I called several places that rented camping equipment, “Do you have a tent that an eight-year-old boy could put up?”  Finally, one owner replied, “Bring him over lady, we will find one.”  And so we began.  Friends loaned us some sleeping bags, I took a few pots, we packed what we thought we might need, and began what was to become a 1200 mile trip lasting almost a month.

There were, of course, some mishaps.  One day during our first week, we were at a new campsite, I was sitting and reading and the children were playing.  “This is easy,” I thought.  But I happened to have the trunk of my car open, with my purse in it and the keys to the car were in my purse.  My daughter, Marian, came along and closed the trunk.  Oh no!  After some anxiety about how to deal with the problem, I asked a neighboring camper for some help.  He took out the back seats and climbed through the trunk to retrieve my purse.  I never knew that back seats could come out.  This fellow-camper was so generous with his time, his know-how, and his sense of how to help and reassure us.

One night in Maine, just near the Canadian border, it was raining hard and Stephen was coordinating the raising of the tent and leading Marian and Beth in ways to help.  Several men were watching and to my astonishment, no one offered to help.  Up to then, we had met so many generous and friendly people.  What a contrast this experience was with the man who helped me get my purse out of the locked trunk!  After we got into the tent, I told them “tomorrow we are going to sleep in a motel.”  I could hear their sigh of relief and delight.  It was cold that night in the tent in the rain.

We traveled all through upper New York State, to places my children had learned about in social studies.  We ended up in the Thousand Islands and came back down the east coast to Tanglewood and finally home.  My family and I loved the trip but I did miss another adult to talk to.

At home, the memories of the trip sustained us for a long time.  I realized that I did not have to listen to people suggesting I could not do something.  The possibilities were endless and I could make up my own mind about what I could and could not do.  The trip gave me the confidence to know that I could deal with the aftermath of divorce.  A woman alone with three small children could go on a three-week trek.  We were responsible and able.

The divorce was also difficult for my children.  They, too, were in mourning but the trip nurtured our feelings of togetherness.  We were a family, a different kind of family, a family who together had experienced the ups and downs of parental discontents and a vacation journey.

I was brought up to believe that I had to be married but this trip helped me understand that, if need be, I could do it alone.  My strength and resourcefulness had never been tested before.  But the ups and downs of camping, combined with being the sole parent, helped me validate the strength and ability to take responsibility, responsibility of all kinds.

My children also grew.  Watching an eight-year-old boy, Stephen, telling his siblings what to do in the rain, was a picture of cooperation and leadership.  Marian and Beth helped with so many things and took responsibility for cleaning up the campsite when we were leaving.  They were working together, a joy for any parent

The trip turned out to be much more than a vacation.  The divorce was the nightmare that changed my life and who I am.  Our journey together brought me the ability to think for myself and to trust my own abilities.  I didn’t have to buy the myths of what I could or couldn’t do.  I now had the confidence to make those decisions myself.

“Without a wound, there is no author,” wrote Amos Oz, the famous Israeli author.  I would paraphrase it with “Without a wound, there is no wisdom.”  For me, wisdom evolves from crisis.  I wasn’t a failure because my husband wanted a divorce.  Crisis reinforces the idea that life matters, that you can conquer the problems, you can believe in yourself, you can move to the next more complex step, and you can explore the magic and mystery of life.  For me, that is the journey to wisdom.