I’m a single mom who learned that divorce doesn’t end when the papers are signed.
There’s the decree, and then there’s everything the decree can’t account for: raising a child across two homes, navigating a court system that doesn’t always work the way you thought it would, rebuilding financially and emotionally, and figuring out what life looks like when the legal battle is over, or sometimes, when it isn’t.
I created Beyond the Decree to write about that part.
Some of what you’ll find here is personal. Some of it is practical. Some of it is an examination of a family court system that can be bewildering, expensive, frustrating, and painfully disconnected from the families it is supposed to serve. And some days, it may just be about the very ordinary chaos of being a single mom trying to keep all the plates spinning.
Because life doesn’t stop while you’re dealing with everything else. There are careers to manage, relationships to navigate, bills to pay, and an entire identity to rediscover somewhere between being someone’s mom and being responsible for absolutely everything.
I don’t have all the answers. What I do have is lived experience, a lot of lessons I learned the hard way, and a belief that we should be able to talk honestly about what happens after divorce without reducing our lives to case numbers, court orders, and custody schedules.
Outside of all of that, I’m a working mom, an introvert who requires an unreasonable amount of quiet to recover from interacting with humans, and someone still figuring out this version of life as I go. I don’t have a perfectly packaged story of life after divorce. Some days I feel like I’ve figured it out. Other days I’m eating snacks for dinner and wondering when exactly I became the person responsible for absolutely everything.
But somewhere along the way, I’ve learned there can be a lot of life on the other side of something you once thought might break you.
The decree may be part of the story. It doesn’t get to be the whole story.
A note about this site
Beyond the Decree reflects my personal experiences, perspectives, and opinions. Nothing published here is intended as legal advice, and every family and legal situation is different. When writing about other people, particularly children, some identifying details may be changed, omitted, or generalized to protect their privacy.
