I want to personally thank each and every one who voted for my entry in the RE-DEFINE DIVORCE Contest. I can't believe that I won. The last time I think I won anything other than a 20 oz. soda was in fourth grade. I'd read the most pages during the school year and for that achievement I won the boxed set of Beatrix Potter's Peter Rabbit. It was perfect timing. School was ending and I could lounge around and read to my heart's content all summer long.

The timing of this win is perfect too. I've been kind of paralyzed for a while. My husband leaving and the ensuing divorce had numbed me. I was like a book when the title and picture on the cover had been removed. You couldn't really tell if there was anything interesting there or not. For the longest time no one knew that I felt completely wiped out on the inside too...Blank.

At first, I thought this was a horrible injustice that could never be rectified. My life as I knew it had been taken away. It was literally erased in the space of one day! But I'm rethinking my former assumption that my life was over; just another tragic life with an even sadder ending. Now, I sincerely believe and know that just the opposite is true, MY LIFE IS JUST BEGINNING!

I am feeling more energetic. I am actually looking forward to tomorrow and the future in general. I've made some plans and I've taken some action towards making those plans a reality.

The First Wives World site and the many wonderful women I've met and befriended here have made such a difference in my life. I am reminded through the blogs, comments and discussion replies from each contributor that it is indeed my life and I do have control over it. I can give permission for others to define who I am, or with courage, boldness and renewed love and belief in myself, I can redefine my own life!

We've always talked, me and Mike, about the things that scare us about this. Sometimes, though, it crosses the line from comforting to pessimistic. 

We don't ever really argue, but we have had some draining "conversations." It occurred to us, a bit ago, that these "discussions" are all over hypotheticals.

Now, why is that? Everything, as it is now, is close to perfect. We are exactly what the other wants, as and where we are.

The problem is, we're worried it won't stay like that. What if I never stop being scared? What if we find out, once we're in the same city, that our schedules and our lives aren't compatible? What if someone eventually wants to move in and someone else doesn't? Better to call it all off now, it will never work, we're all going to die.

I look back over the things I've written during a Typical Alice Relationship Breakdown, and they've all been over What Ifs.

It's one thing to be aware of potential issues and deal with them, but it's another to spend this much time worrying that one day it will all fall apart. After all, who's to say that we won't keep on adjusting successfully as we go?

I suspect I didn't enjoy the marvelousness of this past year as much as I could, and that's just ridiculous. This is the most wonderful person in the world, for me, and I should be leaping about in happiness all the time, not fretting over potential future issues.

So that's what I'm working on: taking it as it is now. Dealing with things when and if they come up.

It's hard, after going through a divorce, not to believe that everything will come to an untimely end. But somewhere, I'm sure, there's a balance, before reason becomes sabotage.

One day I'm up, the next day I'm down. One day I'm indifferent about my marriage, and soon after I feel some hope. When I first started writing this blog, this was often the case. Now the see-saw effect is back.

Today is a hopeful day. Rob and I are just back from a meditation and yoga retreat where we truly enjoyed each other's company. I liked it when we withdrew to the safety of our room to share notes on the dharma talks and secret feelings about the sometimes overwhelmingly enthusiastic New Age devotees surrounding us.

We made our own little world within the little world of the center, and it was a bonding experience. There was giggling, and even a bit of cuddling. New territory. Or at least territory we haven't visited in some time.

That the focus of the retreat was lovingkindness meditation probably helped. (Duh.) The point of the weekend was to grow our capacity for mindfulness and compassion. If there are two ingredients more critical to the health of a relationship, I don't know what they are.

So let's see how we do. Rob and I have been practicing this meditation off and on for a few years, and it certainly has helped me open up to my father, a former "most difficult person" in my life. But to transform a marriage?

The see-saw effect may continue, but perhaps more often we'll tip in favor of compassion...leading to true forgiveness...and (dare I say) true intimacy?

I had a fun reunion in Dallas with a divorced gal pal I just love. We caught up over lunch about everything including her social life. They're either looking' for a nurse or a purse, she said point blank. I spit out my soup. When she told me her sister just sent her and her contractor a three year anniversary card, I snorted my salad.

What's going on around the country with divorced women with respect to their social lives really runs the gamut of emotions at different times.

This particular sweet potato has been in a couple serious relationships since her divorce back when, then she attempted some online and offline dates but they weren't working out.

She realized the problem too. HER. She just didn't give two craps. I think that was a quote.

She wished she did she said, but she didn't. So she stopped dating and started picking up men — in her pick-up truck — to work at her house and then go home.

Her contractor is the current man in her life and apparently its been going on for awhile. Three years is awhile, no?

But she explained, even a steady contractor can go MIA on occasion forcing you to find a replacement.

She told me she was so excited about a recent available contractor, he thought she was coming on to him.

Something tells me it may have had something to do with her opening line — "Show me your rock hard sheet rock baby!"

Some contractors even play hard to get she said, which is why her pick up line is of choice is? ... "Hey I've got a pick-up!"

So now we know.

Some women are out there flashing sexy legs and cleavage to attract men...others are out there flashing pick-up trucks to attract day workers.

To each her own.

Attitude is everything!

Debbie

To email Debbie: [email protected]

It's Friday. Weekend is coming and I'm down deep in my on-going Libra head-trip. The endless quest for balance.

If you are a mom, if you are divorced, separated, remarried or somewhere in between, tell me please, I have know how you do it.

How do you juggle it? What do you do to create and maintain balance in your life?

Really, please, I'm begging here.

What do you do? 

I'm glad Edgar and I are getting along so well since the divorce, but I'm also a little worried about it. He was in the room when the judge declared our marriage irretrievably broken. But he's still acting like it's not.

A business call came to the house for him, so I called to pass on the message. We talked, which is how the whole thing with us got started and is something I still enjoy. I thought he sounded like he'd been drinking. But I didn't find it necessary to mention that, until he began telling me how much he misses me.

"Are you drinking?" I asked.

"No," he replied.

"There have been times," I said, "when you'd tell me you hadn't when you had. And that was part of the problem."

He had nothing to say to that.

I actually have nothing to say about that. When I divorced Ed, I also divorced his alcoholism. But it's not like I don't care. It still hurts to know he's in pain and I still can't fix it.

Addiction is cruel that way.

I didn't cause it, I can't control it, and I can't cure it. All I can do, now that I've gotten myself to a safe space, is wish Ed well and be careful not to enable him any more.

While I'm often sad to be moving away from my home of the last 20 years, it's probably a positive thing. Putting even more space between me and the ex should be good for us both. 

By the time I decided to end things with S, we'd been friends for 20 years, and a couple for nearly three: the first one, blissful; the second, puzzling; the third, what the heck am I still doing?

My decision made, I anguished over how to break things off. My inner demon suggested shooting off an email. Keep in mind, this is a guy who for my birthday, gave me a set of those huge, ugly bed rests with the arms that college kids like. One turquoise velour, the other brown canvas. For my beautifully serene and spare blue-gray bedroom. Because he was never comfortable watching TV there. (Note: These now look lovely in my daughters' dorm rooms.)

But I had to remember that first year too — how he had magically appeared in my life when I needed him the most, how he had eased the pain of Ex's remarriage, how he had so engaged my daughters on all our many vacations, how much I had enjoyed being a part of his family. No, an email simply wouldn't do. As much as I hate hate HATE confrontation, a confrontation it had to be.

So naturally, I stalled. I was busy with travel for work; he was busy traveling for play: golf trips, ski weeks, ski weekends.

And as our every weekend together routine turned into once a month, I sort of figured the relationship might just atrophy on its own into oblivion.

No such luck.

A girl's gotta do what a girl's gotta do. So I told him that while we'd had a good run, I thought that as a couple, we had run out of steam.

"So, we're not steamy?" was his rejoinder.

Sadly, no.

Robert Frost famously wondered if the world would end in fire or ice. I've always loved (and agreed with) the line:

From what I've tasted of desire

I hold with those who favor fire.

No steam, no fire, no more desire.

And this is how our world ended.

Sometimes I want so badly to have a happy, intimate marriage that my heart feels like it actually hurts. The cynic in me says that no marriage is actually happy, and anyone who claims to be happy in a marriage is either lying or living in denial. The realist in me, however, knows that there must be something to this whole marriage thing because otherwise we wouldn't all be doing it, right?

Sometimes I just want to scream, "HOW DO I GET HAPPY IN THIS RELATIONSHIP?!" I want someone to tell me what to do to fix things so that I can stop living this life of emotional Atari. I want someone to take my hand and tell me that eventually, everything is going to be okay.

A big part of why I haven't ended things is because I want to believe that there is hope that this can work. What a fantastic thing it would be to someday look back on how we almost split up but then were able to repair the relationship and stay together. I think about how much stronger we can potentially be as a couple after going through all this and then coming out of it all okay.

Then I look at how lukewarm we are toward each other and I wonder if couples ever really recover from something like that.

When does a person decide to actually give up hope and file for divorce? Does it feel like a loss of hope, or does it feel more like a triumph of having made a decision finally? Is it terrifying, empowering, or both?

There's a new billboard on the highway that I drive to work every day. It pictures two pairs of feet: one small pair standing on top of a big pair. The caption reads, "Have you been a dad today?"

This one, simple thing provokes an enormous amount of thoughts and emotions out of me.

I suppose the most obvious situation I think of is my situation, Adrian's situation.

Levi has not been a father today, he wasn't a father yesterday, and I've got a feeling he won't be being a father tomorrow.

This kind of thing, this totally 100% single parenting thing has felt at times, really lonely and incredibly isolating. I've cringed when people have asked about Adrian's father. I've spent countless hours trying to think of the perfect response to that question, yet, there really isn't one.

But today I'm sitting here thinking to myself that if they've got a billboard on the highway asking men if they've been a father today, well then, I must not be as alone as I feel.

I wonder if it's done any good.

I wonder if a man has driven by that and thought to himself, I should be more of a father.

I wonder how Levi would feel if he drove past it.

My guess is that he would be underwhelmed.

We haven't spoken in a while, Levi and I. It's been peaceful that way but also really sad. It's as if I've finally accepted that he won't be Adrian's father, no matter how hard I try.

I guess I'm glad I've accepted it, but there is something about that acceptance that feels really shitty. Really final.

I wonder if they have billboards like these in Los Angeles.