The Good Divorce
Chapter OneWhat's Good in Divorce
Valuing Family
My older daughter got married twenty-five years after her father and I divorced. A large family group took part in the ceremony, including my exhusband, his wife, their two children, and my younger daughter. Looking at the video, I see two proud and happy parents walking their daughter down the aisle. From these images of smiling, laughing people, a stranger could never tell that this couple had not been husband and wife for the past twenty-five years, unless, fast forwarding to the altar scene, they noticed the three beaming parents to the right of the bride. In this scene we three parents stand together tightly holding hands, laughing and crying, deeply moved. This family constellation is like many others around the world--families in which one or both sets of parents are divorced.
Those who witnessed our stormy, acrimonious parting in 1965 would never have predicted that my exhusband and I could share the wedding of our child politely, let alone joyously. No-fault divorces didn't exist back then. To be released from an incompatible union, one of us had to prove the other undeniably at f ... read full excerpt from: The Good Divorce ebook