Dear child of divorced parents,

Divorce is never fun. I never thought I’d be in the position to write this letter. I never imagined I’d be here, with divorced parents.

But I am, and so are you.

When I first found out the news of the separation, I was honestly in more shock than I was upset. I did what anyone would do: I went to my room and shut the door. I thought shutting the door, and closing my eyes would make this go away. I thought it was a dream. I thought I’d wake up and everything would go back to normal. Because this was not suppose to be how my life turned out.

But it is how it turned out. I know it’s hard. No matter what age you are when you’re given the news, it’s never easy. Five, twelve, or twenty, it’s all the same.

Don’t blame yourself. A marriage is between them, not you. Don’t retrace your steps and wonder if you had done x, y, or z differently, if this wouldn’t be happening. You cannot blame yourself for their decisions. You are not the problem, and you never were.

In the beginning it will be awkward. Okay, truth is it will probably always be awkward. But split holiday’s will get easier as time goes on. You might still hate them, but it does get easier. It just takes time. Eventually this will be the new normal, as weird as that may sound.

Don’t ever feel like you have to split your time between them. It’s not a game. There’s no scoreboard. If you want to spend x amount of time with your dad, do that. Don’t feel like you have to do the same for your mom. And vice versa. It’s not a competition. Spend time with each parent when you see fit. Don’t try to pencil them in, and split the time between them, worried that the other will be offended. They’re your parents. They shouldn’t care about who sees you more like it’s a race.

Don’t ever feel like you don’t have a true family. Family isn’t about a marriage. Family is the people who stay with you and support you. You do still have a family. Your version of family just consists of a mom and dad in two separate houses. A divorce doesn’t take away your family, it just makes it a little different, that’s all.

It’ll take time to get over the fact that it feels like you have separate lives. Sometimes you’ll feel like you live two lives: one at your moms and one at your dads. Truth is, you have one life. One set of parents. You don’t have to live a double life. Eventually it get’s easier overlapping them.

Don’t be afraid of love. Don’t be scared that every marriage will end this way. Just because your parents ended in divorce, doesn’t mean yours will. Please don’t be scared to love someone because you feel like it’s a path to failure, because it’s not.

Divorce will teach you a lot of things. It’ll teach you how relationships aren’t easy, and that it takes a lot of dedication. You learn that failed relationships don’t make you any less of a person. It teaches you that a relationship can’t make you happy, and that a relationship takes two people to make it work. It teaches you that life isn’t always perfect, and sometimes it’s a little different than the norm.

Being a child of divorced parents has had it’s ups and downs, I’ll admit that. And it might not be ideal, but it’s not the end of the world.

Sincerely,

A child of divorced parents.