Alexandra's Story
The day my life irrevocably changed without any warning was 19th July 2016. I can remember the date so specifically because it was my 9th wedding anniversary. I was, to all intents and purposes, ‘living my best life’. I was married to a man I loved and who was also my closest friend. We had got through many rounds IVF, to be lucky enough to have two wonderful daughters (aged 18 months and 3 years at the time). We both had successful careers – demanding but fulfilling. I was dealing with the grief of losing my father unexpectedly a few months prior, and I was struggling with the inevitable strain of being a working mother with two little ones but life was good.
On that day, after receiving flowers and a card telling me how much I was loved, we went for dinner to celebrate our anniversary and on the walk home to relieve the babysitter, my husband told me that he didn’t love me any-more and did not want to be in this marriage. I was blind-sided. He didn’t provide me much more of an explanation that night or has ever done since about why or what went wrong or why he didn’t communicate this before.
What I want to share is that despite my world falling apart in that one instant and my certainty at the time that I would never survive, I have rebuilt myself and my life with my daughters into something far better and stronger. A story of hope.
The first few years can only really be described as a shit show. I was an emotional mess – I literally cried when I woke up and cried myself to sleep for about a year. I had no-where to live on account of the superb timing of him walking out on the day we had sold our family home, so I rented a tiny house with my girls and managed the renovation of the property we had bought together, knowing it would never be our family home. I had one daughter starting in a new school and the other starting at a new nursery. One was still learning to talk and walk properly and the other was learning to read and dress herself. So young and with no understanding of why their parents no longer lived together and why Mummy cried all the time. I also had that little thing called work – a small business in its infancy that I was running full time. Welcome to the chaotic world of being a single parent.
I bounced from appointment to appointment in a fug: couple’s therapy, individual therapy, acupuncture, physio, doctors, mediators, lawyers, accountants, builders. I went through the inevitable mess that is internet dating, made all the mistakes, drank too much on my own and tried, as far as I was able to survive. I have always joked that it took an army to put me back together ... the compassion shown to me by people who had never met me before was so touching and fortunately, I had an incredible family and friends to fall back on who supported me with never-ending love and loyalty and wine!
So 5 years on, my life is very different … I grew my business and was able to finally buy my beautiful family home I renovated from my ex-husband. I met a wonderful man who understands and loves me in a way I never knew was possible. He came with two gorgeous children and we all live together in a slightly chaotic but love and laughter filled existence. I am stronger, wiser, more empathetic and so much more grateful for everything I have in life. I also know that I am capable of dealing with anything that life throws at me. If you can manage through those first few incredibly difficult years of being a single parent, you can do anything.
