Grief and Relief
Hugo is up to his old tricks - offering a brilliant and insightful post in which he writes:
We can experience real grief over a choice we’ve made while being immensely grateful to have had that choice in the first place. Divorce is, in this instance, similar to abortion. No one has sex saying “Gosh, I hope I get pregnant so I can find out what an abortion is like!†No one gets married saying, “Oooh, I can’t wait to go through the heartbreak of dividing up the Christmas ornaments and deciding who keeps the dog!†In my all-too-abundant experience, divorce proved to be the least-worst option in my first three marriages. It was not an option exercised with joy, but with a strange mix of deep sadness and immense relief.
Maybe it’s just because of the way my brain is wired, but I’m deeply familiar with that mix of deep sadness and immense relief. Hugo’s post is about abortion and he talks about divorce as well, but I think it fits with a lot of human experience. Head on over and read the whole thing. You won’t regret it.
February 27th, 2008 at 9:48 am
Most of my friends and I have had abortions, and it was no big deal for most of us, at least no bigger than surgeries in general. Americans are way too preoccupied with this issue, especially considering that nearly half of all women will have abortions once in their lifetime.
February 27th, 2008 at 10:29 am
Thanks for the link, Glenden.
Andrea’s point that nearly half of all women will have an abortion dovetails nicely with my point that the experience bears some similarity to divorce — an event that about that same percentage of us will endure.