Lesson 20: Divorce

Have you ever had a memory that never let go of you?

In this deeply personal episode, The Time Smith takes you into “the forge” and down to a place he’s never shared before — the fifth floor. What unfolds is a powerful childhood moment shaped by silence, confusion, and a single question no child should have to answer: “Who do you want to live with?”

Through vivid storytelling, you’ll step into a tense family dinner, feel the weight of unspoken emotions, and experience how one moment can echo across a lifetime. But this isn’t just a story about divorce — it’s about listening, forgiveness, growth, and the choices that shape who we become.

This episode explores:

• How childhood experiences silently influence adulthood
• The power of listening vs. learning the hard way
• The emotional impact of conflict on children
• Forgiveness and the possibility of change — even years later
• Turning pain into purpose and becoming better for the next generation

If you’ve ever felt unheard, carried unresolved memories, or questioned how your past shaped your present — this episode will resonate deeply.

Because the past can’t be changed… but how you respond to it can.

🎙️ Raw. Honest. Transformational.
Welcome back to the forge.

Follow, share, and leave a review to help this message reach someone who needs it today.

Transcript

Have you ever been lost in your thoughts? Randomness. A thought pops into your head and you don't know where it came from. Many times it's your past. Things that have happened that have not let you go. Why have they hung up? Let's talk about that. Hi. I'm the time Smith and welcome back. I hope you had time to listen to my last lesson. What's next? Were you able to grab a journal and a pencil and begin writing? Were you able to create your own forge? I hope you had a chance to do that. I do feel that it's important that you write your future down, your thoughts down, and your goals. Then you can at least see what you're trying to accomplish. Let's go into the forge. Look around. I always try to keep it clean in here. There's always a lot of sweeping and dusting. Cobwebs seem to appear out of nowhere, but I just clean them. I do like when it's clean in here. It allows me to think. It allows me to see clearly. Well, especially like on days like today, where I do feel that I need to share something rather deep. And today we're going to go down to the fifth floor. I have never taken you down there before, but it's something that you might relate to and that's divorce. My parents have been married for a very long time, decades. But I remember a moment that seemed to happen rather often, and it ate at me. I hated it, honestly. I was young, impressionable. I looked up to my parents. I respected who they were. But follow me down as I share my perspective on my own life. Let's take the elevator. Let's walk over to the left, to the fifth floor. Going down Just reminds me that this was a very unpleasant moment. But here we are. The fifth floor. And let's walk down about three three doors right here on the left. Just remember when you walk in, this is my situation and I'm sharing it with you. One day I got home from my friend's house, and I live in a time where we would hear my dad whistle, and it didn't matter how many blocks away we were, we can hear that whistle. We knew that we had a couple of minutes to be home. After we heard it, whether we even heard it or not, we always had to be close enough to know that if my dad whistled, we should be home. Well, I ran as hard as possible. I was about four houses down. I run into the door sweaty, but when I walked in it was quiet and my mom tells me in Spanish. Go wash your face. By la de la cara. And I did. I washed my hands and my face. And on this particular day, when I sat at the table, I sat to the left of my dad. My two brothers were on the right side of my dad, with my younger sister to the left and my mom opposite of my dad. And my mom one by one, served us probably one of the best meals I remember chicken and mac and cheese. Mac and cheese was a treat, but the loudness of the silence took over. You can hear the forks pinging against the plates. No one was talking. I didn't know what was going on. The food. Well, it should have been delicious, but it was just overshadowed with what was happening. And I looked to my dad and he has his eyes down. And I looked to my mom and my mom's face was in her hands. I didn't ask her though, what was wrong. As we finished our meal up, my dad began to speak and he says, your mom and I are getting a divorce. In Spanish, of course. And right away he begins him pointing at us and he says, who do you want to live with? He points at one brother, one mi mama. With my mom and my other brother Juan. My mama to my sister. When my mama. And my dad pointed at me. Well, at this moment I was just thinking about not being tagged out in the game of freeze tag we were playing. I was thinking about how fast I was. I was actually thinking also at school. I came in second place on the on the one mile run. My friend, who was a sixth grader at the time, came in first. I was a fifth grader and I wasn't nearly as tall as him, and I tried to keep up and I remember I couldn't wait to tell my parents. But now I had it on my shoulders that I had to decide who I wanted to live with. And the only thing that came out of my mouth was, I don't want you guys to get a divorce. My dad slams his fork on his plate and got up. My sister began to cry. My brothers got up, put their plates in the sink as if to say, I've heard this before. And my mom, she just stood there crying. I remember thinking to myself, did you really think it was going to be this easy? That if we all decided who we want to live with, that they just separate? Well, I wanted to come home and see both my parents. I wanted to see my dad every day. I wanted to see my mom every day. And I didn't intend that they didn't get divorced at that moment. Only thing I thought to myself is that's not what I wanted. At Step out. You know, when I look into that room and I stand in this hallway with my back up against the wall looking into that room. This is a room that I've always come into, looked and closed the door, and there have been times that I would bawl my eyes out, feeling like it was my fault, that maybe they could have had a better life if they did get divorced. Thinking that maybe a lot of things would have happened, wouldn't have happened if I just would have said, oh, I would have gone with my dad. Just made it easy on them. Why was I so complicated? Life isn't that easy. It makes me think about what we hear. Listening. Many people believe that we learn from the mistakes that are made. And I'm a firm believer that we learn first by listening. Without trying to get too far away from this picture and this memory that I just had. A quick example is when you tell your child, don't touch that it's hot and they touch it and they burn themselves. Well, now they're not going to touch something hot again when you tell them. But how much easier would it have been if they just would have listened? So why does listening. Become the main thing I've learned from this situation? Because it's it's what I've learned and saw about marriage, about relationships, about the people that you care about, that we should love each other and that we should forgive and that we should let go, and that we should accept people that the way they are now, being older, I know the things a little better about what my parents were going through. I know why my mom forgave and I know why my dad was hurt. But I've listened to them so that I can have a good life, so that I can understand and not be sitting at my own table having to tell my children, who do you want to live with? Who do you want to go with? Listening. Let's close that door. There's actually more in that room than just listening. There's a little bit of trauma. There's a little bit of sadness in there. There's. There was a moment that I want to be heard and I wanted to be heard. Many times this life's problem drowns out the exciting things that happen. And we tell ourselves, what does it matter? But it does matter. I can tell you that when my child came to me and told me, hey dad, I came in first place, I came in second place, that it was a moment for me to celebrate. And actually not to go back and tell him this story. It was for me to push them and. Like we tell our children, you can be the next doctor and you could be the next president, you could be the next Olympian. But those traumas and those moments that we wish would have been responded to differently. Gives us the opportunity to respond to it differently when it happens to us. Forgiveness. Can you forgive? Can you love unconditionally? Can you let go? To be honest with you, I don't know what happened and what made my parents constantly reconcile with each other that they made their marriage last more than four decades. It's not just the old school way. It is the way. Let's walk back to the elevator. And let's go up. I don't know if you're in a moment of divorce or separation, or maybe questions. Or maybe you're the child in that memory. Understanding is important. Being heard. Being loved. Being honest. Even allowing people to hurt and embrace them. Here we are, the forge. Remember, the forge is a place where these memories are forged. They're not changed. They are exactly the way that it happened. With no alteration. And though we want them to be different, that's the way life played out. You can change the future. You can change your present by the way that you respond. We can't change the past. I've talked to my parents about this very memory. And yes, I've forgiven them And I'm not hurt with them, but I remember. It hurt me once, and it it actually turned me into a person. Uh, a variation of a person that at times I wanted to be and I didn't want to be. And I had to have the best response to that. And that's the charge. That's the challenge that we're given to in this life. Well, we're some are born with a silver spoon and some are born with no spoon. We are all required to do our best. So yes, though this is about divorce and maybe I don't offer any advice on how to stay married, we can look around. And remember that it does affect those around us. It does affect the moments when those fights are being had, when you can't get away from that argument that the world is still going. That our children are listening. That there are moments in their life that are important, that they might want to share, that might alter the decisions you're going to make. And this isn't just about praying for your spouse that they change. This is about the prayer and the thought of how do I change? That's one thing that my father taught me at the end of it. My dad came to us years later. I was about eighteen years old, and he sat us down and he said, I just want to tell you guys something. I'm sorry for the things that I did and affected you. And I'll never do those things again. And amazingly, he never did. That man was gone, and this new version of my dad appeared. And one can say it was too late. And another can say it's right on time. And in my life it was right on time. It's never too late to change. It's never too late to change your mind. So remember if you are lost, you can be found. And if you feel unloved, you are loved by me. I am the time Smith. God bless.