Waiting for Permission: The Intersection of Grief and Divorce

Show Notes:

• A writer reads her original flash nonfiction piece about grief, permission, and the marriage she knew she needed to leave
• On the particular cruelty of losing your mother while also losing your marriage—and what happens when there is no space to grieve both at once
• The moment she told the sky before she told anyone else, and how her mother's voice found her on a morning run
• Why so many women feel they need to justify leaving a marriage, that wanting out isn't enough, that intuition doesn't count, that we need external evidence before we can trust ourselves
• On the cultural training that teaches women to discount their own inner knowing, and the quiet devastation of a partner whose response to grief is "now you know what it feels like."
• What the hospital room felt like in the minutes after her mother passed—and why that experience remains one of the clearest pieces of evidence she has that love continues
• On modeling something better for our daughters—and how that clarity made the next step easier to take

Read this piece and subscribe to the Redacted Substack column here.

Transcript

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Welcome back to the Redacted Limited podcast series. I'm your host, Steph Springer. In the last couple of years since I've been working with divorced women through my writing workshops and through the call for submissions for the Redacted column and anthology, I've encountered a lot of stories from women who lost their mothers nearly at the same time as their divorce, which presents, like, a very particular type of almost a double grief. And today's guest is a writer who's lived through that type of grief, the kind that arrives alongside a marriage already unraveling. After she reads her short, beautiful piece, we talk about something I think many of us know but rarely name out loud: the way women are conditioned to believe that wanting a divorce isn't enough, that we need evidence, as she says, mountains of it, that our own knowing, our intuition, our inner voice somehow doesn't count. This piece is tender and vulnerable and honest, and I'm so glad she trusted us with it breaking the News. I tell the sky first. I finish an early morning run, the tears are streaming down my face in the dark. I look up at all the stars, whose names I never learned, as if they are the gatekeepers to my mother's spirit. "I have to leave, Mom," I choke out the words. I think about how he made my mother laugh, how he would kiss my father's bald spot lovingly, and my dad would blush. He had such an easy way with them. They loved him for it. I remember the hug my mother gave me at the end of our wedding reception. I can feel her arms around me, congratulating me, the same arms that held me when only my body could carry the memory. She was my first home, my truest home, and now she is gone. Now I have to leave the only other home I've known, the one with him. "I'm so sorry," I say. "I'm so sorry, Mom. It's okay to go." It's jarring, this thought, because it's not mine. It's what I prayed in my heart as I ran to my mother's hospital room the night she died. I didn't want her to have to wait for my arrival to die. I wanted her to know that if she needed my permission to leave, I would give it to her 10,000 times. I prayed those words over and over as I drove to the hospital, as I ran to the ER doors, as I ran through the hospital. It was one of the last things that I said to her as I held her hand and played her out of this world with the song Press On. I knew she was saying it to me now, "It's okay to go." beautiful. It's such a beautiful piece. Tell us more about writing it. Um, so the story behind this piece in particular, it's, it's the night my mother died. Um, but some of the things not mentioned in here that kind of adds to this particular night, my health was not very good. I'd been struggling in our marriage for two years at this point, and it's totally true that our physical health is 100% tied to our mental and emotional health. And, um, that became... I did not realize it at the time, but, uh, starting a year into our, our marriage struggles, I started having very heavy bleeding with my periods, and, um, it was... It went on for a year. And the... So two years into our marriage struggles w- was right around the time my mom started getting really sick. And I h- was so anemic I went to my obstetrician, you know, to check me out, what is going on. He could not... He had no explanation, said it was probably hormonal, and recommended that I get an endometrial ablation to stop it. But I couldn't, um, be scheduled for that until I was safe to do the surgery, and I was so anemic that, um, they wanted to try a couple interventions before that happened. So on the night she died, I was at my most exhausted. I was weak all the time. Um, so I'm just, like, running running at, like, my weakest point to try to get there. My husband at the time called me and said that she was probably not going to make another hour. We'd been in town for, I think, five days, um, as she was deteriorating, and I went back to the hotel to get some sleep, and he called me in the middle of the night, and I wasn't 100% positive that I was gonna even make it there. So, um, that's why I had that prayer in my heart that it was if she needed to just go, I did not want her to wait for me to get there, but she didn't. And, um, I got there, and I think it, it'd only been 20 minutes. I got there, and I sat with her, and, um, I told her I was there, and I played music, and I listed everyone that I could think of in her life, and I said that we were all there. And it was one of the hardest things to do, because, I mean, obviously, you know, you don't wanna tell someone that you love that they can leave you, but what else is there to do That too when put in that situation, right? Because it is evidence that we care about them. Yes, it was a loving gift, that permission, and you hear so many stories about people who are dying who, who wait for their loved ones or who wait for that permission. Exactly. Mm-hmm. Um, so after she passed, um, there was no space for me to grieve her passing, and my marriage-- my ex-husband, um, was estranged from his own mother, and those issues kind of, um, took up all the compassion. If he did, if he was capable of compassion for it, I, I never saw it. It was really just, um... Our conversations turned to, "Now you know what it feels like." Right. It's like, what? I'm- The one-upmanship almost. Yeah, just kind of what, why do you, why would you say that to someone you care about? Um, it should be, "What can I do to help?" Um, but it wasn't that, and so because I didn't-- I think that her death accelerated, um, kind of our-- what we already knew was coming. Right. I think he was in denial. Um, but I so needed her permission, and I think a lot of women do when they're struggling in marriage. They feel like they, it's not enough to just want a divorce. You know, we have to have evidence. Right. Mountains of it. Right. Good evidence. Absolutely. Mm-hmm. And- Our intuition or our own inner knowing or our own wishes are- No are irrelevant. No. And, and we're right to want that because we want to be supported, and- Right we feel that that support depends on people believing us, and we are smart enough to know that is not always true. People don't always believe women. In fact- Correct they need these, you know, points of reference outside of the woman to be like, "Okay, I see what you're saying here." So. Yep. I, I knew that. Um, but most importantly, I wanted to know that my mother, um, was okay with it, because she stayed with my dad. My dad was sick, um, in the last six years of his life. Um, and he, he had a mood disorder and he had Parkinson's, and- Wow he was not himself at the end of his life, and she stayed, um, despite that. And I kind of felt like because she had, I couldn't. Yes. Right. Wow. So I felt like n- feeling and knowing that she was saying that to me was so important for me to just take the next step that I knew I had to do. Yes. I, um... Have you listened to the podcast The Telepathy Tapes? Yes. Yes, I have. Mm-hmm. And 100%- Yep I had this... I, I can't remember which episode it was, but they were talking about, um, you know, life after death. And- Mm-hmm in that hospital room when I was sitting with her, I cannot tell you how full that hospital room felt. It was just me and my ex-husband, and my mother's husband, my stepfather. But it felt like everyone, everyone on the other side was there waiting- Yep for her. And when she passed, I would say in minutes after she passed, I... that didn't feel like that anymore. Right. I don't... Having that experience, um, it makes me... I've always been... I've been a religious person my whole life, but how that is expressed has changed over time, and I feel like there was a time when I just... You know, I don't know. All my friends are atheists. Maybe there is no God. But there have been a few times in my life, and this is one of them, that I'm like, "There is something." There is something- after, and I don't know what it is, but all I can say for sure that it is is love. Yes. Because that experience was so powerful and so clear. Anyone in... I know my ex-husband would not want to admit it, but that is exactly how it felt. Mm-hmm. And I think, you know, when we talk about needing permission to, to leave marriages, I think, like, what you described, it's very woo-y, right? It's very, it's very, "Oh, you're making this up." No, it, it's real, and you know it, and you felt it. And, and I think we have been trained to not trust ourselves and to, to ignore that intuitive voice that knows. And in that moment, you knew. You knew what was happening. You knew she was preparing to leave, and, and her loved ones on the other side were preparing to help with that transition. And when you heard a voice say that it was okay to go, you knew it wasn't your voice. You knew it was hers, and it was. And that was a gift. I've got s- goosebumps head to toe right now. Awesome. And, and what a gift, because you gave, you gave that to her, and she gave it right back to you, that witnessing, that permission, that unconditional love. Mm-hmm. Um, and I, yeah, I, I love that episode of, of the podcast. And, and that is what they say. That is what they say, that that's what's on the other side, is that it's, it's love. And, and I think in those quiet moments or in those moments when we have asked a question or are, are needing an answer, I think sometimes we get it. And I remember clearly a, a day before I left, it was, it was about a month before I left, and I was, I was walking around a barn. My daughter was in a horse riding lesson, and I just circled and circled and circled. And I heard this, this voice say, "It's okay. You don't have to live like this anymore." And it just shifted everything- Mm-hmm you know? And I think, too, when I... You know, I think about the past and my mom, but I also am thinking about the future. Like, what do I want for my daughter? Right. Would I want her to need my permission to do something, you know? Um, I knew it wasn't the marriage that I'd ever want for her, and then it made it even easier. Yes. It does make it easier when, when we realize that that part of our job is modeling for them what happiness looks like and what healthy relationships look like, and that even if we aren't consciously instructing them, we are always instructing them so thank you. I'm sure that it is- You're welcome raw to talk about this. Not as raw as it was, but it still- Yeah still gets me. But it... I really appreciate you giving me the chance to talk about it. Yeah. I love talking about this stuff, and thank you for sharing all the beautiful writing that you've shared with Redacted. I'm, it's, it's such a gift. Absolutely. Thank you. Thanks.