My oldest daughter turned three and my marriage ended
Words by Sophia Phillips
My husband ended our marriage nine days after my daughter's third birthday. Our youngest daughter had her first birthday 52 days after that. We had been married for six years and eight months, partners for eleven years and seven months. I came home from a 7:45pm hot yoga class, he sat me down on the couch, and he turned my life upside down. We had been best friends and partners in life in my mind — conquering our thirties, starting a family, laughing every day. Sure, our sex life was pretty much non-existent, and okay, he had been spending many nights alone in his art studio or going for late-night drives without telling me. But I was home with a toddler and a baby, exhausted from long days of stay-at-home-motherhood, desperate to watch Real Housewives in bed before whichever kid decided to wake up first for milk or a diaper change. I didn’t have the brain power or emotional bandwidth to focus on his solitude and what it meant.
Since that day in April my world has shattered, morphed, and then shattered again. My husband was suddenly a stranger. He made wildly impulsive decisions that I will never understand. He either had a months-long manic episode, or a relentless and unending mid-life crisis. My daughters and I were just along for the ride. I couldn’t believe that I was being flung into single motherhood while still freshly postpartum, when I had no job or career prospects in mind because we had decided I would stay home until both girls were in preschool. I couldn’t believe there was no road to saving our marriage - his mind had been made up for months, it seemed, and he quickly moved out of our family home and into a giant loft in downtown LA next to the Cecil Hotel.
"The strength and the decisions seem to be somewhere within me, deeply tangled and rooted. They seem to unearth themselves to me in the tough and treacherous moments, in the every day disastrous minutia."
I grasped at any route to gain some clarity in the beginning. I zoomed with an astrologer in Marin County who told me I had the birth chart of a writer, and that I was currently navigating two foggy and very confusing transits that would last until 2026, conveniently the year I turn 40. I went to a highly sought after psychic in Sherman Oaks; her husband gave me a cup of tea, and I sat with her in a home office cluttered with pink stuffed animal unicorns and framed pencil drawings of angels. She told me to look into her third eye, and then bluntly stated that my husband had been getting blow jobs in hotel rooms, but that I would someday meet a man with strong hands who builds houses. I was desperate for insight and guidance. How do I do this on my own, how do I become a partnerless parent? My ex had become unreliable and didn’t have a safe place for the kids to stay. I quickly became their sole provider, spending every single night alone with them. A baby and a toddler. My two sweet and strong-willed girls. And me. Of course, I didn’t get the solid answers I was looking for in my rushed spiritual inquiries. I just began trudging through each wild day.
The strength and the decisions seem to be somewhere within me, deeply tangled and rooted. They seem to unearth themselves to me in the tough and treacherous moments, in the every day disastrous minutia. Most days feel so hard. There is a toughness that is indescribable, and a toughness that I absolutely never imagined motherhood being for me. I barely survive getting everyone out the door for preschool drop off. The gentle
and connective parenting I was certain that I would implement seems to quickly slip through my fingers the second my toddler and I begin our breakfast/brush your teeth/get in the car power struggle. It all feels unforgiving and lonely. But somehow, we make it to bedtime every night — which usually includes my oldest and I falling asleep together in my bed at 8pm — but we make it. It is an impossible task to try and make sense of the ungrounded insanity that my life has quickly turned into. The only truth that reveals itself again, and again, and again, is simple. That I am a mother to my girls. It’s all I know, and I think all I will ever need to know. The toughness and the treachery might make some days feel utterly hopeless. But I know I need to let this ride play out.
That some days I will feel like I am flailing in the wind as a mother, that I am allowing dysregulation and cluttered chaos to take me down. But I believe - deep in my gut - that my girls and I will come out on the other side of this. And hopefully be awarded with some grit and resilience in the end. And those magical motherhood moments that I always imagined do exist. Both girls cozied in my bed, staying up past their bedtimes, watching Sleeping Beauty and falling asleep together. Sisters sharing giggles and stumbling hugs. New skills and new words and new sentences. Witnessing their love and curiosity and empathy expand and grow. I am so lucky I get to experience this unwieldy life with them.