Blog Archives

One of the things I love best about blogging is engaging with a community. Opinions evolve. Perspectives change. Sometimes I see how inaccurately I projected my thoughts or even how off the mark I was by the responses in the comment section. I welcome your feedback and would like to take a moment to respond to a couple of great comments from yesterday’s post.

This first comment comes from Sandi Ormsby of Ahhsome.

“Personally: I’m not interested in reading about someone’s divorce. Even if they are in the public eye, announce it, and be done with it…everyone should be allowed some common courtesy, some dignity to move forward without their spouse. We don’t need to gossip or offer opinions.

BTW, re: “We want to hold on to the hope that our dreams can come to fruition, that our lives will not fall to a national statistic…” well said, but I don’t think divorce is causing her to lose that dream or even damaging it. Her happiness is just being altered a bit.”

Celebrity divorces are announced daily, it seems. I was at the salon getting my hair done this morning, chuckling at all the weekly magazine subscriptions laying on the tables. They are riddled with hook-ups and break-ups. I think what struck me the most about Heather Armstrong’s announcement was how much attention it is receiving from more respected news sources, if that makes any sense.   She seems less of a celebrity to many of her followers and more of a friend or personal acquaintance. There are many bloggers that I read so often that I feel like I know them, personally. In fact, there are a handful that I consider friends because we interact outside of the blog world, albeit only through emails and text messages. Every time I hit “publish”, I am forever sharing a piece of myself, good or bad. My success with my failures and sometimes there is an unsettling feeling knowing that complete strangers have a very limited opinion of who I am.

The second comment comes from Kathleen at Richwell Ventures.

“Of course it IS nice to see people succeed, but you mean, “and never fail”, and good luck with that. She did succeed, just not indefinitely. I don’t know of this woman or how long she has been married, but I do know that the only constant is change.
-
I do empathize with her. It SUCKS. It’s devastating, I have been there, heck who hasn’t, but the potential death of her marriage does not automatically destroy her future, nor negate the blessings she has had up to this point. It just changes, and we endure – or don’t.”

I do agree with Sandi that everyone needs to move forward in their own happiness – however that may look. Unfortunately, it is unlikely that fans won’t speculate about the circumstances or outcome, it is in our nature to have an opinion, even if it is based on nothing concrete, mere assumptions. My hope is that the Armstrong family has good communication and a loving support system. And yes, Kathleen, I suppose it is a bit naive of me to want to see long-term success without failure. Maybe what I really hope is that we are able to succeed with minimal failure. I fail at small things every day: lose my temper, forget to pack someone’s book, start dinner too late, etc. But the one thing I don’t want to fail at are my relationships. Those are the things I hope to keep close, protect them at all cost. Although I know that comes with a price too sometimes. I also agree with Kathleen, because I know personally the devastation of divorce. It certainly was not my intent to imply that divorce would cause someone to lose or damage a dream. But it is the end of one dream – until the next one is envisioned. Happiness is a choice, I believe, although some days are much harder to find it than others. I never went in to my first marriage thinking, “let’s just see how long we can keep this going“. Obviously, my dream was a life long journey. The journey just changed, but in the end, I found a different happiness, a different dream, and a different future.

My dream now is to follow my creative interests and write more professionally. I want to build a better blog, start a book and even do some public speaking again. But the biggest part of that dream, is having my kids and DW at my side. That is the part that is sad to see – the end of a partnership. Even though I know there are always opportunities to build new ones.