For the Sake of the Children: The Story of Our Blended Family

By Victoria Lane

A mother's memoir of navigating divorce, learning to co-parent, and successfully blending new families

• Language: English
• Publisher: Balboa Press
• Release date: May 31, 2022
• ISBN: 9781982276218

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Copyright © 2022 Victoria Lane.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

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The author of this book does not dispense medical advice or prescribe the use of any technique as a form of treatment for physical, emotional, or medical problems without the advice of a physician, either directly or indirectly. The intent of the author is only to offer information of a general nature to help you in your quest for emotional and spiritual well-being. In the event you use any of the information in this book for yourself, which is your constitutional right, the author and the publisher assume no responsibility for your actions.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

ISBN: 978-1-9822-7622-5 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-9822-7623-2 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-9822-7621-8 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2022910203

Balboa Press rev. date: 05/31/2022

Contents

Preface

Acknowledgments

Chapter 1 Childhood Memories and the Early Years

Chapter 2 Destiny Calls

Chapter 3 Difficult Choices

Chapter 4 Insights and Wisdom from a Close Friend

Chapter 5 Day of Reckoning

Chapter 6 New Beginnings

Chapter 7 Maternal Instincts

Chapter 8 Broken Promises

Chapter 9 Letting Go and Loving Myself

Chapter 10 Starting a New Life Chapter

Chapter 11 Bringing Families Together

Chapter 12 Manifesting Abundance

For Carwyn,

Your beautiful spirit shines brightly, despite the difficult choices I made. You are life’s most precious gift, and I will always love you to the moon and back.

Preface

Each of our lives is nothing less than an amazing journey—full of so many varying emotions, adventures, fears, failures, and successes.

Oftentimes our childhood experiences have been deeply ingrained, although typically hidden from our daily vantage points. Inevitably, those false narratives, written long ago, will surface in our adult lives and manifest themselves as we attempt to learn and grow. If we are lucky, we will somehow find the courage and the strength to face our deep-seated fears. I honestly believe the universe keeps introducing the life lessons we are meant to learn over and over, allowing us the opportunity to rewrite our individual stories and free ourselves from the heavy burden of carrying the unspoken deep within us for so many years.

I write this inspirational memoir in hopes you will learn some valuable lessons from my own personal journey, beginning with the divorce of my parents and the profound impact their separation had on my earlier years. Today I am grateful for the entirety of my life because I now understand it has simply been a series of chapters, each one leading me to a better understanding of who I am and why I’m finally able to love myself fully and unapologetically. It was previously exceedingly difficult to be true to myself, especially when I had no idea who I really was or who I could become. Once discovered and embraced, my truest self was able to attract the perfect life partner who would deeply love and respect me for who I truly am—not someone he hoped I would someday become. And only then was I able to become the best parent my son deserves and the stepmother my husband’s two children have come to love and trust.

Each of our individual journeys is sacred and uniquely different, but the lessons learned hold equal and impenetrable value in our ability to fulfill the lives we are meant to experience. I wish you much success as you inspire those who will one day follow in your footsteps.

In writing this memoir, I have re-created events, locales, and conversations from my own memory. To maintain their anonymity, I have in certain circumstances changed the names and identifying characteristics of individuals or places. I may have also changed certain nonessential details, compressed timelines, and left things out in service of the reading experience.

Acknowledgments

To Morgan,

For being my life partner, loving me deeply and unconditionally from the start. You are my lover and my closest friend. Thank you for believing in me. You have always been my one in a million. It just took some time for me to find you.

To our family,

Through many doubts and fears, you had the willingness to open your hearts and minds to create this amazing blended and extended family. I will forever be grateful for each of you.

And finally, to Evie, James, and other grandchildren to come,

You define the next generation with such joy, purity, innocence, light, and love for us all, no matter our flaws. You are a reminder this is how we each came into the world, and it is precisely how we should choose to live the rest of our days. Mimi loves you with all my heart.

CHAPTER 1

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Childhood Memories

and the Early Years

Moment of Truth

W hen are you going to tell him it’s over? The year was 1996, and I had just seated myself on the exceptionally comfortable couch in my therapist’s office. It reminded me of my grandmother’s living room sofa—off white in color, well worn, soft, and completely enveloping. I needed something to comfort me whenever I found myself in Linda’s office. She was incredibly skilled in her chosen career as a medical psychologist and licensed professional counselor. I was accustomed to fooling my previous therapists; although admittedly, I had only worked with two others during my thirty-eight years of life. Linda, however, had an amazing ability to see right through my foolish games, and what was worse was that she called me out on my behavior—always in a very direct yet respectful manner.

What are you saying, Linda? There I sat, literally being consumed by her sofa, sinking in ever so slowly, like quicksand tugging at my hips. I asked Linda for clarification, even though her words were crystal clear and had already traveled straight through my heart. How did she know? How could she have figured it out? I certainly hadn’t revealed my innermost feelings to her. Perhaps it was everything I hadn’t said during the weeks we had been working together that led her to reach this conclusion.

It’s clear to me you no longer believe your marriage can be saved. You have moved on. As far as you are concerned, it’s over, and that’s OK, she replied. She was right. My marriage had been over for some time in my mind, yet I was simply unwilling to admit it to myself, to my therapist, and I was certainly not equipped to admit it to my husband, who was desperately trying to make our marriage work. Most importantly, I couldn’t bear the thought of what a divorce might do to our only child. He was by far my greatest accomplishment in life. I would never do anything intentionally to hurt Carwyn, and I knew all too well how much pain the divorce of your parents could bring.

All I wanted was to ensure our only child would be spared the trauma my brother and I had endured when our parents separated and ultimately divorced. My mother and father couldn’t stay together, even for the sake of the children.

Divorce through the Eyes of a Child

My parents split just before I turned twelve years old. My brother was soon to be eight. When my father left, he not only divorced my mother, but in every way that really matters, he divorced his children too. The day he broke the news—or should I say blindsided my mother with the fact he was having an affair with his much older secretary—it was during a very long car ride they took in his little British MG two-seater sports car. When they returned, I was home, and for the first time I can ever remember, I witnessed my mother devolve into hysterics. She made it inside the garage door and to the den but only as far as the black leather recliner, where she wept for hours.

My father called for my brother and me to join them, where he explained how stressful his work had been for some time and that he just needed to get away for a little while. It’s not your mother’s fault, he explained. He looked straight at me and said, Sis, take care of your mother. Then he proceeded to pack his bags, and just like that, he was gone. He would never spend another night in our home, nor would he ever be present for Thanksgiving to carve the turkey or to gather us all together to celebrate Christmas mornings. My little brother must not have understood what was happening, or he was in complete and utter denial, because he simply asked if he could please go back outside and play with his friends. My mother told him to go on, if he came home in time for dinner.

The conversation that ensued between mother and daughter would change my life in ways I could never have contemplated, and for many more years than I would like to admit. I don’t remember when she finally stood up from the black leather chair, but I do recall sitting beside her and listening for hours about how my father had broken a promise that would destroy her in ways neither of us could possibly have known or understood at the time. She told me how they agreed she would forfeit her career as an executive secretary to the senior vice president at a large automotive manufacturing plant when she became pregnant with me at age twenty-five. The promise was that my father would always be responsible to earn a living and support the family if she would be willing to stay at home and raise the children. She had gladly accepted his proposal, believing it was a promise that would never be broken. My father was the only man my mother ever loved.

Mom was only thirty-seven years old when she revealed these broken promises to me from the black leather chair, and I watched as she soon began to age prematurely, likely from the culmination of stress and sadness that enveloped her world immediately thereafter. She told me never to trust that a man would take care of me. She emphasized the necessity to strive for independence so I would always be able to provide for myself. Little did I know then how those words would be eternally etched into my heart and soul. The impact would be felt for many years to come.

My childhood abruptly ended at that very moment on that dark and pivotal day. I had to become more responsible than my young age would normally have required. I soon became my mother’s caregiver, along with immense help from my grandparents. Luckily, they all lived locally and were an integral part of our lives—even more so after my father left. Mother developed ulcerative colitis or Crohn’s disease (we never knew for sure which) within months of my father’s departure, and she was hospitalized on multiple occasions over the course of many years when she would become deathly sick. Once she weighed in at seventy-five pounds when the ambulance came to take her to the hospital, and on that cold and dreary afternoon, I was afraid she would never return. I believe my grandmothers felt the same, and they likely discussed which of them would care for my brother and me in the event of her death.

While recovering for weeks in the hospital, she unknowingly developed multiple blood clots in her legs, and when she got out of her hospital bed to take a shower down the hall, the clots dislodged and traveled directly to her lungs. I remember receiving the call to let us know she had been transferred to the intensive care unit. What I didn’t know was that she had also begged her young physician to do whatever was necessary to keep her alive. She was determined to keep fighting for her life to raise her two children, knowing her estranged husband had no intention of so doing.

She did in fact survive, and she lived to be eighty-one. She battled her chronic illness for many years and ultimately had a surgical procedure that freed her of the inflammation her intestines had endured for so long. They removed her large intestines and some of her small intestines too. She lived the rest of her life with an ileostomy, and had she known how much better she would feel, I’m certain my mother would have asked for the surgery many years earlier. She never remarried, and although my father ultimately did remarry and create a beautiful second family, I know my mother never stopped loving him. My mother preferred to live alone rather than risk her heart again for another man.

Lasting Impacts

I share this childhood story to provide the proper context in understanding why I grew up not trusting men. For much of my early adult life, I made extremely poor relationship choices that were truly self-fulfilling prophecies. If I became involved with men who were clearly unavailable or not willing to commit to an exclusive relationship, it reinforced the underlying narrative I had long ago created—which was that I must not be good enough and that I truly wasn’t worthy of being loved.

I demonstrated many of the typical characteristics of being a first-born daughter—reliable, conscientious, structured, cautious, controlling, highly achieving, ambitious, and successful. I would bask in a parent’s attention, always strive to please them, and I was a perfectionist. One might argue those traits have remained with me throughout the course of my life. I was certainly a straight A student from kindergarten through junior high school. I am grateful for possessing these traits because I believe they were the hallmark of my professional career and definitely why I always felt I was at my very best when holding a leadership position.

Once in high school, with adolescence in full bloom, I was