It has taken almost a year for me to be ready to share this story.
Some of this is because once my divorce was over, I just wanted to move on. I did not want to dwell on it. I was so glad that finally I had all that time to spend on something else!
But I also know these stories have value. And how could I share all these other divorce stories, and not share my own?
Obviously this post is paywalled. This information is even more sensitive because it is not anonymous. But this Substack is about pulling back the curtain. About saying the unsayable. Sharing the unshareable. So here we go.
*Please note that moving forward, I will be making attempts to not reflect on my marriage so much. Obviously when discussing topics I will bring my personal experience to the page. But I think it is particularly hard for my ex that our marriage continues to be part of the public discourse. Do I owe him anything? No. But do I want our relationship to improve so as to better be able to parent our daughters? Yes. My memoir (that is still out seeking the right publisher) details a lot of our marriage and themes that I have not gone into detail about in this space. So no worries, for those of you still interested in my marriage, there will be plenty to come in book form. And again, I don’t plan to censor myself here. I just want to be thoughtful about what is and what isn’t discussed here.
On June 24, 2024, I sat across from my ex and his lawyer in my legal firm's conference room. We were there for a settlement conference.
If you missed the initial story of my divorce, which I posted a week before this conference while we were still in what I called Divorce Purgatory, start there. It shares the timeline of my divorce up until we reached the stage, after ceasing mediation, where there was no clear path forward.
Let me just share a bit about how slow our mediation process was. We filed in February 2023. Hired our mediator that same month. Didn’t have our first joint mediation session with her until…November. During that time, we were compiling data. Financial disclosures. Business appraisal. Home appraisal. Establishing marital standard of living.
Not much happened in that first mediation. We shared our reports. My ex determined he would hire his own forensic accountant to do their own reports. Our next meditation was scheduled for January. Then got pushed back to February due to his lawyer who had double booked himself.