The Whole of Us

I recently heard someone talk about their multiple marriages to the same person and it just could not have hit any harder.

I was 22 when we first got married. I had just started my post-graduate in emergency nursing and Tom was finishing his bachelor’s degree in dentistry. On my salary alone, I kept us afloat, but that wasn’t the hard part.

The hard part was the huge suitcase full of pain and trauma we’d each dragged into our marriage. It was intense. Back then we knew very little about trauma, conflict resolution or emotional and mental health. We would fight until the early hours of the morning- him wanting to sleep, me unable to.

Of course it wasn’t all bad. There was so much to love about that time in our lives- there was also a lot of it! Time to dream and plan for our future. Nothing felt impossible. We were so young and it all felt so exciting.

Our second marriage began a year later when we welcomed our first child, Isla. Delight and joy rolled into sleepless nights and a steep learning curve. Two years later we had our second daughter Alessia. Both our greatest and most meaningful blessings.

You can barely articulate the grand love you have for your children. It changes you. Our world went from black and white to brilliant colour. Everything looked different. It was immeasurable joy and also one of the hardest seasons of our life. My mental health crashed after our second baby and life for much of the next decade felt like survival. It changed both of us. We took on roles that kept us safe and kept us, as a family, moving forward. Those early childhood years are some of life’s most precious. For some of us, they are also the most difficult. We worked together as a brilliant team, soaking in what we could and going through the motions.

Before we knew it, the intensity of the physical and emotional demands of that season shifted, and we found ourselves on the other side of the ‘blur’.

Welcome to our third marriage. Our eyes opening to the evolution and changes that have occurred in each other. Older. Wiser. A little singed around the edges.

While parental demands still exist, they’re now different and leave a tad more space for reflection and self examination. It’s a time of counting the cost and the many blessings. Looking inwards and understanding who we are and why.

These last few years both Tom and I have undergone a total life overhaul of our physical, mental, emotional and spiritual health. Tom once described it as smashing a completed lego set onto the floor, adding a tone of different shapes and colours and then rebuilding again. It is beautiful. Painful, but oh so beautiful.

We’re rediscovering us and it’s better than you can imagine.

There is a choice here though. A decision to harden your heart, lean into resentment and become unmovable or slowly and carefully allow the healing and transformation, that your heart so desperately longs for, to take place.

We’re swaying back and forth, sometimes its barely visible, but its there. A willingness to bend and flow and remain soft. A tenderness and compassion emitting from both of us.

This my friends is the choice. It’s why they say marriage takes so much work! You’re two different people with different pasts that made it! There is so much celebration in that statement alone.

I find myself almost in shock at the changes in us. The good type. My very capable, strong, independent hero of a husband so bravely chose into an unravelling. If you understand mental health, then you understand the complexity, confusion and deep guttural loneliness that can accompany it. Very few glimpse the process or the suffering that ensues, but with time and space something profound begins to unfold. His courage to face his deepest pain has had a life long and generational impact on our family.

It has forced an authenticity that is deeply connected to ourselves and each other. His undoing has given us as a family space and time to make sense of our story. To understand ourselves better, break patterns and beliefs, and in turn, create a palpable hope around our very exciting future!

This third marriage feels like the most transformative. A setting of the foundation if you will – the real one, not the one that looked good to everyone else. Each marriage just as sacred and important as the next but this one, has changed everything.

The question is are you willing to unravel a bit to expose this new version of you? Are you willing to face discomfort in owning your part in it all? Are you open to change, growth, transformation and love? There is a cost no matter the decision.

So what are you choosing?

If this post has resonated with you leave a comment, send us a message or share with a friend. If you’re struggling with mental health reach out to someone trustworthy or seek professional advice.

Photo Credit: Kristine Clark Photography