A few weeks ago I was pulling out an old book that my mom needed for book club. As I picked up the book a picture of my ex-husband and I fell onto the floor. For a moment I was back in high school remembering how things used to be before life got so complicated. I turned the picture over and left it on the dresser in my room and took the book to my mother. The next day my four year old brought the picture to me. He hadn’t seen pictures of us together for a very long time.
My initial reaction after my divorce was to throw away all pictures of my ex-husband. Seeing pictures of us together was simply too painful. I wanted to erase that part of my life. I was so miserable I couldn’t bear to think of all that I had lost. I had dreamed of us being a family, and now we were far from the family I had dreamed of.
Now that some time has passed I’m thankful that I didn’t follow through with my initial reaction. When my mother remarried when I was two years old her new husband threw away every picture I ever had of my biological father. Growing up I felt like a piece of my history was missing. My grandmother had one picture left from their wedding and I cherished that picture because it was all I knew of my father at the time.
While I don’t display the pictures around the room, I do still have them for Logan when he gets a little older and wants to see them. As much as I wanted to erase that part of my life, I couldn’t erase that part of Logan’s. He needs to see us together as a family, since he was too young to remember that on his own. It’s still hard for me to see those pictures, but I love Logan enough to keep them around. While that was a very difficult time in my life and I would never want to go through that again; I learned so much from those experiences. I would never want to erase the strength that I gained from them.