How to Get Divorced Without a Shovel: A Guide to Surviving Divorce Without Getting Buried

By Sabrina Jones

So are you feeling anxious, hurt, furious, scared, considering beating someone with a shovel? Then take a deep breath and have a seat. I have a few words of advice for you, my friend. In my divorce, I made many mistakes but I also learned SO many valuable lessons along the way. I came out of my divorce happier than ever and loving myself and my life more than I ever thought I could! Divorce is only the end to a chapter. And I am here to walk you through the ups and downs. I am here to tell it to you straight and the only way I know how by sharing all of the dirty details of my own adventure. Filled with humor, heart and enough honesty to make my mother blush if she reads it, I hope this book gives you an extra voice of encouragement as you travel this crazy journey called divorce.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Archway Publishing
• Release date: Jun 15, 2015
• ISBN: 9781480818514

Sabrina Jones

Sabrina Jones is a cartoonist and scenic artist. She is a co-author (with Marc Mauer) of Race to Incarcerate: A Graphic Retelling. Jones is the author of Isadora Duncan: A Graphic Biography and a contributor to World War 3 Illustrated, Wobblies!, FDR and the New Deal for Beginners, Yiddishkeit, and Radical Jesus. She lives in Brooklyn, New York.

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Copyright © 2015 Sabrina Jones.

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 publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

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

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ISBN: 978-1-4808-1849-1 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4808-1850-7 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-4808-1851-4 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2015908015

Archway Publishing rev. date: 05/27/2015

CONTENTS

Chapter 1 ’Til Death do Us Part…or Something like that

Chapter 2 Words can Certainly Break a Heart

Chapter 3 Pissed? Oh, You Haven’t Seen Pissed!

Chapter 4 You Might as Well Open Your Eyes and Scream

Chapter 5 How Sabrina got her Groove Back (cheesy title but you’ll see where I’m going with this)

Chapter 6 No Such Thing as Losing Everything

Chapter 7 It takes a Village

Chapter 8 Mom and Dad

Chapter 9 Gotta Keep Your Head Up

Chapter 10 Quiet…at Last

Chapter 11 Meeting your new Frenemy

Chapter 12 Other Miscellaneous Legal Crap

Chapter 13 I Always Did Suck at Division

Chapter 14 I’m Waiting for my Real Life to Begin ~ Colin Hay (Necessary Listening Homework!)

Chapter 15 Dating Lesson #1

Chapter 16 Dating Lesson #2

Chapter 17 Dating Lesson #3

Chapter 18 Be Good to Yourself

Chapter 19 You Already Rock but Now is a Perfect Time to Turn up Your Volume

Chapter 20 By the Grace of God

Chapter 21 It’s the Holiday Season

Chapter 22 Life Doesn’t Have to be Perfect to be Wonderful

Chapter 23 Merry Freaking Ex-mas

Chapter 24 God has a Wicked Sense of Humor?

Chapter 25 Back to School, Back to Reality

Chapter 26 The Final Verdict

Chapter 27 What do I do Next?

Chapter 28 How to Keep Old Baggage from Becoming New Baggage

Chapter 29 Can’t Live With Him; Can’t Kill Him

Chapter 30 Forgiving Yourself

Chapter 31 And From the Branches Fell These Two Little Nuts

Chapter 32 Two Steps Forward; One Step Back

Chapter 33 3 Fuzzy Mistakes

Chapter 34 3 + 1 = Totally Freaking Awesome!

Chapter 35 It’s Just the Chapter, Not the Book

Chapter 36 The Series Finale of my Own Personal Dramedy

Acknowledgements

First and foremost, thank you, God, for always, no matter how many times I screw up, wrapping your arms around me and protecting me with your grace and love. Like a loving Father, you always made sure the coast was clear before I stepped out into traffic.

Thank you, Sam, for your humor and support, your strength and acceptance. Thank you for showing me the true meaning of love. God broke the mold after He made you and I am honored that I get to be your wife.

Thank you to my boys for always making me feel like an awesome Mom even when I knew I wasn’t. You were both my inspiration and my motivation to make things better. Thank you.

Thank you to Missy and Rami and the rest of my Village for always making me laugh through my tears and never letting me cross a bridge without a friend holding out a hand on the other side. There are no words for the kindness shown to me by all of you.

Thank you to Debbie for always being my cheerleader. I wouldn’t have published this book if it hadn’t been for you! Yep, that means that this book is all your fault ;)

Thank you to Jason for an awesome book cover. LOVE it!

Thank you to Janie, Beth, Jen, Heather W., Heather G., Christy, Karla, and the rest of The Warriors for helping me find strength and confidence in my voice. Thank you for letting me fly my freak flag! I’d proudly be stuck in the land of misfits with you all any day!

Thank you to my family at KnoxLife for helping me to learn that there is room in the Kingdom for everyone and that we ALL have a purpose.

Thank you to all of my writers (Debbie, JoAnn, Kristin, Maranda, Megan, Missy, Penny, Rami, Timi and Wilma) for your strength and honesty…. Your support and belief in this project meant SO much to me.

Thank you Mom and Dad for not (yet) disowning me. I love you both. Thank you for the fine example of a wonderful marriage. I think I’ve got it figured out now 49826.jpg

Thank you to PH … it’s never been boring! Thank you for my story.

Introduction

I was one of those people that had everything planned out. I was the Queen of the Day Planner. I knew where we were going the next two years for vacation. I was already thinking six months down the road to what to get the kids for Christmas. Everything in my home was organized and labeled. I didn’t like surprises or change. In June of 2007, all of that planning flew out the window. My husband of over twelve years announced that he was not happy. Eight weeks later, he had moved out. Within four months, divorce papers were filed. This lady was in a tailspin of huge proportions with no idea how I got there.

During this time, I tried what I had always done when faced with a crisis. When my son was diagnosed with ADD, I bought a bunch of books about ADD. When my family faced death, I read books about grief. Looking down the barrel of the divorce gun, I bought divorce books but they sucked! There were different categories of divorce books.

1. Psychological – very heavy, dry reading. When all I really wanted was direction or someone to empathize with me, these books simply explained the reasons why marriages fall apart. They were filled with statistics and made me feel like a loser.

2. Spiritual - Don’t get me wrong, I love God and need all of the spiritual guidance I can get but these books made me feel guilty and like I had failed. I got the vibe that in every divorce, there was both a sinner and a victim and I honestly wasn’t sure I wanted to be either even though I felt like a bit of both.

3. Books about the result of divorce on my children – these were the absolute worst. I was just trying to help my kids adjust and these books were already cramming statistics down my throat about divorce rates for my children and grandchildren as a result of my failed marriage! It was all too much to take.

When I divorced, I was the first of my close inner circle of friends to end a marriage. However, since then, I have walked many friends / acquaintances / family members through their own divorce. I realize that there still are just not a lot of books out there that are just an honest firsthand account of this crazy journey! When I got a private message on Facebook from a high school friend that I have not spoken to in twenty-five years pleading with me for direction on the day she was going to meet her own divorce lawyer for the first time, I decided, enough is enough. I’m writing this myself!

When I first shared with friends that I was writing this book, they would often ask what I was going to call it. I honestly had no idea until the very end of the process. But I settled on the title, How to Get Divorced Without a Shovel for this reason. When I was going through my divorce, people would ask me how I was doing. I frequently replied Well, I haven’t used to a shovel yet (meaning to either hit PH with it or to dig PH’s grave with it, I never did clarify). So all these years later, I never did need that shovel (I think PH took it in the divorce anyway) ;)

So here’s the thing. I am not a therapist. I am not a psychiatrist. I have no spiritual foundation beyond Sunday school. I am not a lawyer. The only thing I have to offer you is experience. And it was a horrible experience! I made mistakes. I acted immaturely, irrationally, even recklessly. But here’s what I learned. There is no right way to do divorce. There is no twelve step plan to get through it. There is absolutely no way to put a timeline to it. There is not a magic formula for how long it will take to heal or get over it or move on. I think that was one of the most challenging parts for me. I wanted to know the plan. I wanted to know when I was going to be happy again. I hated the uncertainty of the whole thing. In school, we learned the five stages of loss and grief: Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression, and Acceptance. Divorce visits all of these, some several times. But there are also so many more that sneak their ugly heads in there. I have walked them all. I am going to tell you my highs and lows, tricks that helped (or that I wish I had done to help) and a few lessons that I learned along the way.

You will notice that this book isn’t that long and chapters are relatively short. That’s because, right now, you don’t need anything else heavy on your plate. I know this book is going to sit on your night stand with that heavy psychological divorce book and the spiritual divorce book and the one about messing up your kids so this one is light. Feel free to read it after the others so that you can sleep a little easier.

Within this book are also the stories of some of my nearest and dearest. They are going to share their experiences, either with their own divorce or as someone close to someone that got a divorce. Even my two sons share their feelings about my divorce. Everyone’s experiences are different and we all learn different things. I am so grateful that these amazing women and my two sons all offered to share their experiences.

You will also notice scriptures throughout the book. In the back of the book, all of these scriptures are re-printed as well as a few extra ones. I had these scriptures hanging everywhere when I was getting divorced. They were on my bathroom mirror, on my dashboard, over my kitchen sink. Use them!

Throughout this book, I will be dropping little song suggestions for you. These are mostly songs that meant something to me during different phases of my divorce that might help you or at least give you a better glimpse of how I was feeling at the time. When going through my own divorce, it seemed that half of the songs on the radio or even at the grocery would set me into tears! I once fled a Body Pump class at the gym because I started sobbing because of the song that was on! All of these songs are available on ITunes and I really do recommend checking them all out because they help… or at least they helped me! Plus sometimes there is nothing more therapeutic than singing at the top of your lungs!

Also, this book is intended for those who have already decided to get divorced. I try to be optimistic and hopeful but at no time will I ever say that divorce is easy. It’s not easy. It is hell. But it is also the greatest game changer I have ever been blessed with experiencing! Yes, I just said my divorce was a BLESSING!!! But please do not think this book is going to try to talk you into getting a divorce. Only you know when enough is enough. I don’t know you or your spouse or your situation so I would never pretend that I could give you good advice about whether or not you should divorce… however, if you do, then allow me to introduce myself…I am your new dear friend! I have been where you are and I will walk you through this.

Now, before we go any further, take a deep breath. You are going to be okay.

Chapter 1

’Til Death do Us Part…or Something like that

First of all, I will not be referring to my ex-husband in this book by his real name. I do not call him my ex-husband anyway. I call him my practice husband because our twelve years together were just that - practice. So from here forward, he will be called practice husband or PH for short 49810.jpg

So now a little background - In the summer of