It's Not About Us: A Co-parenting Survival Guide to Taking the High Road

By Darlene Taylor

Do You Want to Create a Healthy Co-parenting Relationship?

 

If you'd told Darlene Taylor that she'd pack her bags after a rocky divorce to move across the country at the request of her ex-husband, she would've laughed in your face and asked t

• Language: English
• Publisher: DYT Consultant LLC
• Release date: Nov 1, 2022
• ISBN: 9798986768427

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How Did We Get Here?

August 7, 2019

As I stare out the airplane window watching the sprawling Los Angeles landscape get closer and closer, all I can think is How the hell did we get here? The past few weeks run through my head like scenes from a movie of someone else’s life: the movers packing away into boxes and loading onto a giant truck all seventeen years of memories and the full life I had carved out in Cincinnati. Scenes from the goodbye lunches and dinners and promises of visits that would be scheduled flood my memory, trying to escape through the tears I keep fighting.

This was not in the plan. I was sure I knew what the next six years would look like: Sammi would graduate from high school and go off to college, and then I would be free to start the next chapter of my life outside of Ohio. I was supposed to have time to plan, to decide where I wanted to live, and to be strategic about laying the foundation of my life as an empty nester. Nowhere on my dance card was an abrupt move across the country to a place I said I’d never live. But here I am. And as I look at Sammi sleeping peacefully, her head in my lap, I know why.

It’s not about me.

When Mick first called to tell me about the job he’d been offered to become the head men’s basketball coach of the UCLA Bruins, I was beyond excited for him. Then he dropped the bomb. He wanted me to move, too. My knee jerk reaction was, You’ve got to be shitting me!

We lived in Cincinnati, Ohio. We had been divorced for nine years, and only the past three could be considered good. How in the world did he have the nerve to ask me to move across the country, to do something that would seemingly only benefit him, with no clear upside for me at all? Especially after the drama that had ensued a few years prior, when I wanted to leave Ohio with Sammi and he was not having it. To say that was a rough patch in our relationship is a gross understatement.

At that time, the drama culminated in Hamilton County Family Court deciding that the move was not going to happen, and I had to accept that Cincinnati would be my home, at least until our daughter was eighteen. Mick had said that being a consistent presence in Sammi’s life was his number one priority, and because of that, he was committed to staying in Ohio and coaching at the University of Cincinnati until Sammi finished high school.

For someone who had been itching to leave Ohio to be closer to my family and get a fresh start after a rocky divorce that was fodder for local gossip, that was a hard pill for me to swallow. But OK, if that is what the court decided, then so be it. I put down the roots that I had been reluctant to plant. I started my own business and began making connections to try to establish myself as a personal trainer and nutrition coach. I went back to working as a mental health therapist and began to really make Cincinnati feel like home.

Even with all those things in place, I knew there was still an outside chance things could change. Mick and I had been together way too long—and I knew way too much about the world of college coaching—to think that the possibility of him moving was completely off the table. There was always a part of me that paid attention to the coaching carousel that happened every March as the college basketball season ended, knowing that an enticing opportunity might come knocking for him.

So his call now wasn’t a total shock. After all, I was a basketball fanatic too, and I knew that UCLA had fired its coach midseason, creating an incredible opportunity for some lucky coach to take the reins of a storied program in the land of endless sunshine. Who could say no to that?

I’m certain that Mick knew it would be a hard sell given the road we had traveled. After doubling down on his commitment to stay in Cincinnati, he was now asking me to uproot my life and go to a place where I had no connections, no job, no ties really at all. This was a big ask. The biggest of asks. He was asking me to do something that you ask of your wife. And I wasn’t his wife anymore.

His pitch revolved around the idea that the move would provide a more diverse and accepting environment for our biracial baby girl. He also raved about the obvious career opportunities for me as a personal trainer in the land of the beautiful people. Both were good points, but I would be leaving the home I had made for us, the friends who had become my family, the business I had worked so hard to build, and for what? No connections, no job waiting for me, no support from family or friends. I’d be starting from scratch.

The easy answer was no. Hell no. Why would I upend my life to chase his hoop dreams? I gave up having to do that when I stopped being a basketball wife. Why would I even consider moving across the country for my ex-husband?

I wouldn’t. But I would move to the depths of hell if that was what was best for my kid. And without question, having both of us in her life on a daily basis was what was best for her. So there really wasn’t ever a choice.

Welcome to LA.

I could never have imagined in 2010, on the heels of our divorce, that we’d ever get to the place we’re at now—that we’d be friends, exchanging ridiculous political memes and heartfelt happy birthday text messages. And certainly not in a space where he would even consider asking me to make this kind of sacrifice to help further his career.

But after many ups and downs, and getting it wrong a lot, here we are. I know that there were several decision points along the way that got us here. I remember something my attorney said to me at our first meeting that really stuck with me: People get married on the same day, but they don’t get divorced on the same day.

I realized then that this would be a journey. I had the luxury of knowing that this was coming. What I had been wrestling with for months was going to feel like a gut punch to him. I had a head start on this journey, and it was unfair of me to expect him to know how to even begin to walk this path. We would be processing our pain and loss at different rates, and neither of us was going to heal on my timetable.

I had this vision of us being Bruce and Demi, one big, happy, blended family that would honor the space each of us held in our child’s life and move forward with grace. But that doesn’t happen overnight, and it only happens if we both stay committed to the truth that this is not about us; it’s about her.

Here’s the reality for parents about life postdivorce: every single thing you do from the minute divorce becomes a reality for your family is a lesson you’re teaching your children, and they will carry these lessons with them going forward. It will affect their definition of family, and also how they see themselves, how they view relationships, how they love, everything.

If Mick and I were both sticking to our assertion that we were parents who would do whatever was best for our child, then here is where the rubber meets the road. We would have to become intimately familiar with words like sacrifice, humility, and compromise.

We would have to keep the biggest of big pictures in clear focus and be governed by the reality that the divorce itself would not screw her up. If we wanted her to come out of this healthy and whole, it was up to us to work together and get this right for her.

Chapter Two

Drowning

I knew divorce would be hard. I wasn’t expecting it to be a cakewalk. I had been through breakups before, so I felt like I knew all about the emotional roller coaster I would be on and the uncertainty of, well, everything. And I thought I was prepared. I really did.

I so wasn’t.

We were five years into a marriage I believed was forever when it became clear that this fairy tale would end prematurely. Once the decision to divorce was made (the why is another story for another book), we separated, and I moved out. I found a townhouse not far from our family home and worked hard to make it as comfortable as I could. I wanted to ensure that Sammi would not feel like she had been plucked from the only home she had known and dropped into a strange new place, which was unfortunately exactly what happened.

She had started half-day preschool, and I was in my first quarter of teaching women’s studies at the University of Cincinnati, so there was a comforting rhythm to our schedule that eased the transition. By all accounts, it appeared as if we had settled into this new reality and were making the best of it. But I was on autopilot. Those first few months felt like a blur.

On the days that I didn’t have to be on campus, I would muster the happy-mommy energy to get Sammi to school, then return home and pull the covers over my head until it was time to pick her up. On Tuesdays and Thursdays when I actually had to face the world and teach, I would plaster a smile on my face, somehow muddle through my lectures, and do what I needed to until I could return to the safe haven of my