By Jude Huck-Reymond

I first want to rephrase this question, sometimes experiences don’t “help” you to grow, but instead experiences “force” you to grow or adapt. The experience that forced me to grow the most must be the second divorce my father went through. My parents first divorced when I was about 10 years old, but I still wasn’t quite mature enough to understand what the process meant and how it would affect me. My father then remarried and divorced once more when I was about 15. By that age, I had matured enough to understand the dynamics of my father’s relationship, and potentially understood where his relationship was going before he did, though that is speculation. By the age of 15 I fully understood my own parents’ separation and understood that both of them were happier independent of one another. Because of this understanding, I could observe my father and stepmother’s relationship and compare the experiences to what was happening between my own parents during my childhood. I started to predict a divorce between my father and stepmother maybe 2 years before it ended up happening. I have a younger brother, and so I started developing feelings of responsibility for him because of the lack of focus my father and stepmother had on us due to their own dysfunctional relationship. This time forced me to mature much more quickly than my peers, and I found myself understanding emotional dynamics years before my peers would begin thinking about them. This time has dramatically affected my perspective on marriage and partnership and has caused me to very heavily filter the quality of people that I let into my life and occupy my time. I also had two extra brothers for l4 years of my life. Since our parents broke apart, I haven’t talked to them much at all. I think it’s important to be clear that I have no grudges and do not blame any of those people for my experiences. This is because I’m grateful for all of my experiences. If not for the challenges during my childhood, I would not be as strong as I am today. I think that is true of everyone, we must simply hold the right perspective on our past experiences. Learn, do not regret. That is what I’ve learned from the experiences in which I’ve grown the most.