What it feels like to write a holiday letter after a divorce.
Dear Friend,
I married Eve in 1986, and every December we’d write a holiday letter to our dearest friends. It was a good way to say, “even if we hadn’t talked all year, we still thought of you.”
As we got older, the ritual took on a second purpose. Every so often a card came back stamped UNKNOWN AT THIS ADDRESS. We’d google the name and, more often than we liked, find an obituary.
2023 was the first year we didn’t send anything. We had decided to divorce and didn’t know what to say to the people who didn’t already know. The divorce was final in May, 2024 and the house was sold in June.
I still wanted to send you something. I had a new address, and mail forwarding would end soon. I’d grown a beard—enough of a change that I wanted you to recognize me if we crossed paths. Mostly, though, I wanted you to know I was still here.
But I didn’t know what to write, so I didn’t write anything.
This year I promised myself I would write for sure23. After all, if you sent us a Christmas card this year to our old address it will be retuned because mail forwarding has expired.
But what shall I write?
This morning I woke up with the answer: I’m going to tell you what it feels like to write a holiday letter after a divorce. Here goes.
In December 2023, after the papers were filed but before the divorce was final, my predominant feeling was befuddlement. I was living apart. The main project Eve and I shared was the painful work of disentanglement. I couldn’t even write a first sentence because I had no idea where to begin. So I didn’t try.
December 2024 was different. The divorce was amicable and became final in May. The house sold in June. Our lives were separated, and it did feel like the worst was behind us.
And yet the feelings that Christmas were more intense: loneliness, shame, and a sense of failure. I was sleeping alone in a big house. I didn’t have a job to go to—a place where I could be with people and spend my days doing something purposeful. I’d never treated divorce as an option during our marriage. I felt ashamed of the things I’d done that led Eve to imagine her life would be better without me.
I always knew a marriage takes work, and I’d never been fired from a job. This felt like being fired from the most important job I’d ever taken. I felt like a failure because I had failed. I deserved every bad thing I got.
With all those feelings, I couldn’t bear facing the people who didn’t know.
But that was then; this is now.
My feelings have changed because I’ve reframed the story. Of our 37 years, 5 months, and 21 days of married life, the first 36 were very good, as marriages go. We raised two wonderful boys. We had adventures. We had trials and tribulations and many triumphs. We saved money. We bought a nice house together, and Eve inherited an apartment in New York City. We had time and resources—and real options—for how we might spend our remaining years.
Eve’s papers cited “irreconcilable differences.” At the time it didn’t make sense to me, but I’ve come to see she was right.
What we lacked was a way to reconcile our differences about how to spend our time and resources. Now that we both have full control over our time and no shared resources, that conflict is gone.
And I’ve been asking myself: was the end of our marriage really a shameful thing?
When I was a child my parents said, “There is no shame in shame, but there is no honor in dishonor.” What they meant was that shame can be a conscience-signal, not a verdict. Feeling it isn’t, by itself, proof of wrongdoing. The honorable response is to check the facts: did I do something shameful? If so, apologize and make amends. But it may be that shame is just a feeling, unsupported by the facts.
And “no honor in dishonor” simply means you can’t spin an unworthy act into a worthy one.
Our vow was not “to remain married.” It was to love, honor, and respect each other for as long as we both shall live. Strange as it sounds, honoring those vows made in November 1986 is proving easier in divorce than it was in marriage.
Put briefly, Eve and I have shifted from pursuing a happy marriage to pursuing an honorable, loving, respectful relationship in divorce. I’m not feeling shame in having shifted from one goal to the other.
I wonder how you react to all this. And I’d love to know what you’ve been up to since we last corresponded. And, more importantly, what you’ve been feeling of late.
Please keep in touch. Tell me what you’ve been doing, thinking, and feeling. I need friends now more than ever.
Cheers,
Brooke
Next read about Brooke’s visit to meet Alex and Bakerloo.
Brooke Allen 