Divorce Blogging

Yesterday my husband handed me the front page of the New York Times and said you have to read this article: "When the Ex Writes a Blog, The Dirtiest Laundry Is Aired".  The article was about bloggers who post about their divorce details, and two of my favorites Naked Jen and Penelope Trunk bravely spoke up on the subject. I had a chance to meet both of these bloggers live and they as engaging and interesting in person. What really moved me about the article is that I am a child of a divorced family, so the discussion of the effect of children reading their parent's divorce blog posts is an interesting one. I thought about Penelope Trunk's quote from the article when asked if it is good for children to get information about their parent's divorce in a blog:

"It is a generational issue"...we think it will be a big deal, but it won't be for them"...

I only remember parts about my parent's divorce such as resenting going back and forth between houses when I was in highschool. There were other disappointments, like realizing that some of our married family friends felt uncomfortable hanging out with the "divorced" family... Although I do remember longing for the white picket fence life, I felt better about having divorced parents then having parents in an unhappy marriage. But in the long run, experiencing divorce as a child helped me

prepare for finding my soulmate as an adult (I have a happy marriage - but waited a lonnnnng time to find the right guy). I saw that relationships are complicated, communication takes work,  that no matter how much two people love each other marriages may not work if couples are not compatible. I saw that couples disagree and even (gulp) argue at times... But I did not experience any of the raw emotion or hurt that more complicated divorces have. After reading that article I wondered how I would have felt reading about my parents' feelings on divorce.

After some thought, I decided that I would have felt empowered reading about my mom's feelings about divorce and struggles finding strength as a single parent. I would not have wanted to hear any bad feelings my mother or father felt about each other - somehow I don't remember them sharing that side of the divorce with me ever anyway. On my father's side, it would have been interesting to hear how he felt when we landed at his door for summer vacations and he had to play single dad (why does daddy have no food in the fridge??...). Or after my dad did get remarried, it would have been fun to read the comic side of how my mom and stepmom ended up getting along better then my dad would have liked. Add to that the high probability that our kids WILL join some online discussion by the time they are teenagers (into adulthood) through online social networking, and it seems that parents sharing their voice online may not be such a big deal (as Penelope Trunk mentioned).

Maybe divorce blogging will evolve into a vehicle to discuss the personal side of the experience, and help divorced families find strength by showing the imperfect side of marriage.... Just like parent bloggers share the imperfect side of parenting (what...huh..... parenting is not a perfect art??)

Original Silicon Valley Moms Blog Post

Beth Blecherman is one of the Partners of the Silicon Valley Moms Group. Her personal blog is on parenting and technology (Techmamas.com)