Family Game Night: divorce edition

“EYE TWITCH!” I WON!

This was a game my four kids innocently created at the dinner table the year I was navigating my divorce.

I had four under the age of 10 during my divorce. 

We would sit down for dinner, say our prayers, then go around the table while everyone took turns sharing their highs and lows of the day.

That’s when their voices would often fade out, and my distracting thoughts would upstage them and take hold of my attention like menacing pop-up ads. 

When these thoughts (and anxious feelings attached to them) flooded my brain, they overflowed in the form of an involuntary muscle spasm in my left eyelid.

My kids thought this was hilarious. Naturally, they created a game out of it, which provided the silver lining of some dark twisted humor at my expense. The first one to catch my anxiety-derived eye twitch won. I will admit that this consistently pulled me out of my alternate divorce universe - and even made me laugh. I would snap back to present-time with four little hands pointing at my crazy eyelid.

How am I going to respond to that text?

*twitch*

How am I going to pack up this house and move on my own?

*twitch*

How am I going to manage financially?

*twitch*

How do I find time to email my attorney those documents?

*twitch*

How will I navigate my first holiday alone?

*twitch*

Divorce was a thief when it came to robbing me of quality time with my kids - whether that was through split custody or through my own mental distractions. The good news was that I could work on the latter, and my kids could help me hold light-hearted compassion for myself with humor. In time, my eye twitch (and my monkey mind) calmed down, much to my kids’ disappointment. “Spot-it” has served as an ideal alternative to “mom’s eye twitch” for family game night. I still get my ass kicked, but I’ll accept defeat from my kids over divorce distress every single time.

With Compassion,