I read part a heartfelt story today. It’s about a person who was working hard to build a great life for their family. Facing the struggles of being a breadwinner and a parent to a young child, the excerpt depicted a fateful day. The day they heard the words, “I’m done.” No preceding discussion, no last chance, nothing. Over a dozen years of marriage and family gone in one sentence. And now this person must build their life again. What is probably special about this story that allows so many to connect the pain, struggles, and anguish felt is the story is about a woman.
Does society truly care about how men feel when relationships end? This was the question repeating in my mind as I read the excerpt from falling apart in one piece I kept asking myself if a man wrote this book would anyone care about his feelings. Or would we as a society immediately ask what he did or didn’t do to cause his wife to say “I’m done”? Would we embrace his struggle to maintain his composure at work while at home he is not being considered valuable enough to keep fighting for? Or would we as a society focus on the woman and child that are now left in the wake of whatever we have quietly convicted him of. Because after all in a society that claims there are no good men left, no woman in their right mind would ever leave a good man. Right?
I hope this story from Stacy Morrison helps guide women who have risen through the difficult ranks of business and struggling to grasp they just might feel more equipped in the workforce than as a wife or even a mother. That it’s OK to build on their strengths in order to build a peaceful fulfilling life. And if our society can allow women to simply be who they are maybe we can learn to connect to how men might feel when they have heard the words, “I’m Done.”
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