A Line of Women

There is a part of this story — between the mask coming off and this room — that I am still not ready to tell. But this part, I can tell you now.

The first time I met with my attorney in person, the entire experience felt surreal. There's that word again. Surreal. But I don't know another one that fits.

She asked a lot of the same questions everyone else had asked me. “How could you not know?”

And once again, I found myself explaining something that had made perfect sense inside my marriage. Opposite schedules. A rhythm of life I had no reason to question because, as far as I knew, everything was fine. The bills were paid. We had what we needed. Why would I have been suspicious?

I trusted my husband. That was the answer. I trusted him.

There seems to be this assumption that betrayal must leave breadcrumbs everywhere — that surely the person being betrayed should have noticed something. But when you trust someone, you aren't conducting an audit of your marriage.

You're living in it.

At some point during that meeting, though, something changed. She understood. I could see it happen — all the pieces clicking together for her at once. And suddenly she wasn't asking me how I had missed it anymore. She was telling me what to do next.

“Here is what you do. Here is what you say. You leave it at that.”

That was it. No spiraling. No overexplaining. No begging someone to understand why I was hurt. Just a plan. A strategy. Instructions.

I cannot fully explain what began happening inside me in that room. Because sitting there, listening to this woman calmly hand me the tools to protect myself, I suddenly felt like there were other women in the room with us.

Three of them.

My grandmothers and my best friend. Three women I have always believed are among my guardian angels.

Inez. Nonny. Lauren.

Three women who, in completely different ways, had faced circumstances that took choices away from them.

Inez was institutionalized — trapped not only by circumstance, but by the time in history in which she lived.

Nonny found herself with three children and a marriage she had to leave. And she did leave — in 1971. Sometimes I think about what that actually meant. A woman with three children choosing herself at a time when women were not exactly celebrated for doing so. She endured it. She survived it. She kept going.

And Lauren — Lauren didn't get more time. Death made the choice for her.

Three women I loved. Three women who knew what it meant for life to become something they could no longer control. And suddenly there I was. Sitting in an attorney's office. Alive. With choices. With resources. With a woman across the desk telling me exactly how to use them.

I felt them. I know how that sounds. But I did. It felt like generations of women had crowded themselves into that little office and were standing behind my chair saying: Listen to her. You can do this. This is your chance.

I walked out of that meeting lighter than I had walked in. Confident. Focused. Ready.

And then I got into my car. That is when it got weird.

My entire body started buzzing. Not metaphorically. Buzzing. Energy moving through every inch of me. And in my head, I could almost hear them: Go. Do it. You've got this. We are with you. We are proud of you. Do not back down. GO.

It was so intense that I sat there for a second just feeling it. Then I looked into the rearview mirror.

The hair at the very top of my head — right at my crown — was sticking straight up. Straight. Up.

Apparently the spiritual pep rally happening inside my body had escalated to electricity. I stared at myself in the mirror and almost laughed. Because of course. Of course this whole insane, devastating, completely surreal chapter of my life would include my angels electrifying my hair in a parking lot.

Subtlety has never really been the universe's preferred method of communicating with me.

But underneath the humor was something much deeper. I felt surrounded. I felt protected. And maybe most importantly, I felt brave. Not because I suddenly wasn't scared. But because, for the first time in a long time, I felt like I was standing inside a line of women instead of standing alone.

Women who had endured. Women who had survived. Women who had lost choices. Women who had fought like hell with the choices they did have.

And now I had choices they hadn't. I could speak. I could leave. I could protect myself. I could refuse to be intimidated. I could fight.

When those six deer appeared at dusk in that golden field, I knew exactly who three of them were.

Inez. Nonny. Lauren.

Standing there. Watching me. Quiet. Steady. Unmoving. And the same message came through them again: Go. Do this. We are here. We are proud of you.

And then something else. Something that has stayed with me:

Do it for us.

Maybe that is part of what breaking generational cycles really means. It isn't that the women before you were weak. Quite the opposite — sometimes they were astonishingly strong. They simply lived in worlds that did not give them the choices we have now.

So perhaps honoring them does not mean repeating their endurance. Perhaps it means using the freedom they should have had. Speaking when they were silenced. Leaving when they were trapped. Protecting ourselves when they could not. Choosing differently — because now we can.

I walked into that attorney's office devastated by what one man had done to me.

I walked out carrying the strength of three women. And apparently enough electricity to make my hair stand on end.

Fight had officially begun.