I published an essay entitled, “I’m A Surgeon. I’m Also Child-Free — And 6 Words From A Colleague About My Life Left Me Stunned,” on HuffPost Personal in 2024.

The morning it went live, my alarm jolted me from sleep well before sunlight filled the sky. I grabbed my phone, swiped it open to see the headlines, and there, smack dab in the middle of my news feed, I saw my name. The day had hardly begun… and I was already trending.

I had revealed my most private feelings about my reproductive life and detailed how my choice not to have children was repeatedly called out in professional settings. I was confident that whether I had kids or not did not determine my worth as a person. In the 21st century, it should not be controversial to say that some women choose other paths. And, still, that morning, I was nervous about sharing all this in such a public way.

Those nerves only proved my social conditioning. Women without kids are still viewed within the context of rigid stereotypes. I was anxious about how my essay – and I – would be perceived, and I worried it wouldn’t be good.

Then something unexpected happened. I was inundated with messages. Over the next week, my Instagram, the essay’s comment section, and even my work email were flooded with a huge outpouring of gratitude and positivity. Women wrote to thank me for sharing what they felt but couldn’t vocalise, for helping dispel the myth that women without kids are selfish and cold, and for making it clear that women don’t need to apologise for choosing not to have children. More people felt like me than I ever would have guessed.

Most of these messages were from women who, like me, did not want to be mothers. Women who knew that their reproductive freedom was hard fought and well deserved, but still wrestled with strong societal expectations. Some of the messages I received, however, were from women with kids who wished they had been told at some point in their lives that they had other options. I even received notes from men who had witnessed their partners’ or wives’ value reduced to whether or not they were a mother. What united all of these people was a simple wish: for women to be valued beyond their reproductive choices.

I would be lying, though, if I said all the responses I received were positive. A proportion of these notes were filled with anger and resentment. A few of them even veered into harassment. Like the positive messages, these all had a unifying theme.

“You stupid idiot,” wrote one person, “will feminism take care of you when you’re old and dying?” Feminism, responses like these implied, was to blame for my decision to pursue a life as a successful surgeon, to follow the instincts that told me I did not want children of my own and that my life could be complete without motherhood.

To some degree, I expected to receive messages like these from men, but I was surprised to find that many of the negative replies were, in fact, authored by women. They insisted my own take on my own life could not be trusted and that I was lying about feeling fulfilled. I would never be happy, they insisted, and never know true love or joy. My life would always be incomplete, they said, since I had been misled by a wolf in sheep’s clothing into a life without meaning. That wolf was, apparently, feminism.

These sentiments are not new, even if they have been emboldened by the current presidential administration. Feminism has long been a societal scapegoat. The wave of feminism championed by figures like Gloria Steinem encouraged women to free themselves of society’s expectation that all women must have children and stay in the kitchen. However, in recent years, this narrow definition has been heavily critiqued for the way it may appear to overlook and undervalue the labour involved in motherhood. This version of feminism has also estranged women from different backgrounds by centring the experiences and priorities of only white middle class women.

Women who find deep meaning in child rearing and significance in their work at home have felt alienated by mainstream versions of the movement. Some have even fled progressive politics because they found more alignment in conservative platforms, which often embrace domestic life and labour as a woman’s truest calling. There are even those who have argued that feminism has “ruined” motherhood by allowing women to pursue alternative paths in life and by encouraging the declining birth rate. Furthermore, the experiences, voices, and struggles of marginalised, non-white, and queer women have not always been included in the mission of some approaches to / forms of feminism, leaving many searching for alternative frameworks to fight for all women’s rights.

As the derogatory messages I received in my inbox show, the societal skepticism of women without children is not going anywhere, especially now that we have high-powered conservative think tanks pushing regressive gender roles and opposition to feminist movements. They, too, take the stance that feminism has damaged the traditional family structure by allowing women to believe their lives can be fulfilled without motherhood and marriage.

At the same time, conservatives like JD Vance, who is well known for his animosity towards single women without children, are using their large platforms to claim that women who pursue professional careers are causing social unrest.

Instead of addressing the real lack of support mothers face in this country, Trump is also making an explicit play to push motherhood on American women. Since my essay was published, we have seen proposals for a baby-bonus cash payout for new mothers, childbirth medals, and a federally funded tax-advantaged savings account seeded with $1,000 for any child born between 2025 and 2029, all aimed at selling women on partaking in a traditional nuclear-family lifestyle.

As a paediatric surgeon who helps children every day, I do not understand how I could be viewed as an enemy of the state. Unfortunately, I still see this belief play out – even at work.

In fact, a mother recently asked me a series of personal questions to suss out whether I was capable of performing her child’s routine surgery. After inquiring about my qualifications, she asked me directly whether I was a mother. “No,” I told her, and I asked her why she wanted to know. After a bit of rambling, she concluded with an unconvincing apology, noting, “But I think women should be able to do all kinds of jobs… or whatever.”

I don’t mind questions, and I understand parents put a huge amount of trust in their children’s doctors, especially when it comes to surgery. However, this specific encounter was yet another reminder that even a woman’s value in professional settings can be tied back to their reproductive choices.

I knew a question like this didn’t belong in that hospital exam room and had nothing to do with my skill as a surgeon, but it’s no surprise women feel this way. After all, we are all taught to view women without children as less capable and less committed to the care of others.

At the time I wrote my original essay, I had hoped such sentiments about women without children were declining. But in the weeks after it was released, I watched Kamala Harris’ choice to not have children of her own get repeatedly dragged through the mud. The derogatory rhetoric about women without children has, sadly, only accelerated since I awoke to find myself trending on my phone screen.

I, however, have never wavered in my belief in my value as a childfree woman. Because of the women who have come before me, I have been able to live a life full of joy, meaning, and fulfilment – on my own terms. I will continue to use my voice to ensure others can do the same.

Caitlin A. Smith is a surgeon and writer in the Pacific Northwest. Her personal essays on surgical training and experiences have appeared on Doximity. She is currently writing her first book, a firsthand account about the life and experiences of women in medicine. Find her at @miseducationofaknife on Instagram and Substack.

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I have always prided myself on having a sixth sense for deception, an ability to spot the lie buried in the casual comment or the discrepancy in a story that exposed what someone is working to hide. I figured that’s what made me a great thriller writer.

In 16 books published over 25 years, I’d been constructing elaborate plots where people led double lives and hid horrible truths with both blatant lies and simple misdirection.

My protagonists were always law enforcement – inspectors and detectives, a medical examiner – sharp-eyed women trained to see through shiny veneers to notice the small inconsistencies that eventually cracked the case.

And yet, for two and a half years, I missed the most obvious plot twist of my life: my husband was having an affair with his massage therapist.

The irony isn’t lost on me. Somedays, the irony is suffocating.

It was a Friday afternoon in December 2022 when I found out. Our kids were home from college for the holidays, and our family was preparing to head to Mexico to join my sister and her family for a week of sun, sand and margaritas.

I discovered his affair not through any brilliant investigative work nor the careful attention to detail I so prided myself on. Instead, the discovery came from a charge on a credit card statement – a session with a couples counsellor we hadn’t seen in almost a decade – that caused an uncomfortable pit in my stomach.

I sometimes wonder whether the appearance of that pit meant that suspicion had been planted before then – whether there was a part of me, deep and buried, that sensed the rot beneath the carefully maintained façade.

When I reached out to my husband, his phone was turned off. For more than two hours, the pit grew as he remained unreachable and our adult children began to sense something was wrong. When his phone finally came back online, I confronted him with the charge and asked what was going on.

“I’m almost home. Let’s talk then,” he responded. So casual. So calm.

When he arrived, he asked if we could talk without the kids.

“What’s going on?” I demanded when we were alone. “I’m not in love with you anymore,” he said in the same tone you might mention the oil light has come on in the car.

“Who are you in love with?” I asked.

Love was energy; it didn’t just dissipate into the ether. It went somewhere else.

“There’s no one else,” he told me.

He acted normal for the next 24 hours. In weak imitation, the kids and I tried to act normal, too, to prepare for our trip and the small Christmas celebration we planned before leaving.

The following morning, Christmas Eve, we were set to depart for our vacation when I woke at 4am with the memory of something my husband said when our friends divorced: “A man never leaves his marriage unless there’s someone waiting for him.”

I roused him at 4:04am and asked again, “Who are you in love with?” When he didn’t answer, I started to guess. I got it in two. On the first guess, he protested loudly. On the second, he went silent.

“How long?” I asked. If I’d written the scene, I like to think I’d have been more creative, but creativity evaporated in the panic of that moment.

I shouldn’t have been surprised that he lied again. It took more than three weeks to get him to admit that the relationship had been going on for almost two and a half years. Three years later, there are details that never quite squared and lies that were never ironed out.

As a thriller writer, I’ve spent countless days imagining the worst things people can do to each other. I’ve sat in coffee shops and on airplanes and at my desk and invented murders, betrayals, psychological torture.

I’ve been inside the heads of liars and manipulators and people who destroy others without remorse. That experience made me believe I understood human darkness with a clarity others lack. But understanding it for the benefit of a story and living through it are entirely different things.

For days after I found out, I moved through my life like a stranger. Every object felt suspicious, every memory potentially false. Had he been thinking about her when we were in Nashville for my birthday the month before? Was he texting her from our bed when I was in the kitchen and setting up the coffee machine for the next day? How many times had he said “I love you” while mentally planning his next Friday massage appointment?

“Really? Your massage therapist?” I asked once, during one of those miserable circular conversations where nothing gets resolved and everything gets worse. “A 50-year-old man and his massage therapist. It’s so cliché.”

The comment clearly stung, as if I’d insulted his creativity rather than his fidelity.

“We were friends first. She listened to me,” he said.

“I listen to you,” I said like a petulant child.

“You’re in your office, working, or you’ve got your nose in a book for the podcast.”

He wasn’t entirely wrong.

Once our kids had left for college, I’d shifted my focus to my writing and working harder than ever as my career took off. I’d stopped working on the marriage. My shiny new toy was the book; his worked out the kinks in his neck, ones put there by 30 years with me.

That December, I was neck-deep in a manuscript about a detective investigating a pregnant surrogate who goes missing. It was a book I’d been so excited about six months earlier, one I’d been confident was my darkest, most psychologically complex book yet.

After I learned my husband’s secret, I couldn’t write a word.

Every time I sat down at my desk, I’d cry or stare at the blank page, wondering why I bothered. What did these pretend murders matter? What did my clever plot twists signify when I’d missed the biggest one in my own life?

Beyond the logistical fears about my own future was another terrifying realisation: I no longer wanted to write the detective book. Overnight, I’d lost interest in stories about detectives solving crimes, justice being served through shootouts and the court system, about the bad guys getting caught and punished. Suddenly, those seemed too neat, too fake, like fairy tales and not the Grimm’s variety.

Real betrayal, I learned, doesn’t get solved in 300 pages. Real deception doesn’t wrap up with a satisfying twist where everything makes sense and the protagonist emerges stronger and wiser. Real betrayal sits there, ugly and unresolved, in the middle of your life while people take sides and you fill the garage with items you once cherished and no longer want to see.

I started thinking about the kinds of stories that had never interested me – messy ones where the protagonist doesn’t figure everything out and there are no clear villains, just people making terrible choices for complicated reasons. Stories set in the ugly places I’d never wanted to go until now.

When I found my way back to the page, I rewrote the surrogate story, cutting the point of view from the detective, and placing the biological mom at its centre with her best friend from high school as the surrogate who vanishes four days before the baby is due.

In this new version, the story focuses on these women who were friends in high school and the complications of their long, intense friendship.

Though there is a big moral question at the centre of the book, as well as a fun, juicy plot, it was the interactions between the characters themselves that allowed me to explore the messy reality of life that I was living through while writing.

My divorce was finalised at the end of 2023, a few months after I got a new agent, six months before my agent sold that book, Pinky Swear, at auction for release earlier this year. It was the hardest book I’ve ever written and the best.

The one I’m writing now is trickier, more complicated. It’s about a woman who discovers her husband’s long affair with a massage therapist.

My husband was married to a thriller writer for almost 30 years. This can’t come as a surprise to him. Still, this is not a memoir. There’s a murder, for starters. But there are echoes from my own experience in the details, like the secrets that begin small and seem harmless … until they’re not.

While the main character is not me, the protagonist is walking in my own, uncomfortable shoes, trying to construct a narrative to make sense of chaos, and working to find a path forward when the narrative crumbles.

Every time I drive downtown, I scan the cars, the street, the store or restaurant for my ex-husband and his girlfriend. I still haven’t seen them together, though I know that they are. I wonder what I’ll feel when I do – a fresh wallop of despair? Closure? I have run the scenario a hundred times, and I still don’t know.

What I do know is that the writing I’m doing now feels like what I should be doing. Not because detective fiction isn’t important or valuable, but because I’d been using it as a way to imagine I could manage the outcome and somehow avoid the terrible things that happen to people who I imagined weren’t as studious or as prepared.

For months, I’d been plotting elaborate lies and deceit in that first draft of Pinky Swear while missing the simple, stupid truth: that the person sleeping next to me was a stranger. That I was so good at inventing characters for mysteries, I’d forgotten to be curious about the one I’d married.

I see now what those books were really about: control. The illusion that if you’re smart enough, observant enough, careful enough, you can see the betrayal coming. You can solve the crime. You can write your way to safety.

But you can’t. Life isn’t a thriller, and there’s no genius detective who’s going to figure it all out – no satisfying final chapter where all the pieces fit. At least, not in my life. Instead, there are just little clues I recognised far too late about the person I thought I knew becoming someone I never knew at all.

The book I’m working on now – the one about the woman who discovers her husband’s two-and-a-half-year affair with his massage therapist – will be called Happy Ending.

It won’t be neat or easy, but it might be happy. I hope it will be.

Danielle Girard is the USA Today bestselling and award-winning author of several novels, including the Annabelle Schwartzman series and Pinky Swear. She is also the creator and host of the Killer Women Podcast, where she interviews the women who write today’s best crime fiction. A graduate of Cornell University, Danielle received her MFA in creative writing at Queens University of Charlotte, North Carolina. When she’s not traveling, Danielle lives in the mountains of Montana.

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Early in the morning of Nov. 10, 2017, I got the phone call every parent dreads and none of us are ever prepared for. On that November morning, my oldest daughter, 15-year old Parker Lily, lost the battle with her mental health that we thought she’d been winning. Since that call, my family and I have been trying to rebuild our lives.

For years, I carried around the same tacit misconception many people do about suicide: if someone seems depressed, dejected or hopeless, you don’t say the S-word. You definitely don’t ask if they’re thinking about taking their own life. The worry behind this misconception is simple: you don’t want to put the idea of suicide into their head.

I’m here to tell you, as a father whose life was split into “before” and “after” by that phone call, the opposite is true.

If you take nothing else from what I’m about to say, take this: you will not cause suicide by asking someone directly if they’re thinking about it.

The mental health world has firmly renounced the idea of not asking someone directly. And I’m hoping to get as many people as possible to understand this and to jettison silence. You might be the lifeline they didn’t know they were allowed to grab.

Parker wasn’t a “statistic.” She was my daughter. She was also a force of nature.

Even as a little girl, she was formidable: curious, larger than life and constantly creating. Almost from the time she could walk, teachers were telling us how gifted she was as an artist, how she possessed a level of abstract thinking way beyond her years.

She was a protective, loving big sister to her siblings Rory and Hudson. She was fiercely loyal, cared deeply about her family and friends and had an antipathy for injustice that would light up a room, or a dinner table argument.

She was also very funny. At four, she was already asking big questions like, “Why can’t I eat ice cream for breakfast?” and delivering them with a level of confidence that made you think, “Honestly, why can’t you?”

In later years, you would have seen a bright, artsy teenager who was thriving at her Maryland high school; a place structured specifically for kids battling mental health issues. She made friends, acted in plays, created art and seemed, finally, to be hitting her stride. From the inside, there was a lot more going on.

Parker struggled with her mental health. There were moods we didn’t understand, self-harm, a stay in a psych ward. There were shifts in medications, potential diagnoses (bipolar? borderline personality disorder?) that were terrifying to hear attached to your child. There were stretches when she seemed to be climbing out of it – when we allowed ourselves to think, “She’s winning. We’re over the worst of it.”

We wanted that to be true so badly.

The morning she died, my phone rang with a Maryland number I didn’t recognise. I almost didn’t pick up. But I did pick up, and I heard an officer tell me Parker had taken her own life. Her roommate had found her. The police hadn’t been able to reach her mother, Deb, my ex-wife. I heard a voice come out of my mouth that said: “I’ll tell Deb.”

My brain split. Part of me was insistent that this had to be a mistake, a sick joke. The other part was already running toward the house where Deb and the kids were sleeping, knowing I had to wake them up and say the words out loud.

On my way there, I found myself standing on a corner, outside of myself, waiting for a traffic light to change. The bus stop, the police precinct, the blue sky: None of it made sense. Parker was gone. There was no right side up.

Then something overwhelmed me, rushing past the horror. It was the first of many to follow. It was a wave of grief. Grief that manifested itself as pure love.

I’m not ascribing any mystical significance to the experience. I was reacting to massive trauma. Adrenaline, flooding brain chemicals, my emotions, my memories, all working together to keep me from completely losing my grip. That’s a perfectly reasonable explanation.

But in that moment, Parker came to me – from my heart, my mind, my soul – and gave me the courage to go to her mother, to her siblings, and tell them that she was gone.

That was the beginning of “After.”

In the months after Parker’s death, I started going to support groups for people left behind after suicide. I walked into those rooms feeling that my story was unique, my pain singular. I walked out realising that suicide is heartbreakingly common, and that most people don’t talk about it.

I heard story after story, each different in details but similar in impact: the shock, the guilt, the endless replaying of “What did I miss?” and “Why didn’t I…?” and “If only I’d said X, or done Y.”

The numbers are brutal, especially for young people. Too many of our kids are battling suicidal thoughts, and far too many of them are doing it in silence because they’re ashamed or scared, or because the adults around them are too terrified to even think about, let alone name what might be happening.

Then, in the spring of 2022, my daughter Rory wrote a college essay about living in the shadow of Parker’s death and her own mental health struggles. Reading her words – raw, direct, courageous – awoke something in me.

She talked about not knowing how to be anyone but “Parker’s sister,” about trying to figure out who she was in the wreckage. It knocked something loose in me.

I realised I couldn’t keep expecting my kids to tell the truth about their pain if I was going to stay quiet about mine. It was time to confront the silence and guilt that take over after suicide, and to make sure that people who feel pulled toward that edge know they are not alone. There is zero shame in asking for help.

So, I started telling my story.

At first, it wasn’t a show. It was just me, at a table late at night, scribbling memories and fragments: Parker as a little girl insisting on ice cream, Parker drawing on every surface in the apartment, Parker in a hospital gown apologising for being sick, Parker onstage at school and absolutely owning it.

I wrote about the day of the phone call and the immediate aftermath: the wake, and what it feels like to stand over your child’s body. What it feels like to see your grief mirrored by the family and friends surrounding you.

Over time, those pages turned into a script – a one-man show about a family punched through the heart by suicide, and the love that somehow keeps flowing regardless.

It’s a family portrait and a love letter to Parker. It’s also a survival story. Not a triumphant “and then everything was fine” survival, but the kind where you limp forward, fall down and keep getting up because there are still people who need you, who love you. I called it “Bent Through Glass” because life is unspeakably fragile, the world a place of broken shards despite our best efforts. And also, and more importantly, because even when glass fractures or breaks, it never ceases to refract the light around us.

If Parker can no longer be here, then what I want is for her story to help someone else stay.

If you’ve lost someone to suicide, you might be in the same loop I was:

How did I not see it coming? How did I let it happen? What kind of parent, partner, friend does this make me?

I don’t have answers that make those questions disappear. What I’ve learned is that the questions themselves are a vacuum. “Why?” is eternal, possessing an infinite array of answers. I spent years asking why, only to be dragged deeper into a lightless hole, every time.

The only thing that has any consistency for me now is this: don’t turn away from it. Turn toward it. That means turning toward your own grief instead of stuffing it down and pretending you’re “fine.” It means turning toward the people around you who are hurting, instead of looking away because you’re afraid of saying the wrong thing.

And it especially means this: if you think someone you love might be suicidal, say the word. Ask the question.

You are not going to “give them the idea.” If they are in that kind of pain, the idea is already there. What you might give them is permission to tell the truth out loud. Ask directly: “Are you thinking about killing yourself?” If the answer is yes:

• Stay.
• Tell them you’re grateful they told you.
• Help them reach out to trained support: a crisis line (in the U.S., you can call or text 988), a therapist, a doctor, a trusted adult, whoever is available and trained to help.

You don’t have to fix them. You’re not a superhero. You’re a human being saying, “I see you, and I’m not going anywhere.”

If you’re the one in that dark place right now, hovering on the edge of thoughts you don’t want to admit even to yourself, this is what I want to say as a father:

Stay. Stay long enough to tell one person. Stay long enough to make one call or send one text. Stay long enough to get through this hour, and then the next one.

You are not weak for needing help. You are not a burden for feeling this way. There is no shame in saying, “I can’t hold this alone.”

When I step out under the lights and tell this story, I’m not doing it because I enjoy reliving the worst day of my life. I’m doing it because, in the aftermath of Parker’s death and Rory and Hudson’s struggles, it’s clear to me that silence around suicide is killing people.

We cannot afford that silence anymore. We never could.

Alex Koltchak is a writer, filmmaker, actor, performer, and stand-up comedian. His one-man show, Bent Through Glass, is being staged at The 30th Street Theater in NYC from April 1-25, 2026, with the aim of performing the work nationally.

My grandmother never stepped foot in a swimming pool. The closest she ever came was the afternoon I held my phone in front of her face, tilting the tiny glowing screen so she could see her great-granddaughters slicing through bright blue water at a swim meet. They were still little then, just beginning to race. Her eyes were tired but sharp.

“Shana,” she said, squinting at the screen, “what is that girl doing in that water?!” There was real fear in her voice; the kind that doesn’t come from ignorance, but from history.

“She’s racing, Grandma,” I told her. “That’s Zuri. Don’t worry – she’s safe.”

She leaned closer, watching those small arms churn. “Do they like swimming?”

She nodded slowly, and looked on. “I never did learn to swim, baby. Never even been in a pool.” I squeezed her hand. “I know. But we aim to change all that with Zuri and Amara.”

What I didn’t say was that this wasn’t just about safety. It was about rewriting something.

My grandmother never learned to swim, but my mother did. In her childhood, sparkling public pools were not invitations. They were exclusions.

During segregation, Black families had been barred from entry. When desegregation came, many towns chose to close pools rather than integrate them. Access to water – something so innocent and basic – became a quiet marker of who belonged.

The effects are still visible today. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Black Americans drown at rates about 1.5 times higher than white Americans, and the disparity is especially stark for children. In swimming pools, Black children ages 10–14 drown at rates 7.6 times higher than white children. Public health researchers have linked these disparities in part to generations of unequal access to pools and swim instruction.

But in the late ’70s, my mama stepped into the water anyway. Two months after she gave birth to me – the first of her seven children – she signed up for swim lessons. If she learned, her children would not inherit fear as instinct.

When we were little, she made sure every one of us took lessons. We grew up in Charleston, where sometimes it feels like there is more water than land. Rivers stretch wide. Marshes wind through neighbourhoods. The ocean is never far. Every summer, we went to W.L. Stephens pool. The smell of chlorine. The echo of whistles. The sting of sun on wet shoulders.

Each year, we grew stronger. My brother and I kept up our lessons into high school – we were not racers, but continued swim education for safety: yardage, endurance, treading water until our legs shook. In our family, swimming was non-negotiable.

But “basic” has not always meant “accessible”. Many of our Black and brown friends didn’t take lessons. They came to the pool, yes, but they stayed close to the sides, where the waves slipped gently into the gutters and onto the deck. My siblings and I could go much farther out – not recklessly, but confidently. The water was our friend, not a stranger.

Years later, I found myself sitting in the bleachers at that very same pool – W.L. Stephens – but this time as a mother. Zuri was seven. It was her first swim meet. She stepped up for the 25-yard freestyle – tiny, serious, goggles slightly crooked. The buzzer sounded. She dove. She touched the wall first.

Her coach ran up to me, wide-eyed: “Looks like her time was one of the fastest in the state for her age group.”

One of the fastest in the state. In the same pool where I learned to tread water. In the same water my mother insisted we master. I felt the past and future colliding in chlorinated air.

What I did not expect was that Zuri would fall in love with racing. At eight, she swam anchor at the 8 & Under State Championships. Her team was seeded low. The role of anchor, or the last team member to swim in a relay, is often filled by the fastest or most experienced swimmer. She dove and touched first. The tiny swimmers took first in the state.

Years later, at her final Age Group State Championship, she stood on the blocks again as anchor. Same pool, but she was older, stronger. The natatorium hummed. The starter beeped. She dove with quiet poise and remarkable strength. I didn’t breathe. When she touched the wall, the scoreboard flashed: 24.91.

Under 25. On a relay. At 14 years old.

Three other girls had already poured everything into that water before she dove in. Four bodies. One finish. They broke their team record and placed third in the state – less than a second from first.

I covered my mouth before I realised I was crying. It was not just her time. It was the inheritance, interrupted.

There were not many girls who looked like her in that heat. USA Swimming reports roughly 2% of its membership is Black. Two percent. Better than my grandmother’s day. Better than my mother’s. Still small enough to notice.

I do not let Zuri carry that weight. From me, she gets steadiness. Her dream is hers.

My grandmother passed away in March 2024. She never stepped into a pool. But she empowered the next three generations to step forward anyway.

In just four generations, a grandmother was barred from entry, a mother stepped in anyway and a daughter made swimming non-negotiable. Now a great-granddaughter anchors relays and breaks swimming records with her teammates. Four generations of unconditional love. Lifetimes of growth and development.

I miss my grandmother. But she saw the beginning of this change, and that matters more than I can fully explain. Water once represented exclusion. Now, in our family, it represents possibility. And that feels like victory.

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I could tell you my marriage ended. But that wouldn’t be the whole story. The truth is I slowly and quietly destroyed my marriage while convincing myself everything was fine.

I’m an average guy. I had a good job, and I showed up physically. I paid the bills. I provided. I thought that was enough. I thought love was something you earned once and then just… had.

I grew up in a small town in rural western Kentucky, raised in church by a devoted mother. Faith was familiar. Scripture was familiar. People watched me grow up and assumed I’d be fine. I assumed it, too.

My parents divorced when I was five. After that, I saw my father three times before he died. No birthdays. No calls. No effort. For years, he lived a mile from me, and I never knocked on his door. I didn’t have the courage. We joked about it when we drove by his house, but jokes are sometimes just a mask for pain.

I didn’t realise then how much that absence shaped me. I learned how to be likeable. How to avoid confrontation. How to be “fine” instead of honest.

When she walked into church one Sunday in a red dress back in the summer of 2014, the world stopped. I still see it clearly. Third row from the back, sliding past her family to the middle of the pew. She didn’t know what she did to me just by walking in. I remember thinking, Don’t screw this up.

She had a way of making rooms feel warmer without trying. A confidence that wasn’t loud. A softness that wasn’t weak. She laughed easily, but she also carried depth. She noticed people. She listened. She remembered things I forgot.

When I told her I loved her and she said it back, something settled deep in me. Well, after my heart exploded in my chest. It felt safe. Certain. Like I had finally landed somewhere.

I loved her in ways that were quiet and ordinary. I loved how she moved through the world. She loved the beach, and I loved watching her stand at the edge of the water, red swimsuit with white trim, dipping her toes in and hesitating. She was terrified of sharks and whatever else she thought might await her out there. She would cling to me as I pulled her farther out, trusting me even when she was afraid.

I loved the way she looked at night when everything was quiet. Wearing one of my T-shirts, ratty pyjama shorts, hair a mess, no makeup. No one has ever looked better with no makeup. Standing at the end of the bed rubbing lotion on her arms, talking about something small that felt important just because she was saying it. I would watch her and think, This is it.

And still, I didn’t protect it.

I loved her voice. I loved the way she sang karaoke without fear. I loved how she laughed at herself. I loved how hard she tried. How much she gave.

And then, years later, when she said yes to my proposal, something in me relaxed. I thought the work was done.

I didn’t stop loving her. I stopped being careful with her heart. I stopped listening the way I used to. I stopped noticing when she was tired. I stopped hearing what she was really saying. I defended myself, instead of protecting us. I crossed lines I knew better than to cross. I hid things because honesty felt inconvenient.

I didn’t lose my wife all at once. I lost her in pieces.

For 10 years, I quietly gave her hell. Through defensiveness. Through distraction. Through choosing comfort over connection. Through the nights I chose screens, hobbies or “me time” over sitting next to her. Through moments where she needed my presence.

She warned me. She told me she was tired. She told me she felt alone. She told me she was losing feelings. She said it more than once. More than twice. I treated those words like background noise. Something to address later. Something that could wait.

I thought love would wait.

On Christmas morning in 2025, everything looked normal. The kids were laughing. Wrapping paper everywhere. A life built together doing what it had always done. But when I looked at her, her eyes were empty. Not angry. Not sad. Just done.

When she asked me to leave, I told myself it was temporary. I said what I needed to say to get back to feeling comfortable. A week later, it wasn’t temporary anymore.

I moved into an apartment. Friends told me I’d be home soon. I wanted to believe them. But something inside me knew I wouldn’t be.

There is a special kind of loneliness that comes from grieving someone who is still alive. Your brain lies to you and tells you there’s hope because she’s breathing, because you can still see her. But your heart knows when something sacred has already left the room.

Finally, the lights came on.

Years ago, my mum bought me glasses to help improve my colour-blindness. When I put them on, I cried. Colours I had never seen before exploded into view. That’s what this was like – except it wasn’t colours. It was her.

I saw everything clearly. The love she gave. Her patience. Her effort. All the times she stayed when she shouldn’t have. And then I saw myself, from her side, without excuses. I realised that I didn’t lose her suddenly – I lost her slowly, choice by choice.

I let the pain hurt. Sleepless nights. Knots in my stomach. A heaviness that didn’t lift when the sun came up. Somewhere in that pain, I began to change.

Not to win her back. I changed because I couldn’t live as that man anymore.

I am learning not to waste time on things that just fill gaps in the day, but to focus on the things that truly make an impact in my life. I have learned to lean on God in a way that I never have in my life. I’ve learned “I’m sorry” has to be more than just words. I am learning to be a man.

Every day, I ask myself one question: How can I love her today – even if she never comes back? Sometimes that means prayer. Sometimes silence. Sometimes restraint. Sometimes doing the right thing knowing she’ll never see it and never know.

Our old home feels different now. I see unfinished projects. Cracks I never fixed. The effort I postponed because I thought there would always be time.

I wish I had been more present. I wish I had soaked in the moments instead of multitasking my way through them. I wish I had taken more pictures. More videos.

I still love her deeply. I probably always will. I don’t know what tomorrow will look like. I don’t know when this pain will ease or when I will no longer feel the urge to crawl back into her presence.

The world doesn’t stop turning, so we move forward. But we don’t have to move forward blind. I pray there will be another chance for me to find this kind of love again in the future. If I do, I will walk into it as a man with a scar – one that will instruct me on how to love for the rest of my life.

If my story keeps one man from assuming love will wait, from believing tomorrow is guaranteed, then something good came from the wreckage.

Don’t wait until it’s too late.

Logan Durall is a pseudonym for a writer who hopes other men might learn from his example before it’s too late.

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“JUST BRING BACK MY MAYAAAAAAAA,” I sobbed into the phone to my then-boyfriend of two years, Tom.

He had just left our East London apartment for a two-hour journey to the specialty vet hospital, where our 13-year-old paralysed chiweenie waited to be picked up. Housebound with Covid, I waited impatiently for him to return with the love of my life.

Tom knew that Maya had always been my soulmate. She had been at my side since I was 19 and going to college in Greenwich Village. She gently snorted in my bag as I snuck past security into my film class, where a treat from my professor awaited her. Bouncy and bright, Maya romped through the city with me, often drawing adoration from passersby for her cuteness.

We were inseparable. I would wake to the surge of traffic or the rumble of street construction below, Maya nuzzled into my dark hair. Up we went to the coffee shop’s takeout window, where, surprise, surprise, more treats were ready for her taking. On the subway, to friends’ houses, on road trips across state lines, and on flights home to sunny, smoggy Los Angeles, Maya came along every step of the way.

During Hurricane Sandy, it was Maya and me against the world. No power, no running water. Maya and I traipsed along the Westside Highway at twilight, a Blessed Virgin Mary candle ablaze as a torch, walking past what felt like a post-apocalyptic downtown.

Maya even moved across the pond with me to London when I turned 30 – a reset after a five-year relationship abruptly ended.

She first moved in with my mum, who FaceTimed me at least four times a day while I spent the longest three months of my life waiting for her to arrive.

When she finally did, I felt whole, like I could exhale and lean into my new London chapter.

A few months later, Maya, almost 12, lost mobility in her back legs. I placed her in a leather duffel bag (unzipped, of course), threw in some blankets and rushed into the November night to the same specialty vet hospital, which would become our refuge for the next three years.

Still in my yoga pants and sweatshirt from that afternoon, the only thing I could think about was getting Maya better. I kept reassuring her, “It’s OK, it’s going to be OK,” even though I was ultimately reassuring myself. Stroking her soft face and trying to keep the tears back, I knew our lives would never be the same.

“Intervertebral disc disease,” the neurologist said. “She needs a spinal fusion immediately.” With only a 50% chance of regaining movement in her hind legs, I began to prepare for whatever came next.

Maya glowed in her new neon pink set of wheels. She zipped along the Hackney Canals with even more flair than before, drawing even more smiles in her new form than she had on four legs.

It was during this period that I met Tom. We both swiped right, and I planned for him to meet Maya on our third date. By then, I had accumulated a handful of dog sitters for her. While she could be home alone for up to four hours, for special nights out, I needed backup.

Maya was still figuring out her new self and was scooting all over the apartment in her white puffy diapers. As soon as I brought Tom up to meet her, Maya had an accident all over a floor pillow. Embarrassed, I began to apologise.

“It is not a bother,” he laughed as he picked her up. “Come on, you. Let’s get you cleaned up,” he cooed as he reached for the kitchen roll.

It was at that moment that I knew Tom was here to stay. During lockdown, he would drive from the other side of London and spend the entire weekend with us, giving Maya baths, making a duvet fort for her so we could watch The Twilight Zone, and going for long walks with Maya rolling beside us. He would even adorn her with origami crowns. My plus-one became a plus-two.

On our first family holiday in summer 2020, we rented a cottage in the Cotswolds, where Maya rolled in green fields sprinkled with cows grazing. When she grew tired and needed a rest, Tom would scoop her up in his arms, like a bride being carried over the threshold, and blow on her face to cool her down.

When the three of us finally moved in together, our priority was securing a ground-floor apartment so Maya could come and go with ease. Our entire existence centered on Maya. It was never just Tom and me, but rather the three of us, moving as an imperfect unit into this new, cohesive life together.

As our love deepened, Maya’s age began to catch up with her. Despite being the ultimate roller girl, more health issues began to pile on: hyperparathyroidism, myoclonic seizures, pancreatitis and blindness. During this time, she would be up all night, distressed, howling and crying.

We took turns, surviving on three hours of sleep, our collective mental health wearing down, yet we persevered. On these late nights, I would turn on sound bath playlists, sing to her and do everything in my power to keep her settled on the futon we had set up in the living room. We would not give up on our Maya.

In January 2024, we celebrated her 16th birthday together. Our only measure of time was her comfort. As long as she was still eating, still bright-eyed and not in pain, we kept going. She had traded in her wheels for a stroller, and we pushed her everywhere, her head poking out to take in the breeze.

Maya was on a cocktail of medication, and our lives revolved around the rituals of caring for her – giving her syringes of medicine, hiding pills in peanut butter, cooking for her. She was a metronome, and our lives played to her rhythm.

Maya flew home with me that spring. By now, she could not be left alone, so it was easier to travel with her to ensure round-the-clock care. During this time, I felt Maya’s clock was running out.

I knew an engagement was just around the corner. I had found the ring in his sock drawer, and I kept saying how important it was to me to have Maya at our wedding. She would be the bouquet, as I dreamed of carrying her down the aisle.

Tom would not be marrying just me; he would also be making a vow to her.

Within 48 hours of returning to the UK, Maya was rushed to the emergency vet because she could no longer breathe on her own. We began Googling videos on how to build an oxygen chamber at home from a plastic storage container. Tom found all the parts we would need and was ready to pick up the oxygen tank when the call came. It was time.

We sat with her on our laps for five hours, crying as we looked through all the photos of our many adventures over the years: Maya gliding in Williamsburg, a soggy Tom holding an even soggier Maya after a lake dip, Maya in her skulls and crossbones sweater, us singing happy birthday to her. And then my worst fear finally happened. Her spirit had grown too big for her now very tired body.

I was devastated. I don’t remember getting into the car or Tom driving us home. He held my hand and, through his own tears, led me into our now very empty apartment. Even though he was tucking me into bed and telling me to try to rest, I felt truly alone for the first time in 16-and-a-half years.

The engagement came six weeks later, while I was waiting for a taxi to Heathrow to fly back to New York. It would be the first time I would be in the city without her. Maya’s vet gave me an envelope of bluebells to plant in her honour. On that solo trip back to NYC, I walked down Sixth Avenue, turned left onto 13th Street, and stood in front of the apartment where Maya and I first became inseparable.

Maya had always been my constant, my heartbeat outside my body. Losing her was like losing a piece of myself, the glue that held my world together. Kneeling, I spread some dirt beneath a tree and scattered the seeds.

Across the ocean, I knew my person was waiting for me. His love for Maya over those four years was one of the greatest acts of devotion I had ever witnessed. Our love for her and the shared grief of her absence would now be a journey Tom and I would navigate – together.

Jordan Ashley, Ph.D., is a writer and the founder and executive director of Souljourn Yoga Foundation, a nonprofit creating transformational yoga retreats that support girls’ education worldwide. Learn more at souljournyoga.com.

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I was 14 the first time I really thought about the death penalty. Every day in freshman English, our teacher wrote a new question on the whiteboard. Before class began, we had to write a short essay on the topic. One day, the prompt read: “What is your opinion on capital punishment?”

Until that moment, I hadn’t given it much thought. Whenever I heard that someone had been sentenced to death, I just assumed they probably deserved it. But I’d never been asked to consider whether it was morally right.

I wrote my first sentence with a No. 2 pencil: “I believe the death penalty is appropriate when a serious crime has been committed.”

Then I stopped. I picked up the eraser and erased it. I realised I couldn’t, in good faith, justify capital punishment.

Unlike my answer to the question on the board, death wasn’t a decision that could be undone just by picking up an eraser. Death was final. So, from that moment forward, I knew where I stood: I was against the death penalty.

As I grew older, my opposition to the death penalty never faded. It became a core part of my identity, a topic I often returned to in conversations with friends, or sometimes even strangers.

The more I read about the topic, the more disturbed I became by how unevenly capital punishment is applied. Two people can commit the same crime and receive completely different sentences, depending on where the crime occurred, or on their access to money and legal resources.

I learned about the many people who were executed and later found to be innocent. I began donating to The Innocence Project, an organisation that works to free the wrongfully convicted. At times, my donations were small. But it was my way of staying connected to a belief I had carried since I was 14.

I never expected that 20 years later, I would again be confronted with the same question written on that whiteboard. But this time, it wasn’t hypothetical.

In April 2025, I received a jury summons. I didn’t have time for jury duty, but the court’s website said most proceedings last only two to three days. I assumed I would not be selected, and if I was, I expected it to be brief.

Ultimately, I was selected to be a juror, and I quickly realised this wouldn’t be the case. It was a trial of an accused serial killer who was alleged to have murdered eight people: Andrew Remillard; Parker Smith; Salim Richards; Latorrie Beckford; Kristopher Cameron; Maria Villanueva; his mother, Rene Cooksey; and her partner, Edward Nunn.

As the scope of the case became clear, I knew that a death sentence was a real possibility, and I felt conflicted about moving forward as a juror. But as I listened to other potential jurors answer the attorneys’ questions during selection, I began to think maybe I belonged there. I hoped I could keep an open mind and bring nuance to deliberative conversations.

One of the most difficult days as a juror was when the youngest daughter of Maria Villanueva testified. Maria had been abducted and sexually assaulted. Her lifeless body was found in an unpaved alley – nearly naked, surrounded by trash cans and cigarette butts.

After listening to her talk about her mother, I had a 6pm dinner reservation for pasta and drinks with my neighbours. The juxtaposition felt shameful, but I was desperate to think about anything other than what had happened in court.

After months of testimony, the jury deliberated on whether or not the defendant was guilty. We found the defendant guilty on all charges, but the jury still had to determine if the defendant would receive life in prison with no release or the death penalty.

Before the sentencing phase of the trial began, the victims’ families read their impact statements.

When Kristopher Cameron’s partner spoke, I knew her words would hurt.

“Our son was only 10 months old when his father was taken. My daughter never got to meet him. My kids will never experience dances or donuts with their dad. He had dreams. Now all we are left with is the void his absence will carry.”

Kristopher’s children will never hear his voice or watch him walk through the front door after work and kiss their mother. Instead, they’re left with ashes on a mantle. They won’t know his smell, his laugh, or how it felt to hug him. They will never unwrap a gift with a tag that says, “From Dad.” Kristopher’s murder ended one life, but it also fractured every life he was connected to.

After several more months of listening to the prosecution and the defense arguing over mitigating circumstances, it was time for the jury to deliberate again. We immediately took a preemptive vote.

I was the only one who didn’t instantly vote for death.

Attempting to keep an open mind, for six out of the eight counts, I voted as “undecided”. For the murder of the defendant’s mother and her partner, I voted in favour of life without parole.

I braced for the judgement from the other jurors. I explained that I had tried to consider all the mitigating circumstances related to the defendant. He had been abused. I know his childhood was difficult, and I know that he had a problem with drugs. Legally, these factors all allowed us to grant leniency. But any attempt to have these conversations fell on deaf ears.

Many jurors refused to acknowledge the defendant’s history of drug abuse and mental illness, despite expert testimony from both the defense and the prosecution. All the mitigating circumstances were irrelevant to them. The only thing that mattered was making sure the defendant was executed.

It didn’t feel like justice for the victims – it was vengeance toward the defendant.

After just a few days of deliberation, I knew if I didn’t change my vote to execute, I’d be the cause of a hung jury, which meant the sentencing phase would have to be retried, a process that would take months. A new group of jurors would be tasked with deciding a sentence for a verdict they hadn’t delivered. And there was no way to know how long it would be before the new trial began.

I sat on the floor of the jury room hallway, creating a list.

If I choose death, that’s it. He’s dead.

But if I choose life, the jury will hang. His sentence will be retried, some new set of jurors will go through it all again, and the victims’ loved ones will be denied closure.

There was no option that did not harm someone, if not many people. There was no option that minimised the damage. I’d gone into this trial initially believing I would not vote to execute the defendant under any circumstance. I romanticised the idea of refusing to crack under pressure, and the mercy I would be extending to someone. But after a week of sleepless nights and several bottles of wine, I knew what I had to do.

“All in favour of life for count one, regarding Parker Smith, raise your hand.”

“Now, all in favour of death, raise your hand.” Twelve votes.

I was forced to put my hand up for each individual charge until I had voted for death six times. I couldn’t bring myself to vote for death regarding the murder of the defendant’s mother, Rene Cooksey, and her partner, Edward Nunn, because I did not believe the defendant was in a coherent state of mind when he committed these murders.

Once the vote was done, I managed to lift my head off the table, only to drop my face into my palms and weep. I couldn’t hold back any longer. I could hear backpacks zipping as the other jurors packed up their belongings to head out for lunch, while I just cried.

The defendant had been arrested on Dec. 17, 2017. Exactly eight years later, we turned in our verdicts. They were read out loud the next day.

Being a juror on a capital murder trial unearthed frustrations with our system that I never knew existed. I always knew that I didn’t support capital punishment, but I supported it even less after this experience.

I know I will always partially regret my decision. My life will forever exist in two sections: before trial and after trial. If I was able to give in on my most strongly held belief, what do I really believe in, and what do those beliefs even mean? Being responsible for an execution is a burden I will carry with me. While the death of each victim brings me sorrow, so does the inevitable death of the defendant.

I wish the trial hadn’t ended this way. But I wish there didn’t have to be a trial at all, because I wish that all eight victims were still here. I think about Andrew, Parker, Salim, Latorrie, Kristopher, Maria, Rene and Ed constantly. I will always do my best to make sure they live on.

I chose death, not because I wanted the defendant to die, but to bring closure to the families and to allow the victims to finally rest in peace. Although I know I am going to carry the burden of that choice with me forever, I hope it lifted at least a little of that burden off them.

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“You made a sex tape?!”

Susannah turned to her husband, Ron, mouth agape. He looked down, his cheeks reddening.

“It was right after college. I was experimenting,” he mumbled, twisting in his seat. “No big deal.”

As a couples therapist, I am always looking for how to mend the frayed edges of a relationship, but Susannah and Ron were different: they had come to my office to end their marriage.

I practice what I call breakup therapy — a short-term treatment I developed for couples who want to end their relationships without bitterness.

The premise is counterintuitive: instead of looking forward toward separate futures, we look backward at the relationship itself. It’s structured to look at the beginning, middle and end of their time together with exercises that focus on both their gratitude as well as their resentment.

The work culminates with the couple crafting a shared narrative about their union and literally writing it down – a story of what worked and ultimately what did not. Then, I ask them to sign it. In this way, they resolve the many unanswered, and often unasked, questions that can trap couples in recriminations and keep them from moving on.

The idea was born from my own bitter divorce. After my split, I was plagued by questions that repeated on an endless loop in my brain: “What was I thinking?”; “Why didn’t I see that red flag?”; “What is wrong with me – I’m a therapist and I should have seen what was happening.”

Then, one day, my therapist asked me a different question: who was I when I decided to marry? Suddenly, my internal feedback loop stopped.

“You’re asking me who I was, not why I married him?” I said, skeptically.

“Yes, I am,” she answered. “Marriages can be as much about identity as they are about a union. What were you trying to solve — or avoid — by marrying him?”

The question unlocked something for me. I’d been full of anger at myself, but I hadn’t really taken responsibility for my own actions. With her help, I crafted a story that I could hold onto about what function the marriage had served for me. Truly owning my choices helped me have more compassion for myself and less anger. The most startling realisation? When I had created a story that hung together, the nagging questions ended for good.

I have seen this same process unfold for many couples. But often, in the course of these sessions, new things surface.

“Susannah?” I said, surprised to hear the hurt in her voice. “This feels like a big deal for you. Why is that?”

Ron and Susannah had not been the most willing subjects for breakup therapy. During our first session, Ron blurted out: “You’re like a medical examiner doing autopsies on dead relationships! Your scalpel hurts. I don’t think you know what it feels like to be humiliated.”

“I wouldn’t be so sure,” I answered softly. “I have a teenager.”

“This feels stupid,” he said on another occasion. “She’s done, I accept that. What is there to say? This feels like horseshit.”

“See what I’m working with here?” Susannah said, throwing up her hands and shifting away from Ron on the couch. “I knew he wouldn’t take this seriously.”

“No, he’s right,” I said. “If it’s really true that you fully accept and understand her decision, Ron, then this is horseshit. But is that true?”

His silence was all the answer I needed.

Over the next few sessions, we went over how they’d fallen in love (“It just made sense, we fit”); the birth of their three children (“The unit held us together”); the unraveling of their connection (“We were ships in the night for as long as I can remember, but then one day I woke up and just wanted more from life”).

We mapped the patterns their marriage had fallen into over the course of three houses, two cross-country moves and their children’s exodus from home. It was a saga spanning decades.

Then, in our fourth session, Ron mentioned the sex tape.

“Something about this is landing hard on you,” I said to Susannah, her mouth still ajar. “Why?”

“Yeah, why?” Ron echoed.

Susannah paused and looked out the window.

“It’s that you … you tried something that – I don’t know – was out there … bold and different.”

A tear welled in a corner of her eye.

“It’s not you. You’re not brave! Or, at least you haven’t been with me, not in all these years together.”

Then she began to cry. Ron and I looked at one another.

“Susannah?” Instantly, I regretted breaking the silence.

“All this time, I decided you just couldn’t try new things,” she managed after a while. “I gave up.”

Ron put up his palms. “What is happening?” he said, exasperated.

“But if you can do that …” she continued. “What was it? Did I just not ask? Did I build my life around a lie?” She looked lost. “Was it that you never really loved me enough?”

She turned back to Ron and banged her fist on the couch.

“I did ask! I asked you to look at porn together when we stopped having sex, to take classes with me, to go on that whale-watching tour. … You just ignored me!”

This time, I held my tongue.

“Is that a thing?” she went on, turning to me. “That you can reach the end of a relationship and not even have known what was possible?”

“I made that tape 30 years ago,” Ron blurted out. “She’s upset over something I did when I was a totally different person!”

This was the impasse that I had expected, that arrives in most of my breakup therapy work – the moment when two people realise that as well as they think they know each other, there are things they don’t know or have lost track of. It’s my job to help them hold that bitter realisation. Then it’s my job to help them arrive at forgiveness or some kind of reconciliation – if not with each other, then with what happened to them.

“It was 30 years ago, Ron,” I said. “But you aren’t a different person. You’re the same person, and she’s wondering why you couldn’t have been that with her.”

I turned to Susannah and said, “You have a right to be hurt, but were you truly honest with him? Did you give him the space and the safety and the encouragement to be that person? Do you think you both can forgive each other for what you weren’t?”

It was three weeks before they appeared again in my office, having canceled two sessions in between appointments.

“I was stirred and moved by what happened here last time,” Susannah began. “When we left, I thought: Maybe there’s enough left between us?”

Ron’s eyes were downcast.

“But I realised I can’t,” she said. “I just can’t open up that part of me with him anymore. I want … I need this divorce.”

I nodded. “Ron? How do you feel?”

“I can see where we are … I’m not fighting it.” His voice broke. “I’m just really sad.”

Often it requires some kind of shock to break through the built-up layers of anger, resentment and disappointment in a couple in order to illuminate the cracks in their relationship – something true that has been avoided or left unsaid. In this case, it was the surprise of an ancient transgressive act that lay bare how little they knew each other and how misaligned they’d become.

Susannah moved closer to Ron on the couch and laced her fingers with his.

“You guys seem calmer – closer. Tell me what you are feeling,” I said.

I knew something about that calm after the storm. After my own divorce, we had maintained an uneasy truce for years, until one long car ride after dropping our daughter at camp. As we rode in silence, I suddenly remembered my therapist’s question: Who was I when I decided to get married? For the next two hours, we talked over that question and everything else, and together realised how lonely we had been — two Israelis who, instead of understanding why we had both chosen to leave, had clung to each other and to a shared language. Before long, we were laughing as we had not laughed since the early days of our marriage.

“So, where do we go from here?” Ron asked me in their last session.

“Well, in my experience, when a marriage ends, a different relationship can sometimes be created,” I said. “That’s up to you guys. All endings are sad, but not all endings have to leave you broken. There’s an opportunity here to get to know each other in a different way. And …” I leaned forward to make eye contact with each of them “… to know yourselves better.”

After they left, I sat quietly in my chair for a while. I allowed myself to remember that moment in my therapist’s office when I realised that I had been using my marriage to escape a question I had been avoiding and what a relief it had been to finally face it.

When a sex tape from decades ago unlocks two people’s grief, it’s not so much about the end of the road as it is about the roads never taken – the versions of a marriage they never tried. It is a sad moment, but also a generative one.

They’d come to me to bury their marriage. What they found instead was a way to know each other – maybe for the first time in years – even as they said goodbye.

Note: Names and some details have been changed to protect the identities of the individuals appearing in this essay.

Sarah Gundle, Psy.D., is a psychologist in private practice and an assistant professor at the Icahn School of Medicine, Mount Sinai Medical Center. She is currently writing a book about breakups. You can find her on Instagram @dear_dr_sarah.

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