This post is a part of Divorce Guru’s “Divorce, Women, and Success” series. For the next few months I will profile women who have achieved the bulk of their success after divorce to provide you with hope,motivation and inspiration that you too can succeed in life after divorce!
Yours in success!
-Kim Hess Divorce Guru
Success After Divorce By 30
by Sascha Rothchild
Many people have told me I seem really cheery for a divorced person. Why wouldn’t I? Divorce has treated me well. It was being unhappily married that made me grumpy!
I got married when I was 27, to my boyfriend of 3 years, and at 29 and a half I was planning my 30th birthday party when I realized I didn’t want my husband on the guest list. Talk about a red flag! It was then I knew I would be divorced by 30. I had to tell my husband I wasn’t in love with him anymore. He wasn’t at all shocked since he was no longer in love with me. I had to admit to my parents that their big wedding present would be going to waste and sheepishly alert my friends who thought my hubby and I were the perfect couple that, in fact, we were not.
When it came to marriage I had failed. But amazingly, having the strength to get divorced rather than to wallow in mediocrity for the next 50 years propelled me into a new decade with energy, optimism, courage and a whole lot of charisma. Being married to someone who just wasn’t that into me was draining and depressing and it wasn’t until my ex moved out that I realized I had a lot more to offer than being a frustrated unfulfilled nag.
Ever since I was a little girl with a pink diary and a purple pen, writing has always been my passion and my career goal. I moved to Los Angeles right after college to pursue my dream and although I had some marginal success it wasn’t until after my divorce that people started really connecting to my work. I had always been told I was funny, but that my characters lacked a certain depth.
Once I dealt with the death of my marriage by sitting on the floor of my apartment and sobbing and sitting on my therapists couch and emoting and sitting in front of the mirror and admitting to myself that I was a mess and I couldn’t pull off blue eyeliner no matter how hard I tried, my writing opened up and became three dimensional. I had feelings, I could admit to being vulnerable, I was aware of those post-divorce pendulum swings of elation and devastation and I was able to harness all that in my writing.
I wrote an article about how all my friends and I were divorced by 30 and instead of it being a cynical cautionary tale, I came at it from the perspective that divorce can be a needed rite of passage. It can be a positive rather than an embarrassing piece of baggage. That popular article spawned my memoir How To Get Divorced By 30 and finally my start and stop career was go go go!
Divorce sucks. It isn’t easy. But if you have the wherewithal to get out of a bad marriage, then I believe you have the wherewithal to achieve whatever goals you set for yourself. New job? Fitting into that prom dress? Finally taking the trip to Europe? Those things are easy compared to having to tell your spouse to sign those papers.
Marriage did not bring the confident emotionally open side out of me but surprisingly divorce did, making me a much better writer. And for that I will always thank my ex husband, not just for marrying me, but for divorcing me too.
SASCHA ROTHCHILD is the author of HOW TO GET DIVORCED BY 30: My Misguided Attempt at a Starter Marriage. She grew up in Miami Beach where she did stuff. She then went to Boston College where she learned stuff. Right after graduating with a concentration in playwriting, she moved to Los Angeles to begin her writing career and found there was a whole lot more stuff to do and learn. Sascha has been featured on NPR’s This American Life, is on their best-of CD Hope and Fear, and has appeared in their series for Showtime. She is one of the original performers in the stage show Mortified and is published in Simon and Schuster’s Mortified book. Sascha is a television producer and writer and also periodically writes for LA Weekly, LA Times, Women’s Health Magazine and MSN. She keeps people entertained and offended with her weekly blogs on Politics Daily and Psychology Today Magazine. Sascha is currently in bed with Universal Studios to pen her latest feature film. Not a day goes by that she doesn’t consume, or wish she was consuming, frozen yogurt. Visit her website at www.sascharothchild.com.
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This is the first of your series I have read, do you have older women featured in others? Being divorced by 30 is hard, but hardly a failure, more a learning curve. I am not trying to be hard or unfeeling, I just feel there are so many women divorcing later with few skills and terrified that have to carve out a new career and need some mentors their own age.
Thank you for your comment Nicola.
I have quite a few woman who are are in their 40, 50′s and 60′s that have already been featured or who are coming up. I understand your sentiment that being divorced by 30 is not considered a failure to most, but as you know, anyone who marries feels they will spend the rest of their life with this person. Upon realizing the marriage is not going to “stand the test of time” they may deem themselves a failure no matter what age and feel a great deal of pain whether they are young, old, rich, or poor.
Everyone’s story is valid, which is why I am showcasing a wide variety of woman’s stories. If you would like to share yours please email me at khdivorceguru@gmail.com. I’d be happy to review it…everyone’s story is a chance to relate and help others!
Thank you!
Divorce Guru