Sunday, April 10, 2011

mezora

This week's Torah partion is about lepers...sort of...well, not really.

Anyway, it reminds me of a difficult and lonely time in my life when I was treated like a non-person, or less than a full member of the community. It was a period I was so eager to put behind me that I spent little time reflecting back upon it until years later, when I came back into the community and discovered a former acquaintance standing in the shoes I had once worn. I asked about her experience and, as she described the way others were treating her, my memories of rejection and loneliness came rushing back and I knew I had to help her.

I immediately made plans to throw a party and I invited a bunch of the people who were ignoring this woman in their midst. When I explained to one of them what I was doing, she argued that my perception of the situation was accurate. Ironically, this friend was one of the people who had ignored me when I had stood in my old shoes but befriended me when I returned wearing a "new pair". I told her how I knew it was true, without mentioning that she had once treated me the same way.

The shoes I'm overstretching here are the metaphorical shoes of a divorced woman, or, as some people who haven't walked in them might put it, of a "single mother by choice".

The reason I mention this is because I wonder whether it's the perception that some women CHOOSE to become divorced that exempts them from the loving ministrations of the community, or if not, what is it that makes people behave the way they do?

It is marvelous that when a married woman becomes gravely ill, the community lines up to help - they visit, they bring meals and gifts, they offer to do errands, they drive the woman to and from doctor appointments, they cart her children around for her. It is absolutely a wonderful thing. It feels great to help people in their time of need, when they feel overwhelmed, when their life seems to be falling apart. It makes us grateful not to be in their shoes, faced with our own mortality.

But when a woman gets divorced, she is often a pariah, very much like the lepers of the Torah. Generally speaking, a woman not only needs a whole new skill set, but also a whole new set of friends and support system, because she suddenly may become persona non grata to a shockingly large portion of the community. I'm not sure it is even a conscious decison people make, and I'd certainly prefer to think that it is not, but every time it happens to a friend, I reach out to them, only to hear how rare my kindness is. This saddens but no longer surprises me.

As beautiful as it is to witness the outreach to the wife whose physical health is slipping away from her, that is how ugly it can be to witness the phenomenon of people turning their backs on the divorcing woman as her world is crumbling.

I was divorced 15 years ago and since then I have counseled such a great number of people - both lifelong friends and those who were drawn to me just for that season of their lives - that I have become, quite accidentally, a bit of an expert.

I think this expertise obtained because I have so much compassion for women at this painful point in their lives. Admittedly, I simply love talking, helping, and giving advice, but it's more than that. Especially when I meet a person who came to town in a relationship and now, bereft of that relationship, finds herself utterly alone, well, I really "get it" and evidently, that is rare. First of all, no woman becomes a single mother by choice. Either her husband leaves the marriage, or she leaves because she is on the verge of losing her mind. In the latter case, she is essentially leaving in order to save her life. She generally does not leave the marriage until there is no longer any viable choice. In all my years of becoming an expert on this subject, I have only encountered one person who chose to leave her marriage to play the field because she was pretty sure she could score an upgrade. She traded up and then her second husband left her. In that instance, I had a bit less compassion, but as far as I can tell, her story is very unusual.

Because divorce sucks.

When I moved to Cincinnati married to a native son, I was embraced to some degree by the community of folks my husband had grown up with. When I divorced him, they turned their collective back on me. One woman, whom I considered a friend because she kissed me whenever she saw me, invited us to parties, took me out to lunch, brought us a lovely baby gift, attended our son's bris, had us break the Yom Kippur fast at her parents' house, and invited me to faux finish her dining room in exchange for pizza, explained, when I turned to her for comfort, that while she hadn't really been friends with my husband while growing up, so far as she could tell he had become a real mensch. So, if I was leaving him, well, we could no longer be friends.

Others were more subtle, leaving me to the conclusion that Cincinnati was just an extrmely cold and unfriendly place. I immersed myself in parenting my young son, accepting the fact that he and I were now two people "on our own", as my photo albums from that era are labelled. We had a lot of fun together, and we had an incredibly close, intense relationship, but we were constantly isolated and alone in the middle of a crowd. No invitations to playdates or shabbat lunch. No invitations to much of anything. I felt lucky if anyone spoke to me. On the playground with my son after school, the only adult who engaged with me was the grandmother of another preschooler. Ironically, she was a good friend of my former mother in law, but she was the only adult (other than the teachers) whom I remember talking to on a regular basis at my son's school. We took the kids for ice cream a couple of times and it was shocking treat for me to get to talk to another adult in this context. I wonder if she has any idea how much I appreciated her kindness. When I am done with this blog post, I plan to call and tell her.

I joined a new temple and attended services weekly, took a class at lunchtime, but nobody there reached out to me, not even the rabbi and his wife. My decorative painting clients were often quite friendly while I was in their home, but that was as far as it went. It was clear that I would have to create my own life. I was (if you know me, you know this) far from shy, but I had just two, very busy friends in town - one had been my nanny, and the other, Gillian, a single friend from college, who had moved here to join the local symphony just as I was preparing to get divorced.

This scarcity of friends left me plenty of time for myself. When my son went to be with his father, I either exercised alone in my apartment, did volunteer work, laundry, filled photo albums with pictures I'd taken of my son, or hung out with the new gay friends I made through my work as a decorative painter.

The other thing I did was to go out on blind dates. These were either the result of an ad I placed in the newspaper or, later, when I became more selective, through an old fashioned Jewish matchmaker. Nobody in my "community" ever once asked me if I wanted to meet someone they knew. Early on in my divorced life, I met an older guy when I went to shabbat services elsewhere, and I went out with him only because (1) he was tall (2) I despaired of ever being introduced to anyone. I even auctioned myself off from a catwalk once when someone asked me to help the charity she worked for.

Eventually, one of those dates (from the matchmaker) actually led somewhere. I became engaged, and when I did, there was a palpable shift. Actually, it was more like an earthquake. Once I was part of a couple again, clients started acting like friends. One client made a bridal shower for me. Other clients attended, showering me with gifts and positive attention. Even though I felt like exactly the same person, no more or less attractive or friendly, it was as though my "leprosy" had suddenly cleared up, my pariah status had been nullified. I didnt have any more money than before because I was marrying a graduate student earning his Phd and paying off student loans. But some of my clients - now our friends - even came to our wedding, even though it was hundreds of miles away, in Cleveland.

So, mezora. This is still how we treat the lepers. I hope it is clear that I am sharing my story not to complain, not to criticize, but merely to raise awareness and increase sensitivity. The town I once thought of as unfriendly when I was divorced has yielded up an abundance of good neighbors and great friends, a fun community orchestra and an incredibly supportive and loving yoga community. I have a wonderful husband, three of the best children in the world, and a temple community where people in all stages of life are genuinely included and embraced.

I recently started a new blog to open up conversations about certain female topics on which we tend to remain silent, and then, this week's Torah portion reminded me there is yet more silence that I feel should be broken. My hope is that you will now think of a divorced person in your community and reach out to her or to him. My dream is that you will read this and invite them, include them, or offer them a helping hand. You never know what sort of shoes you might be standing in someday. May you never walk alone.