Tips for Divorced Artists Raising Children
Buckle up
Two Houses. Two Painters. Two Parents. is a newsletter of stories about art, feminism, grief, and time excavated from the Soho loft where I grew up. Posts are free and illustrated with the work of my long-divorced parents, the painters Mimi Weisbord and Lennart Anderson. Sign up here:
Yes! Write and paint on those weekends and weekdays without your children. Make them a veritable artist retreat. You are unencumbered, and you are free.
But be careful of handling your children as old baggage. Even if they carry your former partner into your house, figuratively and literally.
Date! Have sexy weeknights and weekends. A second adolescence.
But remember to allow your children space to have their first adolescence; their job is that developmental passage.
Travel! See what you’d always longed to see.
And be aware that if all your fun is without them—if they are passed between you like a football—they are not living their life with you. They are in transit. Observant. Resentful. Gaslit.
Celebrate! You are overthrowing whatever you unwittingly bought into with your marriage. You deserve it. Your work, long delayed, can find traction.
… while your children grieve. They are now two people. His and hers. Navigating loyalty games you swore you’d never play with them and the competition between you.
No worries, you love and respect your children, and they love you. They will see your perspective. You raise them with so much consciousness of everything.
Yet, you did choose their other parent. What attracts them once attracted you. They may see their perspective, too.
Expect to feel hurt over the holidays.
A hurt that is not theirs to fix. They never planned to spread themselves so thin.
Remarry! Have more children!
But they will always be your children.
Why not? They are off to college and beyond. They don’t live with you anymore.
But are their faces stripped from your walls along with your ex’s?
Vow until death do you part! Unless, of course, you divorce again…
Who will steward your legacy?
Sound advice for any divorcing parents, artists or not. Thank you for giving voice to the child.
Such an important topic. When I found myself a full-time single mum, I was glad I understood from my own experience, something of what my kids were going through.