Any parent who’s supported their kids through the breakdown of a relationship will I’m sure relate to Missy Higgins inmate and poignant new ballad “A Complicated Truth”.
I couldn’t stop the tears streaming down my face when I listened to this uniquely vulnerable song, and they continue to well up each time I re-listen. Somehow Missy has managed to capture in only a few minutes the immense complexity of relationship breakdowns and the heart wrenching journey of trying to help your children understand. The dialectic of at once no longer being in love with your ex … while at once forever carrying love for them the parent of your child. Or perhaps wishing you’d never met them while at once loving your children completely and knowing that they wouldn’t be who they are without the two of you.
The loneliness when your children are with their other parent, and the hoping they are safe and loved … Sitting in the quiet house (which you may have longed for until it arrived), and having enforced time away from them which perhaps you've never had, and never planned.
The complexity of co-parenting - or the reality of parallel parenting (watch out for a future blog on this topic) which many of us face. Managing yourself when kids ask the most understandable but stinging questions - “Why can’t daddy still live here?” “How could you give each other rings and break a promise ?” “Could you ask him to come back mum?” “Why is our family different to everyone else’s families?”
The sadness that your story isn’t like the stories awash with happy endings which we’re mostly exposed to. The guilt and the grief for what you hoped and expected things to be for you and for your kids. The sense of failure that you couldn’t make it work. The reality that we're constantly told life is simple but it is infinitely complex.
I love the way music can be therapeutic. I have a series of different songs for when I need to process complex emotions - or feel seen when feeling alone with my experience. Do you have a treasured song that speaks to your experience?
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