how to get divorced at christmas

with dignity and hope

I have a friend who announced she and her husband were splitting up after thirty-odd years in her annual family Christmas letter. She didn’t make a big deal of it either, just inserted the news in there matter-of-factly, a bombshell among all the other updates about holidays and kids graduating from uni and internships and backpacking trips to Peru.

I thought it was incredibly dignified — blunt and devoid of self-pity. Almost but not quite funny. I admired how she turned a brutal year into the most badass Christmas letter ever. I told her so the next time I saw her. She just threw back her head and laughed, looking more relaxed than I’d seen her in years.

My own Christmas-letter-divorce-news is somewhat less breezy and conclusive but for the the first time in a year there is at least something to report.