I was eight or nine when my parents separated, and at the time, I didn’t really feel like anything was wrong. My younger sister was about four or five. I didn’t have a strong grasp on what was happening, and I didn’t feel like I was being affected in a major way. Back then, it just felt like life was happening around me and I was moving through it.

I was twelve when my father moved to a different country for work, and that’s when the slow unraveling of my family began. At first, it was subtle—his visits home became less frequent, almost imperceptibly at first, until by the time I turned sixteen, my parents were officially divorced. Looking back, it all felt gradual, hazy, and somehow inevitable.

When I separated from my husband, my children were 21 and 26. It wasn’t a sudden break — it unfolded over years. I had actually separated two years before finally deciding to end the marriage. For a while, I went back, thinking maybe we could make it work. That reconciliation lasted about a year and a half.

When my marriage ended, my children were 14, 12, and 10. I thought I was protecting them by staying quiet — by not saying too much, by not staining their view of their dad. I believed silence was kinder.

I was sixteen when my parents divorced, and because we had always been a close family, it felt like the ground shifted beneath me.