After my first marriage ended, I waited almost nine months to begin dating.

Our marriage lasted 24 years and so much of who I’d become was really adaptations of my first husband’s ideas and thoughts about life. Over the years, in many ways, we had become each other -something that is pretty typical in a long marriage.

Separating means having to sort you from the other person.

I think of the day I brought my new dog, Gracie, home shortly after my marriage had ended. I watched her joyously slide nails first across those pristine wood floors my ex and I had put down the year before. Instead of seeing the playfulness of her behavior, I felt the pressure of how my ex would have cringed, which wasn’t really how I felt.