If you’ve been divorced and have children, you know the queasy feeling you get when your ex picks up the kids for the weekend, the door shuts, and you find yourself alone. Truly alone. Walk around naked, singing “Single Ladies” at the top of your lungs alone. You oscillate between longing for your children’s presence and grappling with the unfamiliar sensation of freedom. It’s a paradoxical state of being – the desire to bask in uninterrupted time clashes with an ache for little voices.

You plan to check the to-dos off your list, go to Pilates class and enjoy time to yourself, but it feels strange not to schedule your time around carpools, soccer games and birthday parties and be interrupted by “mom” every few minutes. You want to make the most of these 48 hours but being solo for this long feels strange. No matter how engrossed you are in cleaning out the junk drawer, there’s a persistent pang in your chest, a sense that a part of you is elsewhere.

You make it to lunch and instinctively wonder if your kids have eaten. You catch yourself reaching for your phone, your fingers hovering over the screen, tempted to send a quick text to check in. But then you pause, remembering the importance of respecting the boundaries of their time with the other parent.

It’s a delicate balancing act. You want to know they’re fed, safe and happy but you don’t want to interfere. If you call and say you miss them, they may hear the loneliness in your voice, miss you and want to come home, upsetting everyone. Or, maybe if you talk to them you’ll discover they’re doing something outrageously fun, and wish you were there to see them do “that thing” for the first time, relish in their excitement and bestow praise for their bravery. Now you’ve convinced yourself you’re missing out on something important.

Five minutes ago you were planning a leisurely walk to the farmer’s market and now you’re jealous in addition to feeling alone, worried, and anxious – and it’s not even 1 pm on Saturday.

Realistically, the kids are more likely to be eating chicken nuggets and watching Frozen for the umpteenth time than they are of tasting their first oyster or doing a back flip off the high dive, but that doesn’t matter. You’ve worked yourself into a tizzy, your head is spinning, and your mind is racing with visions of them without you. “What am I missing?!” you wonder.

This hits you, hard. This is my new reality. You signed up to be a 365/24/7 parent and now your time is chopped into blocks, with weekends, entire weeks and holidays missing. Your plan was to be present for ALL the moments, to be in on ALL the jokes and share in ALL the experiences. You suddenly feel as though one of your limbs is missing.

As evening descends, you calm yourself and find peace in the simple pleasure of solitude. Perhaps you pour yourself a glass of wine and sink into a bubble bath, or maybe you binge watch that new show on Netflix. For a moment, the weight of responsibility lifts from your shoulders, and you revel in the luxury of selfish indulgence.

Curled up in bed, you grapple with the tornado of emotions still spinning in your head and contemplate the complexities of parenthood, divorce, your journey, your dreams, and the relentless pursuit of happiness. Amidst the inner turmoil of uncertainty, there’s a glimmer of clarity, a realization that sometimes, the hardest choices lead to the greatest rewards. Deep down, you know this and take a calming breath.

For me, adjusting to the absence of my children was the hardest aspect of divorce. Something always felt slightly off, even when I was surrounded by friends and family. I couldn’t escape the melancholy that washed over me the moment they walked out the door until they were off at college. There are gaps in our shared history, and that’s okay. My life didn’t unfold the way I envisioned it and neither did theirs. We’ve all had to find strength in our broken places and move forward.

Now, my daughters are adults with independent lives and I cherish each and every moment I get to be with them. That was always going to be the case, divorced or not.

If you relate to this, what is/has your experience been? How do/did you come to peace with these gaps in time? How do/did you juggle full-time parenting with alone time?