1 - When this story began

Summary

MY STORY

It was a glorious blue spring Sunday in 1989. I walked to my local church for nine o'clock Mass with my thirteen-year-old daughter, Frances. It was a “visiting” weekend. Fran was living with her father at the time and came to my place for two days every second week. At Mass a visiting mission priest delivered the homily. He preached about the evils of divorce, implying that people who divorce were taking the easy way out and stating that they were ruining their children's lives. “Do you know what the biggest fear of youth today is?” he said as if someone had actually done the research and come up with this fact. “The thing all young people fear is that their parents will divorce and they won't be loved any more.” Well, as a single mother I was struggling to regain my own identity. I was working very hard to develop a relationship and a sense of mutual respect with my daughter.

By the time we left the church I was raging. “So Fran, do you feel unloved because I left your father?” “Ah, mum,” she said, “that's just rubbish, you don't take any notice of that stuff.” As we headed down the hill she asked, “if it makes you so angry why do you go?” Indeed why? The decision was already made. I was struggling to manage the changes in my life, get it back on track, earn a living and teach my daughter important things about close relationships.