Community

Tonight, I hosted the monthly dinner for my friends, the members of the Thursday Night Group.

That's not an official name, just how I identify them in my Gmail contacts. About 18 months ago, I was desperate to make contact with people going through what I was going through, coping with separation and the path to divorce. I couldn't be alone in feeling this way, there had to be others to talk to. I badgered the Vienna Women's Group coordinator until she found me a group, any group, meeting on one the evenings that I had free. And so on Thursday evenings I started going to a workgroup on coping with the emotional aspects of separation and divorce.

It wasn't quite a support group. Our facilitator introduced topics each week, and we talked about gaining skills in coping with emotions, achieving goals, and healing ourselves. But each week we also shared our personal stories, and it was those stories of our personal pains that resonated most. The smell of burnt toast every night because one husband overcooked toast every night before going to bed. The weight-obsessive husband who disallowed dessert for the whole family after Thanksgiving dinner. The husband who called his wife's cellphone constantly. All of us had stories.

At first we told them only in the group. Then a good suggestion - why not meet for dinner before the group meeting. And once the workgroup ended, luckily, fortunately, beautifully, we kept going, at dinners at each of our houses. We happen-started a tradition of monthly dinners. In those get-togethers, we got to know the places where some of these torments had occured, the houses and furniture chosen together, the photos of the husbands, the toys of the children.

I am so grateful for these women. When we're tormented, angry, reflective or just down over how our lives got to this place, they are there. We've seen happy times and some very sad ones. And a group of very disparate women are still together, making new lives. I have friends, and I am very, very grateful.