From Heartbreak to Healing: The Start of My Divorce Journey

Welcome to the very first episode of The Music of Life! I’m Caryn Portnoy, and today, I’m opening up about a journey that deeply transformed me—my divorce. While I originally planned to talk about music’s influence on relationships, I felt a stronger need to first share my personal experiences. In this episode, I dive into the emotional complexities of my three-year divorce and what led up to it.

You'll hear me reflect on the challenges, from custody battles and financial struggles to navigating personal growth and finding a way forward after the end of my marriage. This episode is packed with lessons I’ve learned, insights about communication and resilience, and the impact divorce had on my role as a mother. 

Trust me, it’s a raw and real look into a life-altering chapter that I hope will resonate with anyone going through a toxic divorce. Learn from me and my experience, there’s a lot of hindsight I want to share and pay the wisdom forward to anyone else involved in a similar situation. Hit play and join me on this heartfelt conversation.

Episode Highlights:
[0:05] - My intentions for starting the podcast and the topics I will cover.
[2:21] - Reflecting on my childhood and the complex relationship with my mother.
[5:45] - The painful six-year journey through infertility treatments and the emotional toll on marriage.
[9:28] - The transition to becoming a stay-at-home mom and the financial strain it caused in marriage.
[13:52] - A pivotal moment: realizing the need for a better, more peaceful life and confronting unhappiness in marriage.
[18:05] - Handling divorce challenges, including mutual friendships, COVID-related tensions, and navigating custody issues.
[32:19] - More to come on my personal journey.

Links & Resources:

Send me your questions, comments, or stories at: podpage.com/themusicoflife I'd love to feature it in a future episode.

Thank you so much for listening to this first episode of The Music of Life! I hope my story offers some comfort and insight if you’re going through something similar. If you enjoyed the episode, please rate, follow, and share the podcast with others who might benefit from these conversations. Don’t forget to subscribe so you never miss an episode! Let’s keep this conversation going.

Transcript

Unknown: 0:00

Karen,

Caryn Portnoy: 0:05

Hi everyone, and welcome to the music of Life. I'm your host. Caryn Portnoy, before I get into this episode, please comment, ask questions, share some of your experiences, and don't forget to subscribe. Wow, I can't believe this day is finally here. I had an idea for a podcast in 2021 and had to shelve it for a bit during that time between then and now, I went through a three year very painful divorce, and while I still want to address my original topic, which was music's influence on sex, love and relationships. It's still gonna have to take a back seat for now, I felt drawn to speak about my divorce first. So the three main topics that I'll address in this podcast, first is about my divorce, what led up to it, what I endured, what lessons I learned, and now that we have signed our divorce agreement and we are post divorce, all the things that are going on now, the second part will be about spirituality, the healing that I went through while I was going through my divorce, and all the things that I learned from that. And then I'll address my original idea, which will be more of a lighter, more fun kind of topic. So I ask you, what was the greatest challenge in your divorce that took you by surprise, and what didn't you see coming? My intentions for this podcast, and what you can expect from me is that my real intention, first and foremost, is to help others going through a painful, toxic divorce. It was very hard for me. I've learned so much, I've gone through so much, and I really want to give back to others. The second thing is, I will not be bashing my ex. I will not be trashing him or throwing him under the bus in any way out of respect for my daughter being that he is still her father. I wouldn't do that to her. I would like to dedicate this podcast to her. If my daughter ever wants to hear my truth, what I endured, what I experienced from my perspective, I want her to be able to hear it from my side. Let me just go back a bit and talk about the fact that my parents got divorced when I was three and a half years old, and my sister and I, my sister's three and a half years older than I am, and we stayed with my mother until I was 10 and she was 13 and a half, in which case, we moved in with My dad and stepmother, and my stepmother pretty much raised me with my dad, so I had a very difficult relationship with my mother throughout my life. When I lived with her, I felt like she wasn't really available to me. She and my dad got married very young, and my mother used to always say that she went from her parents house to her husband's house. I always gathered that she just didn't have any time in between to know who she was and know what she wanted out of life, or anything like that. By the time we were living together, just the three of us, my mother, my sister and myself, she was busy working. I guess she was also dating at that time, and she wasn't really home much. So my sister and I were latchkey kids. We'd come off the bus from school and let ourselves into our apartment, and that was it. And whenever my mom came home, she would make us a quick dinner, and I didn't really have much access to her, even when she was home. I just felt like she wasn't really emotionally available to me. So when I needed help with my homework or anything else, I just I couldn't really turn to her, and so I I felt neglected. I felt abandoned. I felt like I wasn't important. I felt like I wasn't good enough. I felt like I wasn't lovable. I mean, all those things any kid would feel that way as I got older and I started therapy and things like that. I worked through so much of it, but my my relationship with my mother was always kind of difficult, and it didn't mean we didn't love each other. It didn't mean that we didn't work on our relationship over the years, as I went through adolescence and puberty and all kinds of stuff like that. I mean, I always believed a girl needs her mother, even though my stepmother was so good to me and we were so close, and she did a great job. It was really hard. I always struggled to connect with my mother, and she always had difficulties and obstacles and challenges in her own life. So it was hard. It was a hard upbringing, and then at some point, I think once I was in college, it. Became that I was the parent and she was the child. And that was kind of the trajectory that our relationship took when I started working and earning my own money and things like that, and she was always in a state of scarcity and lack. Never had money, never knew how to be responsible with money. If she had it, she spent it, that kind of thing. And it was, it was especially once I got married and once I had a family of my own, it was, it was very hard to enable her, and I had to be the one to parent her with tough love. And it was hard. It was very hard. Anyway. The reason that I bring all of this up is because you'll see and hear as we go on, the similarities and parallels with my own daughter. You know, we had one daughter. Took six years to have her. We had massive infertility treatments, and we ended with 10 rounds of IVF, but along the way, I had, I think, four or five miscarriages, and my ex, or actually, who wasn't my ex, yet, my husband had some health issues of his own during that time, and we were just faced with a ton of challenges, mostly me, because it was me having the procedures and the tests and the miscarriages and stuff like that, but it was very, very stressful on both of us, and it was a very daunting six years, very painful, very difficult, very stressful and straining on familial relationships. It was very hard. I was working a full time job, and I was earning a nice salary. I was traveling for work, and this was during the I think it was about four years out of the six years in that I got this job, I decided that I was not going to tell anybody what we were going through. At this point, I had a big job, and I was trying to be professional about it and keep my personal life separate from my business life. But I did go prior to my job. I did go to the fertility clinic and get blood work done and sonograms and all kinds of stuff before I had to be in my office, I would book conference rooms, knowing what my doctor was going to be calling me, and I was able to keep it private. But you know, that kind of caused stress too, just because I'm trying to balance a full time job that has a lot of responsibility with all the medical stuff that I'm going through, and it was just an enormous amount of stress at that time, two years in my husband told me to quit my job. His reasoning was that we have a short window of opportunity to have a baby. I was approaching 40 at that point. And he said, you can always get another job, but, you know, we have a short window to have a baby. I resigned from my job. I came clean with what we were dealing with and what I was going through and all of that, and they were so unbelievably supportive. Told me that if and when I was ever ready to come back, they would hold a job for me and or find a job for me at some point, I never really considered myself to be a stay at home mom. I always thought that I would be corporate America mom. That was kind of how I felt before she was born, and once she was born, everything changed. Everything from the moment they put her on my chest, and we were skin to skin, and I felt that rush of oxytocin, and I was just, I was in love, and I just could not imagine being two minutes away from her at that point, like, especially after all that we went through to have her, in my Mind, it was like, Well, I didn't work so hard to have her, to now not be with her, and I couldn't imagine that I'm working. And I'm look, I'm sure tons and tons of people go through this dilemma. You know, you're working your butt off at a job, and you're making X amount of money, and you're spending X amount of hours away from home, and you have, likely a stranger raising your baby. And I was not okay with that. I decided that I was going to be a stay at home mom. I did have a baby nurse for two weeks to kind of show me the ropes, and I did have a like a babysitter come once a week, and so I had time to rest and sleep and whatever else I needed to do, but I just couldn't see going back to work at that point, which became a huge sticking spot in my marriage, clearly, because my husband was very ready for me to go back to work and earn money. But I just I felt that my daughter. Daughter deserved the best from me and deserved my time and energy and love. And you know, I missed out on having my mother raise me, and I vowed that I was not going to do what she did, and I wanted to be there for my daughter, and I wanted to give her all the love and attention and affection and importance in my life, and she deserved that, so I fought to have that. I don't really know how much my husband wanted to fight to get me back to work, but it didn't make sense to me to pay somebody to raise my kid when I could just raise my kid and she would get the best from me. We argued about it for a while, but I wasn't willing to leave my daughter. I felt that it was important for me to be home with her. What I discovered when she was about three and a half, and she was going to camp at this prominent nursery school where we lived. And I found out that the moms of the kids that went to this preschool, which was it was a nursery school in kindergarten, but a lot of these moms, they drove the mini busses so their kids could go for free. And I thought to myself, Wow, if they could do this, I could do this. These were women who drive Range Rovers and have dripping jewelry and diamonds, and if they were able to do this, so could I? So I got my commercial driver's license and I was able to drive their mini busses and and lo and behold, my kid went for free for day camp, and I drove the bus. And it really wasn't a huge commitment, but it made sense for me. It was a way for me to stay home with her. It was a way for me to contribute financially by we didn't have to spend that money once she finished going to day camp, there they have a sister day camp for the older kids. As she was getting older, I drove the bus for her day camp, and so I saved us more money, and then she went there for preschool. So I saved even more money when she aged out from there, and she wanted to go to sleep away camp. I offered to the camp that she wanted to go to. You know, if you need a driver, I have my commercial driver's license, although they didn't need me to drive a bus. It was just a van, but they jumped all over it. And so when she went to sleep away camp, when she was seven, I went to and I worked there for eight weeks each summer for six years, while she went as a camper, we figured out that I had saved us over $150,000 over a decade by driving so she could go for free. So for me, in my opinion, that was my financial contribution to our family, and my husband never once acknowledged it that way. He wanted me to go to a job outside the home and come home with a paycheck. And that was his mentality. So in my mind, it was like, Well, why should I kill myself for 10 months out of the year to make money to then pay for camp, when I can spend eight weeks out of the summer and not have to pay that money? It kind of felt like a wash to me. But he was, he was adamant about it, and it became a big sore spot. It was 2020, just before COVID, somewhere around February, I remember standing in my garage and thinking to myself, is this? It is this really? It is this the happiest I'm ever going to be in my marriage. We were one of those bicker bickerson couples, where we bickered over everything. He was a very volatile person, and flew off the handle very quickly, very ferociously. It was not a peaceful Union at all. It was very tumultuous, and I just kind of thought like, is this as happy as I'm ever going to be? What came to my mind right in that moment was, I deserve better. I deserve more. I deserve a chance to be happy and peaceful and harmonious, and this was just years and years of this accumulating and to be honest, my daughter saw the writing on the wall for four years before I got to this point, she would ask me questions. I'm not going to say exactly what. She said, But she knew she knew, and she questioned me, and she knew that I would tell her the truth, because I always told her the truth. Later that year, when my mom was basically dying, I kind of started turning towards myself. The stress from caring for my mother really took its toll on me, and because we were in lockdown and things were so crazy with COVID, I turned to my treadmill and I just started walking, and I don't know it was a great stress release. I also got a pilates reformer machine for my house. So I had been doing Pilates for 20 years at that point, so on and off. It was a great stress release for me to do both of those things. I wasn't really paying attention. I had gained a lot of weight throughout my marriage, and it was once my mom passed away, I kind of felt like she gifted me life, and it felt like, okay, it's my turn. Now I get to live. I get to be happy. I wanted a better life for myself, and so I started working out almost every day. I got really into it, and I wasn't focused on losing weight at all. I was just focused on moving my body, and I wasn't even aware that I was getting smaller. It took people telling me, and I wasn't I just wasn't paying attention to it. Apparently, I had gone from like a size 1416, down to an eight. I was feeling really good in my body. I was feeling great and happy and confident within myself, but I still had to face my marriage, and the fact was, I gave my husband nine months of expressing to him how I felt, how unhappy I was in the marriage, and I said to him, I'm the happiest I've ever been, except when I'm with you, how does that make you feel? And he said, well, not good. And that was the end of it. There was no conversation because he wouldn't have conversation. I mean, it's so ironic, because I'm such a communicator. I've been in therapy for so many years, and I'm all about communication, except when you're with someone who just won't communicate. Just stonewalls all the time. So that was very frustrating, and I wanted to make sure that I said everything that I needed to say to him, because I had a feeling at that point that I was heading for divorce. I wasn't gonna just throw it at him. I really needed to make sure that I said everything I needed to say, and I did. And by the time I served him in August of 2021 the shit really hit the fan. I mean, right out of the gate, I picked up my daughter from school that day, and I told her that I just served him with divorce papers. I think she was in a bit of shock. She certainly wasn't expecting it at that minute, but I it was the only time that I could be alone with her to tell her. And then by the time I got home with her, I said to him that I wanted to take her to my parents house for the weekend so that we could all kind of sit with this and process it separately. And he went off the wall threatening to call the police to say that I was kidnapping her, and this happened in front of her, which is the only reason why I'm saying it now, I will not be saying anything that happened that didn't happen in front of her, so if I'm talking about specific events that happened, it's because it happened in front of her, and I'm not divulging anything that she doesn't already Know About or bore witness to. Anyway, I was told, prior to serving Him, that I should have, you know, like a 20 to 30 minute conversation with him, calmly, compassionately, empathetically, basically saying that I'm going to be serving him, but to talk about what led me to this and what happens from here? He was like, Does this mean that I'm going to be out on the street? And I said, Of course not. You're not going to be out on the street, but you need to hire yourself a lawyer. I was very calm. I was very direct. I told him that I never felt like he had my back. I never felt supported. I never felt like he cared about my happiness and I said, I never felt like you ever had my back. It was just you. We were not friends. I never felt like you were my friend. I always felt like you were my adversary. That's a big deal in a marriage. I mean, if you can't be friends. First, at least, to have that to fall back on when things get rough, romantically, it's really hard to stay together at that point, and we didn't have that. He was never my friend. I wanted him to be clear about why there was no fixing this after like it was just, it's time to move on was basically where I was at the processor came and served in the papers. I remember we were at the football field. My daughter was on a flag football team and and so most of our friends were there week to week, out of respect for the fact that these were our social friends, since all the kids grew up together and all of that, this was our friend group, people. We had dinners with, we went on vacations with, we went to parties with, we hosted them for dinner and holidays and things like that. I mean this, these were our friends, and out of respect for that, I felt that they should hear from me personally that we're getting divorced. So shortly after that, he took that and ran with it and decided to take this entire smear campaign against me, and to this minute, I don't know what he has said about me, about this divorce or whatever, and quite frankly, I really don't care what he said. He was on a quest to turn all of our friends, our entire community, his family, and worst part, my daughter, against me. Whatever he sold them, they all bought it, drank his Kool Aid, and that was it. It took some time, but, but when I realized that this is what was happening, and people were definitely taking sides and and all most, I think most of them were picking his side, actually, all of them, everybody chose his side. And in fact, one of my ex friends, I was told, went around town asking whether they were team him or Team Me. I guess later on, when I was starting to heal, I guess my mantra was like, if you're not for me, you're against me. And it made it that much easier to cut all these people out of my life, even though they already decided that they were gonna back my husband through this ordeal, I started unblocking, unfriending, deleting all of that, and it felt like 1000 pound weight off my back. I didn't need people to be fake friends in my life, and it just felt very empowering to walk away from these people that clearly weren't for me, the hardest part was it was around Halloween time when COVID was still a big issue, and my husband and I were on opposite ends of the COVID conversation from what I understood from my attorney, New York State sided or ruled in favor of the vaccinated parent, and I was so adamantly against the vaccine for myself and for my daughter, and he obviously was pushing to have her vaccinated, and It became a complete shit storm that involved lawyers, that involved doctors, that it was terrible, and for whatever my reasons were, and I'm not here to argue the political side of the vaccine or whatever, but I just, I always vaccinated her with all of the scheduled vaccines. It wasn't it was a COVID specific issue I had not just not wanting to vaccinate her in general, because I did every year. The head attorney of my law office called to tell me that there was a case that was just published at that time where the judge was ruling in favor of the vaccinated parent, which was the mother. In that case, the dad was against it and didn't want to vaccinate the kids, and the judge ruled in favor of the mother. And not only did the dad lose all custody of their kids, but he lost all visitation as well. Head attorney, he said, Look, you need to go into court and say that you took the vaccine and you gave it to your daughter too, or else you're going to risk the same thing. It ate me up alive. I was just I could not believe that this was what was happening, and I was especially angry by it because she wasn't even in a high risk demographic to require the shot. Nobody was demanding it at that point, but it was at the very beginning. I just I couldn't believe it, but I had to do it. I wasn't going to risk losing her. I scheduled the appointments. I took her to the appointments, and she had both doses, and I did it myself to. Do. I wasn't going to have her take it and me not take it. We both got the shots, and it was a moot issue. After that. We just it was done. We moved on. It was Bar and Bat Mitzvah season, where we lived, where all of the kids were getting Bar and Bat Mitzvah at that time, and nobody was still demanding COVID vaccines, but it was becoming an issue because the CDC was saying no large gatherings, and people were having these big parties, and no masks were required, and it was a shit storm on top of an already big shit storm. So my my husband was taking heart to all these parties, and I wasn't going at all. Some people were politically correct and invited all of us, even though I wasn't going to go. Because why do I need to go with all of my ex friends and my husband who I'm divorcing? So it was a very awkward, uncomfortable, high stress environment and time, and all my kid wanted to do was be with our friends and and celebrate and be part of them. And I understand that. I mean, of course, I understand that, but I was looking at it from her health standpoint. You know, I can't say how many times I had to decide between her health, my health and our relationship, because I couldn't have both. I had to sacrifice one at every twist and turn. It took a long time for me to choose our relationship over her health or my health, and it was just it was an impossible situation to be in. It truly was. But anyway, one of my ex friends who jumped on his bandwagon from the get go, who swore that she could be Switzerland and and be neutral and all that stuff, and you just can't when you're dealing with a couple who is very volatile. There was nothing amicable about this. This split, she was a shit stirrer in the middle of the storm. So while we were still dealing with this COVID situation, while my daughter had, like, football practices and games and stuff like that, my husband and I had an agreement, at least through the attorneys, that if my daughter was going to be at somebody's house, she had to wear a mask inside. She wasn't supposed to be inside people's houses. But you know what control did I have at this point? He was just he had gone rogue, and he took her and did whatever he wanted to do. It was one time we were going to her practice, and he took her. And he took her a few minutes early, and I had a sneaking suspicion that he was going and taking her to this ex friend's house, so I decided to swing by there and see if I was right. And I was so I rang the doorbell, and my daughter is inside their house with no mask on, and I opened up the door, and I asked her calmly to please come outside so I could talk to her. And she started hysterically crying as she came outside with me, she said, Daddy and this ex friend made her take her mask off. She was clearly in the middle, under pressure. Do I do this? Do I not do this? Do I follow? Do I not follow? It was a very difficult situation that she was put in. I asked her to come outside and talk to me, and of course, he came right out with her. He did not want me alone with her. And then the ex friend came out with her phone to record the whole thing, and because he wasn't leaving me alone with her to talk to her, I took her hand and I crossed the street with her to sit in my car so we could have a conversation about this. And the entire time, he was standing outside the passenger side of my car, and she's crying and like we all caused a scene. It, yes, it was me, but it was the two of them as well, meaning him and the ex friend, my daughter, was just collateral damage in this horrible situation. And there was an audience. There was a house full of people who were suddenly starting to look outside and see what was happening. He was in all of his glory, because now he caught this whole thing on tape, and now he had something to hold over my head and threaten me with, and eventually I had to leave. It was just like, What is this accomplishing? He was so overbearing and such a bully about it that like I couldn't even have a conversation with my daughter, so we went to the practice, and she was with him. I was off to the side, and I don't even know why I was there, other than I felt like I needed to be there for her, but clearly he was in her ear and. And this was really like the beginning of how this whole dynamic was going to play out. So after this whole Halloween nonsense passed, it was one event after another, whether it was a bar Bat Mitzvah, whether it was a sleepover, whether it was a party or whatever it was, and I had been fighting for a schedule since I, you know, since everything commenced, I hung up a whiteboard in the kitchen, and I filled out all the things that she had going on for the month, and we were both supposed to input stuff so that we both knew what was going on. And don't, you know, I filled everything out, and he would stand there with his arms crossed, taking it all in and reading and looking and whatever. And then he would walk away and not add anything that he knew he had planned. And therefore it constantly kept me in a state of, I have no idea what's going on, I only know what I've planned and what things I know about. So that was his whole game plan was to just keep me in the dark about her schedule. This way he got to control where he took her, with whom, when, why, what for he just took over her. There became a lot of alienation of her, whereby she would be in his room with the door closed. Let me just say emphatically, I never once portrayed him as a pervy dad. That was not my issue with that at all. There was one time when she was in his room with her in his bed. He was shirtless and under the covers, and she fell asleep in his bed. I knocked on the door and told her that she needed to go back to her own bed. It was not appropriate for her to be sleeping in her father's bed with the door closed. That was the one and only time I was uncomfortable with that. The other times, 99% of the time, it was because he was alienating her from me. So the door closed was to keep her away from me for no other reason I had an issue with that. Obviously. Look, we both own the house. I have every right to be in that house, but there was no way in hell he was ever leaving that house. So it was a constant battle over space and who had the right to be where he was supposed to keep the status quo within the home. He did not. So as a result, I stopped cooking and cleaning, and he blamed me for a dirty house when I kept saying to him, You did not appreciate what I did before I served you. Why am I going to cook and clean for you now he took pictures of dirty surfaces, and he would threaten to email it to the judge. I mean, come on, it was crazy. It was crazy. It was really like high anxiety from every which way, and it was really hard to navigate. Nobody had a road map as to how we were going to divorce and still live together, and what that was going to look like, and how my daughter was surviving this. I mean, she didn't ask for this, and she was definitely from minute one, the hardest victim here. I'll talk more about this in the next episode, but we were off to a very, very difficult start. I have so much more to get into, many more personal stories and experiences to share lessons I've learned and wisdom I've gained, and I also want to talk about insights and personal growth. Please join me every Thursday for a new episode. I invite you to comment, like, share, subscribe. You can reach me at the music of life, five, five@gmail.com with any questions or stories or experiences or anything that you want to share with me, I'd be happy to talk about it on another episode. I appreciate your listening, and if you're enjoying this, please go to the music of life.com and check out anything new you.