Hello, I’m Regina. I’m a divorced mother of four. My twenty one year marriage to a career Naval Officer ended in 2009. In February of 2011, my divorce was finalized, and my ex husband was remarried the week later. All I knew to this point was being a military wife and a mom. Now, I was divorced and quite frankly, lost. The only identity I  had left was as a mom. I had been a stay at home wife and mother for 17 years with only a few years in the academic and business world. I only held an associate degree. Putting off an education for marriage seemed like a good idea. What did I know? I was twenty. I had no clue what was ahead of me. I knew how to run a household and how to parent without my spouse being there thanks to deployments, trips abroad, and schools. That wasn’t the problem. The problem was who was I. I didn’t have my own identity. I was his wife. Their mom. Regina was gone and had been for years. How was I going to find myself and raise my children all alone? Well, that’s what these blogs are about.

So with that being said, you are going to find mistakes in my blogs I’m sure. I’m human and busy as hell being a divorced mom of four and a surrogate grand mom to four. Half the time, I walk around tired and dazed. Being divorced is hard. I’m still navigating new waters and learning. I don’t claim to be an expert. I don’t claim to be a writer. I don’t claim to be a therapist. What I do claim is that I went through Hell. I learned a lot. I began finding myself. And, I refused to let divorce define me. I know that hearing other stories of divorce and healing helped me. So, I’m paying it forward.

In October, 2013, my son, Joshua, and I sat at a local outdoor cafe and discussed love, loss, and living a genuine life. I had been divorced two years, and my son had been through a hard breakup. We joked that I was now officially a “first wife”. I loved the movie “First Wives Club”, and my ex husband did leave me to marry someone else. An idea formed that afternoon. Perhaps, we should start a club for anyone who had experienced the end of a long term relationship and suddenly found themselves questioning who they were and how they got to this point in their life. That day, the First Lives Club had it’s first official meeting. The club was small. Just the two of us but we had so many thoughts and ideas.

Jump forward five years and here we are to post that some journeys need to be shared. All of us heal at different paces (it’s not a race) and by different methods. I pray that maybe there will be something in these posts that gives a reader some insight, comfort, or glimmer of hope. You can find your way to living a life that is genuine and happy. One full of promise and hope. Hopefully, our stories, lessons, and mistakes will be of some use to that someone in need.