Time and again I am struck by the "unconventional" nature of my family unit as it stands today. I am an almost-divorced woman in my mid forties, whose son comes over occasionally, has her widowed mother over for a few months of the year, and whose only constant companion is her dog. For many there is nothing odd about this arrangement, but I am an outlier in my very traditional Indian family. When I married almost 25 years ago, the expectation was that I would end my time on earth either in the arms of my spouse or as his widow. No one would have envisioned me as the head of my own household, taking major life decisions almost single-handedly.
Perhaps it is even more amazing that this dramatic change in my life has occurred in less than thirty six months. In the summer of 2019, my life, to any outsider, was the perfect picture of a traditional Asian immigrant success story. It had all the necessary material and non-material trappings - a big house, luxury cars, Indian friends in the community and growing careers. It all changed in one afternoon when I decided it was time to leave a relationship where neither side was fulfilled. In the months following my decision I spent hours mourning the loss of my "family". Despite what everybody told me, I was convinced that I would never find an anchoring force, a core to nurture and call my own. My mind had been conditioned by years of the traditional narrative, and envisioning any sort of a family unit without a husband, and kids, all living under the same roof, was impossible and even sinful. It felt like I was breaking a sacred code.
But time, as they say, is the biggest healer. While the sense of loss will stay with me forever, I have decided to open my heart to new possibilities. Possibilities of a different career, what holidays look like and what a family can be. A new picture of a family is beginning to form over the more traditional version and with it the realization of new possibilities .
For years I could only imagine of a time when I would have my sister and my mother over to stay with me and we would have a girls only holiday and gossip late into the night without a care or the burden of family responsibilities. Today, as I fall asleep, my mother and my sister are here with me all the way from India and Malaysia and we are doing all I dreamt of doing! As a result there are three women in three rooms in my house. There is no child or husband in sight, and yet it feels very much like a complete family.
