Not much is written about the end of a marriage, the moment when you sign away the union you created.

A union you believed to be ordained by God.

A big white dress, a bridal party of 16 and a cathedral full of 200 closest friends and family on a clear, crisp, November Saturday made you feel enveloped in love as that union was initiated.

No, the ending is very different from the beginning.

The end comes in the form of a conference room in your lawyer’s office on a cold, February morning.

You gather with the man you pledged to love for eternity and together you tell the private judge you’ve hired that you want him to remove your marriage from the courts records. With the strike of the pen you become once again Heather A. Dahlberg.

The literal end to the partnership that brought you from your awkward post college years to your middle-aged identity, now, in name only, brings you squarely back to the place you started.

As hard as it is for me to write, I am ashamed by the women I was just 6 months ago who thought that those who divorced just didn’t “work hard enough at it”.

If only it were that simple.

If I could just look at my little girls and explain away this horrible thing by saying “Momma didn’t work hard enough and it’s over”. The simplicity in that statement would clear away the clutter in our heads, but that statement would deny the truth- divorce much like marriage is much more complicated than that one size fits all statement.

Loving Brock was everything perfect and beautiful to me in this world.

His love brought me confidence and it delivered to me the three most precious gifts.

But, once you pull the string on a marriage it is nearly impossible to stop it from unraveling.

So mine has unraveled.

And this ending has humbled me.

I will walk away a less, judgemental women.

I will walk away having seen the best in a marriage.

I will walk away knowing that opening yourself up to someone in this manner is what God ordained.

On Sunday morning we decorated for Valentine’s Day.

As a child I remember my mom pulling out the box of decorations before each minor holiday (Valentine’s Day, St Patrick’s Day, 4th of July ect) and getting a little rush. We didn’t just celebrate Christmas and Easter. We found a way to celebrate year round.

I want to carry that tradition on with my girls. Unfortunately, I don’t have a box of decorations for the minor holidays so the girls and I had to improvise.

Construction paper, markers and scissors were all we needed.

We spent an hour on these and I had to make the girls stop.

Incredibly simple. Cut out a heart, write on it something you love about one of your family members, then tape it to the kitchen cabinets. When we were finished we had this:

Now, each morning, I wake up and have these staring at me. And every night, when I am engaged in that last-minute game of what else can I accomplish before I fall asleep standing up, I look up from taking the dishes out of the dishwasher or making school lunches and I see these.

Best Valentine’s decorations ever.