Amy Childs

How I became a Happiness Consultant (part 2)

For 15 years I lived the existence of a mother and “happily married” minister’s wife. This required severe repression of some parts of myself, but at the same time it reinforced my notion that I could find satisfaction no matter what. When we returned to the States and then later to the small religious town that I had grown up in, I chose to ignore the incongruities and appreciate what it had to offer. I felt lucky to be raising our children in a close community, and found many ways to create bonds with other women and mothers. To help support the family in ways that were fun for me, I ran a daycare center in our home and started my own professional organizing business. Although I did not experience true inner partnership with my husband, I worked to build a friendship with him that supported our common desire to raise our children in a peaceful and nurturing home.

In 2001, at the age of 34, I had what I soon came to see as my “mid-life emergence." My inner self rebelled and stopped being willing for me to suppress myself and pretend in order to be loyal to a marriage that I didn’t deeply believe in. I told my husband that although I very much wanted to remain friends with him and be a family, I had been pretending to be in love with him for our whole marriage and I no longer felt that I could live with this lack of integrity.

After months of grieving, emotional upheaval, deep breathing, family discussions, counseling, community processing and truth-telling, we reached a new understanding about our lives and our relationship. We had a funeral for our marriage and declared ourselves divorced. We melted our wedding and engagement rings and had five “Friends and Family Forever” rings fashioned from the gold, one for each of us and our three children. We had a ceremony dedicating ourselves as friends and family forever.

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