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DIVORCED AT 30
Katherine Ormerod reflects on her marriage ending and how it gave her a new perspective on life and love
WELL-BEING
IN THE MONTHS leading up to my 30 th birthday, I remember feeling content
that many pieces of so-called adult life were falling into place: I had a great job
in London as a magazine editor, a husband I’d known since I graduated from
college, and a fun group of friends. Then, 10 days before my birthday, out of
the blue my husband announced he was leaving. He packed his bags the next
day, and I have not seen, or spoken to, him in the six years since.
In the immediate aftermath, I was incapable of feeling anything except
loss, shame, and alienation. The thing is, life doesn’t pause, and your personal
tragedy isn’t anyone else’s. Your friends don’t stop getting engaged, pregnant,
or promoted. The bills keep coming, as do deadlines; magazine pages need
to keep getting filled with copy. It sounds like a cliché, but it was work
that saved me. The first reprieve from my misery came on a trip to Los
Angeles, where I was interviewing two powerful businesswomen, Tory
Burch and Diane von Furstenberg, who, incidentally, also happened to
have gone through divorces. Partway through my conversation with
DVF at the beautiful Beverly Hills home she
shares with her husband, Barry Diller, she stopped
mid-sentence to ask if I was okay. I thought I’d
been doing a good job of putting my game face
on, but looking back I was an emotional wreck
and pretty obviously in crisis.
After I explained the situation, DVF turned to
me and said, “Girl, you need to change the lenses
in your sunglasses. You say he left you? Actually
he set you free. You’re young, halfway across the
world, and staying at a great hotel. Go have an
adventure.” Later she gave me a lip-embroidered
wallet to carry whenever I traveled to remind me
of my freedom, and sent me back to my room at
the Sunset Tower with my tape recorder and a
kiss on the cheek. Her words rang in my head
later that evening when a friend called to ask me
to go for a drink across the street at the Chateau
Marmont; I could stay in and work on my articles,
or I could let the night take me. I chose the latter and
ended up meeting a Texan millionaire. It was a short-lived
liaison, but it broke the spell.
When I got home I decided to wipe the slate clean.
I began by deleting every picture of myself with my ex
on social media. He had already dissolved our relationship
digitally; in many ways I was lucky it wasn’t “complicated.”
I signed up for Tinder. But I wasn’t fully ready to startfresh. My perceived romantic failure was always top
of mind, and I found it impossible not to mention. Even
to strangers. Even on dates. I cried on the street and on
the subway. I wasn’t sleeping, was bone-thin, and didn’t
get my period for months.
Slowly, though, I stopped feeling so ashamed. I’d been
mortified to talk with my friends—mostly because they’d all
shelled out a small fortune to attend our three-day wedding
celebration in Tuscany—but I realized that it was a perfect litmus
test. The people you think will be there for you often
surprise you, and vice versa. I lost a lot of friends,
but it wasn’t because of the split per se. It was more
how my divorce changed me: I quit pretending.
Pretending to be happy. Pretending to enjoy things
to please other people. It’s liberating to lose what
you most love and survive. It makes you fearless.
By shedding my shame I started to live honestly.
I can now say, with the long lens of hindsight,
that my divorce was the best thing that ever hap-
pened to me. It may also have been the low-water
mark of my life, but my recovery from it has
defined me. Today I look at what matters most to
me and laugh at how much my definition of suc-
cess and happiness has changed from what I’d
envisioned in my 20 s. I am not on staff at a mag-
azine. I am not married. Instead I run my own
brand consultancy, have published a book on social
media, and have given a TEDx talk—all things
I would never have imagined I had the potential to achieve.
I also have someone wonderful in my life, a younger man who, when
I met him later in that fateful year I turned 30 , was just out of college. We
have completely divergent backgrounds and interests, and it definitely took
the people close to me a beat to understand our relationship, but we are
happy and have been blessed with a little boy, Grey. Ours is a special kind
of love: calmer, more solid, but also with a sense of perspective. It may not
be forever, but that’s okay because life is a patchwork of love; not one shot and
you’re out. I try not to have any regrets (aside from tossing my $5, 000 wedding
gown in a fabric donation bin). I experience moments of nostalgia in which it’s
hard to believe that it was me who walked down the aisle. I’m a different woman
now, and the memories don’t necessarily fit. But being married and getting
divorced is a part of who I am, not just my history, so I choose to honor it. ■“It’s liberating to lose
what you most love
and survive. It makes
you fearless.”COURTESY @KATHERINE_ORMEROD