A voodoo Doll in my Daughters Backpack

Elizabeth Marshall- WhoU

I unwrapped a present my daughter brought home from school one afternoon in third grade. She was a crafty gal, and I loved collecting her various ceramic treasures and paintings over the years, but this one was different. I looked at the small, felted human form in my hands and asked her what she'd brought me today.

"A voodoo doll," she said.

Now this was curious. She went to a Montessori school, one with a long tradition of teaching peace and conflict resolution, and I hadn't imagined voodoo made the curriculum. So I dug deeper.

Why a voodoo doll?

"Men are mean, and I don't want them to hurt you anymore. This will protect you."

And just like that, a dagger sank deep in my chest.

A week earlier, I had quietly retreated to my room. A man I'd started dating had suddenly gone quiet, stopped texting, and a wave of sadness filled my heart. In hindsight, he wasn't the guy for me. But that's often how it goes. The heartbreak isn't really about him, it's about the hope we quietly import onto a newly budding connection, or the jab to the ego of not being chosen. And if we're still healing underneath it all, those small losses have a way of tapping into old wounds and old self-doubt. (No pins required for that kind of damage, apparently we do it to ourselves just fine.)

I thought my retreat had been invisible. I was wrong. My sensitive girl had felt my energy shift and tuned in to the sniffles behind my closed door. I hadn't kept my dating as private as I'd hoped, and honestly, I already knew my kids weren't thrilled about the idea of me dating at all. They reminded me often that they loved single mommy and didn't think I should date, ever. I was more than a year out from my divorce by then, had some good therapy behind me, and felt, quietly, that I deserved another chance to love. But that felt like a private conviction I was holding while they held a very different one.

So the day the voodoo doll came home, I sat with it for a while.

So much of divorce is spent picking up the pieces of a household torn apart. The reasons are all different, but every one of us carries our own particular grief. What's harder to see is the toll on our children. We'd like to believe we understand their experience, but we're not walking around in their little shoes, even if we ourselves grew up as children of divorce. Their tears, their anger, their sudden neediness, their slipping grades, these are glimpses, not the whole picture. This was hers alone.

So when we start thinking about getting back out there, it helps to remember that these small, wonderful people are coming along on the journey too, whether we've asked them to or not, and they may not be nearly as excited about it as we are. I took a step back. I considered the angles, read what I could find, talked it through with my therapist. There is no single formula here. Every child, every circumstance, every intensity of divorce is different, and the age of your child changes the equation entirely. So my honest encouragement is simply this: go slowly, for their sake and yours.

For me, that meant something specific. It meant learning how to build real friendships with men first, and letting my girls see, over time, that I could choose wonderful, safe people to have around us. I wanted them to know, before it ever mattered, that I knew how to choose someone with integrity. I'll always be grateful for the friends who showed up for potlucks, beach days, and afternoons at the park simply because they valued the friendship itself, no strings attached. A few years later, once our world had settled and trust had quietly rebuilt itself, I felt my girls practically pushing me out the door to go find my person.

So here's what I've learned to watch for, in myself and in them, when it's time to think about launching into your next best chapter.

How do you know they might be ready?

Watch for steadiness. A child who's handling their daily routines and the small changes of life without heavy anxiety is telling you something. So is a child who has their own friends, their own hobbies, their own interests they enjoy. Perhaps even some curiosity about your own friends, showing more interest than anxiety. And look for the ability to hold two truths at once, that you can love them fully and still make room for your own new friends, and yes, someone special.

And what tells you to wait?

Not every kid is going to bring home a voodoo doll or make their reluctance as evident as mine. Clinginess is one of the clearest signs, panic when you leave, or a demand for all of your time and attention. Watch for regression too,acting younger than their age, anger that feels bigger than the moment. If they're still talking, day after day, about wanting your old family back together, that's grief still very much alive, not yet ready for anything else layered on top.

And when do you decide to move forward?

Go slowly. Keep your dating life and your home life separate for longer than feels strictly necessary. When it's time to talk, use simple, honest words, and promise them what you can actually promise: that nothing about their safety or your love for them is changing. Listen more than you explain. Their body language will often tell you more than their words do, and patience is the whole game here. And if you sense real fear or sadness taking root, don't be afraid to bring in a family counselor. That's not failure, that's good parenting.

 I still have that little felted doll somewhere, tucked in a box of her childhood things, retired from active duty. It was never really about voodoo. It was an eight-year-old's best attempt at protecting her mother's heart with the only tools she had. I think about that often now, how she was doing her own quiet healing right alongside mine, in her own third-grade way.

We were both just trying to figure out how to let love back in without losing what we already had.

If you're navigating this season yourself, single parenting and stepping back into dating at the same time, know that you're not the first to feel torn in two directions by it. Take your next steps with intention at whatever pace your family actually needs. No pins necessary.