Rachel Clark

Like so many others, I woke up one day to find myself divorced. Yet today I am joyously remarried to my ex-husband.

How did this happen?

I’m a science writer and biologist with training in the sexual behavior of animals. Years back, I received a Master’s degree in Zoology, in which I studied and published on alternative male mating strategies. After working as a science writer with Cornell University’s Program on Breast Cancer and Environmental Risk Factors I began a freelance science writing career that spans more than a decade. My writing has appeared in Nature news online, the Earth & Sky Radio Program, Living Bird Magazine, various science textbooks, in publications of the Joint Fire Science Program, and many others. I’m a member of the National Association of Science Writers and the Society of Environmental Journalists.

From this you might guess I’ve got a passion for learning. And it’s true. Growth excites me—and that hunger to grow is, in part, how I ended up divorced. Like so many thousands of other people, I had come to believe that I was stunted in my marriage; and that for many reasons it had come to a necessary end. But our divorce did not solve our “problems” and, rather, brought on many more difficult and painful challenges.

My husband, like me, is an investigator; he’s a scientist. Cerebral talks and figuring things out had always been part of our union.  So even though we’d endured the finality and ferocity of a divorce, and even though were both in love with and living with new partners, and even though we had truly believed our marriage was over—in our quest to understand our intense post-divorce difficulties—we began talking. Almost overnight there reawakened an unexpected passionate friendship. Together we began reading books on marriage, the science of attachment, affairs, and divorce. Stunned, we learned we’d succumbed to a culturally universal urge to flee our marriage; an urge that, in reality, had almost nothing to do with the marriage itself.

The flood gates broke as we let ourselves admit that we still had a fierce emotional bond. And as we bore witness to our history, partnership, social network, marriage, extended family, children, and the life we’d shared together, we discovered that we had created the most vital adult relationship of our lives. Emerging science confirms the power of that bond…Nothing could ever replace it.

Today my beloved (first and second) husband and I make our lives in the beauty and abundance of the Pacific Northwest with our two sons. We’ve been together for nearly 20 years, give or take the Divorce Time. He devotes his life energy to our family, community, and the mythic totem species of our region, the salmon. Our boys spend their time reading, playing with Legos, and requesting yet another dinner party with our close family of friends. My husband and I occasionally glance at each other over their heads, relief plain on our faces; we are so thankful they no longer endure the stress of our former split.

And me? I find joy in yoga, the delights of local food and our backyard chickens, writing, reading, my friendships, and especially, in the sacred art of growing in my marriage, loving my husband, and together, shepherding our greatest privilege: our children. Most nights you’ll find me nestled in bed with my boys and husband, reading yet another Harry Potter chapter aloud…but rarely speaking of He Who Shall Not Be Named.

I am currently writing a memoir of our experience. If our story can help avert the pain and trauma of even one unnecessary divorce or inspire another couple’s reconciliation, our heartache will have been worthwhile.