By Sarene B. Arias, author of Discovering Diamonds: A Story of Compassionate Divorce
For a long time, I stayed in my marriage because I believed that leaving would make me a “bad mother.” I told myself that enduring unhappiness was simply part of the job description.
In the introduction to Discovering Diamonds, I share something that still catches in my throat when I say it out loud: in my marriage, I felt more like a slave than a woman. And yet, I stayed—because we had children, and I believed their needs automatically outranked my own.
Many women know this internal conflict intimately. In fact, a 2015 study by the American Sociological Association found that women initiate nearly 70 percent of divorces, and that number rises to almost 90 percent among college-educated women. These statistics don’t mean that women are impulsive or anti-marriage. They suggest something far more uncomfortable: that many women stay until they simply can’t anymore.
Especially mothers.
We are often taught, explicitly and implicitly, that once we have children, our personal happiness becomes optional. A luxury. Something to revisit “later,” when the kids are grown. But here’s the truth I state clearly on page 13 of my book: your personal happiness is both your right and your responsibility, even if you are a parent.
That sentence alone can feel radical.
Let me be shed some light on the matter: loving your children deeply does not ask you to sacrifice your humanity. In fact, divorce does not mean you love your children less. It means you are willing to look honestly at the emotional environment they are growing up in, and at the person you are becoming inside it.
Renowned psychologist Dan Siegel offers a powerful reframe that many parents are ablet to recognize immediately. He compares emotional well-being in families to the airplane oxygen mask rule: you must secure your own mask before helping your child. Not because you’re selfish, but because if you can’t breathe, you can’t help anyone else breathe either.
When our needs go unmet for years on end, we feel unseen, overextended, or diminished. It also becomes exponentially harder to parent with patience, presence, and warmth. Children are particularly sensitive, and while they may not understand the details, they feel the emotional weather in the home. Chronic resentment, quiet despair, or emotional shutdown don’t disappear just because we try to “push through for the kids.”
This is why I believe that parents are allowed to consider divorce—even when children are involved. Not lightly. Not impulsively. But consciously, compassionately, and with deep care for the entire family system.
Which brings me to what I call Compassionate Divorce.
For couples who must part ways, Compassionate Divorce offers an alternative to the adversarial, blame-driven model most of us associate with divorce. Instead of framing separation as a failure or a battlefield, it treats it as a transition that still needs collaboration, integrity, and shared responsibility.
In Compassionate Divorce, partners are supported in remembering that they were once a team, and, in many ways, they still are. The goal is not to “win,” but to create the best possible outcomes for every member of the family that they have formed together. This includes the children, of course, but also each parent as an individual human being.
One of the hardest parts of this process is slowing down. This is especially true when relationships are in crisis, and fear can drive people toward quick exits or rigid positions. Compassionate Divorce asks something braver: that each person take responsibility for their inner work, communicate honestly, and stay connected to shared values even while letting go of the marriage itself.
In Discovering Diamonds, I describe this process as opening a “toolbox.” Inside are skills many of us were never taught, such as emotional regulation, conscious communication, boundary-setting without cruelty, and the ability to sit with grief without assigning blame. These tools don’t just help couples divorce well. They help them co-parent, heal, and grow long after the legal process ends.
And then there are the diamonds themselves.
The “diamonds” are the unexpected gifts that emerged for me through Compassionate Divorce: self-respect, emotional freedom, and a renewed sense of vitality. I became a better mother not because my life got easier overnight, but because I became more alive, more honest, and more present. My children didn’t lose a parent, instead they gained a mother who was no longer disappearing inside her own life.
If I could offer one piece of advice to couples standing at this crossroads, it would be this: don’t confuse endurance with love. Staying at any cost is not the same as staying with integrity. And leaving does not have to mean destruction.
Divorce, when approached with compassion, can be an act of responsibility rather than abandonment. It can model courage, emotional intelligence, and respect. And for children, that lesson may be one of the most valuable inheritances we ever give them.
Hope doesn’t end when a marriage does. Sometimes, that’s where it finally begins.
About the Author
Sarene B. Arias is author of Discovering Diamonds: A Story of Compassionate Divorce. She has learned to make peace while finding love in the conflict-ridden Middle East. She is a Certified Integral Therapist who works internationally with individuals and couples, helping them to feel vitally alive. Her groundbreaking Diamond Workshops support couples in crisis, helping them to rediscover hope and compassion.
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