I introduced myself without mentioning my divorce

Dear Delyara, For two years after my divorce, I introduced myself through what had happened: newly single, starting over, co-parenting, rebuilding. The divorce became the headline above every fact about me. In therapy, I realised I had begun treating survival as my only identity. Last night, I attended a community class where nobody knew my history. When we introduced ourselves, I said my name, that I work in urban planning, that I love mystery novels, and that I am learning pottery badly. I did not mention my former husband. Nobody looked at me with pity or admiration. I was simply another person in the room. Self-esteem did not arrive as confidence about being divorced. It arrived as remembering that my life contains sentences in which the divorce is not the subject.