In Africa, divorce is seen as a taboo. It doesn’t matter if you are suffering in silence, as long as you are still wearing your wedding ring and staying under the man's roof then, you are doing well. I grew up hearing that marriage is for better or worse, but no one tells us that the worse could mean losing your life.
The pressure to endure is so deep in our culture, especially for women. You hear things like, “Don’t let another woman raise your children,” or “What will people say?” especially if you are a devoted church worker, the shame is even heavier. The fear of judgment from pastors and church members has kept so many women stuck in marriages that are killing them slowly.
There was a woman in my area when I was growing up Mama Chidinma. She is very quiet, neat, and respectful but her husband was known to be a woman beater and a beast. Everyone knew. She always covers her shameful husband, the man will beat her at any given opportunity and the children are just too little to intervene, Chindima and I were friends and attended the same primary school, people do not really intervene because they believe it was “family matter.” and she always tell close neighbors who tried to talk to her that she didn't want another woman to raise her children.
She stayed year after year enduring the painful marriage. Not until one night, he beat her and she didn’t wake up, Just like that Mama Chindima died. The next morning we saw the children crying and shouting bitterly, my mother rushed out to check what the problem was and we heard that Mama Chindima died overnight when her husband was beating her, we were shocked and everyone in the area was in deep shock
Everyone started talking about the children she wanted to protect. The children now became orphans overnight because the man was arrested, but the damage had already been done. Her story is not the only one, many women like Mama Chidinma are enduring abusive marriages just to protect their children, their image, or their church status.
Yes, divorce can hurt children. It can shake their world, make them cry, confuse them, and leave scars. But what about the trauma of seeing their mother being beaten daily? What about the fear, the screaming, the silence that follows after a slap? What about growing up in a house filled with pain instead of love?
Some people grew up in homes where their parents were always fighting. No divorce but yet there is no peace either. And today, they still carry those wounds. Some children find it hard to trust, love, or even know what a healthy relationship looks like because of their past experiences with their parents.
We have to start telling ourselves the truth, A mentally stable parent is more valuable to a child than two broken people pretending to be married. The parent’s well-being must come first not because the children don’t matter but because if the parent is broken, there’s nothing left to give. You can’t raise a whole child when you are shattered, staying in an abusive or emotionally draining marriage for the kids is not right it’s dangerous.
There is no prize for dying in a marriage. Your children would rather have you alive, even if it means being raised in two homes than visit your grave every year and wonder why you didn’t leave. Churches, families, and society need to stop shaming those who walk away. Divorce is not a failure. Sometimes, it is survival. It is choosing to live, choosing to heal, choosing to raise your children with peace, even if it’s from separate homes.
The trauma of children from divorced homes is real, but it is not worse than losing a parent who could have chosen themselves. Let’s stop calling suffering endurance. Let’s start choosing life because only the living can raise children well.
This is my response to this episode of hivelearners community prompt of #hl-w165e1 which the topic is tagged "DIVORCE"
