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Reflections on Identity

Packing Up a Life and Marriage

When It’s Time to Move On

Laura Friedman Williams
Human Parts
Published in
9 min readJan 26, 2025

Photo by Tomáš Malík on Unsplash

A photo pops up on my phone on Sunday evening. I open it and quickly glance at it while stirring a pot of soup. I squint to make out the image without my reading glasses: two stacks of translucent plastic bins, five in all.

“What am I looking at?” I text back.

“Your stuff!” responds D, my ex-husband. “I put it all nicely in storage for you, so you can go through it at your convenience. I paid for two months, so no rush!”

I see right through his exclamation points— his attempt to mask guilt with enthusiasm. He and I both know what this really is: I am, finally, being kicked out of his house. The exclamation points do not soften the blow.

I recall some of what is in these bins: the white eyelet dress I wore to my parents’ wedding, a stuffed white dog that my father gave me when I visited him in the hospital before he died, a biography of the dancer Maria Tallchief my mother bought for me when I was sick with bronchitis in the third grade.

I picture these items with vivid detail despite not having looked at them in over twenty years: the 95 cent price tag in the top right corner of the book, the jaunty red beret on the stuffed dog’s head, the kelly green trim on…

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Human Parts
Human Parts
Laura Friedman Williams
Laura Friedman Williams

Written by Laura Friedman Williams

Author of AVAILABLE: A Very Honest Account of Life After Divorce (Boro/HarperUK June ‘21; Harper360 May ‘21). Mom of three, diehard New Yorker.

Responses (41)

What are your thoughts?

A heartbreaking piece, beautifully written.

101

The tangible grief of divorce is everywhere in your story. Hard, difficult hopeful grief. Anyone who has been divorced knows the impossible ache of reaching out to only miss or ignore each other bids for recognition the sad validations of ending…

81

Beautifully written and completely relatable. I wrote my own heartbreak story at the end of my 28-year marriage, based on the weekend I returned to help him empty the house after it finally sold, one of the hardest things I've ever had to do in my life. Wishing you luck as you move forward.

42