Coping with divorce Cindy Cruz remembers when her husband first asked for a divorce. They were celebrating Thanksgiving 1990 a day late. Her husband, who worked on the neighbor islands during the week in construction, had flown home for the weekend.
Cindy Cruz and her
children relied on friends
-- and on each otherKEEPING TOGETHER
Debra Barayuga / dbarayuga@starbulletin.com
But when he arrived home and the turkey hadn't been carved yet, he became upset and asked for a divorce. Cruz drove him back to the airport.
She filed for divorce three years later, and it was finalized in 1995. They had been married 18 years.
Today, she has no regrets. "I think it's better this way -- the freedom," Cruz, 42, said recently.
That she and the children -- Robert, 23, Dawn, 19, and Eliot, 17 -- are OK more than five years later has shown her that there is life after divorce.
Her advice to families going through it: "Find some kind of support to help you get through it."
It doesn't have to be a counselor. It could be other family members, friends or neighbors.
Cruz and her ex-husband are among the 86,464 divorced men and women in Hawaii last year, according to a U.S. Census 2000 Supplementary Survey.
Of the 2,865 divorces filed on Oahu in the 2000 fiscal year, 1,466, or 49 percent, were families with minor children.
After her husband left abruptly that November day, his absence did not register immediately because Cruz was so used to seeing him gone most of the time.
Her children seemed OK with the separation.
"But deep down they were hurting, upset, sad," Cruz said. "They wanted to live with both, not just one."
Daughter Dawn was 8 when her dad asked for the divorce. "I couldn't stop crying when he told me. But I was happy because they weren't getting along," she said. "But the fact that both wasn't there together was kinda hard."
Brother Eliot, then 6, turned into a "terror," probably because he didn't have a father figure, Dawn said. "He never listened and acted out a lot."
The hardest part for her children probably was not being able to drive down the street or catch a bus to see their father, Cruz said.
"I was OK with the divorce if my dad had stayed here -- but a long-distance divorce was harder," Dawn said.
He lived on Maui and could not afford to fly all three children at once to visit him. So he would fly over and visit at least once a year, sometimes at Christmas.
Cruz never considered counseling for her or her kids.
She and the children relied mainly on each other, and they seemed to have come through the divorce unscathed, she said.
It probably helped that she managed to remain strong even after losing her own mother earlier that year.
"I didn't go hysterical, berserk or crack."
At first, it was hard financially, Cruz said. She did not file for divorce right away because she needed medical insurance, which she did not have working part time.
Then she was laid off. Her oldest son, who graduated from high school when the divorce was finalized, had been working full time but was also laid off. The same happened to her ex-husband, who worked in construction, so there was zero income.
If it weren't for an understanding landlord who let her slip on rent for about eight months until she got back on her feet, and neighbors who fed her children, they would have been on the streets, Cruz said.
Cruz, a paralegal, eventually found full-time work with a divorce attorney. "I just had to work and support the kids," she said. "I couldn't stay home and mope and cry."
It finally hit her at one point that she was alone, with no one to depend on emotionally. "There was no one to hold me; I missed the companionship."
But by then, work and her children were keeping her so busy, she had no time for anything else.
Being with other people, particularly her neighbors, helped keep her busy and her mind off the divorce, she said.
While it didn't matter what others thought about the divorce, and she doesn't see herself as a failure for ending the marriage, the divorce did bother Cruz initially.
Her parents had divorced when she was 8, and she hadn't liked being separated from her father. "I didn't believe in (divorce). I didn't want to," Cruz said. "But at that point I didn't have a choice. He wanted it."
She is now "good friends" with her ex-husband, who still lives on Maui. He has not remarried. He stays with her when he comes to visit, and they go out. "But I don't think I can live with him anymore," she said.
She has a close relationship with her children, and they have remained close to their dad. Eliot has lived with his dad since last August.
"Ours is a happy ending so far," Cruz said.
Cruz and her daughter now volunteer for the parent education program Kids First, putting on activities for children whose families are going through a divorce.
"I understand what these kids are going through," Dawn said.
Marital status of men
and women in Hawaii
15 years and over 457,818 15 years and over 472,408 Never married 149,569 Never married 116,786 Now married* 257,007 Now married* 254,019 Divorced 36,937 Divorced 49,527 Separated 4,622 Separated 7,775 Widowed 9,683 Widowed 44,301 *Except those separated from spouse, which is distinct category
Source: U.S. Census 2000 Supplementary Survey, a monthly sample of households from November 1999 through December 2000. Institutionalized populations are excluded. The confidence rate in the data statewide is 90 percent.