The Government Dropped A Bombshell On Me After My 30-Year Marriage Ended That Left Me Stunned

Mom worked for almost two decades after her divorce, but could not financially make up for the years she spent as a housewife. The low-paying jobs she had while married — cleaner, waitress, and such — counteracted her higher income as an administrative assistant. She ended up grossing $575.00 a month from social security, despite the fact that she could have drawn against my father’s social security allotment for more than double that amount. For her, it wasn’t only a point of pride and separation from him, but it was also her symbol of freedom and independence. Living simply and frugally on her own earnings was more important to her.

Maybe that is why she made a point of giving me a hundred-dollar bill every Christmas when I was a young mother. “This is just for you,” she would say. I kept the money as long as I could, but inevitably I would spend it on an “emergency”— a kid’s field trip, new shoes, etc. Still, I cherished this bit of independence in an otherwise codependent marital relationship.

I have worked too hard to have a different life or a better outcome than she did. I did not want to end up like her.

Don’t misunderstand: I admired and respected my mom and her devotion to her children, including the care she took of two of my adult brothers. One, who was incapacitated by a heart attack and stroke, outlived her by five years, and the other was dying of liver disease. Fierce like a feral cat, she advocated for them… right up until death. When my brother died, not of liver disease but in a house fire, part of her died with him.

Mom had a hard life, but she never complained, at least not to me. I think that is why she died so young at age 73 from hemolytic anemia. She was weary.

As she lay on her hospice bed, I told her, “I love you, Mom.”

“I’m too tired for love,” she replied.

Death was her escape.

I understand her statement much better now, some 12 years later. Sometimes it is safer not to feel. The bombardment of too many traumas demands a soul to shut down. Unconditional love is exhausting to maintain. 

In the decade since the judge banged his gavel pronouncing me “restored to all the rights and privileges of an unmarried person,” I have earned a Master of Fine Arts in writing, secured gainful employment teaching college-level composition, and navigated the care and keeping of the house and the car.

What was unaddressed by my attorney or the judge was how this very choice to divorce after being an at-home mother of three and the sole cheerleader for my husband’s career carried the added penalty of social insecurity in retirement.

I soon discovered my situation isn’t unique. According to the Biden-Harris “Economic Security of Older Women” study released in September 2024, women still experience persistent and accumulating workplace inequities throughout their lives: lower pay compared to their male counterparts, fewer employer-sponsored benefits, unpaid caregiving responsibilities, etc. We earn less and pay less into the entitlement funds.

“These factors disproportionately disadvantage widows, divorced women, and older women of color,” the study found. The poverty rate for divorced women 65 years and older is over 19%, well above their married counterparts at 12%. This means they are living on a yearly income of $15,650 or less. With the increase in the gray divorce numbers, it makes sense that there is a coinciding increase in the number of women living in poverty.

My recent trip to the Social Security Administration office confirmed this inevitability. Despite working to increase my earnings with multiple promotions and erasing the zero-income lines from my work record, my marriage and divorce created lasting financial inequalities. My wage projections — even if I add in the modest and taxed alimony income — aren’t technically in the poverty range, but it is meager. Retirement, especially in the Trump economy, looks doubtful. Luckily, I have a few more years to prepare.

Until the United States truly values stay-at-home mothers by instituting congressional action and not just spouting pro-life/pro-family lip service, women are going to continue to suffer a lifetime of financial disparity. For starters, childcare tax credits, like the ones we grant folks who pay for daycare, could easily apply to stay-at-home moms. We could also provide caregiver credits for years spent working at home rearing children on women’s social security tallies, like European countries have done for decades. 

Lately, whenever young mothers ask me about staying home with my children, I admit that I’m not sure it was worth the sacrifice. I never thought I would feel this way. I’ve been quite pompous about my choice, feeling superior to those “bad moms” who worked outside the home, missed their children’s “firsts,” and relied on us to do the room mothering and carpooling.

I caution these women not to anticipate misfortune, but to take a proactive approach: limit those years at home, pay into their own IRAs, or devise a plan with their spouses to mitigate the financial penalties. That way, if they happen to fall out of love, or as my mother said, grow “too tired for love,” and make that impossible mental health choice to leave, it will not bankrupt them for the rest of their lives.

In truth, most families, like mine, with shoestring budgets are simply unable to do this. We never know what the future holds — whether it’s a happy marriage, a divorce or a life-threatening illness — so we women have to take care of ourselves… too. This is the essence of gender equality. 

Catherine Berresheim’s work appears in The Autoethnographer ManifestStation, the Nashville Scene, and ”Chicken Soup for the Soul: Lessons Learned From My Cat” (2023) among others. She holds an MFA in creative nonfiction from Spalding University’s Naslund-Mann Graduate School of Writing. Berresheim lives in the greater Metropolitan Nashville area, where she is a tenured associate professor and freelance writer.

This article originally appeared on HuffPost in October 2025.