Like most people who have experienced it, my divorce hit me pretty hard.  Although I was the one who made the decision to leave my husband and end my marriage, it was still one of the hardest decisions I’ve ever had to make and it took a lot of soul searching before I was able to come to a final conclusion.  There were two main reasons for this. Firstly, I still loved him, and still do to this day; and secondly, I believed in the vows I took and found it really difficult to go against this.  And of course I was petrified of becoming a ‘divorcee’ and of the stigma surrounding that.

However, divorcee I became. I found that I had been so lost in my marriage that I no longer knew who I was and I have spent the last three years re-discovering who I am and what makes my heart sing.  I’ve been adamantly and happily single for all of that time, although thankfully not without my share of male company, just without the confines and expectations of a ‘relationship’. 

But it did take a long time and I still balk at the idea that I’m a divorcee.  I don’t regret my decision but it still makes me really sad that my marriage did not work out the way I had hoped.  I thought that at age 30, which is the age I was when I married, I would know what I wanted and what partner would make my ideal husband. But I’ve learnt that love isn’t enough and it is possible to love someone who is wrong for you.

The idea of writing a one woman show has been kicking around at the back of my mind for years.  It was after I left my marriage and was journaling my thoughts and feelings and re-discovering my passion for theatre that I eventually put the two together to finally take the plunge and write my own play.  The more I wrote, edited and revised the script, the further away it went from my own personal story and took on a life of its own.  It now follows the journey of Xara Fox, who like me is a thirty something divorcee… but I’ll leave it to audiences to decide what is fact and what is fiction!

Melanie Sherwood          
April 2008