By Wendy

(This song is performed by Wendy and her sister.)

I was 24 when I got divorced and my parents separated. It was a gut-wrenching time, to say the least. To soothe the constant ache in my heart, I started playing the guitar and dabbling in songwriting. My new roommates and I formed an all-girl band called “The RockStar Betties”—writing and performing ragey feminist songs on instruments we were just learning. (If you lived in Provo at the time, you may have seen us playing at a house party in all our fledgling chick-band glory.)

I was also in my first year of an English master’s program at BYU, when Professor Susan Howe assigned my women’s literature class a final project: tell one woman’s story. Naturally, I wrote an angst-ridden song. Fighting back tears, I performed the song for the class and accompanied myself on the red, used acoustic-electric guitar my mom had given me that year for Christmas. I immediately sat down in my chair, relieved that I’d made it through without bawling. I thought at the time that I had written “She Had To” about my mom and her agonizing decision to divorce my dad. Dr. Howe was on my thesis committee but she didn’t play favorites when it came to grading my project presentation. I don’t remember what I said in the presentation that day, but I remember Dr. Howe’s comment accompanying my less-than-desirable grade: she said I didn’t give enough context for the song. She was right. I didn’t really tell my mom’s story during my class presentation. And now I know why. The story was really about me.

The truth is, my parents’ divorce was devastating to me. It was more painful than my own divorce. My marriage was abusive and I wanted a way out long before it ended. But my parents’ divorce rocked my world. Unwittingly, I had defined myself entirely by my family context: having an intact family unit where I was an integral (oldest child) part. There were no boundaries in my mind between where my family members ended and where I began. There was no “me.” Just the nuclear family that I centered my happiness on. Anyone familiar with the pop psychology term “codependence” will recognize that I had a textbook case. When my parents divorced, I didn’t know who I was. It took many years of soul-searching, therapy, prayer, and graduate training in several forms of psychotherapy to learn how deeply important my personal happiness is. It’s important to me. It’s important to those around me. It’s important to my God.

I dedicate this song to every woman who struggles to define herself outside any relationship—be it to one person, a whole family, or a whole organization. I dedicate it to Mormon women who are taught to value others more than themselves, especially in the context of marriage and family. Divorce is a personal decision. So is the journey to achieving personal happiness. Finding it within or without the context of marriage can be daunting and disorienting for women who have been taught that their value is dependent upon how thoroughly they sacrifice their happiness—even their bodies—upon the altar of others’ happiness. Eve’s decision to defy God’s commandment and eat the fruit in order to heed God’s greater commandment speaks to me. I imagine making this decision between two seemingly good choices must have been inexplicably excruciating and hard-won. One she describes in Moses 5:11 to have been in the service of universal growth: to obtain knowledge of “good and evil, and the joy of our redemption.” I drew inspiration from Mother Eve when I wrote this song. And I draw it from her today.

“She Had To”

April 1974, wedding bells and flower girls.
Long white fence, garden grows seven children.
Leaves fall fast, seasons pass
One man gone, and her heart.

She wandered the desert, hands outstretched.
Asking, “Why is my well spent?
What can fill this emptiness?”

It’s incredible this peace; the apple is sweet.
Inordinate relief, solitude.
Sky bright blue, garden brand new.

Decisions are ridden with dichotomies:
Personal peace, family unity.
She walks alone.
Her garden grows thorn and rose,
But she knows:

It’s incredible this peace; the apple is sweet.
Solitude.
Sky bright blue.
Garden new.

She ate the fruit.
She had to.

(Wendy has had multiple lives , figuratively speaking, but likes the one she’s living now the most.)