Award winning stories from a charmed divorce
Cathia Friou(Cathy-uh Free-oh) is the author of Rock Paper Scissors: Scenes from a Charmed Divorce(2018), an award winner in the relationships/marriage category of the 2018 Living Now book awards. Formally trained as a leadership coach and mediator, she is an ardent devotee of courageous conversations, and conflict transformation. She has her own courageous conversation about the transformation in her life called divorce when she opens up about it in the book.
Charlotte Readers Podcast is sponsored by Charlotte Mecklenburg Library.
Cathia Friou(Cathy-uh Free-oh) is the author of Rock Paper Scissors: Scenes from a Charmed Divorce(2018), an award winner in the relationships/marriage category of the 2018 Living Now book awards. Formally trained as a leadership coach and mediator, she is an ardent devotee of courageous conversations, and conflict transformation. She has her own courageous conversation about the transformation in her life called divorce when she opens up about it in the book.
In this episode, Cathia reads five complete vignettes from the book about her marriage, separation, divorce, co-parenting, and re-entry into the dating world. Each of these stories stand alone as a piece of clarity, as an appreciation for the good, the bad, and sometimes the absurdity of married and divorced life. Cathia is endlessly fascinated with people and relationships and believes, as Socrates, that the unexamined life is not worth living.
The readings – in order:
The Preface
The Preface explains why this is a story of a charmed divorce.
“Our story could never be a country music song.”
[The rest of the vignette is on the show]
Spring 2010
This vignette offers a scene where the couple is “gasping for the last bit of marital air.”
“Sitting on a bench in a park near our house, we try to make sense of what’s happening in our lives.”
[The rest of the vignette is on the show]
Spring 2011
This vignette covers a humorous scene from the author’s post-divorce relationship with a Jewish man at a point when she realizes that his long-term plan is to live an Orthodox life with an Orthodox wife and assumes she is up for it.
“One of the lighter scenes in the off-Broadway show The Last Five Years is the hilarious song Shika Goddess.”
[The rest of the vignette is on the show]
Summer 2012
This vignette is set on the Camino de Santiago (in English, the Way of Saint James), a pilgrimage route across northern Spain. The author walked it to mourn or make sense of the loss of her eighteen-year marriage.
“Watching the movie The Way sparks something in me.”
[The rest of the vignette is on the show]
Fall 2018
This vignette dives into the couple’s post-divorce use of on-lining dating sites and reveals the bizarre fact that when the author tries one site the first match she comes across is her ex-husband, Stuart. It also plays out the imaginary funeral of the author’s ex-husband, not because she wishes him dead, but because it reminds her of the man she was married to for so many years.
“It’s parents’ week-end in Chapel Hill and Stuart and I decide to ride together to go see Julia. On the drive back home, he and I land on the topic of dating.”
[The rest of the vignette is on the show]