That is what happened in my divorce, underneath all the paperwork and the equity splits.

The exact same potato patch that had been dug to humiliate me became, in a different life, a place my children laughed.

Nothing about the potatoes changed.

Only who I was when I dug them.

And that, I have come to think, is the truest thing I know about how a person gets free.

We imagine that freedom means changing our circumstances — a new house, a new town, an escape to somewhere the old pain cannot reach.