28 / matters magazine / winter 2019 E ileen Kaden Dean knew her mar- riage was in trouble long before she filed for divorce. She and her husband starting dating during rehearsals for a the- ater production in 1998. Both were working actors, but, once they mar- ried, Kaden Dean exchanged her theater career for a more “traditional” life as a stay-at-home mom in South Orange. Her husband was on the road, work- ing six nights each week. “We were literally ships that passed in the night,” she says. When her kids were 13 and 8, she discovered her husband had been cheating for years. She told him he needed to leave, and the divorce was finalized seven months later. In anticipation of the looming break-up of her marriage, Kaden Dean had already landed a job teaching theater and music to underserved inner- city middle-school students in Newark. But fear of the future was almost all-consuming. Financial worries combined with heartbreak made for a rough transition into single motherhood. “You need to separate your heartbreak over los- ing your partner and best friend from the very real and practical financial decisions you have to make,” Kaden Dean says. In addition to her teaching job, she expanded her personal business, working as, of all things, a wedding planner. Kaden Dean spent her first two post-divorce years putting her full focus on making sure her kids were okay. “No dating. No big changes. No me time.” “I would get up, take care of them, cry on the way to work and between my classes and again on the way home, and then come home and take care of them.” She was making ends meet, but the challenges, she says, didn’t end. “How do I get a Christmas tree into my house and in the stand all by myself?’ She attended a few support groups for divorcees, but she felt as though everyone had so much anger. “I didn’t feel angry so much as heartbroken,” she says. “And really shaken.” A Sisterhood of Singles Local group supports women throughout the divorce process BY CHERYL SILVER The Maplewood Divorce Club gathered recently at The Cassidy for a holiday celebration.