Dear Mary Chapin Carpenter:
You and I met (not in real life) in the late 80’s when I started listening to country music back when country wasn’t cool.

Songs like I Feel Lucky and Passionate Kisses were amongst my favorites. But the song I most related to and is still on my playlist is He Thinks He’ll Keep Her.

You wrote that song about me. Every phrase, every chorus, every word was my life from an early bride at twenty-one to divorcing my first husband at age forty-three (slightly off the age of the thirty-six-year-old woman in the song, I’m a slow learner.)

I met my first husband in 1982. He swept me off my feet and I never saw it coming. I should have seen it, there were many signs. I was a naive young girl looking for love in all the wrong places and boy did I find it. Friends and family told me of his family’s reputation in the small town he lived in, over the river from where I lived.

But I didn’t listen. I was a starry-eyed girl, and he was my night in shining armor. Our courtship was short, he asked me to marry him in April and wanted to get married in July of that same year. Looking back now, if we waited any longer, I probably wouldn’t have married him.

I continued this charade from 1983 until I filed for divorce in 2004. He and I had two sons who were the light of my life. So, when he turned them against me during the divorce, it was one of the hardest times of my life. Fortunately, his lies were exposed, and they returned to the fold.

Mary, that song told the story of my life, PTA, carpool and all. The good news is that I am no longer that girl. I live my life the way I see fit. I work hard and am successful in my career and in my life. I love openly, and cry when I’m happy, or when God is close, watching over me. I feel his presence often.

My current husband and I saw you in 2019 at the Infinity Music Center in Hartford, Connecticut. I got a little tipsy that night but still knew the words to a lot of your songs. When you sang, He Thinks He’ll Keep Her I sang at the top of my lungs and cried so hard it soaked my face. In some way, you helped me heal that night. And while the scars run deep, I’m on the other side.

I don’t send Christmas cards anymore. That perfect fairy tale was simply in my mind. Thanks for being there for me, Mary.