Victoria Baldwin and her husband may have gone their separate ways, but she still makes an effort to include him in her life — even if they may not always even like each other. In a set of photos that Baldwin submitted to the Love What Matters Facebook page, she wrote about why she and her ex-husband, Adam, still participate in loving family photoshoots together.
"The top two photos were taken when Adam and I were married," she shared. "The bottom two, taken nearly one year and over two years after our divorce was finalized. We are not in love, we don't always agree, we're not best friends, sometimes we don't even like one another. But you know what we are? We are forever connected because of our beautiful, smart, kind, compassionate, funny son."
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Above all, she wrote, co-parenting means having respect for one another, even if you don't always see eye-to-eye.
"We remember that neither of our roles as parents take precedence over the other - neither one of us are any more important to the life of our son," she wrote. "We BOTH need to be there, we BOTH deserve quality time and quality memories with him."
"Neither of us blame one another for the direction our relationship took," she continued. "We do not place blame on one another, and we certainly don't place blame in the presence of our son."
But rather than simply being civil, Baldwin and her ex take time to really show their son that his parents love him, and that they'll always be family.
"Adam and I are not perfect co-parents, but we made a deal when we got divorced, to put our son first and to value the richness that we each bring to his life, for different reasons," she wrote. "So yes, we still have a family portrait taken, and I still pay good money to have the images printed, framed, and placed in our son's bedroom; he may not grow up with parents who live in the same house... but he will grow up to see respect, kindness, empathy, compassion, perseverance, flexibility, and even sacrifice being modeled by both of his parents and he will know it is possible to fall out of love but never fall apart."
Baldwin has a refreshing take on what it means to co-parent after the dissolution of a relationship. After all, divorces — especially ones where children are involved — can be incredibly emotionally taxing, and it's easy to point fingers or become bitter exes. Though it's not always possible for everyone, kudos to Baldwin and her ex for still managing to show so much respect for each other.
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