Rachel Clark

Like so many others, Rachel woke up one day to find herself divorced. Yet today she is joyously remarried to her ex-husband. How did this happen? Rachel Clark is a science writer and biologist with training in the sexual behavior of animals. Years back, she received a Master’s degree in Zoology, in which she studied and published on alternative male mating strategies. After working as a science writer with Cornell University’s Program on Breast Cancer and Environmental Risk Factors RachelI began a freelance science writing career that spans more than a decade. Her writing has appeared in Nature news online, the Earth & Sky Radio Program, Living Bird Magazine, various science textbooks, in publications of the Joint Fire Science Program, and many others. She’s a member of the National Association of Science Writers and the Society of Environmental Journalists. From this you might guess Rachel’s got a passion for learning. And it’s true. Growth excites her—and that hunger to grow is, in part, how she ended up divorced. Like so many thousands of other people, she had come to believe that she was stunted in her marriage; and that for many reasons it had come to a necessary end. But her divorce did not solve her “problems” and, rather, brought on many more difficult and painful challenges. Her husband, like Rachel, is an investigator; he’s a scientist. Cerebral talks and figuring things out had always been part of their union. So even though they’d endured the finality and ferocity of a divorce, and even though were both in love with and living with new partners, and even though they had truly believed their marriage was over—in their quest to understand their intense post-divorce difficulties—they began talking. Almost overnight there reawakened an unexpected passionate friendship. Together they began reading books on marriage, the science of attachment, affairs, and divorce. Stunned, they learned they’d succumbed to a culturally universal urge to flee their marriage; an urge that, in reality, had almost nothing to do with the marriage itself. The flood gates broke as they let themselves admit that they still had a fierce emotional bond. And as they bore witness to their history, partnership, social network, marriage, extended family, children, and the life they’d shared together, they discovered that they had created the most vital adult relationship of their lives. Emerging science confirms the power of that bond…Nothing could ever replace it. Today her beloved (first and second) husbands and her make their lives in the beauty and abundance of the Pacific Northwest with their two sons. They’ve been together for nearly 20 years, give or take the Divorce Time. He devotes his life energy to their family, community, and the mythic totem species of our region, the salmon. Their boys spend their time reading, playing with Legos, and requesting yet another dinner party with their close family of friends. Rachel and her husband occasionally glance at each other over their heads, relief plain on their faces; they are so thankful they no longer endure the stress of their former split. And Rachel? She finds joy in yoga, the delights of local food and their backyard chickens, writing, reading, her friendships, and especially, in the sacred art of growing in her marriage, loving her husband, and together, shepherding their greatest privilege: their children. Most nights you’ll find Rachel nestled in bed with her boys and husband, reading yet another Harry Potter chapter aloud…but rarely speaking of He Who Shall Not Be Named. Rachel is currently writing a memoir of their experience. If their story can help avert the pain and trauma of even one unnecessary divorce or inspire another couple’s reconciliation, their heartache will have been worthwhile.