Dear MIMsters: My Mother Wants to Leave Her 30-Year-Old Marriage for This Reason

Happy New Year to y’all. My mother wants to leave her 30 years old marriage for this reason.

I am her first child and I will be turning 28 in October this year. I have 4 siblings. We are 5 children in total.

My mother became my dad’s second wife because my step mom could not bear children after years in marriage. Eight years after my mum came into the picture,  my step mum bore her only child 8.

Now, my mum wants to leave because she feels like an outcaste at her church, a “Pentecostal church” This is because they won’t allow her partake in “holy communion service “and other church activities because she is a second wife.

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This same church refused to hold a naming ceremony when our last born was born because mom is a second wife, never mind that we live peacefully.

We all live together in the same house in peace. These women cook together, relate like siblings and most of our neighbors don’t even know they share the same man too.

To the best of my knowledge, I’ve never seen them fight. Sometimes, I marvel at how they are able to hold everything together. With my weak heart, this is something I know that I can’t deal with, but they do.

My stepmum raised me. Back in the village, they call her by my name because people who don’t know about reproduction issues think I am biologically hers. I love that woman.

My mom gave birth to us a married woman and not as a concubine. Her marital rites were paid with traditionally 30 years ago. They were not even born again then. She married young at the age of 18 and became a born again Christian after my birth. I admit dad has not been the best husband to these two women but he has always tried.

Now, mom wants to leave her marriage because she feels guilty, especially by how the church treats and excludes her from their activities.

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She wants to tell dad to stop relating to her as his wife but should still allow her live in the house. But I ask myself, which man will continue to provide or stay under the same roof with a woman he married, have kids with and stops relating with her as her husband?

This means that she has to go back to her father’s house in the village and that’s not the kind of life I want for her. Is the church indirectly telling her to divorce after 28 years of living together as one big family? I can’t deal with this right now. I need mature counsel on what to tell her. How should I go about this? I am confused.