Thurman’s difficult transition

Uma Thurman underestimated how hard divorce would be, says Allison Glock in Redbook. When she and actor Ethan Hawke split in 2003 after reports that he was cheating on her, Thurman, now 37, had no idea what she was in for. “I’ve had only a few big relationships, and I always went back. I never left anybody and stayed away. With my divorce, I felt like a refugee from my own life. As much as it wasn’t satisfying, or people were complaining, we still made a life together. And then I was outside of it.” Hawke and Thurman, who were married for eight years, have two young children, and Thurman wasn’t prepared for single parenthood. “Everything took me by such super surprise. It still does,” she says. “Before, I felt I was a single parent, because I was on my own a lot. But I was really wrong. There is a world of difference between parenting alone, but with a person who cares about you and your children, and never having anyone around to turn to and say, ‘Oh look what he did!’” But now, more than fours years after the split, she is starting to feel in control of her life and ready to move on. “I finally feel like, cool. I feel better. I’m finally getting away from it. But truly, with divorce, you are one person before, and you have to figure out how to be another person after.”