Josh Lucas's ex-wife posts touching Craigslist ad about moving on after divorce
Writer Jessica Ciencin Henriquez has a way with words — even when it comes to a Craigslist ad.
Henriquez is moving out of New York City with the 6-year-old son she shares with ex-husband Josh Lucas, the actor known for his work in Sweet Home Alabama and A Beautiful Mind, among others. So she did what most New Yorkers do — she posted a Craigslist ad to unload her stuff. Only, unlike most ads on the site, her 2,000 word post — entitled “Moving on Is Hard to Do Sale” — was beautiful and candid as she touched on life after divorce.
What Henriquez was selling — a mattress, a set of mugs, a kitchen table — almost don’t matter. It was really her description of the things.
She wrote that “no sex was had” in the queen size Casper mattress. “I bought it at the beginning of my year of celibacy,” she wrote. “No dating, no sex, no one, one year. I had beautiful dreams in this bed, dreams about flying, about shooting through the air, and leaving this city behind me, dreams about landing in a foreign place where no one would know my name. And when I woke up, I believed that maybe I could start over with another someone who was capable of loving me like I deserved to be loved. Anyway, this mattress has no stains, no damage, and the tears have dried.”
The set of mugs she’s unloading were a gift from a friend because she only had one. “There was only a need for one” after her divorce, she explained. Then she talked about how “he” always knew how she liked her coffee: a splash of milk and two cubes of sugar. “It was one thing I loved about him,” she wrote. “He only had to ask once when we first started dating: ‘Beyoncé or Barack?’ (same shade but different sweetness).”
The mugs are no longer needed because she no longer drinks coffee. She wrote, “I quit drinking coffee the year I finally quit him.”
The kitchen table, a rocker and hammock conjured images of her son. She talked about letting him play with his cars atop the table, so there are some scratches. She shared how the boy sat in the hammock and looked out at passersby on the city streets to get a sense of what the weather was like each day.
As for the rocker, she wrote about shopping trip she took with Lucas when she was seven months pregnant to get it. “The father and I went to the store, determined to choose the perfect furniture for our first (and only) child,” she recalled. “We walked up every aisle and sat in each option they had, laughing at how seriously we were taking this one task. But that baby grew up, and that marriage ended.”
Henriquez told the New York Post that she’s a “nostalgic person” and “each of those items meant more to me than just a quick summary.” She also talked about how the money from the sale is going to the charity Moms for Moms NYC, which helps single mothers..
Early Thursday, Henriquez wrote that it’s time to take down the ad after receiving more than 2,000 emails about the sale. The potential buyers were clearly moved by her post.
Okay time to take this Craigslist ad down. There are over 2000 emails in my inbox and I can’t keep up. Like, emotionally I can’t keep up. ?? https://t.co/Egp9Rip1uh pic.twitter.com/upA3ZKKXQe
— Jessica Ciencin Henriquez (@TheWriterJess) May 30, 2019
Henriquez declined to reveal to the New York Post where she’s moving, but it seems out of the U.S. In her description of the child’s wooden globe she’s selling, she wrote that she and her son spun and picked a place to move. There are “beaches where we’re going” and they are “crossing an ocean together.” She continued, “Even though I'm scared, I know this is part of the plan. Live. Hurt. Heal. Repeat. New York City is no longer for me; I've done what I came here to do. I've grown up and I’ve outgrown it and now I’m tired of stepping over shed skin.”
Henriquez and Lucas had a very eventful few years together. They met randomly at a dog park in 2011. As they got together, she was fighting cervical cancer. The next year they married and welcomed their son, Noah. By early 2014, she filed for divorce, but after it was official, they gave things another shot. As recently as 2017 they were on the red carpet together. They also lived in the same NYC apartment building after their split and co-parent their son together.
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