Few of us will ever know how it feels to be as wealthy or perhaps as drop-dead gorgeous as Elin Nodergren, but plenty of people following the Tiger Woods saga will understand how it feels to be betrayed by someone you love.
In her first and only interview with US People magazine this week, Nordergen admitted to have been completely “blindsided” by Tiger’s actions, that their marriage for her was a “real one” and that she had never doubted Woods for a second.
“For the last three-and-a-half years, when all this was going on, I was home a lot more with pregnancies, then the children and my school.
“I was blindsided…I felt stupid and embarrassed,” she said of her reactions to the seemingly unending revelations of Tiger’s infidelities.
But if we take anything from this sordid and albeit glamorous version of a very human experience, I hope it’s Nordergen’s public resilience; a rare willingness to pull together, re-focus priorities and dare I say it …move forward.
Firstly, she’s refused to “buy” into the melodrama of her situation.
One of the first few stories I remember reading in the wake of Wood’s revelations was a picture of her at the petrol station filling up the family car.
She didn’t look at the camera, but she didn’t make a scene either – she was just getting on with things. A very different reaction to those we are used to seeing in the wake of a celebrity marriage or otherwise breakdown that tends to follow an inevitable path of drugs, alcohol and trashy nights followed by rehabilitation. Then repeat.
Nodergren has also shown herself to be determined to cope by committing to the survival of a family that she admitted she “had lost”. And that family is very young.
Children Sam and Charlie are only 3 years old and 19 months respectively and from the little I know through friends with children this age, life is tough enough with a strong family unit – but doing it largely on your own, when the centre of your own life has fallen apart, must be near impossible.
“It was hard, but it hasn’t killed me,” she told People
Her stalwart public face is a strong argument for the importance and dignity of silence.
Nordergen waited nine months to do the People interview and told reporters that in her quest for living a “normal life” and finding peace within herself, it will also be her last.
Contrast this with Woods, who not only made the “public apology” and then been party to several press conferences, where he has taken questions on the situation at hand - he even made an advertisment for Nike in which the voice of his deceased father Earl, also a known adulterer, asks if he’s learned anything.
Yet of the two parties it’s Nordergren who would most understandably want to make a public nuisance of herself. There must have been hundreds of times where would have liked to have shouted obscenities from the rooftops but didn’t - she just chose to get on with things.
“I’ve been through hell.
“It’s hard to think you have this life, and then all of a sudden - was it a lie? You’re struggling because it wasn’t real,” she said.
People have described the terms of couple’s divorce as “amicable” with both parties wishing each other “the best” for the future, but looking at them now it’s not hard to see which party will need that luck more.
Not only is Norderegen obviously beautiful and intelligent, she’s also proven herself to be a strong woman and a devoted mother, who even when tested to the core, has her priorities in the right place.
I get the feeling that with Woods out of her life, it’s very unlikely that she’ll ever face demons like this again.
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