Divorce Without Dishonor

There is life after divorce, despite how you may feel now. While you’re in the throes of divorce so many aspects of your life are changing that you go into survival mode. Just getting through each day may seem to be all you can handle. Life does go on, however, and it’s necessary — and possible — to move from survive to thrive, says relationship coach Laurie Cameron. Here are her 9 secrets to living happily after divorce:

1. Accept what is. Stop dwelling on how things used to be or how you wish things were. By accepting your life the way it IS today, you gain the freedom to create the life you want.
2. Take responsibility for every area of your life. Stop blaming your ex for your problems. Taking total responsibility for your actions and responses allows you to learn from the experience and move forward.
3. Practice the two key strategies for a successful life: (1) Figure out what’s not working in your life and stop doing it. (2) Figure out what works better and start doing that instead! You need to recognize and break old patterns in order to move forward with your life.
4. Take good care of yourself. Taking care of your physical, mental and emotional health, will give you the energy and self-confidence to make positive changes in your life. You’ll also have more physical and emotional energy to help your children cope with the divorce.
5. Create a vision and focus on it. Divorce strips us of the goals, hopes and dreams that drove our lives. You need to put aside the dreams you shared with your spouse and create new ones.
6. Take action. It’s not enough to have goals or a plan, you have to ACT. It’s easy to wallow in inertia after divorce, but you must take those first shaky steps alone if you want to move forward after divorce.
7. Create a fulfilling single life. Stop pining for your dead marriage. Being single is a wonderful opportunity for personal growth. Focus on your own life and do the things that make you feel strong, powerful and happy.

When you and your spouse decided to have a child, it was most likely a joyful time. From the moment of birth (and even before that), children steal your heart. You love them, care for them and protect them. You dedicate yourself to keeping your child safe, healthy and happy. Divorce shouldn’t change that.

When divorce becomes a battlefield, your children are the casualties. During divorce, parents must put aside their anger and emotions when making decisions about their children’s custody and support. They must separate their adult differences from the needs and welfare of their children and work together to make decisions that will support and provide for their children’s physical and emotional well-being. Therapist Rosalind Sedacca calls this child-centered divorce.

"When you create a child-centered divorce, your children win — on every level. Parents who make a concerted effort to sit down with each other and discuss the future well-being of their kids together, keep their perspective where it really belongs — on the children," says Sedacca in a recent article on the website Child-Centered Divorce. (Click here to read the entire article.)

Sedacca suggests divorcing parents ask themselves the following questions:

• What

  

A divorced mother herself, therapist Rosalind Sedacca, has created an excellent new website, Child-Centered Divorce, that I can highly recommend. Built on her own struggles guiding her children through divorce, Sedacca has created a website that can be a valuable resource for parents striving to help their children cope with divorce.

The goal of the website is to provide parents with a support network that addresses the problems parents face with their children during divorce. Articles address the issues concerning the emotional health and welfare of children going through divorce. Parents will find the articles engagingly written and particularly useful. In each article parents will find new understandings and helpful tips they can apply to their own circumstances.

Sedacca shares her highly qualified experience in regular articles on the website and also draws on the knowledge and experience of a variety of experts. Some recent topics include:

• Magical Thinking: When Children of Divorce Blame Themselves
• Children’s Emotional Needs During Divorce and Beyond
• When Children of Divorce Act Out — Caring Parents Step Up!
• Child-Centered Divorce Secrets

Child-Centered Divorce was created this summer by Rosalind Sedacca, a Certified Corporate Trainer, author, national speaker and workshop facilitator. She is the author of the helpful  new book How Do I Tell the Kids about the Divorce? A Create-a-Storybook Guide to Preparing Your Children - with Love! (see our October 29 post for a review).

"When I was younger I could remember anything, whether it happened or not." ~ Mark Twain