Address divorce process in 5 steps
Make no mistake; divorce is upper case Emotional. When I decided to leave my marriage, I could not imagine how I would ever say the “d” word to my children or spell out how their lives would change. While I accepted whole-heartedly that my priority was to put my children’s best interests first, I was also painfully aware of how my world was uncoupling and changing. Even though 50% of marriages end in divorce, I felt small comfort from a statistic.
At first, I felt very overwhelmed most days. I vividly recall many dreams of moving through scary-divorce-land bogged down by a big bad trunk of fear, anxiety, guilt and anger. I knew I had to unload the trunk to get anywhere but I did not want to ‘deal.’
I noticed there are two kinds of divorced people -- those who carry around trunkloads of emotional baggage and those who keep their emotions neatly tucked away in little bags, accessible, but less visible in public.
I wanted to be the kind of divorced person who had the clarity and the coping skills to downgrade my divorce from a crisis to a process and to come through the other side with hope and a good life.
Manage divorce process rather than react to crisis
I learned that surrounding yourself with helpful professionals, getting a grip on your finances and finding ways to heal your fragile emotional state is critical in the long term. Divorce is a process, not a crisis and it is important to move out of crisis mode. I also found that lawyers were not the only professionals helpful to working through divorce process effectively.
Here are the top 5 things you need to do so that you can achieve a positive outlook and keep the emotional baggage from undermining you after divorce.
1. Acknowledge that you are grieving and deal with the emotions.
2. Put your children’s best interests first.
3. Learn about your finances - develop a monthly budget, understand your assets and liabilities.
4. Think about how you would like your life to look like after divorce and start doing some of those things now, to help you get there.
5. Prepare for the friend dynamics. It’s not about you, but how friends react to divorce itself.
Here's how I addressed each area:
