Letting go of the family home is hard. The home that you and your ex made when you were together is a symbol of the hopes and dreams that you had for the marriage and your family life together – happily ever after, until death do us part. Grieving the loss of these hopes and dreams is a huge part of the emotional recovery following a separation or divorce.

Therapy during divorce can provide you with a regular time and place in your busy week of to-do’s to slow it all down.  A place to sift through all the advice.  A place to say all the things you can’t say anywhere else.  A place to quiet all the noise, hear your own inner voice and, from there, act purposefully and decisively.

Separation can make it feel like life as you knew it has come to an abrupt halt. It may seem overwhelming to make necessary decisions, such as where to live or work. Making decisions is empowering and can set you on a path forward. Viewing decisions as subject to future revision as circumstances change may help.

Dating again is often part of the recovery from separation and divorce. Taking the time to work on yourself physically, emotionally and mentally before jumping back into the dating pool can increase your odds of finding a new partner.

Sadness, to some degree, is a normal part of the divorce process. It’s important to seek help in the form of medication or talking to a divorce counselor if the sadness becomes depression and continues for more than a week or two.

The intense anger of divorce can act as an important counterbalance to sadness and despair. Allowing yourself to experience anger and channeling this feeling into arenas where there is less possibility for negative repercussion can help you heal. 

Even if you are the person who initiated the breakup, it is still normal to vacillate between feeling you definitely did the right thing in separating to questioning yourself and your choices. Ambivalence about the separation is a common experience for many people.

Family law matters that include allegations of a history of domestic violence pose difficult challenges for the court system. Usually both parents are eventually awarded parenting time. For victims, getting support to heal from their experiences in the relationship and to cope with these realities of co-parenting can be a lifeline.

As co-parents, it is easy to get caught up in the game of “my time versus your time.” But in this nasty war for time at the co-parent level, often it is the child’s world that is trampled. A better approach is to strive to allow the child to have his or her world, despite the separation.