​www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-parents-can-heal-rifts-with-their-adult-children/
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Check out this thoughtful and thorough April 15, 2024 article written by Joshua Coleman and published in the publication Scientific American. 

Clients often come to see me feeling a wide range of emotions including disappointment, helplessness, grief, anger, outrage, sadness, and betrayal. Emotions influence all of our decisions -- what concessions a person will make during negotiations, when a person will make concessions, whether he or she will continue to negotiate or settle, how he or she will push the other party, how the other person will react when pushed.  People in conflict have a full range of emotions that vary in intensity during mediation, and over time, parties become less able to communicate, more polarized, and less able to resolve their conflict.

The publication  "Grief, Anger, and Fear in Mediation" written by lawyers and mediators Joe and Susan Epstein discusses  how mediators can help untie the knot of emotion and states in pertinent part:

"...Being attuned to the presence and addressing the key emotions of grief, anger, and fear as they arise in the context of mediation...is more often than not the key to successful mediations. Commentators in the field of mediation often address the motivations, underlying interests, and needs of the parties involved in conflict.  Skillful mediators search for and address these factors during the course of mediation. Nonetheless, commentators, mediators, and negotiators tend to overlook the emotionally powerful issues of grief, anger, and fear.  Acknowledgement of emotional factors empowers parties, creates a legitimate sense of control and fairness, and creates the opportunity to restore, preserve, or enhance relationships.  In short, by addressing emotions, mediators and negotiators will unlock the door to key motivations, interests, and needs facing parties..."

Mediators help resolve conflict by identifying common goals, engaging the parties in cooperation, and focusing on the substance of the dispute. We also use tools to address issues and emotions in mediation such as paraphrasing, reframing, validating, summarizing, and asking open ended questions.  In particular, we validate by (1) noticing the presence of emotion, (2) being present and giving all of our attention to the person who is speaking, and (3) acknowledging and naming the emotion. Too often, attorneys and negotiators are uncomfortable with addressing emotion in a mediation room and choose to simply ignore it.



 

Mediation is more than just a process; it's a journey towards resolution, understanding, and healing. In this blog post, we're sharing hypothetical examples of individuals and families who, with the guidance of mediation, may navigate their challenges and emerge with strengthened relationships and newfound peace.
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1. Rebuilding Trust in Co-Parenting: In one case, a divorced couple struggling with communication found solace through mediation. Through facilitated discussions, they developed a co-parenting plan that prioritized the well-being of their children. Today, they share parenting responsibilities amicably, rebuilding trust and creating a stable environment for their family.
2. A Harmony of Inheritance: In a complex family inheritance dispute, mediation played a pivotal role in fostering communication and understanding. Siblings engaged in open dialogue, guided by a skilled mediator, and reached a fair and mutually agreeable resolution. The result was not only the equitable distribution of assets but also the preservation of sibling relationships that had been strained for years.
3. Resolving Marital Strain through Mediation: A couple on the brink of divorce sought mediation to explore an alternative to litigation. Through guided conversations, they addressed underlying issues, learned effective communication strategies, and ultimately decided to give their marriage another chance. Mediation provided the space for them to rediscover the love and commitment that had initially brought them together.
4. From Workplace Conflict to Collaboration: Mediation isn't confined to family matters; it extends to various aspects of life, including the workplace. In a corporate setting, a team grappling with internal conflicts found resolution through workplace mediation. By fostering open dialogue, acknowledging differing perspectives, and creating a plan for moving forward, the team transformed from a divided group to a collaborative and productive unit.
5. Healing Generational Wounds: In a particularly poignant case, a family sought mediation to address deep-seated generational conflicts. Through facilitated conversations, the family members uncovered long-held grievances and worked towards reconciliation. The healing process not only repaired fractured family ties but also set the stage for a more connected and supportive family dynamic.

These anecdotal examples show the power of mediation to transform relationships, facilitate understanding, and pave the way for a more harmonious future. If you find yourself facing challenges within your family or workplace, consider the transformative potential of mediation – a process that goes beyond conflict resolution to foster positive growth and lasting connections.





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Loved talking to Bold Journeys about resilience, grit and perseverance, my parents, and all things mediation! Click above to read the full article or read it below:

We were lucky to catch up with Ellice (Lisa) Halpern recently and have shared our conversation below.
Hi Ellice (Lisa), appreciate you sitting with us today to share your wisdom with our readers. So, let’s start with resilience – where do you get your resilience from?
That is a really interesting question and one that I have not been asked about before in an interview. I am fascinated with the topic of resilience and grit. I remember when Sheryl Sandberg gave the commencement speech at Virginia Tech’s graduation in 2017, after her husband Dave Goldberg died suddenly in 2015. Sheryl said in pertinent part, “The most important thing I learned is that we are not born with a certain amount of resilience. It is a muscle and that means we can build it.” Sheryl and psychologist Adam Grant talk about how to build resilience in yourself in their book Option B: Facing Adversity, Building Resilience, and Finding Joy. “Hundreds of studies have shown that children and adults recover more quickly when they realize that hardships aren’t entirely their fault, don’t affect every aspect of their lives, and won’t follow them everywhere forever.”
Where do I get my resilience? My mother used to tell me when I would become overwhelmed with school work in high school, college, and law school to take one thing at a time. I am a detail person and a perfectionist, and this wise advice has guided me throughout life. We have a choice to complain and to see the glass as half empty or to reframe our thoughts, find the silver linings, and to see the glass as half full. My parents divorced when I was 12. My mother was a single mom who raised three children on her own, worked full time in a career that she loved, and died of cancer at age 55 eight weeks after diagnosis. She was a very positive and resilient person and led by example. My father had various health issues but did not complain about them; he carried on with a full life of working as an attorney and traveling.
I continue to build resilience day by day and year by year. I am paraphrasing Sheryl and Adam here: We all go through hardship and heartbreak and it is important to surround ourselves with our tribe, to speak about traumatic events, and to build self-confidence and self-compassion. We need to pay attention to our happiness and our joyful moments.
Thanks for sharing that. So, before we get any further into our conversation, can you tell our readers a bit about yourself and what you’re working on?
I am a mediator and have owned my business Little Falls Mediation since 2015. My business is based in Arlington, Virginia, and I work remotely when I spend time in California. Our mission is to provide a caring, empathetic environment where clients feel comfortable, safe, and empowered in discussing and resolving conflict. I mainly work with families on marriage, family, divorce and post divorce matters and also help to resolve disputes in community, workplace, and business matters. Mediation is a form of alternative dispute resolution in which the mediator empowers the parties to a dispute to identify the issues, brainstorm solutions, evaluate solutions, and reach joint decisions.
My brand is kindness, rapid response, and competence. My clients come to me when they are undergoing great stress, and I treat them exactly as I would want to be treated.
I started off as a lawyer. I worked in an executive branch agency in Washington, D.C. after law school, then worked in the U.S. Senate for Senator Ted Stevens from Alaska. I then worked as Washington counsel for the American Medical Association. After I had three children, I decided I wanted to take charge of my schedule. I trained to become a mediator in 2010. I started working at Multi-Door Dispute Resolution in D.C. Courts, handling court referred cases in the Small Claims, Family, and Judge in Chambers programs. I taught Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) and Mediation at the Scalia Law School at George Mason University for many semesters. And I currently guest lecture at American University once each semester as well on ADR.
If you had to pick three qualities that are most important to develop, which three would you say matter most?
Perseverance, grit, and resilience were three qualities that were impactful in my journey. And to be successful in my practice with my clients: kindness, rapid response, competence, and transparency about the mediation process and costs.
My advice: find a mentor and be a mentor. One very important mentor to me was Larry Gaughan, known as the father of mediation in the D.C./Maryland/Virginia area. I met him at a conference and learned so much from him about life, grit and resilience, and dispute resolution. We became good friends and colleagues and I miss him every day. Larry died at age 85 in 2019. I receive regular calls from young professionals who are interested in mediation as a career, and I very much enjoy speaking with them and mentoring them.
To close, maybe we can chat about your parents and what they did that was particularly impactful for you?
My parents empowered me to figure things out for myself. They did not hover over me. I paid for college and law school mostly from student loans even though my father was a lawyer and could well afford to pay for my education at Cornell and Georgetown. I paid for my first brand new car with money earned from my first job out of law school. I paid for my contact lenses and my clothes as a teenager. I always had a job. My parents worked hard throughout their lives — my mother as a Development Director up until her death at age 55 and my father as a lawyer and then journalist up until his death at age 88. And they both were extroverts and loved traveling, volunteering in their communities, engaging in what was going on in the world, and celebrating life. I miss them every day.
Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.littlefallsmediation.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/littlefallsmediation/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/littlefallsmediation
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ellice-lisa-halpern-5b81726/
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/ellicehalpern

Image Credits
Photo at AWE (Arlington Women Entrepreneurs conference), Jackie Huber photographer. Headshot, Tim Coburn photographer. GMU photo, shot with my cellphone.

Wishing everyone a wonderful holiday season and a happy and healthy New Year! 

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Loved talking to Canvas Rebel about the first dollar I ever made, my background, my brand, and all things mediation. Read the article here or below: canvasrebel.com/meet-ellice-lisa-halpern/

STORIES & INSIGHTS
Meet Ellice (Lisa) Halpern
NOVEMBER 9, 2023

We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Ellice (Lisa) Halpern a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
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Ellice (Lisa), looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. The first dollar your business earns is always special and we’d love to hear how your brand made its first dollar of revenue.
I was training to become a family mediator in 2015. Training was a process which involved observing a mediation with a mentor mediator, co-mediating a case together, and then mediating on my own with my mentor mediator observing me. I worked on a divorce case during my training with my mentor mediator, Rick. I noticed that Rick was really good with the financial issues so I handled the parenting plan issues and acknowledged the emotion that was present between the parties. We were a good team.

A few months after we wrote a marital settlement agreement for this couple, I received an email that I should go buy the December issue of Northern Virginia magazine. The cover story was “”Til Divorce Do Us Part”. There were three paragraphs in the article about my co-mediator and me. A reporter had interviewed this couple, unbeknownst to me, about using mediation in the divorce process. The three paragraphs were extremely complimentary about the work that we had done with this couple. “…they kept two hardheaded people on task and focused. When we were being counterproductive, they kept us calm and on topic…if we had gone to mediators from the start, we would have been done in two months at a fraction of the cost…I can’t say enough about how much we appreciate our mediators.”

My first client called me after reading the cover story in Northern Virginia magazine. I’ll never forget the thrill that I felt when she said she had read the cover story and wanted to hire me!

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?
After law school, I worked in the executive branch of government in Washington, D.C., then went up to Capitol Hill to work as Minority Counsel on a Subcommittee of the U,S. Senate Governmental Affairs Committee. My boss was Senator Ted Stevens from Alaska. I then became a lobbyist for the American Medical Association.

After I had three children, I decided to train to become a mediator. Mediation is a form of alternative dispute resolution in which the parties to a dispute are empowered to identify the issues, brainstorm solutions, evaluate solutions, and reach joint decisions. After I was certified by the Virginia Supreme Court to be a general mediator and a family mediator, I started working at Multi-Door Dispute Resolution in D.C. Courts, handling court referred cases in the Small Claims, Family, and Judge in Chambers programs. I wanted to mediate as many cases as I could to gain experience. Eventually, I decided to open my own mediation practice, Little Falls Mediation. I help my clients to resolve family, business, workplace, and community matters.

My brand is competence, kindness, and rapid response. My clients come to me when they are undergoing great stress, and I treat them exactly as I would want to be treated.

Can you tell us about a time you’ve had to pivot?
When I started mediating, mediators were trained to work with clients face to face. It is important that parties to a dispute feel comfortable, safe, and empowered to discuss and resolve conflict. Mediators need to establish trust with their clients.

I remember when the pandemic first started, I said out loud that online mediation could not be accomplished effectively. I was not sure how to establish trust and to convey warmth if I was not meeting with clients in person and looking them directly in the eye. Of course, I was wrong and I’ve been mediating online since March of 2020. My clients like the convenience of mediating from the comfort of their offices or homes.

Any stories or insights that might help us understand how you’ve built such a strong reputation?
My brand is kindness, competence, and rapid response. I am also very transparent about what mediation costs with my clients. I give them choices. I am famous for giving homework assignments during a mediation session and for drafting session notes after a mediation session that clearly outlines what clients agreed to during mediation and what homework assignments they should complete before we meet again. I tend to get clients in and out of mediation which they greatly appreciate. My clients tell me all the time how much they appreciate these four factors: kindness, competence, rapid response, and transparency about mediation costs.
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Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.littlefallsmediation.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/littlefallsmediation/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/littlefallsmediation/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ellice-lisa-halpern-5b81726/
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/ElliceHalpern

Image Credits
Tim Coburn Photography

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While the legal aspects of estate distribution may seem straightforward, the emotional complexity that arises in stepfamilies can add an additional layer of difficulty, leading to disputes, misunderstandings, and prolonged conflicts. Such situations often require delicate handling and an understanding of the unique dynamics at play.

Communication, transparency, and empathy are essential elements that can help alleviate the strain in stepsibling relationships during the estate settlement process. Open and honest dialogue among family members can foster mutual understanding and pave the way for a smoother transition. Encouraging all parties involved to express their concerns, needs, and expectations can lay the groundwork for a more collaborative and amicable resolution.

In some cases, seeking the guidance of a professional mediator may prove beneficial in facilitating constructive conversations and fostering a more harmonious environment. Additionally, engaging the services of a skilled estate planning attorney can provide valuable insights and legal expertise to ensure that the distribution of assets adheres to the wishes of the deceased while minimizing potential conflicts.

Clients and friends often assume that because I am a mediator, I excel at working out conflict within my own family. I tell them that mediation skills are valuable in everyday life and help navigate conflicts, improve communication, and foster better relationships. Here's how you can apply mediation skills in your daily interactions wherever you are:

• Active Listening: Practice active listening by giving your full attention to the person speaking. Avoid interrupting or formulating your response while the person is talking. This shows respect and helps you truly understand his or her perspective. Listening does not mean agreeing/
• Empathy: Put yourself in the other person's shoes and try to understand his or her feelings and point of view. This can help you approach the situation with compassion and avoid jumping to conclusions.
• Stay Calm: When conflicts arise, stay calm. Emotional reactions can escalate situations. Take deep breaths and maintain a composed demeanor, which can help de-escalate tensions.
• Use "I" Statements: Express your thoughts and feelings using "I" statements rather than accusatory or blaming language. This helps prevent the other person from becoming defensive and opens up space for a constructive conversation.
• Ask Open-Ended Questions: Encourage the other person to share his or her perspective by asking open-ended questions. These questions require more than a simple "yes" or "no" answer and promote deeper discussions.
• Focus on Interests: Identify the underlying needs and interests of both parties. Often, conflicts arise due to differing needs, and finding common ground can lead to effective solutions. Ask: Help me to understand why you feel this way?
• Separate People from the Problem: Emphasize that you are addressing the issue at hand, not attacking the person. This can help reduce personal feelings of defensiveness and keep the conversation focused on resolving the problem.
• Generate Options: Brainstorm together to find various solutions that could address the issue. This collaborative approach can lead to creative and mutually beneficial outcomes. View the other side as a partner rather than as an adversary.
• Stay Neutral: As a mediator, your goal is to remain impartial at all times. Avoid taking sides and work toward finding solutions that benefit everyone involved.
• Summarize and Clarify: Periodically summarize, paraphrase, and re-frame the discussion to ensure you're both on the same page. This helps avoid misunderstandings and ensures that both parties are heard.
• Focus on Win-Win Solutions: Strive for outcomes that meet the needs and interests of both parties. This encourages a sense of collaboration and helps build positive relationships.
• Practice Patience: Resolution might not come immediately. Be patient and allow time for both parties to reflect, process, and come to a decision.
• Offer Appreciation: Acknowledge the effort and willingness of the other person to engage in the mediation process. Showing appreciation can foster goodwill and maintain a positive atmosphere.
• Know When to Seek Help From Other Professionals: While mediation skills are valuable, some conflicts might require help from additional professionals especially if they involve legal, safety, or mental health concerns. Other professionals who may help include an attorney, therapist, parenting coordinator, and/or a financial neutral.

Mediation is a learned skill that takes time to develop and refine. The more you practice these techniques in your daily life, the more effective you'll become at handling conflicts and fostering positive relationships. 

Need to know

When my former husband and I finally agreed to divorce, our ending was more of a mutual ‘I give up!’ moment than an explosion that blew us apart. We’d been struggling for so long – fighting, living without affection or sex, trying one couples therapist after another – yet here we were on the same page at last. However, beneath the surface calm, I was hurting intensely. I suspected he was going to return to the girlfriend he had been seeing. I was filled with an excruciating sort of grief, made up of some parts pure sorrow, some parts intense anxiety about our children and the future, and some parts persistent rage. I walked around with a thought bubble floating above my head: ‘What’s going to happen next? How the heck am I going to recover from this?’

In this Guide, I’m going to explore the answers to those questions based on my own experience of living through divorce, as well as what I have learned from relevant social science research, and from my 30 years as a psychologist working with others navigating these stormy waters. I will be offering both concrete suggestions for adjusting and adapting to life after a separation or divorce, and providing ideas for how to gain some mastery over your mind, and the frantic worries that may be haunting you.

My own anxieties were both free-floating and very specific. I worried intensely about our seven-year-old son, who kept asking ‘Why is Daddy living in a “department”?’ and our 11-year-old daughter, who became both extremely frustrated by her little brother, and deeply protective of him. Both had already lived through a number of years of uncertainty with unhappy parents.

I worried that I would not be able to afford to stay in our home and remain in a neighbourhood where I had friends to call on for carpools and dog care, and where my children could play all day long inside and out with a flock of other kids. I worried that I would be single forever, living with an identity of ‘Rejected and Divorced’.
The years that followed were hard – I can’t minimise that – but they also led to the kind of growth and wisdom that allowed me a second marriage that has been happily sturdy for 20 years, new experiences I would never have imagined for myself, the capacity to be good friends with my former husband and his wife, and – thank goodness – the opportunity to watch our children adapt, recover and thrive – themselves partnering with wonderful mates.

One of the challenges for many people following divorce is mastering a sense of failure, pessimism and helplessness. Parents who divorce worry especially about the impact of the divorce on their children. Many are not aware that they have the power to limit the risk to themselves, and the risk to their children, if they know about the most powerful risk factors and protective factors.

Divorce can also interrupt your social ties in so many ways. You are no longer part of a couple – so some friends may stop including you in dinner parties. You may have to move, giving up familiar roots in your neighbourhood. Your low mood may deter you from making an effort to arrange social dates with friends and family. Later, I will talk more about how to work on creating, maintaining and strengthening your social support network after a divorce.

Finally, many people who have made the difficult decision to end a marriage head into their future worried about repeating old mistakes, and recreating unworkable relationship patterns the next time around. I’ll give you advice for shifting those patterns to build healthier connections in the future.

The human spirit – for both adults and children – can be incredibly resilient. I will explore choices you can make in your day-to-day life to bolster your resiliency, make it easier to adapt, and build a strong social network that will protect your mental health, and even bolster your physical health over time. Divorce is not the end of the story. It is one very emotional, and often very sorrowful, chapter, but there are going to be many chapters written after that one.

What to do

Consider how you divorce
If you are contemplating a separation, or are heading toward divorce, one way to create cushioning for yourself and your family will be to carefully consider which process to use to create plans and resolve your differences about money, property and parenting. Couples can choose a process that will provide more support, be less adversarial, and rely less on court decisions and more on the input and thoughtfulness of the individuals involved. While litigation is, in a small number of cases, necessary, most people can make effective use of mediation, ‘collaborative divorce’, or ‘cooperative negotiation’ models. These models make a huge difference in how people will land once the divorce is legally complete.
While a review of these various collaborative divorce models and processes is beyond the scope of this Guide, my psychological advice here will be relevant regardless of the kind of divorce process you have engaged in. Some of the guidance will focus particularly on how to recover from more painful divorce experiences.

Use SMART goals to take back control of your life
Once you are in the midst of a divorce, a good starting point for regaining control and writing a new chapter of your life is to create a ‘business plan for life’. Setting intentions about financial, psychological, relationship and parenting health will not only help you create a sense of efficacy – an ‘I can do this!’ experience – the exercise will also lead to thoughtful decision-making in all areas of your life, during a period when painful emotions can overrule rational thought. Using the framework of setting SMART goals, borrowed from the field of industrial psychology and corporate management, you can set your intentions for the first year or two after divorce using these goal posts:
Specific (simple, sensible, significant)
Measurable (meaningful, motivating)
Achievable (attainable)
Relevant (reasonable, realistic and resourced, results-based)
Time-bound (time-based, time-limited, time/cost-limited, timely, time-sensitive)To give you a sense of what these goals might look like, below I’ve shared some of my own from years ago. Note, you need not make every goal you set fit all SMART criteria. Aiming to fit one or more of them is a great start:

Specific: organise bi-weekly potluck suppers with a few other moms and their children to ensure I am building connections and creating events to look forward to – but that don’t take me away from the kids.

Measurable: work on adding a few client hours a week to my practice, to bring in some extra money, and limit my anxiety about finances.

Achievable: continue to attend my own individual therapy once a week, asking my therapist if she could slide her fee for the coming months while I adjust to a new financial picture.

Relevant: arrange to spend one-on-one time with each of my children, knowing that special time with them will help me stay in touch with how they are coping, and will help them feel my focus on them – balancing out all the times I feel preoccupied with my own feelings and stress.

Time-bound: (1) Commit to myself to take a 30-minute walk every day with our dog, with or without the children, and do 50 sit-ups and 25 push-ups. Keep an exercise log. If I stick to this for 30 days, buy myself a new item of clothing. (2) Reach out to my brothers regularly, at least by phone. Set up a visit with each within the next few months. (3) Make a plan with friends or family for the Christmas break when the kids will be with their dad, so I am not alone. Try to confirm a plan by 1 November.You might notice that several of these goals are in some way connected to strengthening and accessing social support, a topic I’m going to cover in more depth below.

A large note of caution I would add about creating this kind of plan (and writing it down) is that, if you don’t follow up on any of your goals, you might feel guilty, or just beat yourself up in some way. One way to inoculate yourself against that outcome is to add a note that achieving any one of your goals is going to be helpful. Good is not the enemy of perfect! When you are navigating something as stressful – or traumatic – as a divorce, an important goal is to look for moments to feel proud of yourself, and give yourself many get-out-of-jail-free cards.

The potential benefits of working on this kind of plan include feeling pride and settling anxiety over the myriad issues you may be worried about. After all, you now have a plan, and you’re making progress on some thoughtful ideas that could help you recover.
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Cultivate your social support
Because of the almost inevitable effect of divorce on your social world, one especially important step now, while you go through a divorce, is making the effort to plan, reach out, and take care of yourself by letting friends know you need them – and being sure to reciprocate their efforts to include you or arrange activities with you.

One idea I found incredibly helpful as I was recovering from my divorce – and which led to decades of fruitful relationships – was to begin organising informal potluck dinners with friends on a monthly basis. Dinners rotated among our homes throughout the city. Some people loved hosting, others preferred to just drop in as guests, but these potlucks became beloved events for everyone involved. The evenings expanded our network – everyone met new people and was able to connect with those they already knew. Conversations led to both opportunities for emotional support as well as connections that created openings for instrumental support – from carpools to shared babysitting swaps and dog-sitting trades.

Another easy way to boost your sense of connection, and increase your experience of happiness and wellbeing, is to pay attention to all the opportunities for small interactions with ‘weak ties’ you can have throughout your week. ‘Weak ties’ (in contrast to the ‘strong ties’ with friends, family and close colleagues) are all those people in your life whom you see regularly but have no deep relationship with – the coffeeshop barista who knows your name, or the person you see at the bus stop every morning. The social scientists Mark Granovetter and Gillian Sandstrom have both studied the amazing benefits we reap from creating, noticing and developing conversations with these strangers we see repeatedly – or even once! Their research shows that, when you have a positive interaction with a stranger once or twice, that person is no longer a stranger – they become someone who helps you feel connected to your community, as well as a little less lonely and a little bit happier in the moment and throughout your life.

The beauty of these tiny interactions is that anyone can have them. The biggest challenge for those of us who may be more shy or introverted is breaking the ice with friendliness despite any awkwardness we might feel for the first few moments. My advice is to try it! If you are not already a person who tends to chat to strangers and say ‘Hello’ to all you meet, do a short experiment with yourself. Make a mindful effort to say ‘Hi’, and initiate a quick conversation with one person every day whom you do not know. ‘I love that T-shirt! I’m a Red Sox fan too!’ ‘You’re doing a great job handling this long line. I know it takes patience.’ Or ‘Good morning – I think I’ve seen you at this bus stop before. I live just down the street.’

Take stock of how it feels to create these tiny interactions, and try to notice them when others initiate them with you. If you find that it gets easier, and more fun, over time, notice whether that leads to any greater feeling of connectedness – in your neighbourhood, your building or wherever you are. Know that, as you try this, you are bolstering your physical and emotional wellbeing – which will help you move forward and recover your life. Who knows… it might even lead to a new relationship.

Aim for cooperative coparenting
If you don’t have children, you can skip this step which is about the parenting approaches you can adopt, or aspire to, to protect your children through a divorce and lower your own long-term stress that might otherwise arise from coparenting conflict (for coparenting advice related specifically to the sometimes awkward business of child handoffs/handovers, please jump to the Learn More section of this Guide below).
Parenting conflict is one of the major risk factors for children post-divorce. Conflict that is persistent over years, and focuses on topics related to the children (such as arguments about who will pick up the kids from soccer, who will pay for a prom dress, or whether kids are allowed to call the off-duty parent whenever they choose) are particularly damaging.
The following approach will help to reduce coparenting conflict or keep it infrequent and quickly resolved. It’s based on books by Bill Eddy, co-founder of the High Conflict Institute in San Diego, including BIFF: Quick Responses to High-Conflict People (2011) and BIFF for CoParent Communication: Your Guide to Difficult Texts, Emails, and Social Media Posts (2020). ‘BIFF’ stands for: brief, informative, friendly and firm. I will take you through each point in turn.

First, keep all messages to your coparent about children issues brief. This means no more than one short paragraph. Even better, a few sentences. Using bullet points helps to keep a message easy to read, and short. If an issue is complex and requires discussion, consider a conversation when both you and your coparent feel available and in a good state of mind. (If the relationship is really troubled and a civil conversation feels impossible, make an appointment with a mental health professional seasoned in helping coparents reduce conflict.)

Second, only send your coparent messages about your children that are informative: that is, focused on a concrete, specific topic. Avoid adding in commentary about extraneous issues, past wounds, your coparent’s faults or complaints.

Third, I advise my clients to re-read all messages that are in written form and aim for a friendly – or at least collegial – tone. Scrub them of any snark in tone or word. Even if you are reacting to a message that was unkind or sarcastic, the idea is to rise above, and stick to BIFF. By reducing stress and strife, this could lengthen your life, and you will protect your children and your other relationships too.

Fourth, be firm in your communications about your children, which means being clear and stating your preferences directly. If you cannot accommodate a favour your coparent has asked, then a simple, but very clear ‘I am so sorry, I am not able to do that’ is better than hemming, hawing or defensive excuses.

Here is an example of a revised email communication with a coparent who asked if they could trade weekends looking after the children next month.

Original message to the coparent:
ANOTHER ASK? Are you kidding me? Do I need to list all the favours you have asked of me in the past three months? It is incredibly inconvenient for me. And now I am sure you will be resentful if I say no, so I am – one more time – between a rock and a hard place. And when was the last time you agreed to trade time with me? Scrubbed according to the BIFF approach:

I’m so sorry. I won’t be able to do that trade next month. I will try to be more accommodating later this spring but right now is tough for me.I have guided countless clients toward this approach to communication and I can tell you – it’s not always easy to do. When we are hurt by someone, angered by their behaviour, and/or repeatedly triggered by old relationship patterns that have been dysfunctional for a while, taking time to breathe, calm down, and think clearly before speaking or pressing ‘Send’ is a challenge. If you can manage those steps first, the construction of a BIFF message will come more easily.

In general, the grease that makes the machinery of coparenting move more smoothly will often include expressing appreciation and gratitude, maintaining grace and calm in the face of a coparent’s poor behaviour, and always protecting your children, as best you can, from conflict between you and the other parent. Research shows that when parents are able to communicate cooperatively, and children feel parents get along pretty well, children’s adjustment on all sorts of scales – academic, social, emotional – is more positive over the years. Not only that but, by keeping conflict at a minimum, children remain much closer to both parents as they grow up.

In that spirit, here are two more tips for those with children, especially in the early months and years post-separation, when everyone is on a tough learning curve:

• Consider using a coparenting app such as Our Family Wizard, to ease scheduling issues and help keep track of children’s busy timetables.
• Invite your coparent to join you in sending each other weekly ‘logs’. Logs are brief summaries (think bullet points) of how the children were doing during your time with them. The topics might include your children’s health, anything relevant that happened during school/daycare, and what they’ve been up to with their social life and other activities.

Logs help parents have a sense of what happened in their children’s lives while they were in the other home. Parents can therefore make the experience of living in two homes feel more seamless for the children and can follow up with children about things that happened while you were apart. This gives children a sense of family cohesion, and helps coparents feel informed, respected, and… once again, reduces conflict and increases a sense of wellbeing for parents.

Prepare for the next chapter of you
When you are going through a divorce, or are adjusting to one, it is normal to spend a lot of time thinking about who you will be as a ‘divorced person’. At some point, once you are ready to begin looking to the future, you might understandably worry about whether you will ever find love again, or worry that, if and when you do fall in love, you might repeat previous mistakes, and land in another unhappy relationship.

When I am working with someone transitioning out of a marriage or recovering from a divorce, I share my belief that the most important exercise for preparing well for future relationships is to spend time looking backward at their previous relationship patterns, and work hard to understand what patterns led to health and happiness, and which ones contributed to the divorce.

Another way of thinking about this is to give just as much thought to what you want and need in a relationship as you would when considering a job, or the purchase of a house. We so often fall in love – for conscious and unconscious reasons – and then in the euphoria of new-love endorphins, we pay less attention to the repetitive patterns that constitute that new relationship. I believe that the best predictor of the future is the past. Unless you put a lot of effort into learning from the past, you won’t create more successful patterns in the future.

Reflect on past relationship patterns
One way of looking both backwards and forwards is to consider the various distinct roles within any long-term relationship that call for different skills, different kinds of communication, and lead to different sets of interpersonal dynamics between the two partners. Not all will apply to everyone, but exploring those that apply to your relationship will be helpful.

Within one long-term relationship, you might navigate a friendship, a roommate relationship, a sort of business relationship in terms of managing spending and saving, a romantic-partner relationship that usually includes physical intimacy and, for couples with children, there is the coparenting relationship too.

One aspect of the overall relationship that people often ignore, or pay less mindful attention to, is what I call the ‘individual growth relationship’ – the extent to which each partner supports the other in finding meaning in their life, and in evolving in healthy ways over time. This part of a relationship might include spiritual journeys that the couple share, or perhaps one partner encouraging the other to gain skills and knowledge so they can shift to a job that will make them happier. This is a crucial aspect of long-term relationships because, when people are mated over years and decades, they will inevitably change over time. They will face adversity, challenges, and sometimes achieve great successes. How a couple navigates both adversity and success is directly related to how content vs distressed a couple feels over time.

My clients find it very helpful to give a lot of thought to how these aspects of their marriage functioned. Where were the strengths, and where the vulnerabilities? Examining your own contribution to both the successes and the problems in one area will help you feel aware, alert and active as you initiate and develop your next long-term relationship.

During my own divorce, through many sessions of marital counselling, I came to realise that my husband and I were pretty bad at supporting one another in the individual growth area. He loved his job but I resented his long work hours. He showed little interest in my evolving career, though he was supportive of my part-time schedule so I could get home for our small children. We were good roommates and, for a long time, very good friends. But as our differences intensified, we lost our romance, argued about the children, and spent less and less time together.

When I met my current husband, I initiated many, many conversations with him about all aspects of our relationship. While he came to enjoy these discussions, he initially told me that he felt like I had a miner’s light on my forehead – peering into his soul in attempts to see the recesses of the cave, in order to make sure there were no hidden dangers lurking in there – or, if there were any, to shine the light on them so I could understand them. By the time we married two years later, my husband had gotten pretty darn good at employing his own miner’s light. Being able to talk through our rough spots and really understand one another has stood us in good stead for 20 years.

Know the signs of positive (as well as toxic) long-term relationships
Another avenue for coming to an understanding about your previous relationships, and moving into readiness for a future relationship that will be healthy and nurturing, is taking stock of some of the fundamental building blocks – as well as sources of toxicity – that are quite common in marriages, and then staying mindful and aware of any red flags, or encouraging signs, in your future relationships. For this, I find the work of the psychologists and marital experts John Gottman and Julie Gottman particularly accessible and useful.
The Gottmans’ most popular concepts are ‘The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse’, or the four interpersonal actions that create distress (and predict divorce if they happen too frequently), and their ‘Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work’.

The Horsemen are:

• criticism of a partner;
• contempt, which is usually derived from a position of superiority;
• defensiveness; and
• stonewalling, which is displayed through emotional withdrawal from interactions.

And on the positive side, the seven principles that make a marriage work are:

• sharing love maps (you and your partner getting to know each other’s inner worlds);
• nurturing fondness and admiration;
• turning toward each other, instead of away;
• letting your partner influence you;
• solving your solvable problems;
• overcoming gridlock; and
• creating shared meaning together.

Digging into these concepts through the Gottmans’ books and other resources can be incredibly helpful, whether you are considering your prior marriage to assess what might have gone wrong, or observing patterns in your new relationship to see if you and your partner are establishing healthy patterns.

Take time to adjust, and stay hopeful
Not everyone who is recovering from a divorce will be interested in, or ready to think about future love, so do take your time and, if necessary, return to the previous step only once you’re ready. In fact, many people make a conscious choice to spend some significant time as a single person, foregoing the dating scene for a while. I support that idea – all of us benefit from some time in our own company. The work of adjusting, adapting and recovering from divorce is so important, and takes up quite a bit of psychic energy. I hope this Guide has offered some helpful tips to make that work easier, and more hopeful. I’m definitely a believer in life offering new opportunities for all of us divorced folks.

I will always remember one client I worked with during the months of her divorce mediation. She was in her 70s when her husband of 40-plus years decided to leave her for a somewhat younger woman. Throughout the divorce process, she felt depressed, bitter and frightened about her future. She got through it OK, with support from her adult children, her close friends and her mah-jong group, but my recollection of her was of a very sad, shrunken person. She reminded me of a prune – shrivelled, but sweet inside.

A couple of years after I said goodbye to her, and wished her well, a beautiful and glowing elderly woman called my name on the sidewalk in front of my office building. This petite, smiling person walked up to me and gave me a warm hug – she was that same client. I looked at her in surprise and delight because she looked… happy! She told me that the divorce had been horrible, but also an opportunity for her to change up her life – even at her age. She had sold her large home in the suburbs, moved into a condo downtown, and joined the garden club in her new building. She was now working with innercity teens to plant their own vegetable gardens on their school grounds, and she felt energised, younger than ever, and even peaceful about her former husband’s decisions. ‘I never would have ended our marriage,’ she said. ‘But it was pretty empty, and I was bored. He basically knocked me overboard, but I not only learned to swim, I ended up swimming to a whole new place – and I love it!’

That story might sound like a lot of ‘kumbaya’ and rainbows, but it is not unusual. Everyone can write new chapters of their own lives, and those chapters can be exciting, stimulating and joyful… eventually.

Key points – How to survive and thrive through divorce

1. Divorce is not the end of the story. It’s a highly emotional, challenging time, but there are going to be many more chapters to your life.
2. Consider how you divorce. Various formal modes of negotiation and cooperation will make the experience less adversarial. If you can, choose one of these processes. Even if you can’t, the following steps will help you through this stage of your life.
3. Use SMART goals to take back control. This process of planning, borrowed from the field of industrial psychology and corporate management, will help you set your intentions for the first year or two post-divorce.
4. Cultivate your social support. It’s almost inevitable that your social world is going to take a knock just when you need more support – so one of the most important steps to take is letting your friends know you need them, as well as looking for new ways to forge connections.
5. Aim for cooperative coparenting. By following the BIFF approach to communication (brief, informative, friendly and firm), you can reduce conflict with your coparent, and protect yourself and your children.
6. Prepare for the next chapter of you. When you’re feeling ready, reflect on your past relationship patterns and get to know the hallmarks of positive (as well as toxic) relationships – this will help you feel aware, alert and active as you initiate and develop your next long-term relationship.
7. Take time to adjust, and stay hopeful. The work of adjusting, adapting and recovering from divorce is so important, and takes up quite a bit of psychic energy. But, remember, life will throw up new opportunities. Your next chapters can be exciting, stimulating and joyful… eventually.

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Managing children’s handoffs/handovers
If the children’s handoffs/handovers with your coparent are tough, tense or make you anxious, try to create a schedule that fits in with the times that your children transition to and from school, or to and from daycare, or to and from a third party. For example, if your children transition from Parent A to Parent B on a Monday, and back to Parent A on a Wednesday, then Parent A could drop off the children at school on Monday morning and then pick them back up again on Wednesday straight from school, or soccer practice, or after-school care. Parent-to-parent transitions are often stressful for children – even when they are civil. Kids sometimes worry there might be conflict or tension, and it is tiring for children to feel that they might be in the middle of something. But scheduling the dropoffs and pickups in this way will minimise awkward moments with your coparent and help everyone feel more relaxed.

Do respect the boundaries of custodial time. Before making any plans with your child that fall on your coparent’s time, talk with your coparent first. If your child asks you directly: ‘Can I sleep over at Taylor’s house on Friday?’ and you realise Friday is your coparent’s custodial time, aim for a very neutral response such as: ‘That’s when you will be with your mom/dad. I really don’t know what’s up that weekend so you better check with your mom/dad. If you want, I’ll give them a heads up that you have been invited.’
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Similarly, if your child tells you about a fieldtrip, and you would love to go as a chaperone on that trip, but the trip falls on your coparent’s time, respond neutrally to your child, such as: ‘Sounds like you’re looking forward to that trip!’ Then talk with your coparent out of earshot of your child to ask if they themselves want to chaperone, or if they are OK with your stepping up. If it’s their day with your child, they should have first dibs on chaperoning. If they tell you it’s fine for you to join the trip, express appreciation.

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