2. The First Year After Divorce

In this episode, we continue the conversation about real people and real situations in the world of divorce. Every person has their own unique story. We’re here to discuss the human element of divorce from a variety of perspectives – from personal anecdotes to divorce in the entertainment world. Divorce in the Entertainment World Celebrities can seem like they have it all, but beneath the glamour they’re people, too, with the same feelings and the same problems in divorce. Drew Barrymore has been divorced for a year now. In her 40s with two small children, “When you break up with somebody you’re like, ‘Yeah, that didn’t work,’ but when you get divorced you’re like I’m the biggest failure. This is the biggest failure. I’m so shameful and it’s so hard to actually go through that, even privately.” This feeling of guilt and failure is common in divorce, but isn't who you are. Divorce in the Real World A new client came to see us nine months after her divorce. We worked with her, reviewing her documents and creating a timeline, determining that what was happening post-divorce wasn’t supposed to happen to her. The system wasn’t providing what was financially owed to her and what was agreed upon. We helped her go from barely making ends meet to securing the reimbursements and the level of support she was entitled to. Real Divorce: The Human Element In our article that appeared recently on the DivorcedMoms.com website -- The First Year of Divorce: 10 Truths No One Tells You But Should – we talk about a lot of the feelings we ourselves went through in our personal divorce experiences, are we messing up our kids, do we miss our exes, etc. We also discovered an article on LinkedIn from the men’s perspective -- How Do Men Really Cope After Divorce? – which covers that men don’t fully realize how their lifestyles are changing until some time passes, that they miss all the activity of home life with their kids. We’re basically the same – we have a sense of loss and we care about our kids. If divorced couples focus on that throughout that first year, on respecting each other and taking things one step at a time, it’ll make things better in the long run. As we like to say, “Divorce does not mess your kids up. It’s how both parents behave before, during, and after divorce that can mess your kids up.” Thanks for joining our community. We’d love to hear from you and love to hear positive steps you are taking for yourself every day. Let us know via our website, on our Facebook page or our Instagram account. Divorce is never easy, and although your life may be changing. Change can be good! We want you to know – you are not alone and you will be ok. We’ll talk to you soon. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices