Mediate Michigan

These steps will help to ensure stability and security in the divorce outcome:

• Get the financial help you need. Work with a financial expert to educate yourself about what you’ll need now and in the years to come. Be clear about the future impact of the financial decisions you must make now.

• Get the emotional support you need. Divorce is a complex emotional process — for most, the death of something hugely important in their lives. Feelings of grief, anger and fear are the norm. Processing these emotions and reaching a place of greater self-understanding is possibly the most important work you will do in divorce.

• Consider which divorce process will best support your needs. Collaborative divorce, for example, offers comprehensive legal, financial and emotional support and keeps you out of court. You will be able to focus on what is important to you, and your children, in a personalized and in-depth way.

• Give yourself time. Marriages, particularly long term ones, cannot unravel overnight. You need to give the divorcing process the time it deserves. As one 58-year-old client said to me, “We were together 30 years — we’re not going to figure out our entire divorce in a few months.”• Be compassionate to yourself. Allow yourself the space to repair the pieces that have been bruised in divorce. The courage to be self-forgiving and self-loving is a gift to yourself during and after divorce.

via MaryEllen Linnehan: Divorce Over 50.