The Checklist doesn’t solve it

by | Sep 14, 2017 | Divorce and Separation, Money, Parenting & Co-Parenting

The Checklist Doesn’t Solve It

My blog post ideas usually hit me on the head when I’m struggling. Today’s struggle was getting my kids out the door to school.

This seems straightforward in theory. I even made a checklist, taped to the fridge:

Wake up, 7:30 am. Get dressed. Eat breakfast. Dishes in the dishwasher. Brush hair. Brush teeth. Lunch in your bag. Water bottle in your bag. Coat on. Shoes on, 8:30 am.

Twenty minutes, easy. I got up at 6 am today. By 8:30, we were nowhere close to ready, and I found myself wondering if my neighbours were about to call the police over what sounded like a domestic disturbance in my kitchen.

Nothing was wrong with the list. My kids are good at following lists. Something else was missing.

It reminded me of my work with clients, which starts the same way: a template. A spending plan, property, debts, all filled in over what should be a couple of hours. Both the checklist and the template look concrete and achievable on paper. Both take longer than they should, and both come with more angst than the task itself would suggest.

Because the real work was never the checklist or the template. The real work with my kids was figuring out what was actually going on underneath, the reason two siblings kept finding new and creative ways to torment each other. That meant talking to their dad, coordinating with grandparents whose old discipline methods weren’t landing the same way with these kids, and doing the relational work instead of hoping a fridge list would fix it. That work is slow and uncomfortable, and it’s the part I tend to avoid.

The spending plan template works the same way. Filling it in takes two or three hours, tops. That part really is easy. But the ease is only on the surface, the same way the checklist looked easy until it didn’t hold.

When I did this work with clients, I’d ask what was actually going on underneath, whatever was likely to stretch a simple two-hour process into something much longer, and I’d encourage them to deal with that first. Not because the spreadsheet mattered less, but because reviewing a spending plan is quick. It’s only worth doing once the angst underneath it has somewhere to go.

I used to tell clients: this will take three hours if I’m working in a total vacuum the moment I get your information. But nobody works in a vacuum. It could take three hours, or a while longer. We’d figure it out as we went, and I’d keep them posted as best I could.

Custody of Kitty

by | Aug 15, 2017 | Divorce and Separation, Parenting & Co-Parenting

This is Kitty And this is Kitty out enjoying nature. 

Looks like a fireman Lego with a Darth Vader cape and falling-off headphones, you might think. Oh, how wrong you’d be.

Kitty, the combination of Lego man and Lego cat, the unit is called Kitty, caused a lot of conflict in our household last week.

I was dutifully cleaning up the dishes when I started to hear screaming coming from the area my kids had disappeared to. They always make themselves scarce when there’s work to be done. Someday soon they’ll be trained on dinner dishes.

I went to investigate, and as I got closer, the screaming became clearer.

“You’re an idiot!”

“No, you are!”

“Get out of my room, you’re always taking my stuff.”

“Kitty’s mine! Give it back!”

As I rounded the corner, my youngest hurtled by, clutching something in his hand. I reached out to grab him.

“What’s going on?”

I got a stereo synopsis of the situation. The kids were fighting over Kitty.

I yelled, ” Stop, ” and asked them to hold onto Kitty while we figured things out. The yelling continued, so I yelled stop again.

I called a time-out. “Okay, we all need to calm down, and then in ten minutes we can discuss what’s going on here, but we all need to get to a point where we can talk and not yell. I can’t help you two figure out anything while you’re yelling.”

So my kids went to their respective corners, not easily done. When my eldest is ramped up emotionally, he needs ten minutes alone in his room. Really, he needs twenty-four hours, but we’re working on ten minutes so he doesn’t lose an entire day. My youngest gets thirty seconds of screaming his head off, stomping, slamming doors. Thirty seconds. It’s fun, but it’s what we have to work with. It used to be three minutes. We’re whittling it down.

The kids had their time-outs, and I used the time to strategize and breathe before becoming mom-mediator. Not enough time.

We started to discuss what to do. Both kids wanted Kitty. Both were convinced Kitty was theirs. So first we explored that.

“How do we prove who Kitty belongs to?” I asked.

They started arguing over which set Kitty must have come from. A fireman set? Seemed reasonable. Then they argued over which kid had gotten the fireman set. They tried to get me to cast the deciding vote, but honestly, I couldn’t remember. I tried the analytical approach: you, oldest child, never liked firetrucks, you liked SpongeBob, so in theory Kitty is more likely from a set belonging to the youngest. This led to a lot of protesting from the older one, who explained that various pieces had come from multiple sets he’d creatively combined.

Still stuck. They dragged out every Lego manual to trace where each piece had come from. We did this for a while, until my oldest remembered he’d taken most of the manuals to his dad’s.

All the while, I was trying to help them think past “this is mine and therefore not yours.” Could we find equivalent pieces to build a second Kitty? Apparently not, there was only one cat. Could they take turns? Clearly not.

So I tried getting each of them to see the other’s point of view. I asked my oldest to explain what Kitty meant to him. He walked through the whole inspiration behind Kitty’s creation, how he’d picked each piece and why they belonged together as one unit. I’ve since forgotten the details, but at the time I could tell he felt real pride in what he’d built.

As he explained, my youngest rolled his eyes and huffed. I asked him to stop and listen, he’d get his turn too.

He did. And he repeated almost exactly what his brother had said, for nearly identical reasons. He loves his older brother and wants to be just like him.

I believe my oldest actually created Kitty. I also have a very non-self-aware youngest who genuinely believes he did.

After hearing what Kitty meant to each of them, I wanted them both to get to play with him. But they were still dug into their positions. I’d hoped that hearing each other out might lead somewhere, a duplicate Kitty, a sharing arrangement, even one of them stepping back and saying Kitty clearly meant more to the other. No such luck. They were stuck, and so was I.

I had to pull out the judge card.

“Well, it looks like we need a custody arrangement for Kitty. I’ll hold onto him overnight while I think about who gets the first play shift.”

I’ve had Kitty ever since. He’s been living in my car, riding around with me. I’ve become quite attached.

Rest Got me here

by | Jul 24, 2017 | Divorce and Separation

Rest Got Me Here

My blogging has taken a hit lately. My last post was February 3rd. That’s a long time.

Blog hiatuses are a pattern with me. Tax season, kids, summer, Kits Pool, biking, hiking, life in general- they all get in the way.

In the past, guilt would have made that list too. I’ve learned guilt doesn’t actually do anything for me except drag me down and eat up time I don’t have. Its voice still shows up, but I face it down and send it away now. That takes about thirty seconds these days. It used to take weeks.

Self-blame used to eat up even more time. I’d spend hours arguing with myself over why I wasn’t blogging. It went something like: you spent every night this week watching Netflix after the kids went to bed; you could’ve been working, or blogging, or exercising. And my answer: I was so tired I probably would have made mistakes, written badly, or hurt myself. Then I’d eat some chocolate chips to feel better, and pass out.

None of that guilt or self-blame ever actually brought me back to blogging.

What did was taking time for myself.

Last week I was at camp with my kids. Someone else cooked every meal. No laundry. Tax season was finally over. My kids are at the age where they disappear with friends, and I only see them for our daily hour together and at bedtime. I had time. I read a book. I swam every day. I actually got to talk to other moms.

Five days of real rest, and here I am blogging again, from a place of calm instead of guilt. It’s so much easier this way. This post took me an hour. The guilt-and-self-blame ones used to take days.

This theme keeps circling back for me: rest leading to everything else working better, and I see the opposite of it constantly in my work with people navigating separation and divorce. So much angst and blame gets wrapped up in that process.

I understand it firsthand. The years around my own separation and divorce were brutal. I used to sit on the couch wondering if I was having a heart attack. I felt guilty any time I took time for myself, so I kept pushing through, certain things would get better eventually. I blamed myself, my co-parent, probably my parents too, for the state of things. I took almost no time for myself, and my life was hard because of it. Arguments with my co-parent could drag on for weeks. Nothing worked.

Things got better once I started actually resting. That took time. It’s been four years since my separation, and rest still isn’t a permanent fixture in my life, but it’s getting closer because I can feel what it does when it’s there. Blame is mostly gone too. Mostly. It’s a sneaky one.

When I’m not in emotional upheaval, everything runs more smoothly. Simple to say. Not simple to live.

I’ll come back to this theme again. It’s the kind of thing that needs repeating.

Four Years Out

Four Years Out

by | Apr 11, 2017 | Divorce and Separation

Four Years Out

It has been four years since I separated from my husband.

My kids have gone from four and seven to eight and eleven.

I have a pretty fantastic life right now. It has its struggles, but I’m in a new career that still excites me, and I get up every day looking forward to work. My co-parent and I now share the burdens and joys of parenting far better than we ever did together. Most of my days are content. Some are genuinely amazing. The bad ones last a day, sometimes two, and then I’m back to content.

If someone had told me four years ago how long it would take to get here, it would have made things worse. But I’d have been just as surprised to hear how happy I’d end up. Back then, I thought of my life purely in terms of being a mom, and when that job was done, I’d be done too. Except moms are never really done, so I’d never have been done, and I’d have spent the rest of my life in a smaller, sadder version of the one I actually have now.

I was reminded of this recently.

I met someone in an unhappy marriage. She wants out. Her husband doesn’t. They each have their own reasons. In my case, it was the reverse: my ex was the one who wanted out, and I didn’t. I wasn’t happy either, but fear kept me there. He was probably afraid too, but his unhappiness must have outweighed it, because he stepped out first. I’m grateful now, both for the end of that marriage and for the path it put me on.

Before, I lived in fear, and fear drove almost every decision. I took jobs I didn’t want because I was afraid of not finding work. I stayed in a marriage I wasn’t happy in because I was afraid of what divorce would do to my kids. I stayed small and contained because I assumed change would only make things worse.

Change was hard. I had to change nearly everything I thought I knew about being a woman, a mom, an accountant, someone single with children. All of it. And I couldn’t do it alone.

None of it was easy. But every step down that new path opened up a life I never would have believed I’d get to live in.

So if you’re hesitating: reaching out for help is what puts your feet on your own path forward.

Marriage is Easy, Divorce isn’t. Get a Marriage Agreement

by | Dec 14, 2016 | Divorce and Separation

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Marriage Is Easy. Divorce Isn’t. Get a Marriage Agreement.

It’s pretty easy to get married. All you need is a license, and when I was practicing, it cost about $100. Some people have fancy weddings, which take real planning and money, but that’s a choice. Nobody’s forcing you into a big production.

You don’t get the same choice with divorce. It only takes one person deciding they want out. Marriage needs both people to say “I do.” Divorce just needs one person to file. If the other spouse doesn’t respond, it goes to court, and a judge decides for you. Courts don’t always make good calls for families, so I’d always recommend working things out with your soon-to-be ex before it gets there. Court was expensive too, roughly five thousand dollars a day back when I was seeing clients through it, and that’s before the cost of preparing to get there in the first place.

A desk-order divorce, doing all your own paperwork, was cheaper, around eighty dollars. But it was rarely realistic to actually do it all yourself. The real sticking point was always the Separation Agreement. Mine ran a hundred and forty-nine pages, every one of them describing something contentious, except the two signature pages. A hundred and forty-seven pages of contention took us a year to work through and felt like a full-time job. I used to call ours “the Beast.”

Here’s a start on what has to go into an agreement like that in British Columbia.

You have to agree on the date your relationship started. You’d think that would be simple. It rarely was. I saw clients argue over it constantly, sometimes over surprisingly small technicalities, like whether staying at a partner’s place regularly while keeping a different mailing address still counted as living together. The date matters because it can shift the financial outcome for either person, so it was rarely neutral.

Agreeing when the relationship ended was often even harder. Some people felt it had been over for years. Others still couldn’t quite believe it was ending. Again, the date carried real financial weight.

Then there’s parenting, time and money both, which usually ate up the most time of anything, especially when one parent had been the primary caregiver and the two of them had to rebuild enough trust to share parenting equally going forward. There was a lot to learn too. Most people don’t know, for instance, that a fifty-fifty parenting split doesn’t always mean no child support changes hands.

Then come the assets and debts. People often discovered assets they didn’t know existed, and even more often, debt one spouse hadn’t told the other about. Sorting that out took time and trust that usually wasn’t in great supply by that point.

A Separation Agreement, in the end, is a document that maps out every piece of your future life, negotiated with someone you probably don’t like very much right now. It takes time and enormous emotional energy, and it’s usually built during one of the darker periods of a person’s life.

So.

Wouldn’t it make more sense to build that kind of agreement before the wedding, while everyone’s still happy? It seems a little absurd that our system lets anyone get married on the strength of a hundred-dollar license bought online in a moment of blind optimism, while divorce comes wrapped in rules, requirements, and a court system that’ll make you comply if you won’t agree.

What if the agreement got made in that early, hopeful stage instead?

It might save a marriage, or save someone from marrying the wrong person to begin with. It would almost certainly make the divorce easier, if one ever came. Ask anyone who’s been through it. Divorced people are usually the first to say they wish they’d had one. Which is, of course, preaching to the converted.

How do you reach the people who haven’t gotten there yet? The happy, blissful, about-to-be-married ones?

I don’t know. I only ever saw the aftermath of the people who didn’t have one. Maybe you have a better idea.

What If?

by | Dec 3, 2016 | Divorce and Separation

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What If

What do you normally think right after those two words?

I tend to think: what if… catastrophe.

My propensity to imagine the worst is so deeply ingrained that even after proving to myself, again and again, that the worst case never actually happens, catastrophe is still my automatic first thought whenever something even slightly unusual happens in my life.

I get a letter from the Canada Revenue Agency? Oh no, I’m being audited; I’m going to owe thousands of dollars. It was a certificate thanking me for volunteering to help low-income seniors file their taxes.

My co-parent asks to talk about our parenting schedule? Oh no, he’s going to upend everything we’ve worked hard to build, and my life is about to fall apart as I adjust to some new arrangement. He wanted to swap Sundays because he had an event to go to.

My kid’s teacher wants to schedule a talk? Oh no, my child is a bully. She wanted to ask if I’d come speak to her class about financial literacy.

I first noticed this pattern in the middle of my divorce, imagining every possible horror my post-divorce life might hold. A friend finally said, “Renée, things never turn out the way you imagine. Have you ever once been able to predict the future?”

I scoffed at her. What did she know? She wasn’t in the middle of the horror show I was living. But her words lodged themselves somewhere in my brain anyway, whether because I wanted to prove her wrong or because my analytical brain genuinely wanted to test the theory, I’m still not sure.

So I tested it. And things didn’t turn out anything like I’d imagined. What surprised me more was that they never turned out nearly as bad as I’d feared.

I started paying closer attention: to the dire thought right after “what if,” and then to what actually happened afterward. Every time, the gap between the two was enormous. Turns out I really can’t predict the future. Damn it.

I also noticed how much those dire thoughts cost me. Hours spent worrying about outcomes that never arrived. Once I saw that clearly, I was pretty annoyed with myself. What a colossal waste of time.

Then I noticed something else. I’m not the only one who does this. Almost everyone I know does it. Everyone.

And if you’re in an especially stressful stretch, separating from a spouse, negotiating an agreement, your worst-case machinery runs into overdrive. I get it. I lived it too.

So take it from me, and from the friend who called this out in me first.

It will never be what you imagine. It will probably be considerably better.

And one more thing worth knowing: whatever the future actually turns out to be, you’ll be able to handle it.