The process of divorce turns you inside out.  Every family skeleton is exhumed.  Your flaws, weaknesses and failings are exposed.   The time you ran out of gas, or locked your keys in your car are offered as evidence you aren't fit to parent a child. 

If you have ever cried, you're needy.  If you haven't, you're cold.

I kept a journal during my divorce.  It was not the type of journal my lawyer wanted me to keep.  I didn't record anything I should have.  I didn't talk about my husband's road rage or problem drinking.  Perhaps I enabled him, or tried to love him into mental health, but he's my daughter's father and for a time, he was my best friend.

I factored him out of the equation.  Instead, I talked about the time my daughter came home from her birthday party at school, with a fistful of balloons and announced, "I love my life." I submitted the journal to the court-appointed psychologist.  The concluding paragraph discussed my husband's removal of the landscaping surrounding our house, which was replaced with granite gravel.  The last sentence read, "I wish we could have planted flowers."

I spent some time yesterday with a family in crisis.  Mom is ancient.  She wears diapers and can't get out of her wheelchair.  Her children are fighting over her personal property - fishing rods, a car that won't start and plastic flower arrangements. 

I commented to both attorneys that it's sad when siblings fight over the candlesticks, but when adults fight over Mom's property before she's dead, I lose my objectivity.  After the kids agreed on an equitable division of Mom's property, Mom said, "I want to plant flowers."