Divorce is such an ugly word in the English language.

It has so many negative connotations.

And we’re constantly reminded of our marital status no matter where we go.

Go to the doctor and they’ll ask you the marital status.

Online, they’ll ask you your marital status. Single, married, widowed or divorced. Well, to me it’s either single or married. It’s nobody’s concern or business whether you’re widowed or divorced or separated.

All it does is reveal how you’re going to be judged.

Judged by people you speak with and literally judged by yourself.

I’ve been coaching people for almost 20 years now, and when a divorced person comes to me, they’ll always tell me how their marriage failed.

Well, their marriage did not fail. It wasn’t a failure. They actually tried to work and have a marriage, and that is not a failure. That’s an amazing, beautiful lesson that they had and shared with another person.

You had to bring that person into your life to learn more about yourself to understand the lessons that you needed to learn to make the changes that you needed to make in yourself to grow as a person. So, it’s just another step in the evolution of you as a human being living through the experiences of your life.

And that’s the first step in a successful divorce –

Recognize the beautiful lessons that were learned.

Embrace those lessons. Only after those lessons are fully embraced will you actually have a healthier relationship. The people who decide not to embrace the lessons continue to talk negatively about their divorce.

They go on to the next relationship that will repeat the same lessons again until they finally figure out that you need to really look at yourself and take responsibility for the things that you may or may not have caused in that relationship.

Now, for people who share children with somebody: children are not possessions.

They’re not negotiating tools or chips so you can get more child support or money out of an ex.

Children are beautiful souls who came into this world because two people brought them into it.

I have single mothers tell me, “I carried her or I carried him. Their father doesn’t deserve them.” ”I brought them into this world.”

And that’s a very narcissistic approach to parenting.

It’s all about them and not about the children that they brought into this world. Because it takes a mother and a father to equally raise the beautiful loving boys and girls into amazing men and women.

Depriving your child time with the opposite sex parent is basically sending your child down a rocky road to therapy and screwed up relationships.

When a child cannot have access or a substantial amount of time with their father and/or mother due to another parents’ control issues over the kids, it is basically just setting them up for future relationship issues when they get older.

When a child gets old enough, they will rebel and see the truth, and see how they were blocked karmically and energetically from spending time with their parents.

I’m seeing it with a lot of clients right now. Their mothers have controlled their kids. And now their teenage daughters are lashing out, literally having sex in the bathroom of school, and doing other things that are detrimental to the development of the child once they get into adulthood.

When a child can’t have a relationship with both parents, whether it’s a boy or girl, it’s going to lead to issues with their relationships in the future.

How do I know that? It happened to me.

It’s happened to the majority of clients I have counseled over the last 20 years.

But there’s a percentage of mothers and fathers out there who block their kids from spending equal time with the other parent. They do it based out of their own fears and insecurities.

They truly believe that they should not give up their child at all.

They believe that the other parent can’t do as good a job as them, but really what it comes down to is they’ve got major issues, separation anxiety and things they have not resolved in their childhood. So, they’re holding on to the one thing that they can control: their child.

Basically, not allowing the child to really have all the beautiful things that they truly need in their life.

These parents will always put themselves first.

And always claim they’re the best parents in the world because they don’t really want to look in the mirror.

The beauty of divorce is that it took two people to bring a kid into this world.

It took two people to create this magical being.

And it takes two people respect it, to bring this child up. So, for those of you who are controlling a child, blocking another parent from spending time with a child, maybe you should look really deep into your own issues and how this playing out in your life with your children and your ex.

Because you’re setting your kids up for future relationship failures, and I’ve seen it thousands of times.

You’re setting yourself up for a kid that’s going to rebel because eventually, all the control and all the dominating things you’re doing now is not going to work anymore when the kid gets older.

And they’re going to see the other parent because all they’ve done is just be about love and wanting to be with them with no control.They’re going to run right into the arms of that one.

I’ve seen it with many of my clients. So the key to a successful, happy divorce is what? It’s a means of working together, not control.