The holidays.  The warmth of family and friends.  The festive meals and parties.  The closeness of community.  Or not.

For many people, the holidays are a big fat let down.  They shine a glaring spotlight on our lack of true connection, our loneliness or our deep-down-to-the-bone desire for something unnamable that is missing in our lives.

Conflict changes us.  It’s in the same category as mistakes and crisis.  We go along doing the same thing over and over in life until something happens that we didn’t plan for.  Then we’re forced to make a change.  

Last week I took my 18-year-old son to the airport with his 5 pieces of luggage and sent him off to college.  I drove the two hours to the airport with Sam and his father, who I’ve been divorced from since 2007.  The event had the expected rollercoaster of emotions attached to it: the bittersweet loss of a child successfully heading out into the world.  Sam is my second and last child to leave home and I’m in a sort of loss-fog.

Lately, parental alienation has been a hot topic in family law and the parenting coordination world. That term refers to one parent subtly or not so subtly alienating a child from the other parent.  

It surprises people to learn that filing for divorce is a relatively easy and inexpensive process in North Carolina.  Necessary paperwork can be obtained online or through the Clerk of Court’s office.  The $225 filing fee can be waived for those who can’t afford it.  But how often do you hear someone say that a divorce was cheap and easy? 

When Gwyneth Paltrow announced that she was “consciously uncoupling” from Chris Martin several months ago, I heard the whoosh of a small intentional practice launch into the mainstream.  And in turn, suddenly get sexy. 

As I strive to cut away the technology in my life- put down my cell phone, turn off my computer, and generally unplug- I'm falling in love with a new (to me) techie tool: online mediation.

I’m often surprised in mediations and in life how two people can recall a history or interpret facts so differently.  Apparently neutral bits of information result in one person seeing a giraffe and the other seeing a tornado.  

A dear friend of mine recently went through an ugly divorce.  Initially, she asked for advice, but as the drama unfolded, I watched from the sidelines as she spiraled down the wormhole of the legal battle. 

The old adage that says that there’s a thin line between love and hate plays out in my office on a regular basis.  I often marvel as I watch couples weave back and forth between the two emotions. 

So often in crisis we lose site of the forest while staring at the trees.  We forget what we’re doing it all for.  In the end, isn't some version of this photo what we all want?  We want positive relationships with the people in our lives.  We want respect and trust and friendliness.  We all want to get along.

When we’re in a conflict, all we can think of is resolution.  Typically, our thoughts get loopy, by that I mean they loop over and over on the same track.  The standard template of the loop looks like this:

In a previous entry, Family Money Matters, I wrote about the pitfalls of financial dependence in a relationship and how that plays out in separation.  In this entry, I’d like to offer a more concrete solution to this scenario.

Most parents commit to working together on their children’s behalf after their romantic relationship ends but occasionally separated parents remain in conflict for a  long time.  For whatever reason, these couples can’t get past their differences to build a healthy parenting relationship. 

Some things are actually easier now due to technology and exchanging co-parenting information is one of them.  There are a number of free services that allow parents to share calendars, financial record keeping and documents, creating a virtual desk for the two households.