Dark Chocolate is good for you

Guess what? Scientists have found out why chocolate is good for you.

Eating one and half ounces (42.5 g) daily for two weeks reduced stress hormones in the body, and also helped to reduce the risk of heart disease and cancer. It also helps with the production of serotonin (the happy neurotransmitter in the brain) and endorphins (enjoyment). It has also been shown that savouring dark chocolate stimulates all part of the brain more intensely than passionate kissing.

It might also be helpful in providing relief from chronic fatigue syndrome.

Read more from the article here.

Laughter in surprising places

I received this link in an email from the Friends of His Holiness the Dalai Lama in Australia. HH the Dalai Lama is teaching a number of programs in Sydney, Melbourne and Hobart in early December 2009. This clip is delightful and I just wanted to share it.

Enjoy the laughter and click here.

Things take time

Sorting out issues takes time. So does healing and moving on.

I tend to think that these processes are a bit like recovering from an injury. If you look for improvements minute by minute you won't see any gains, but if you look for improvement month to month you will see how much improvement occurs.

It takes time to get your head around changes in your life. It takes time to sort out what you need to do, when and how, and then of course, it takes time to implement these decisions and actions. Writing "To Do" lists can help to keep you on track, but make sure they have realistic time frames or you might feel like you are not completing anything.

Be prepared to revise what you had planned based on what is going on and remember to take into account any influences that you had not expected that might affect your desired outcomes.

Some Questions to Consider...

Are you ready to consider some tough questions when facing the details of your divorce?

Are you willing to admit that you had a part in the relationship breakdown just as your partner did?

If you consider that you want to have a great relationship with your children, can you allow your partner to have the same?

Will you allow your children to talk with you about the good times they spend with their other parent without getting upset?

What will you compromise on to have a workable separation and divorce?

Do you want to have a positive life that is not bogged down with the pain of your current experience? What would it take for you to move beyond this?

How we see and relate to our world, our experiences and our circumstances can be influenced by our beliefs and attitudes, as well as our self-talk and what and how we hear others say to us.

Choose what you want and work towards it.

Respect and Empowerment

Just wondering -

If we gave others the respect we crave and allowed them to feel empowered the way we would want would we all get along better - ALL the time? This seems to be a huge part of the discord of marriage and relationship breakdown - playing a part in both the cause and effect.

Anger, frustration and feelings of lack of significance (whether real or imagined) make us react in ways that may not be in our best interests and leads to arguments, discord and distrust. This might be a bit simplistic but I think it is part of the picture of stress in our lives.

We need to be responsible for our actions and reactions, and our feelings as well. And of course, at times it would help if we could think before we acted or spoke.

Peace and Kindness

I found a great website today for browsing through books. Random House Australia allows you to download a .pdf file of the First Chapter of some books.

They offer this from His Holiness The Dalai Lama's book "How to Practise: The Way To A Meaningful Life"

I think it is beautifully written so download it here.

It can be so very difficult when facing divorce, challenging times and difficulties to forget how to live with grace and dignity.

The best gift you can give yourself and your loved ones when facing challenging times is to remain true to who you are and not become embittered by the processes you encounter.

Good surprises can happen!

I had a difficult divorce (aren't they all?), and worked hard to make it work.

I think I have had confirmation that I did quite well.

I was recently invited to my former husband's home for a BBQ lunch by my son, my former husband and his new wife. Each asked me at different times to make sure I got the invitation.

This is an incredible shift from my own childhood and parent's divorce. Theirs was the worst kind of acrimonious divorce from the start to beyond my father's death. (Well, before then because their acrimony would have started during their marriage). My childhood felt so bad that I delayed leaving a bad marriage because I couldn't stand the thought of living the rest of my life the way they had....

So, it was really nice to be given that invitation!

Heart felt pain

I seem to be bringing more health warnings about the end of important relationships again this week.

Results released recent from an Australian scientific study ("The Cardiovascular Effects of Bereavement - CARBER") revealed that the emotional pain that some people experience when grieving can have a real physical impact. The study of 160 people (half of whom were in mourning) commenced in 2005 and looked at changes in blood pressure, blood clotting, immunity and heart rhythm activated during the acute phase of bereavement.

The researchers found that grieving could raise blood pressure, heart rate and result in changes in the immune system and clotting - all of which can contribute to an increased risk of heart attack.

There was a six-times higher risk of heart attack for those who had suffered the death of a partner or child. The risk decreased after six months and levelled out after two years.

I believe that the death of a marriage creates similar physical impacts - not just emotional. So many of my divorced friends talked about heart ache and chest pain, and I felt it too.

If you are or have experienced chest pain or other symptoms that are not usual for you, make sure you get checked by an appropriate health care practitioner. It might be easier to think that it is just your experience of your grief, but get it checked out anyway.

Marriage breakdown is bad for your health

Conflict in marriages and marriage breakdown is stressful, and this stress is bad for your health. A scientific study has reported evidence that women suffer more physiologically and psychologically than men when relationships are going through rough patches. Men also suffer depression, but this does not tend to impact their health in the same manner.

The study, co-authored by Nancy Henry and Professor Tim Smith of University of Utah Psychology Department found that women in "strained marriages are more likely to feel depressed and suffer high blood pressure, obesity and other signs of "metabolic syndrome" which are risk factors for heart disease, stroke and diabetes".

Read and overview of the study here or more about the study here.

The authors of the study do not go so far as to say that happy relationships are good for your health, but it is wise to consider that there are more impacts on your life than just the changes that you might be contemplating.

Divorce is not easy for anyone - either partner, children, friends, relatives or colleagues. It is obviously harder on the key people involved but it reaches far and wide.

It is important to consider ways to decrease the stress you might experience, and to try to maintain healthy lifestyles in any way you can. Get enough rest (and sleep), try to eat healthy foods, get some regular exercise and watch out for chemical substances such as alcohol or other drugs.

Love your ex

It is OK to love your ex – many will tell you not to, and in fact most of us want to hate our exes because it makes the pain of separation easier to bear.

But, if we fall into the hatred and anger there is a chance we won’t come out of it. Or if we do, we will be substantially changed and might not find our way back to ourselves.

Remember, whether we choose to believe that we ended up with our former partners out of love, the promise of good things and beliefs, or whether we just want to accept that it was some kind of madness, a mixture of lust and longing, of wanting something more than we had before they were on our scenes, we did choose them. And we actively went into sharing some of the precious time of our lives with them.

Regardless of why it ended, if we get locked into the message of hate, of loss and despair we are likely to forget the good times, the things we enjoyed and the happy moments (few and far between though they might seem).

It is easy to forget that at one time we shared hopes, dreams and common goals with them and that we shared energy, drive and determination in working towards achieving these things. It is easier to focus on what the failures were, rather than where the successes (full or partial) lay.

Obviously there are relationships that have truly changed who we are and our experiences mean that we will never go back to the bright eyed and innocent dreamers we once were. The plus side is we have gained a whole lot of new insights into our strengths, resilience and ourselves as well as a deeper understanding of relationships.

Staying with the bad stops us honouring the good, and worse, it can keep us locked into the belief that we have wasted our life.

So, whom does it pay to stay with the hurt, frustration, anger and pain?

PR: wait... I: wait... L: wait... LD: wait... I: wait... wait... Rank: wait... Traffic: wait... Price: wait... C: wait...

Handling the kids

Children can find it very difficult when their parents divorce.  

How they react, and what they do is as much an expression of how they feel about themselves, their situation, their relationships with each parent, siblings, friends, their peer group and other adults and children around them, as it is about their age, maturity and what they understand about what is going on.  It can be related to what they think are the causes of the marriage breakdown, and what other children in their social and school/work/ religious networks have experienced - whether the situations are the same or not.

It is quite possibly harder for children if they are on their own, but even if they have siblings, each child will react and respond differently so be prepared for "anything goes".

Children might believe they need to protect or defend one parent from the other, they might feel that they have to take sides, prove their love or just get stuck in being confused about the whole thing.

They might not be able to identify what they are feeling, let alone understand it or know what to do about it.  So, they might display unusual behaviour and "act out" - do things that are inappropriate or out of character for them.

Some things to do:

• Try to be patient and allow them some space if they need it.
  
• Let them know that you love them and think of them - even if you can't be with them as much as you want.
  
• You know them best, and know how they react and respond to stress and difficult situations - so be aware of what they might need to do.
  
• Listen to them without judgement.  Let them sound off if they need to (it is a sign that they trust you), but set limits on aggression and unacceptable behaviour.  
  
• Let them feel safe with you - they are probably struggling with this as much as you are (possibly more).
  
• Talk to them about finding other people they might want to talk with - in case they feel uncomfortable talking about some things with you.
  
• Remember that you are the adult - not them - and you might need to put your "stuff" to the side to help them deal with their "stuff".
  
• Allow them to love the other parent - they are a product of both of you, and their environment - let them know and love all parts of who and how they are.
  
• Try not to bad mouth the other parent - keep adult issues at adult level.
  

Remember - children's love is not a divorce trophy - don't try to "win" it.

What to do when things go wrong

We've all been there... 

Had the conversation that shouldn't have come out the way it did, had the look on our face no-one else should have seen (and definitely not our ex or his/her best friend or our kids)...

But it has.

And now we are stuck with the fall out - and how to contain it.  The fall out is a mixture of our own feelings- guilt, stupidity, blame, relief (we really did want them to know, didn't we?) and remorse, and an awareness that we have to DO SOMETHING.  

We have to move forward and we know the next conversations are critical, difficult and the last thing we want to do or think about, but knowing the best thing to do and doing it are different things...   

So, how do we manage?  The quickest way is to hide - to pretend that it didn't happen and that maybe they didn't notice.  Sometimes this works, but is probably better to acknowledge the proverbial elephant in the room and talk about it.  

Some quick steps and ideas to help:

• Notice how you feel, what we did and if possible, understand what led up to this.
  
• Accept that what you did and how you feel is OK.  It is in the past so you can't change it anyway.
  
• Decide where you want to go with this - what is important to you, and to the other key people involved.
  
• Consider what we could and "should" do - how does that sit for you and for others?
  
• What are the costs and consequences of each option you have considered?
  
• Which option is the best for your most desirable results?
  
• How can you make it happen - what do you need to do, who do you need to talk to?  Do you need to rehearse your speech, get some alternative ideas and if so, from whom?
  
• What is the best timing for you and others to achieve your goals?
  

Then - Do It!

Welcome

My background is that I grew up with my parents' acrimonious divorce and am now divorced myself.

My "uncomfortable" childhood, filled with my parent's pain, anger and frustration meant that I was determined to live through my divorce differently.

Yes it was tough - divorce is, but I can now sit at the same table as my former husband and his new wife and discuss things to do with life, our son, his parent etc and not have trouble.  Even more, we can demonstrate to our shared former friends that it is OK to talk with both of us.

This blog is to assist people going through divorce to realise that life continues despite the pain and that there are some practical suggestions to help you get through the tough stuff.

I hope you find this helpful and I look forward to your comments and suggestions.