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The Secret Life of Separated Parents - Recognizing Kinship

At first, most separating parents are looking for relief and some space to get on with their lives. But we all know that most separated parents have some kind of ongoing connections around their children. Some connect around the rituals and accomplishments of their children. Some parents just show up to family events and are casually interested in one another. Some parents stay quite involved with regular contact. Some separated parents have a great deal of contact with each other when kids are young, and then drift apart as children become adults. Some parents have long, extended and acrimonious connections for years. They may soften back into a cordial space only after grandchildren come along. Some separated parents add new partners to the parenting unit and form new multiple-parent families.

At first, separations are usually overly hostile or overly friendly. Neither position holds for the long run. Initially parents have jitters and anxieties as they learn to be together again in public and in private. As they meet for teacher conferences and graduations and school plays and baseball games and weddings, a benign energy can grow to replace the old angers and hurts and sadness. Separated parents find new ways of looking at each other—not just from the passage of time but from a mix of events and experiences. These nuances can make for the messiness of life and point to creative new family connections. A new sense of relief and a change in the expectations of family gatherings begins to grow. This new and more positive tone can be powerfully healing for separated adults and their children. To be in a room together in safety and comfort is healing for the extended family as well. Some separated parents and children know this more benign energy from early in the separation. Some learn this later, when kids are well into their adult years. Much relief comes in learning to feel comfortable together after years of custody battles and visitation changes.

This is the secret. There is connection. It can be cordial. Separated parents are kin.

To view the Separated Parents Are Kin blog, click here.

 
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