Happily Ever After Divorce

Discusses life after divorce, including such topics as self-esteem, co-parenting, single parenting, friendship, and dating.

What happens when your Happily Ever After ends in divorce? Vanessa has it all. She is married to her soulmate and best friend, Jason, and they build a loving family together for 11 years. Everything comes crashing down for Vanessa when Jason announces that he wants an open marriage. As she tries to save her failing marriage, Vanessa goes on an emotional journey filled with hurt, anger and sadness. Can she learn to be happy again? With the help of her children, family and friends, and the power of prayer, Vanessa starts to rebuild her life after a hellish separation and a divorce. Happily Ever After Divorce is an emotional, thought provoking tale which proves there is hope after heartbreak. Divorce may mean the end of your marriage, but it doesn

Earlier in my post-divorce life, I thought marriage would never happen again for me. Having exited a painful one, I had no desire to enter another. Why would anyone want to repeat a difficult experience? . . . I felt that my heart would never be as trusting as it once was. I had lost my faith in marriage. I wasn’t sure it was the best custodian of love. And I still feared how the wife identity could sabotage me. I was content to sit to the side and let others have their turn at giving the institution a whirl. – from Happily Ever After Marriage: There’s Nothing Like Divorce to Clear the Mind by Sarah Hampson After eighteen years of marriage and three children, Sarah Hampson finds herself amongst the growing ranks of divorced MLWs (“Mid-Life Women”). “This is what happens when you are outside the marriage bubble,” she writes. Suddenly, you are in a parallel universe, across some mythic river in a place where you are the un-wife – and you and your un-husband are on the un-married side. And once there, as some kind of compensation for the hardship of the journey, you develop relationship X-ray vision. You know more than if you had never inhabited the bubble. Illusions (and delusions) drop away. Everything is clearer. (pp. xi­­­ – xii) Hampson uses this newfound vantage point outside the “marriage bubble” to bravely explore the institution of matrimony. She applies her famously warm, perceptive and frequently hilarious perspective, not only to her own marriage experience, but also to those of her family and friends, along with the myriad celebrities she has interviewed in more than a decade of journalism. Hampson asserts that the tradition of unveiling the bride after the vows have been made is all wrong. “A bride wears a veil after she becomes a wife,” she writes. “For many, it’s a question of denial, not just of what they want and their unhappiness but also of the characteristics in their mate” (p. 138). With the veil lifted from her eyes, Hampson scrutinizes the marriage assumptions she made as a child, better able to see the domestic compromises made by her mother and grandmother, as well as her own. As a young girl growing up in a comfortably privileged household, Hampson felt secure in her expectation that she would one day be taken care of by a husband. “The message in all quarters of our upbringing was that marriage was the life glue” (p. 30), she writes. Now an Un-Married, Hampson has no end of worries to keep her awake at night. Will her children be irreparably damaged by the divorce? Will her “Ghost Dad” ex stop disappointing them, and her? How will she manage financially? Will she find the serenity she craves? And yet, despite her worries, Hampson finds that as a mature and independent woman she has access to the sort of security and self-possession that she sorely lacked when married. She traces her divorce journey, from her hilarious “Un-marriage Ceremony” (selling her wedding ring to a junk gold broker), to a more fully realized state of being, in which life can be viewed as “a carnival of choices, good and bad, wise and regrettable, designed not to teach us pride in ourselves for engineering whatever successes we may have, but humility in acceptance of how it happened to unfold” (p. 280). Candid, humorous and full of fascinating stories, Happily Ever After Marriage is part modern guide, part passionate conversation with friends and part meditation on what can be seen as a new rite of passage to self-actualization in mid-life. By bravely examining her own life, Hampson brings clarity to the underlying cultural messages that inform the choices we make – and shows how embracing change at mid-life can open oneself to new possibilities of connectedness.

With abandonment and adultery, there is no five-step plan for survival, but there can be hope and healing. Birdseye will help readers learn to honor God when there is no hope of restoration, glorify God during a divorce, and walk children gracefully through the crisis as a single parent.

Divorce is tough. It's filled with painful emotions that can stop you in your tracks. But what you are feeling right now does not have to take over your life. When Happily Ever After Ends shows you how to regain control. It empowers you to look at yourself and your situation, and find a way through this time that will leave you financially sound and legally protected. By gaining an understanding of the three universal laws of every divorce, you can walk through this process with your head held high and dignity intact, and emerge a strong and healthy person. With When Happily Ever After Ends, you can- - Master the seven principles of negotiation - Craft a settlement that gets you what you want - Navigate through the litigation process knowledgeably-not in fear - Create a financial plan that you can live with - Learn better ways to cope when dealing with an ex There is no magical fix and you can't bury your head in the sand. However, there is a clear path with a true end in sight, and the knowledge this book provides can make you BE THE PERSON YOU WANT TO BE.

An uplifting story of gratitude and forgiveness that describes life after divorce and serves as proof that it is possible to rewrite your own happily-ever-after despite unexpected detours.

Kristin began her recovery from divorce to professional cyclist Lance Armstrong with a ring of 3 x 5 note cards. Each one held a hand-selected passage of scripture that helped her cope and survive that stage of her life. Now, in this powerful daily devotional, Kristin offers the same inspiring verses that helped transform her heart and complements them with her own compassionate, personal messages of faith and love. HAPPILY EVER AFTER is a year long daily devotional designed to help women through one of life's most difficult times. Each entry contains a Bible verse and personal reflection from Kristin, helping readers maintain an open heart through their pain, confide in God at every stage of grief and despair, and forgiving those who have hurt them because they have been forgiven by God's grace. As readers continue on their road to recovery, Kristin's spiritually rejuvenating devotional will bring new hope to each passing day of divorce recovery.

What do you do when your marriage is so unhappy that you begin to fantasize about your husband's funeral? That's how bad it got for Alisa Bowman. . . So she launched a last-ditch effort to save her marriage. Project: Happily Ever After is her fearlessly honest and humorous account of how she went from being a "divorce daydreamer" to renewing her wedding vows -- and all of the steps in between. From bikini waxes to erotica, romance instruction manuals to second honeymoons, the silent treatment to power struggles, she goes where many marriage-improvement gurus have feared to tread. Equal parts funny, poignant, and most importantly, useful, Bowman's story will give other miserably-married folks courage and hope. And in addition to telling her own story, she packs straightforward prescriptive guidance, including a "10-Step Marital Improvement Guide." Readers will laugh. They'll cry. And they can start on the road toward their own happy ending!