by Jonathan Gramling

It was about ten years ago that Brandie de la Rosa’s life blew apart when she and her husband divorced leaving their children to spend time with both parents. And in order to make sense of it all — in a situation where perhaps little positive and rational talking is going on — de la Rosa turned to some latent journalistic instincts to make sense of it all.

“I didn’t know anything about writing a book, to be honest with you,” de la Rosa said. “I started doing interviews with my children and then recorded them. There were questions about how they felt about mom and dad divorcing and they were now living in separate homes. I did that because they were younger. I did that individually. As they got a little older, I did it again. And then for the third time, I actually printed out the two-page questionnaire and asked them to fill it out themselves. I had them fill that out and then I kind of filed that away. And then I started journaling a lot, working through the emotions with everything that was going on, kind of the grief of the marriage. And there was the new normal that I had no idea what was on the other side of the door. I was just putting it all down.”

For the most part, there is no clear cut method for coping with divorce just as there is no one way to become a parent and raise children. De la Rosa took a psychology class and tried to make sense of it all.

“I learned things about divorce and children and the trauma that it can create within their lives if you don’t do things right,” de la Rosa said. “Things can impact them later in life, things they experienced as a child. It just got me thinking. ‘I don’t know what I am doing.’ Sometimes I would be in the bathroom crying but come out with a smile and be mom again. Everything I was doing, I didn’t know if it was right or causing more harm. I thought the best way was to check in with them. They were young, way before the divorce. My youngest son was 5-years-old. ‘Anything on your mind today? Anything you want to talk about?’ And of course, he would talk about the dandelions or something that seemed irrelevant. At that time, I thought, ‘Well he’s growing up. If there is anything that he wants to talk about, I want to make it normal to have these conversations, not expecting the worse and of course the bigger stuff later in life.’ That was my way to check in and do a self-check. I used to even tell them, ‘If there is something that bothers you — even if it is something that mom is doing — you aren’t going to hurt my feelings. Please tell me. I want to be the best mom I can be. Is there anything that I can do to be a better mom?’ Sometimes they would say it. ‘Sometimes you are this way or that way. Sometimes you seem checked out,’ whatever the case is. I would listen and I would try to be cognizant and try to change that. As much as I was going through, all my emotions and as hard as it was as a grown woman, it hit me as how hard it must be for children who don’t even know how to process what is happening that they are going through.”

In some ways, Ground Zero for a divorce is the relationship of the divorced parents. How they interact with each other and the environment that they create for the children has a huge impact on everyone’s mental health. Although they may not want to, the parents need to communicate for the sake of the children.

“Putting the kids in the middle is also something that I talk about in the book, Chapter Five, which is Conflict Resolution,” de la Rosa said. “There is another chapter about the child’s perspective. And that talks about not putting the child in the middle of disagreements. Too many parents want to be the right fighter. They want to feel like the hero. If you’re dad or you’re mom, it doesn’t mean that you can’t do X, Y or Z or because of your mom or because of your dad, whatever situation. Or dad or mom owe me money. Can you tell them when you go over there that they need to pay me $20? Now the child feels loyalty conflicts. And they feel, ‘If I don’t side with mom, now mom’s feelings are going to be hurt. And she is going to be sad. And I’m going to be the reason she cried. So I have to go over to dad’s house and tell dad, ‘You owe mom $20.’ Or I’m at dad’s house and I have to be loyal to dad because I’m supposed to be the tough son or tough child. And if I don’t, I’m showing weakness to my dad. So I am going to have to go to mom’s house and tell her she owes him $20. And now they are caught in the middle of which one is right or wrong.”

It is important to stay in control of oneself even it the emotions are raging inside, even if you might feel totally in the right.

“One thing I say — and I implemented it myself — is take a breath, count to three and pause and think, ‘Is this going to harm my child,’” de la Rosa said. “’Is it going to hurt my child?’ When you do that enough — in the beginning you do that a lot — it slowly starts fading away where it becomes second nature. You don’t have to ask the question on whether or not it is going to hurt or harm my child. The automatic response is you are always going to start doing things that help the child. And you won’t even go into the ego things anymore. It takes time, but it is definitely possible. That’s one thing with my children, right before the divorce when things were starting to get rocky and there were times where there was frustration, again I wanted to make sure I taught my children emotional resilience. And I remember the frustrations at times. I was like, ‘I know you’re upset. I know you are angry. I want you to blow out the anger and the frustration. It sounds silly, but it’s one of those things that I incorporated with a pause of 3-5 seconds because with my children, I was there for them. You want to do all of these things. You want to yell. That’s normal. But you can’t go off the rails with it. So I want you to count backwards. You are going to blow as hard as you can at number ten. By the time you get to six, they were asking, ‘Are you still mad?’ I started doing that. ‘Count to three. I know he said what he said. I know he texted me what he said or whatever the situation is. But it’s going to harm or hurt my kids.’ If I fired back, it would be an ongoing conversation or argument. And is it really worth it? The answer is no.”