For many years, I worked as a divorce attorney, and before that, I believed, like many people do, that divorce was primarily a legal problem—a matter of facts, filings, negotiations and outcomes. I thought that if people had good representation and clear information, they would be protected. 

What I learned instead was far more complicated. Divorce is not simply a legal event. It is a psychological and emotional rupture that unfolds inside a legal system that wasn’t designed to hold it. As a judge, and later as a mediator, I came to understand that when intense personal loss is processed through an adversarial structure, fear often fills the space between what the law requires and what people are actually experiencing.

By the time most people arrive at a lawyer’s office, they are already disoriented. Their sense of certainty has cracked. Fear is present, even if it doesn’t yet have a name. What they want most is relief—relief from pain, confusion and the feeling that their life has suddenly gone off course.

That is when the greatest risks begin.

Early in the divorce process, fear often masquerades as urgency. People feel compelled to act quickly, to file, to respond, to protect themselves at all costs. Under stress, the mind narrows. Worst-case scenarios take shape and begin to feel inevitable.

I watched this happen again and again. People did not escalate because they were unreasonable. They escalated because fear convinced them they had no other choice.

From there, familiar patterns emerged.

Being “right” began to matter more than being well. Vindication felt necessary, not out of cruelty, but out of a desire to be seen and understood after a profound loss. Conflict became a stand-in for connection, especially when the relationship had been emotionally intense. Silence felt unbearable. Fighting kept the other person present.

And then there was shame.

Divorce exposes private life to public systems. Personal details are repeated in documents, discussed with strangers and reframed in ways that feel unrecognizable. Many people quietly concluded that the failure of the marriage meant something was fundamentally wrong with them.

Shame rarely announces itself. It can show up as over-concession, rigidity, withdrawal or self-sabotage. Left unnamed, it shapes decisions long before anyone realizes it is in the room. By the time its effects are visible, positions have often hardened and options have narrowed.

What troubled me most was not that divorce was painful; pain is inevitable when something meaningful ends. It was how often unnecessary damage followed—not because people wanted it, but because they did not know where the real dangers were.

Over time, I came to understand something essential: People in pain often make choices that deepen their pain.

This is not a character flaw. It is human behavior under stress.

Fear distorts perception. Catastrophic thinking feels convincing. Other people’s anxiety becomes contagious. Confidence erodes. Judgment wavers.

And yet, I also saw something else. I saw people interrupt these patterns.

I saw individuals learn to pause before reacting. To question the stories their minds were telling them under stress. To recognize when conflict was prolonging attachment rather than resolving anything. To allow grief without letting it hijack every decision. What changed was not the difficulty of the situation, but the space people had to respond rather than react.

For many, that space emerged in mediation. Those people did not have easier divorces; they had less destructive ones.

The difference was not strategy or process alone; it was resilience.

Resilience is not a personality trait. It is not toughness or denial. It is a set of skills—skills that allow people to tolerate discomfort without acting destructively, to separate feelings from fact and to reclaim agency at a moment when life feels out of control.

Agency does not mean controlling outcomes; it means choosing responses.

It is the quiet shift from “How do I prove I’m right?” to “How do I protect my future?”

Over time, those choices compound. Conflict softens. Decisions become more deliberate. A new life begins to take shape—not as a return to what was, but as a thoughtful redesign.

This is what years in divorce law taught me: Divorce does not end a life; it ends a structure.

What follows deserves discernment, patience and honesty, not urgency driven by fear.

When we talk about divorce, we often focus on the end of a marriage. We talk far less about how to move through the process without unnecessary harm to ourselves, our children and the lives we still have to live.

That conversation matters.

Because staying out of harm’s way during divorce is not about avoiding difficulty; it’s about recognizing where the real risks are and choosing not to add damage where none is required.