When you die, what will be the most important thing to you?  Will it be the toaster you got in this divorce?   Will it be the house you get?  Or even the retirement?  I am not saying those things are not important.  They are important to your day to day comfort.  But your emotional health cannot be sacrificed for those things. 

Just like it will hurt to give up half of your marital assets and to give up time with your kids, divorce brings about other kinds of injury.  It affects our foundation of ego, and that really is hard to deal with. You have the power to heal those feelings.  The power is in you.  No one can do this for you.  You need to start down that path.

When I say ‘heal’, I do not  mean to forget what made you hurt.  Nor do I mean that you have to forgive your spouse of responsibility for whatever transgression occurred.  I mean putting those feeling in perspective so that the wound starts to scab over.

Think of it as a case of emotional economics.  You only have so much emotion to share.  Where do you want to spend it?  How big a return are you getting right now with the anger you are carrying around?  One way to unload that bad debt is to forgive it. 

Healing is possible.  You just have to believe it is possible.  If you choose not to believe it, then you won’t even begin to heal.  In my decades of doing litigation, I rarely saw anyone begin to heal by fighting the other person in divorce court.  In collaborative or mediation divorce, the healing seems to starts at least midway thru the process.  And by the end of the collaboration or mediation, hopefully you will have the tools to move forward for a more positive life.