Dear Kate & Emily,

I hope you can help me.... It's my birthday coming up and I'm excited, as I love birthdays! I want my children to give me something, and make a card and a fuss of me! BUT, they're with their Dad on my birthday weekend and I'm really not convinced he's in the mood to remember, or to be too bothered about sorting something out. Am I showing a rather unpleasant spoilt side to me by even worrying about it? I should be more grown-up shouldn't I? If I'm not - then how can I make sure the children do something, without it being me who organises my own birthday cards?

In anticipation,

We’re often told by those interested in our spiritual and mental health that we must find it in ourselves to forgive those who upset and hurt us. Once we’ve done that we can move on. Well, not so according to Professor Aaron Lazare, Dean of the University of Massachusetts and author of ‘On Apology’. It’s saying sorry that has the power ‘to heal humiliations, free the mind from deep-seated guilt, remove the desire for vengeance and restore broken relationships’. Lazare describes a good apology as one that satisfies deep psychological needs: ‘it restores self-respect to people who were initially humiliated and made powerless by the offence.’ Saying sorry also means the offender begins to share and understand the feelings the victim has, like feeling stupid, rejected, humiliated etc.. He came to this conclusion after years spent as a practising psychotherapist making ‘heart wrenching observations of grudges in families, lasting from weeks to a lifetime, resulting from the unwillingness of individuals to apologise and forgive’.

We all get to be single parents for a myriad of reasons, some more messy and understandable than others. However, we all need to get over the break-up and come to terms with it so that we can look forward and start to plan our new future. The motivation being that there’s a lot of unscripted life out there and an awful lot of life in front of us. So, we’ve looked to the experts to advise us on heartbreak.

There’s research from London University that says many of us carry the baggage of old break-ups around, and that it messes with our minds. They got this conclusion because they found that women who married their first love have a better mental state than those who’ve suffered break-ups, and the more break-ups we have the more our mental health’s affected, suggesting we’re not getting over them. We have to go through the natural process of loss and mourning. There’s no way round it. Philip Hodson of the British Association of Counselling and Psychotherapy put it brilliantly: ‘we prefer to skirt round painful issues rather than tackling them head on as around looks shorter and easier, but it ain’t. It’s like going around a bramble patch and finding you fall off a precipice instead’! Well in that case, here are the 4 emotional steps you need to have gone through to ensure you’ve gone right through the brambles and out into the meadows.

I’ve been watching How to Divorce Without Screwing up the Children’ on Channel 4 with pen and paper in hand gleaning words of wisdom from the American divorce coach, the divorcing parents and the children.

The story I want to focus on is the one about the victim, he left her and she’s being as good as she can be. Or at least she thinks she is…..

She is struggling to know how to make things better for her children with a father that has moved abroad and lives with a new girlfriend. Her dreams are shattered and so it seems are her children’s. She feels she’s doing all she can: she loves and hugs her son when he’s sad about missing his Dad, she won’t force her daughter to go to see him if it makes her miserable. She spends time with her daughter riding and it’s fun and easy as it’s a shared passion. The son, well that’s harder he’s a boy and needs his Dad…

We’ve taken heart from those who came to single parenthood from rock bottom and have been able to turn the corner and see the light, however faint, at the end of the tunnel. Here are some personal stories…

I had become part of Jake’s problem: smoothing over the frayed tempers, mending the broken doors. I was making a soft landing for him every time he could no longer stand. Sometimes I feel intensely angry with Jake that, when forced to choose between alcohol and his family, he has chosen the former. I tried to make him stop drinking, but I’m starting to see that while I was powerless to control his life, I am not powerless over my own. Sometimes in the mornings I feel completely overwhelmed by the future. But I feel excited too, and even grateful for the exhausting, rich variety, the experience, that marriage to Jake has given me.’ Isabella Lyne