India Knight now there is a lady I would like to be friends with her book on shopping is stuffed full of retail morsels. However, I first got to know her when reading the amazingly poignant though deeply distressing book by Ruth Picardie “ Before I say goodbye� Am loathe to recommend this book as the last person I did stayed up all night reading it weeping and most certainly did not thank me for the experience. Anyhow India and Ruth were friends and by the time I had finished the book I believed that she was my friend too. The wheels came off India’s bus and she separated from her husband with 2 small children and then wrote the very very funny life on a plate which I most certainly would recommend followed by her single parent themed offering Don’t you want me?

She has only narked me once by writing in an article that she used to be a single parent, but she has a boyfriend now !!!! So she isn’t any more duh, but we have got through that. She has recently written some marvellous words of wisdom in the Sunday Times, which I wish to share with you a while ago. The theme being why are people so rubbish at divorce as she says

“Divorce is not rocket science. You observe the marriage is not working. You file for divorce. The divorce comes through. You realise the crucial thing is to protect your children and to put your own selfish instincts on hold. You understand, because you have two brain cells to rub together, that since stopping being married doesn’t means stopping being parents and this involves creating another kind of relationship with the children’s father/mother. You do this, everyone is a bit shaken up and gets on with it and becomes happy. The end.

The fact that this does not always happen is bound up with an inability on the part of the parents to cope with and handle their own anger and disappointment. Consumed with self-pity they use their own disturbed children as pawns or delusionally they believe their children to be happy and coping when they are clearly struggling.

India reckons that this could be to do with brainwashing. We are so used to hearing that divorce is disastrous, dysfunctional, or even that children are adaptable, will cope, or the one that really gets my goat is the sympathetic well she has been driven to it when using the children as a means to get at and ex, that it gives us permission to have low expectations for the outcome.

At Kate & Emily it is our mission to help you achieve this state to be able to cope with your own issues away from the children, to develop a working relationship with the other parent and to reject the negative stereotypical crap and say “ NOT FOR ME “, because at the end of the day it will be better for the children, for you, for society, for everyone. BRAVO