A blog about breakups and the practice of law by writer and family law lawyer Zara Suleman provides resources and reflections beyond the law – a holistic approach to heartbreak, divorce, separation, and moving on.
What if each family law case in court could address separation more holistically, with more understanding of the challenges, more recognition of the wounds and…more compassion for those who cannot be their “best”?
While family law cannot make people be better humans, we can remember that the work we do is about humans – the messiness of heartache and breaking up of humans coming together and moving apart.
Family law education fails to teach about being brokenhearted and the impact of this devastation on our clients. It impacts people physically, mentally, and emotionally – people are changed in all ways from this breaking.
As lawyers we are trained in the law really well…but learning how to work with human beings not so much…and how to support human beings in crisis rarely at all…that’s a problem.
Women fear not being believed when they disclose violence because they have not been believed. Women fear not being listened to when they disclose violence because they have not been listened to. Throughout this project we found that women have a valid basis for these fears.
As lawyers, judges, members of the legal profession, we are tasked and entrusted with upholding justice, fairness, and the rule of law. But these notions are fraught within in a legal system originally built on advancing the colonial enterprise…
