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…

Remember that time? The hurt, sadness, devastation, sorrow, grief, unbearable pain, betrayal, disappointment, anger, confusion, loss of control, numbness, anxiety, the gut-wrenching feeling that never left, exhaustion, feeling physically and mentally sick, the back and forth, burnout,

Regardless of our areas of practice there is a call out for each of us individually to address the impact and ongoing dynamic of systemic racism and white privilege that pervades our lives and the lives of people we work with.

Going to court will not heal your broken heart. It will not repair jealousy, betrayal, broken trust, cruelty, or even the honest reality that not all love lasts forever.