Separating is not divorcing. Please keep that in mind. It is, instead, the second step in seeing if there's a better way to manage your family.

Being highly invested and preoccupied by an emotionally consuming mission tends to steal resources from other aspects of your emotional life.

Of course the thoughts and awareness are there, but it's all incomplete and often fanciful - kids know there's something to know, and they fill in a bunch of the blanks with their imaginations if their parents haven't had the conversations and/or established themselves as sources of information. It's rare that the kids know nothing at all, and the somethings they do know are often only partially right or flat-out wrong.

I do crosswords when I have time to kill somewhere, and am 100 percent successful on filling in the spots I get stuck on - after I close up, do something else, and then go back to it.

Almost no one can take on an entire future in one step, much less while reeling emotionally.

The most reliable ways to make oneself miserable are attempting to change people and not attempting to change circumstances.

I believe in innocence until there's proof of guilt and all that.