{"id":13564,"date":"2021-06-10T15:08:31","date_gmt":"2021-06-10T19:08:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/positiveexperience.org\/?p=13564"},"modified":"2025-12-11T12:21:38","modified_gmt":"2025-12-11T17:21:38","slug":"parenting-through-divorce-with-hope","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/positiveexperience.org\/blog\/parenting-through-divorce-with-hope\/","title":{"rendered":"Personal story: Parenting through a divorce using the HOPE framework"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"wpb-content-wrapper\">[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text css=&#8221;&#8221;]\r\n<h2>Seeing strengths even during difficult times<\/h2>\r\n<p>I joined the HOPE National Resource Center at the start of this year to help the team bring the HOPE framework to the West Coast. I\u2019m a Bay Area girl living in Portland. Well, to be more precise, I\u2019m a New Jersey girl who made the Bay Area her home for over a decade before moving to Portland. I\u2019m a social worker with my MSW from Cal, and I\u2019ve always worked at the intersection of parenting and poverty, typically at a more macro-level. Oh, and I\u2019m a queer Jew who\u2019s relatively recently divorced with two kids.<\/p>\r\n<!-- \/wp:post-content -->\r\n<p><!-- wp:paragraph -->As it became apparent that divorce was in my near future, I did what any good Jewish girl would do- I went to therapy. During my intake, my therapist had me fill out an <a href=\"https:\/\/positiveexperience.org\/blog\/how-can-we-heal-from-adverse-childhood-experiences\/\">Adverse Childhood Experiences<\/a> (ACEs) screening. Now, to be fair, I do have some childhood trauma that was probably relevant to my treatment, but all I could think about was the fact that my actions were about to increase my own children\u2019s ACE score. Divorce is on the screening tool. It\u2019s number two on the list. \u201cDid you lose a parent through divorce, abandonment, death, or other reason?\u201d It\u2019s given the same weight as parental death or abandonment.<\/p>\r\n<!-- \/wp:paragraph -->\r\n<p><!-- wp:paragraph -->I left that first therapy session, and all I could think about was question number 2. I was filled with guilt knowing that divorce was inevitable. I had dreams where my children developed heart disease and the doctors blamed it on their ACE score from the divorce. I\u2019m not exaggerating. When I tell you that I was familiar with the ACEs research having worked in California while the topic was really taking off, what I should say is that I may have been completely bought in prior to that moment. I\u2019d never stopped to think about the implications of the score on the parents\u2019 psyche or how easy it was to draw a straight line from childhood trauma to CERTAIN DEATH. Have you seen the movie, Trolls (for all of the parents out there, I\u2019m talking about the original, not World Tour)? There\u2019s this scene where the two main troll characters are trying to determine which of two tunnels will take them where they need to go. A happy-looking cloud character appears and tells them that one tunnel will lead them to their destination, and the other will lead them to CERTAIN DEATH. The scene played on loop in my head.<\/p>\r\n<!-- \/wp:paragraph -->\r\n<p><!-- wp:paragraph -->And then I found the HOPE National Resource Center (and hope). It\u2019s so obvious. Of course <a href=\"https:\/\/positiveexperience.org\/blog\/why-pces-are-important-for-all-children-and-families\/\">positive childhood experiences<\/a> (PCEs) are protective factors against ACEs. While I may have increased their ACE score by 1 point, they still had two parents who loved them beyond belief. They actually increased the number of caring, loving, supportive adults in their lives as new partners came into the picture. They now have models of authentic, healthy love in their lives, and they have learned that they are capable of doing hard things.<\/p>\r\n<!-- \/wp:paragraph -->\r\n<p><!-- wp:paragraph -->I\u2019m not going to end this by telling everyone that divorce is great for children. It\u2019s obviously not ideal. But when you look at it through a lens of the HOPE framework as opposed to deficit-based thinking, you can begin to see the beauty and the lessons that can come from less-than-ideal situations. My children have three parent figures now who love them deeply. They live in a multigenerational household with their grandparents half of the week building relationships that otherwise would not have been possible. They have experienced deep sadness and grief, but also the comfort of being held close while they cried. They have leaned into the power of friendship, even at such young ages, as their closest friends helped them process what they were feeling. They have learned to be vulnerable and ask for help when they need it. They have learned that life isn\u2019t always easy, but it also doesn\u2019t stay hard forever. They have learned resiliency through all of this, and I, as their parent, have learned so much from them.<\/p>\r\n<!-- \/wp:paragraph -->\r\n<p><!-- wp:paragraph -->We have a choice every day, whether we\u2019re making big decisions or just waking up and going to work. We can stare at the tunnel that leads to CERTAIN DEATH, or we can look around and notice the flowers sprouting up, the sun shining on our skin, and the breeze on our face. Both options exist most days, but I can tell you that life is a much more beautiful place when you stop perseverating on the tunnel.<\/p>\r\n<p><!-- \/wp:paragraph --><!-- \/wp:paragraph -->[\/vc_column_text][\/vc_column][\/vc_row]<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text css=&#8221;&#8221;] Seeing strengths even during difficult times I joined the HOPE National Resource Center at the start of this year to help the team bring the HOPE framework to the West Coast. I\u2019m a Bay Area girl living in Portland. Well, to be more precise, I\u2019m a New Jersey girl who made the Bay&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":13565,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[88,265],"post_series":[],"class_list":["post-13564","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog","tag-aces","tag-positive-childhood-experiences","entry","has-media"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.1.1 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Personal story: Parenting through a divorce using the HOPE framework | Tufts Hope<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/positiveexperience.org\/blog\/parenting-through-divorce-with-hope\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Personal story: Parenting through a divorce using the HOPE framework | Tufts Hope\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text css=&#8221;&#8221;] Seeing strengths even during difficult times I joined the HOPE National Resource Center at the start of this year to help the team bring the HOPE framework to the West Coast. I\u2019m a Bay Area girl living in Portland. 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