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My wife left me for another man almost seven years ago, when my daughter was eight years old. I can remember what it felt like to be me as clearly as if it were a current event. But the first time I really got a taste of what it felt like for my daughter was when she told me, "I think about it all of the time; it never leaves me alone, I can't stop thinking about it. Nobody asked me what I wanted."

If you have been through a divorce, it might be true that you have heard words similar to these. When I heard those words come from my little girl, it took every ounce of composure I owned to not break down in despair right there in front of her. It broke my heart more completely than the betrayal I suffered at the hands of my former wife. If you can put yourself in my daughter's shoes for even a moment; if you can feel the way she felt that caused her to say those things, how broken would you be? I was standing in her thoughts, living them for myself, and it didn't take any stretch at all to feel the frustration and helplessness she felt. I had already felt it from my own experience of the betrayal, so I knew the depth of her cry.

How can you ease the psychological burdens of that? How can you ease the burdens of a child reeling in a world she has no place in; a world she no longer recognizes, a world that was forced upon her without her consent? These things my daughter said to me that day buried me emotionally, and she was only nine at the time; can you imagine what it did to her? Truly, there is no immediate help for feelings as tormented as that. But there is a way to help your child adjust, and hopefully, a way to help her trust in her world again.

That's what happens, you know, when we parents decide "I just can't take it anymore, when do I get to be happy?" We take away the one thing we could give our children that means the most; the feeling of security they have known since birth, the feeling that can only come from the two most favorite people in her world. My divorce was forced upon me, as it was her; we had that in common. But for me, life was filled with experience in having a power of a sort to decide what was best for me, my daughter had little experience with that. The divorce almost destroyed her sense of independence, of her right to influence the most important things around her, the things we are all emotionally attached to. It burdened her with a sense that no one wanted to know how she felt, no one wanted her opinion about anything. The divorce

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