When prospective clients email Klein Law Group or come to our Boca Raton office to have our divorce attorneys initiate proceedings or respond to them – it’s usually the case that long before that point they have experienced inner turmoil, that this has caused disruptions in their life, and they yearn for the freedom to start fresh.
While starting fresh means different things to different people, people’s responses to divorce are limited to only a few intense emotional states that are experienced in stages. Psychological research on the divorce-stress-adjustment perspective as well as popular guides on divorce describe these inner dispositions and the transitions to which they lead. Sociological research shows how they manifest in social settings. Their conclusion? Women are highly likely to enter into a more reflective stage of their life and seek to fundamentally recreate themselves.
A 2009 study published in the Journal of Marriage and Family titled “Divorce and the Divine: The Role of Spirituality in Adjustment to Divorce” surveyed women and found that, 74% appraised their divorce as a sacred loss, 78% experienced it as a spiritual struggle, and 88% of them engaged in adaptive spiritual coping techniques. Elizabeth Gilbert’s Eat, Pray, Love – in other words – owes a large part of its commercial success to being an honest representation of what women experience after divorce. Unfortunately, not everyone can take a year off from their life to find themselves through simple comforts and intentional communities.
Over the course of our 65 years of combined legal experience we have gained extensive insights into our client’s non-legal needs as well their legal needs. To show our support for them, as they have supported us while acting as their champions in their fight for the freedom to start fresh, we decided to compile some of what has been shared with us into the following Guide for Recently Divorced Women in Boca Raton.
Eat: Cultural Enrichment
Cooking Classes
You don’t need to fly to Rome like Julia Roberts did in order to learn to make a meal like Mamma cooks at home. ThumbTack, CozyMeal, and TakeLessons all enable you to meet with culinary instructors in person and online that have gone through background checks. Do you want to learn to cook Italian food? Check. How about getting instruction in how to prepare sushi so the seaweed doesn’t fall apart? Check. Perhaps you want to learn how to make and plate the perfect paella. It’s all possible! Nearly anything you would want to learn can be gained from the previous sources – all without leaving the 561-area code!
Fun and Leisure Classes
If you’re worried that a consequence of spending your spare hours around fragrant foods may be a spare tire, there’s many other avenues for self-development in Boca. The School District of Palm Beach County helps facilitate an incredible variety of classes for adults. Their Fun and Leisure Classes website links to their current and upcoming course offerings – which includes jazz or contemporary dance, foreign languages, martial arts, photography, jewelry, painting and much, much more.
If that option doesn’t sound cosmopolitan enough, consider acting like a tourist and logging on to TripAdvisor. They have a daily-updated section on Classes and Workshops in Boca Raton that is ranked according to the number of times travelers have favorited it. There’s no guarantee you’ll meet a foreigner there, but it’s possible.
Pray: Practices for Accelerated Coping
Because stress is not just a psychological but a physical response, many women find relief in physical activities or learning how to meditate. Boca Raton is abundant with opportunities for women that crave this form of prayer.
Relaxation
When you want to find information on where you can get a massage, experience guided meditation or have a yoga class as well as find out what other people from Boca think about those service providers – Yelp can help!
And when you want to find discounts for yoga classes, spa treatments and natural medicine practices like reiki and chiropractic adjustment, Groupon is great!
Pray: Intentional Communities for Boca Raton’s Recently Divorced
Divorces don’t only have an impact on you and your partner and your children, if you have them, but also on your circle of friends. Sharing too much may be perceived as emotional dumping, or the advice they provide may seem inappropriate as they themselves haven’t gone through a similar experience. In such situations – seeking out others to converse with can be a positive step.
eventbrite
eventbrite collects and shares information on a wide variety of events with themes that someone who has recently experienced a separation could benefit from. From personal and spiritual health related events to divorce-related events in Boca Raton, such as Support Groups for Kids of Divorcing Families, there’s a wide variety of activities that can be explored. Plus, when you find an issue that you resonate with you can sign up for notifications as to when new events are being held.
MeetUp
There are a variety of support groups on MeetUp in the Boca Raton area for divorcees. Some of these includes meetings oriented to Jewish Women, dealing with narcissist husbands, and support for dealing with the issues involved with single parenting. Even if your particular niche isn’t there, say the ex-wives of gambling-addicted husbands, you can still find a community of people that want to be an avenue for support.
DivorceCare
DivorceCare is an organization that hosts reading and discussion groups over thirteen weeks to help promote personal and spiritual growth for this that are recently divorced. They frequently hold groups guided by experienced, professional counselors in Boca Raton, Boynton Beach, and West Palm Beach.
Palm Beach County
For parents, the Palm Beach County Community Services Department provides a frequently updated list of Support Groups in Palm Beach County and the 211 resource helpline. For children, they offer education and training in coping strategies for dealing with divorce.
Individual Support
If you don’t want to meet in a group setting with people that are also going through divorce, private counseling is also an option. The online mental wellness journal PsychologyToday has an extensive listing of Divorce Support Groups near Boca Raton.
Build Your Own Support Space
If one of the books that we shared in our Guide to Divorce books [future internal link] and you wanted to meet with someone you know going through a similar experience – you could always create your own group! The Boca Raton Public Library allows residents to rent out rooms, or you could always visit one of Boca’s many wonderful cafés and share espresso and snacks at someplace like The Tin Muffin Café or The Seed. Coffee + Goods while discussing Debbie Ford’s Spiritual Divorce: Divorce as a Catalyst for an Extraordinary Life, Breaking Free: A Step-by-Step Divorce Guide to Achieving Emotional, Physical & Spiritual Freedom, or something else!
Love:
After you feel that you are ready to move on to dating, Boca Raton also offer many other options – some of which we share in the second part of our Boca Raton Guide to Post-Divorce Life.
Conclusion
After the marital assets have been divided, the dissolution of marriage is completed and the lawyers are no longer in the picture, many women feel it appropriate to treat themselves. They should. As a cause of stress, divorce is an experience second only to the death of a loved one.
Klein Law Group has compassionate divorce attorneys that are here to help you develop a plan so you can start your life fresh the right way. Our areas of practice include alimony, complex/high net worth divorce, contested divorce, parental relocation, property division, and more.
