I know how it feels when your world blows up.

I was eight years old when my world flipped upside down. I came home as usual after school one afternoon, and I could tell something was wrong when my older sister opened the front door. “Mom’s not here,” she told me.

How could that be, I thought? Mom was always there, reliable as the sun rising in the morning.

I looked for my mom in the house and saw that her clothes were gone, and that’s when I began to panic. I ran to the phone when it rang, and it was her. “I’m at the mall,” she said. “I love you.”

She didn’t say any more, but that day, and in the days and weeks that followed, a rush of words came at me to explain what was going on. Mom and Dad weren’t getting along. Mom had to make a change. Everything would be all right.

But I couldn’t understand. Where was Mom? There was no word from her for another six months. What would make her so unhappy she would pack up and leave? Because that’s what she had done. She had packed her suitcase and moved out and wasn’t returning. She wasn’t coming back to me.

I tried to think of what I could have done to make her so angry, so sad. It must have been terrible. My stomach churned.

I thought I had been born into a happy family. I was sure we were happy, the four of us. We were living in Hawaii—and growing up in Hawaii, as Larry David would say, is “pretty … pretty … pretty … good.” But it’s terrifying when you’re in third grade, and you find out that happy really means sad and “good” is really just empty.

First trauma, then a long, long cold war.

My parents’ divorce was bitter, and I felt helpless as it spilled over onto me. My mom and dad battled, and mostly, I was sad. I knew our family wasn’t going to come back together again, and it didn’t.

For many months, people came in and out to care for my sister and me. Then, my dad met a new partner, and we started seeing more of her. She had a daughter a little older than my sister, and they liked each other, so that helped. We had some stability again.

But that didn’t stop the cold war between my parents, and I felt helpless as I watched it. There was nothing I could do to save my mom from the anguish and financial worries and sleepless nights that came once she walked out, nothing to get back even of a little of the warmth we’d had as a family with her in it.

My mom didn’t come to my high school or my college graduations, and when I was married, she came, but then my Dad bowed out. We never closed the distance between us.

Let me help you find a better way.

Divorce doesn’t have to be this way. You don’t have to lose your mind, blow up your family with impulsive actions, or leave your children mystified and suffering. You don’t have to throw your financial security out the window to get out of your marriage or give up your peace of mind. If my mom were my client today, that’s what I’d tell her, and we’d map out a strategy to protect everyone involved.

I can’t do that for her, of course, but I can do it for you and your children.

I became a divorce lawyer because I know exactly what it feels like to be caught in the turmoil of a difficult divorce, and I’ve spent the better part of two decades helping people find sane, workable ways forward so they can avoid the kind of suffering my family went through. Together, we can see that you and your children come out of your divorce whole.

The world may be spinning now, but I can help you make the next decision and the next from a place of calm and clarity. We’ll lay the foundations that will let you and your children rebuild and be happy again.