It is frequently the case that the tearful woman who comes to see me for her first appointment has lost her strength and self-confidence. As her case progresses, however, the client undergoes a transformation. She begins to reassert herself and resumes control of her future.

Years later, I can bump into the same client and barely recognise the energetic, self-assured woman who stands before me. We women are far stronger than we know. Some of us only realise this strength after years of conditioning and low self-esteem. Others are strong inside and out – and they have always known it.

I was musing upon this recently, after I ended up sitting next to two fashionably dressed men at the recent Selfridges sale in London. (Sat next to? During a sale? Yes. The only way to shop the Selfridges sale is to fight your way through the massive front doors, check out the crowds, immediately admit defeat, head straight for the champagne bar, order a glass of pink champagne and unwind while watching the throng do battle. I also recommend finding some stylish company with whom to share the moment!)

All three of us watched, open-mouthed in admiration, as the woman on the television screen above our heads made her recorded appearance at Selfridges. The singer Grace Jones emerged from a Range Rover, dressed in gold, and stood on the bonnet of the car waving to the crowds. She looked amazing.

Known for her striking appearance, strong voice, extraordinary hairstyle, modelling, film appearances and larger than life temperament, Grace Jones has dared to appear on stage with live lions and tigers. She currently appears in concert wearing only a series of fantastic jackets, hats and a thong. Once, during a well reported altercation – and there have been many – she is alleged to have described herself as “Queen Bitch Jungle Mother of New York”. She certainly makes life interesting for us!

I am in awe of these strong women who choose to live life their own way. They may begin with very little, but they seize upon all that they have been blessed with. They do it themselves. They don’t need or depend upon men or other women. Versatile and determined, they make the most of their own abilities and talents. Their inner tigers have been unleashed.

Strong women are not clingy and do not prolong doomed relationships simply to feel secure. Neither do they seek out relationships because they feel lonely, nor endeavour to always have a relationship on the go.  They respect themselves and have confidence in themselves and their own lives, without the need for a prop.

Strong women do not wallow in self-pity - or if they do, they never let the public see them cry.  Publicly, they aren’t afraid to make mistakes. They expect to trip up. Whenever they fall off the merry-go-round called Life – as, inevitably, all of us do – they pick themselves up and step back on it again. They don’t worry about what others think of them. They aren’t perfect – but so what? They don’t care.

Have you heard Grace Jones sing La Vie en Rose? If you haven’t, I’ve attached a clip (above) for you to enjoy. If you have, I’m sure you will want to listen to it again.

Edith Piaf, who wrote the words to this famous love song, had a tragic, passionate and complicated life. She was named La Mome (“Little Sparrow”) because of her waif-like looks. In her version of La Vie en Rose she is clearly affected by her own experiences. She sings of her love for a man by whom she is overwhelmed, life becoming suddenly “in the pink”. Her rendition, because of the way she lived her life and accompanied as the song is by the unspoken thought that it is doomed, is accepted as the most romantic. At the same time it is, for me, the most tragic way of delivering this beautiful love song.

Grace Jones has a very different style, and her version has become an upbeat sophisticated, iconic cult song for fashionistas worldwide. Last year a specially produced version played at several top fashion shows, as models sashayed down the catwalk to her extraordinary voice.

In her version of La Vie en Rose, Grace Jones celebrates love her way. She is a woman who is enjoying being in love. She is not dependent on her lover, she is not needy of him and there is no unspoken fear that he will leave her. She shares with us only her passion, her feelings and sensations of being in love. She celebrates that love unequivocally  and – most importantly, from my point of view – without asking anything of her lover in return.

Strong women are their own women. They live life and they enjoy love – but they enjoy it their way.

By the way, if you still don’t believe me about the benefits of a lifetime of workouts, check out some of the more recent pictures of the Coolest Woman on the Planet still looking fabulously toned, lithe and strong. She will be 62 this year.

How has this year been for you? If it has been anything like mine, it has been a rollercoaster. It has passed by very quickly and, looking back, there have been some real highs. There was the faster than expected development of our Cheshire office, our acquisition of a London office set to open next year, and five of our cases included in the Law Reports. I also appeared on BBC Radio 4′s Woman’s Hour, debating against Baroness Deech on possible changes to the law on cohabitation.

There have also been some lows: my surgery and a long slow recovery from its complications, getting used to major lifestyle changes and a dash to Israel to deal with a family emergency. I’m no different to anyone else: we all have our ups and downs, our highs and lows.

I have chosen to share many of those very personal up and down moments with my readers, because this blog isn’t just about family law and how it works in practice. It is also about connecting with other people, sharing feelings and emotions, and going through good times and bad together.

Every one of us is touched by tragedy and bad times in our lives. We can’t win everything, and we don’t get everything we want in life. We all have to deal with tough times – and to try and help others through tough times, too. We may not realise quite how good the good times were, until they are over. Conversely we may not appreciate how bad some times were until they are over too. Then we can look back with relief. We were able to escape the worst. Some days we may find ourselves in turmoil: worried, scared, despairing and despondent. But that black cloud does lift, and we can smell the fresh air again.

We can’t predict the future. Instead we must be patient, taking each day as it comes, step by step. We can’t go faster than that. Time passes, the days, weeks, months come and go, and when we look behind us, we realise that actually, it wasn’t that bad.

If we try and use our personal experiences wisely and with humility, it can make us better people and hopefully more understanding of others and the challenges they face in their lives.

This photo of me isn’t the most flattering that I have had taken: I am at home, sans makeup, on my Wattbike! I do think, however, that it sums up my own year quite neatly: lots of hard work, a Wattbike, a determination to keep going and to never give in – which I haven’t, although I admit I’ve felt like throwing in the towel quite a lot this year –  and as you can see at the end the year, I’m still smiling!

Don’t let life knock you off your stride. Keep going, onwards and upwards!

I wish everyone a happy, healthy and peaceful New Year.

I recently watched an incredibly personal interview with the band Fleetwood Mac on the BBC, in advance of their forthcoming British tour. The band members are clearly older and wiser than they were in the late 1970s. They had stories to tell about the emotional turbulence in their lives when arguably they were at the height of their success. It made fascinating viewing for me, a fan who keeps The Very Best Of close by in my bedroom.

I love the music and I love their voices, but I must admit that the words haven’t always made sense to me. I’ve just been conscious that these are world-class artists producing world-class timeless music. Now I understand how their tumultuous lives have contributed so much to their art.

Many clients begin their meetings with me, assuming that what I am about to hear is new. It isn’t. I’ve already heard the account of the breakdown of their marriage or relationship, over and over again. Different faces, different people – but fundamentally the same story. What is interesting is that when a relationship does break down, the parties don’t always have the same tale to tell. One will blame the other. One may blame a third party. The other may say it wasn’t the third party. Perhaps he or she will insist that the relationship has simply run its course.

And so it was last night, watching and listening to the band members. Here were the same accounts of relationship breakdown – but this time set to fabulous music, and given by some of the biggest names in the music world.

Rumours was Fleetwood Mac’s greatest album. It sold millions of copies around the world. Apparently it was conceived and named to correct the rumours about the relationships of the band members with one another. As a divorce lawyer, I was fascinated to hear the story behind the album.

There was Stevie Nicks of the haunting voice and West Coast melodies. There was Lindsey Buckingham, famous for his incredible abilities on the rock guitar. They had started off as young unknowns: “Buckingham and Nicks”. Mick Fleetwood heard Buckingham playing guitar on a demo album, and immediately invited him to join. So closely attached were Buckingham and Nicks, it was a condition that she had to join too. Mick Fleetwood described them as “joined at the hip” – and yet their close relationship deteriorated. Eventually they split.

Buckingham and Nicks each wrote an iconic song about the reasons for their parting. For Buckingham in Go Your Own Way, the relationship ended in grief and anger. Loving you isn’t the right thing to do, he sang, bitterly. He would have given her the world but…..you can go your own way. He accused her of shacking up with another. It was not what he wanted. And all the world had to know it.

Nicks, on the other hand, wrote Dreams: a gentler assessment. She said she had sought a different parting, a recognition that their relationship had come to the end of the road. In her song, she focused on his responsibility for the breakup. You say you want your freedom…who am I to keep you down? Her account in Dreams seems to suggest that he was responsible for the breakup – and that he would realise it only when she was gone. She imagines him in the stillness of remembering what you had. And what you lost.

However Buckingham, thrashing away on his guitar in Go Your Own Way, was having none of it.

For me, as a lawyer who listens to both sides of such stories daily, these songs remain as relevant today as they were thirty years ago. They remind all of us that we are human and fallible.

Here are two different beliefs, genuinely held, as to what has gone wrong. Probably there is a whole lot more that could be said, about why this relationship ended as it did.

But that wasn’t the end. After Buckingham and Nicks split, Nicks began an illicit relationship with married Mick Fleetwood. He divorced his wife. His relationship with Nicks ended after he betrayed her for her best friend, Sara.

The song Sara, from the album Tusk, is my favourite of all. I never tire of it. I never tire of the emotion in her voice that until recently, I hadn’t understood. But what does it mean? I have read many interpretations, but I think it was her way of coming to terms with the loss of her great love and accepting it – or pretending that she had.

She was drowning in a sea of love. She was protected under a great dark wing. She thought she had met [her] match. Then she lost him. He betrayed her.

Now it’s gone it doesn’t matter any more. Doesn’t it? When she sings you can hear her despair as she sings of Sara: the woman who stole her lover.

In an apparent act of acceptance and forgiveness (or perhaps because she doesn’t want to her reveal her true feelings), she sings, when you build your house I’ll come by.

I have tried to imagine everything she felt when she wrote and sang that song, Mick Fleetwood playing the drums behind her and Lindsey Buckingham on the guitar alongside. It can’t have been easy.

Stevie Nicks later checked herself into a rehabilitation clinic using her former friend’s name, Sara, as a pseudonym.

Novelli married young, had little money and worked all hours. He pulled no punches about the fate of his first marriage, which ended in divorce when his daughter was six: “Her mum and I had absolutely nothing in common apart from this unique child”.

The interview was angled fairly sympathetically towards him, although I suspect his first wife would probably tell a different tale.

I have heard such stories many times before, of course. It isn’t my function to judge; there are many reasons why marriages don’t work.

At this point, the interview could have become yet another recitation of marital breakdown. Instead it took an interesting direction, focusing upon the effects of the divorce and the subsequent parenting arrangements upon the daughter.

Reading the daughter’s story, it seems clear that although both parents thought they were doing their best for her, she was miserable:

I can see now that part of the reason I didn’t see [my father] more was because he was working his arse off. But it was just so sad. I really needed him. When he did come, he’d be exhausted. I never complained. I’d have two hours with him and I’d cry my eyes out when he left. He never knew, but after he’d driven away I was a complete wreck. Then when he and my mum were getting on really badly, I didn’t see him at all, and that messed me up a lot.

The daughter acknowledged that her parents tried to do what they could; for example, providing her with an expensive private education. However Novelli did not always find it easy to pay the school fees – often an open sore for arguments between parents.

Christina resented her schoolmates, distinguishing herself from the other children who “turned up in their Land Rovers”. She said that she grew up into “a really angry teenager”.

For whatever reason, she didn’t see her father as often as she would have liked. When she did, she became childlike: all she wanted was to “cuddle him for ages”, like they had when she was small. But she couldn’t tell him. Why not? Was he too distant from her by then? Did she feel guilty, viewing it as disloyalty to her mother?

I noted that her anger was directed at both her parents – not just her mother, nor her father.  Worse still, she was angry at herself. She blamed her parents and herself, “for allowing myself to fall into a place I shouldn’t have”.

To me this innocent statement, from a young woman caught between two warring parents and blaming herself as well, stood out on the page. I can understand why children blame themselves for their parents’ divorce, given they may well have witnessed what happened before and afterwards. They shouldn’t. And they shouldn’t be permitted to think that it is their fault.

Christina acknowledged that by age 18, she was “in a mess”. She went to live with her father. In her words:

For a year I detoxed…..What I did was about survival. ….I don’t think I could have gone on any longer not having a dad.

Painful stuff.

The words, “I don’t think I could have gone on any longer not having a dad”, made me think of the (thankfully few) cases that I encounter in which warring parents do battle, insisting all the while that they are seeking only to get the best for their children. They rage at each other and play out their arguments in front of their frightened children, who are too young and too immature to really understand the power politics that play out. What parents can forget the next day may scar their children irreparably.

The children’s love for both their parents is overlooked, as is the need for both parents to play a role in their children’s development. Sometimes, one parent with control wishes to limit the other parent’s role and even – although this is rarely said – airbrush them out of the picture. For the other parent, it can be tempting to give in and disappear. Perhaps it just isn’t worth the constant struggle with a former spouse?

I have also encountered cases in which a departing parent puts another priority ahead of the children. This could be work, or a new relationship. The parent may try to appease his or her conscience by providing material things, such as gifts or a good education, by way of compensation.

I do not presume that this was the case with the Novellis; I am sure that, as revealing as the Sunday Times interview was, it merely pricked the surface of a complex and turbulent story. However I do believe that when a parent’s role is relegated from one of constant care to one of second fiddle, it is unfair upon the children. The effect can be deeply destabilising. The children may blame one or both parents for this situation. It isn’t the children’s fault, but they may also blame themselves for the ultimate outcome.

How can such sad situations be improved? Recently I was talking to some of the counsellors at the Oakdale Centre in Harrogate. I have a number of clients who seek therapy, counselling and practical assistance from them, to try and resolve emotional challenges linked to divorce. I have found the counsellors at Oakdale to be very helpful.

The answer, they tell me, lies in boundaries.

These counsellors try and help parents to understand that the time spent by each parent with their children should occur within agreed, solid, defined boundaries.

After these boundaries have been set they must be respected by the parents, irrespective of the animosity that the parents may feel towards one another. They must not cross one another’s boundaries; nor must they attempt to shrink them. They must not try and find out what happened when the children were within the other parent’s boundary; nor must they criticise the other parent.  (That isn’t easy, especially when the other parent has a new partner.) Respect for these boundaries translates into respect for the children.

It makes good sense to me.

Image credit: mijita.

Paranoia is a profound distrust or suspicion of others, which goes hand-in-hand with the belief that one is being persecuted. In divorce, these feelings can have some basis in reality. There may indeed be someone out to get you. Usually, it is the person to whom you had hitherto been closest: your spouse.

Unfortunately, divorce causes some people to become irrational or even delusional. Their perceived “persecutor” is nothing of the sort and may actually be a spouse who wants nothing more than to move on with his or her life.

The painting above is called “Paranoia”. What are the figures in the painting staring at and so worried by? There is no-one visible outside, so what or who do they think may be coming in through the door? Are they right to be worried or are they paranoid?

Its painter, Neo Rauch, is a stellar artist who was born in East Germany. His parents died in a train accident when he was four weeks old and he has clearly been profoundly affected by his background. A collection of his art was exhibited under the title Para at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York in 2007, to rave reviews. I was in New York and visited the exhibition with my son Ben.

I must confess that only recently have I come to appreciate Neo Rauch’s work. His paintings can be very difficult to understand. They need a lot of thought. They certainly appear to be telling a story, but Rauch denies this. His paintings pose questions. Rauch says that his pictures can mean “anything to anyone”. So it is up to each one of us to decide what they actually mean.

Likewise, the emotional rollercoaster that is divorce encourages different people to respond in different ways. Innocent spouses can be accused of harassment and misconduct. The accuser may then refuse to allow the other parent to see a child. Thus the paranoia continues to play out, all the way into the courtroom, with the hapless child caught in the middle. Sadly, this is not uncommon behaviour in my experience.

In other cases, paradoxically, what appears to be delusional or paranoid behaviour is actually a perfectly valid and healthy response to a sinister situation. In such cases the persecutor will stealthily, relentlessly and deliberately increase the pressure and the cost – financial and emotional – upon the victim, while going to great lengths to make others believe that the victim is to blame. When the victim complains, the complaints are dismissed and he or she is wrongly criticised.

In all cases the perpetrators may be assisted by others, frequently members of their own family, close friends and unwittingly, even their own lawyers. I recently saw a TV programme about this phenomenon, which is called “groupthink”. The word is used to describe what happens when a group of people support one another, without questioning their plan of action. Lawyers will be familiar with clients who insist on bringing a family member or close friend with them, to provide unquestioning support. Lawyers, who act on their client’s instructions, may also become part of that unconditionally supportive group. But is this healthy?

Divorce causes emotional turbulence, which can affect the minds of both parties and their supporters. Profound love can turn into profound hate. Most people come through the divorce process bruised – but recover. But in a few, thankfully rare cases, those with controlling personalities may find it difficult to let go. Supported by their ‘group’, they may stalk their former partner playing mind games, determined never to stop until the spouse is worn out, exhausted and beaten.

All this of course, is why we have our Courts of Justice. The judges are there to level the uneven playing field, to identify the victim and to protect them from the perpetrator. Our courts are a bastion of strength, and their function is to apply justice.

Even so, I must confess that as a family lawyer, I enjoy the luxury of extended thought. I am currently advising the scriptwriters of a top British TV programme about a fictional court case. It is good fun because it gives me free rein to let my imagination run riot!

It has occurred to me, as I consider all the mind games that could play out in the courtroom, that perhaps a judge, alone in his ivory tower, could also play mind games with the parties before him. His motives could be many and varied. He would enjoy his power over them all. The parties would think he was administering justice. Despite all the evidence, however, the victim would become his prey.

Scary stuff! Could it happen in real life? Think of life as a Neo Rauch painting: I will let you make your own mind up!