* Strong Family Defense Force *

Meet other local people coping with a divorce or separation for discussion and support. ||||| “Ah, yes, divorce ... from the Latin word meaning to rip out a man's genitals through his wallet.” Robin Williams | “I'm an excellent housekeeper. Every time I get a divorce, I keep the house.” Zsa Zsa Gabor | “Mom hates dad, Dad hates mom, it all makes you feel so sad.” Kurt Cobain | “A divorce is like an amputation: you survive it, but there's less of you” Margaret Atwood | “When people get married because they think it's a long-time love affair, they'll be divorced very soon, because all love affairs end in disappointment. But marriage is a recognition of a spiritual identity.” Joseph Campbell | “Divorce is the psychological equivalent of a triple coronary by-pass. After such a monumental assault on the heart, it takes years to amend all the habits and attitudes that led up to it.” Mary Kay Blakely | “The worst reconciliation is better than the best divorce” Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra | “American husbands are the best in the world; no other husbands are so generous to their wives, or can be so easily divorced” Elinor Glyn | “The divorced person is like a man with a black patch over one eye: He looks rather dashing but the fact is that he has been through a maiming experience.” Jo Coudert | “When two divorced people marry, four people get into bed” Jewish Proverb | “Whoever said "Marriage is a 50-50 proposition" laid the foundation for more divorce fees than any other short sentence in our language.” Austin Elliot | “Love is a feeling, marriage is a contract, and relationships are work.” Lori Gordon | “A divorcee is a women who got married so she didn't have to work, but now works so she doesn't have to get married.” Anna Magnani. ///////////\\\\\\\\\\\ American families have always shown remarkable resiliency, or flexible adjustment to natural, economic, and social challenges. Their strengths resemble the elasticity of a spider web, a gull's skillful flow with the wind, the regenerating power of perennial grasses, the cooperation of an ant colony, and the persistence of a stream carving canyon rocks. These are not the strengths of fixed monuments but living organisms. This resilience is not measured by wealth, muscle or efficiency but by creativity, unity, and hope. Cultivating these family strengths is critical to a thriving human community. Ben Silliman | Govern a family as you would cook a small fish - very gently. Chinese Proverb | If you cannot get rid of the family skeleton, you may as well make it dance. George Bernard Shaw | Perhaps the greatest social service that can be rendered by anybody to this country and to mankind is to bring up a family. George Bernard Shaw | A man can't make a place for himself in the sun if he keeps taking refuge under the family tree. Helen Keller | In every dispute between parent and child, both cannot be right, but they may be, and usually are, both wrong. It is this situation which gives family life its peculiar hysterical charm. Isaac Rosenfeld | Call it a clan, call it a network, call it a tribe, call it a family: Whatever you call it, whoever you are, you need one. Jane Howard | As states subsist in part by keeping their weaknesses from being known, so is it the quiet of families to have their chancery and their parliament within doors, and to compose and determine all emergent differences there. John Donne | Every single person has capabilities, abilities and gifts. Living a good life depends on whether those capabilities can be used, abilities expressed and gifts given. If they are, the person will be valued, feel powerful and well-connected to the people around them. And the community around the person will be more powerful because of the contribution the person is making. John P. Kretzmann and John L. McKnight | If you as parents cut corners, your children will too. If you lie, they will too. If you spend all your money on yourselves and tithe no portion of it for charities, colleges, churches, synagogues, and civic causes, your children won't either. And if parents snicker at racial and gender jokes, another generation will pass on the poison adults still have not had the courage to snuff out. Marian Wright Edelman ||||| The voice of parents is the voice of gods, for to their children they are heaven's lieutenants. Shakespeare

Thus saith the LORD, Where is the bill of your mother's divorcement, whom I have put away? or which of my creditors is it to whom I have sold you? Behold, for your iniquities have ye sold yourselves, and for your transgressions is your mother put away. Isaiah 50:1

- - - - - This is a serious matter. There are other places to go to for escape and frivolity. Here we are serious about the task at hand. Our task is to eradicate divorce from off the land. For those of us already afflicted we are here to grow stronger through community TLC as much as we can develop among ourselves; which is very, very much indeed if we UNITE. Here we are.