Partners in Mediation, Inc.

​Barbara's story

 

I am a psychotherapist with over 20 years experience helping people work toward an emotionally healthy life.  I also am a licensed independent drug and alcohol counselor.  I work with people in transition, not only through therapy but also as a mediator.  If you need therapeutic support while going through divorce or separation use the link above to find out more about my therapy practice. 

 

In 1992, when I was in the midst of divorce, my then spouse suggested mediation.  I refused, saying "No one is going to tell me what to do."  After five years of litigation, including a custody investigation, lots of money spent, and heightened emotional stress, we finally got divorced. 

 

I began hearing more and more about Divorce and Family Mediation in my career as a therapist and decided to give mediation a chance by taking a mediation training.  Now, after 25 years of mediating with couples divorcing or separating, I honestly can tell people that mediation is definitely the way to go when a marriage or relationship is ending.  I am sorry that we wasted the time we did in litigation, that the children were put in the middle, and that the money went out the window instead of putting our children through high school and college. 

 

I mediate to help people going through divorce to have a better life during that time than I, my ex-spouse, or my children did.  I understand the pain, anger and frustration people go through during this difficult time.  I want to help them in this transition, and  help them maintain the parenting relationship that is so important to children. 
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Margaret's story

 

In 1993 I was practicing law in a solo law practice, and I was doing lots of divorce and family cases.  That means I was helping parents fight over their children in addition to fighting over property.  I felt like a cog on a gear that ground people up and spit them out, after encouraging each to destroy the other to “win” the case.  Then the judge would encourage the parents to do a good job of parenting their children together, regardless of who had custody or how much visitation time the other parent was granted.

 

I learned about an upcoming mediation training – 40 hours in a single week.  This meant closing my practice for the week, earning no money, but paying pretty stiffly for the training itself.  I made the leap.  By the end of the first day, my original skepticism began to melt away, and by the end of the second day, I was fairly convinced that divorce mediation represented a realistic alternative to the adversarial litigation that I had been doing for over 10 years.  By the end of the week, I was a full-throated convert to mediation.

 

I love what I do, and I wouldn’t trade it for the world.