Micheal Maness

Precious Heart-broken Heart: Love & the Search for Finality in Divorce Micheal Maness

I chronicle the nature of grief peculiar to divorce in a personal manner through the lens of my experience and clinical understanding. I begin with love and end with love. In Part One: I begin with the fantasy that turned into tragedy, and I use the analogy of a clock's mechanism to show the general nature and course of healthy grief - especially in divorce. I start with an analogy of the mechanical nature of something totally non-mechanical and fully metaphysical. A mainspring, fulcrum, lever, and pendulums show how inward and outward expressions of grief facilitate or impede healing. In Part Two: the Black Forest Pathway - How Expression Unfolds - chapters III through XII, a few other analogies are used to chronicle the journey through grief, like the 'Bay of Heartbrokenness,' the 'Bridge of Finality,' and the 'Wasteland.' With these analogies and some liberty, I take the reader on a walk through the 'Black Forest,' observing the various trees that make up grief in the various stages of a divorce. In Part Three: the Black Forest - What Helps Expression - chapters XIII and XV, I step back and view the Black Forest as a whole; that is, in comparison with and without diminishing the grief of death, I show the peculiar and greater pain of divorce. All analogies have some weaknesses, and there is no pretension to having chronicled every aspect. Even these are but scribbles. But perhaps the pictures and journey will help a little. If anything, I hope for an increase in sensitivity toward those going through a divorce, for it can be the most traumatic and painful event in a person's life - indeed, life-changing. For more information, go to www.preciousheart.net.