The First Month After a Separation
For the first month after a separation, when everything needs deciding at once. It settles who tells whom, puts the money and the paperwork in set hours, keeps the children's version of events the same from both sides, and lets a flat week be flat.
Separation · Relationships · Life Transitions · 9 items · once a week
The checklist
- Decide who tells which people — a shared line spares you forty conversations.
- Separate the money before the feelings — one account, one list, one appointment.
- Write down what the children are told — the same words from both of you, every time.
- Pick one friend for the late nights — spreading it thin leaves everyone half-informed.
- Keep the house running on a short list — trash, bills, school forms, nothing else this month.
- Stop rereading the messages — rereading is not gathering evidence, it is bleeding.
- Put one hour a week on the paperwork — a set hour keeps it out of the other hundred.
- Let a flat week be the week it is — a month in is not late to still be reeling.
- Say nothing you would not want repeated — anything said this month may be quoted later.
Use this checklist Free account: tick items off and keep each day's record.
How to use it
Run through it once a week, honestly and without scoring yourself. A checklist is a way of noticing, not a test: an item you cannot tick is information about the day, not a verdict on you. Over a few weeks the pattern of what gets ticked and what does not says more than any single pass.
With a free Theraglee account the checklist remembers each pass, so you can look back. Without one, you can still read it here and keep your own copy.