I know…I know…I know…this is the hard part. Most of what I am trying to say about Divorce is about your personal VICTORY. And here I am bringing up negative things. Painful things. When I went though my divorce and Judge Drager (oh yes I will call her OUT) denied me legal fees(somehow my paycheck of $261 bucks a week seemed like I was financially able to pay a NEW YORK LAWYER and even though the live-in nanny was paid way, way more than me and she didn’t need a lawyer. She actually gave an affadavit AGAINST me. Yes, after I had stood by her bedside at the hospital as she battled a diabetic coma, after I bought her dentures-yes from my $261 bucks. Well, she disappointed me when she finally confessed it to me saying, “Mom I had to do it. He is the boss.” And she claimed that I was a terrible mother...I slept late and took Tylenol PM to sleep (I kinda needed it when my spouse after we filed refused to get out of my bed.) So, then with no money for a lawyer one nite I was sobbing in the hallway outside my apartment and it was well after midnight and my friends started showing up. One by one. Diane. Then Emery. Then Jeannette and then Carey and they sat with me and my old, old dog Peach Blossom who would not leave my side and we all talked and laughed and after they had wrung out the last of my tears and dried them with their sweaters and coats and scarves-none of us actually venturing in the apartment for paper towels. They gathered their stuff and as they left each one gave me a check for several thousand dollars and I said I can’t take this. I won’t and to a women they INSISTED, saying  “ No, you designed my apartment” or “you introduced me to my husband” or “you gave me bags” or just “shut up” and they would not even let me talk about repayment. But one voice one very important voice said NOTHING. My older brother, the manwho I had bought medical school books for as he struggled to pay for Medical School. The brother I sent care packages to when I was pulling in 16 thousand a year in New York working a full-time job and then a night time job and a humiliating CLEANING job for one of my bosses. Yes I have been a maid.

He never even brought it up. And I thought about his sister-in-law and if she was broke and could not afford a lawyer or a diet coke or to pay for her kids food. WHAT WOULD HE DO? Well, his wife would make sure she had the money. There would be calls and cash and comfort. So, it shouldn’t have come as a surprise that when my Daddy died and my mother was left with only his Social Security and her few sewing classes at Hancock Fabric on Highway 280 in Birmingham-he didn’t help. Oh, he helped with Daddy’s funeral (how that man who grew up rich and wound up poor is the stuff of a BOOK-and I am working on it) but when it came to Momma's bills he said nothing. So I have supported her for almost three years now and it has cost me – I was struggling to start The Anabelle Collection and scraping up pennies to pay textile designers and pay rent and pay lawyers and never a word from him. So, I just gave her all my money from GOD BLESS THEM-Atlanta Homes & Lifestyles where I write a monthly column and then I started giving her more money when her old car broke down. Dubbed the Menthol Mobile thanks to her incessant smoking-itwas not worth a drive to the dump. So, I started giving her money from my fees from 1stdibs. And then I had to intercede when she went to the local beauty college and her hair came out green and well I just took over. I love her. She is my life. She was all of our lives when we were little and Daddy was so scary and drunk and mean. And she protected us and when his inheritance was spent on non- existent gold mines and speculative businesses that a far, far richer man should have passed on... she SUPPORTED US. Long hours at the Hancock in Roebuck, longer nights at UAB teaching sewing and editing books and writing for magazines and styling for photo shoots. Anything to pay the bills.

So, I refused to ask my brother for a penny until my friend Patty INSISTED that I ask. I DIDN’T WANT TO…You know how you know what someone would say but you’d rather not EVER HEAR IT. NOT OUT LOUD. The horror. The nausea. The utter and complete disappointment. I have backers for my handbags and so that is a relief. But I still have to pay for this site and I am trying to keep shooting videos and helping my divorcees and I have bills. And I have sacrificed beyond all reckoning.

But my friend Patty said she would call my brother if I didn’t and so I did and he said no. He couldn’t help and then he went on a family vacation with his OTHER family on an Alaskan Cruise. How could he do this to mother, to me…people –people you love will disappoint you but the people you don’t expect will hold you up and lift you beyond your wildest dreams like my friend Michael Bruno who saw my pain and my fear and carved out a  consultancy for me at his booming business, 1stdibs. Or my friend Susie who wanted to help us pay for the programming here on Victory Over Divorce. Or my friend Patricia who said, “ I believe in you” and invested in the Anabelle By Marcia Sherrill handbag collection. Please go shop there www.anabellebymarciasherrill.com because so many people have stood with us and cheered us on and helped us with financing and sourcing and China Trips and with our new philanthropy Carry ForHope www.carryforhope.org where we are working with other handbag designers to put Breast Cancer information in our handbags instead of just “promotional” tissue paper. We will keep on helping people suffering from Breast cancer and Divorcees and anyone else we can touch and we will NOT DISAPPOINT THEM. 

OMG have I actually written this? Did I have a senseof humor during my divorce…I remember tears…I remember fear…I remember breakingdown. But there was HUMOR. I remember my girlfriends insisting on taking me toevery ridiculous silly comedy. They made me laugh. OUT LOUD. I tuned in toCraig Ferguson who is every divorcees best-kept secret. He has been divorcedhimself TWICE and makes his own ordeals laughable.

Instead of feeling sorry for myself (and God knows ILOVE a Marcia pity party-ask my brother, Billy) I turned my energy into writinghilarious stories or rather magazine columns for Atlanta Homes & Lifestyles.I remember one Christmas when Anabelle and I got to Birmingham on Christmas Eveor the day before and I had about 80 bucks for presents and everything and myMother, Jojo had decided to leave all the decorating for us so we could haveFUN. WHAT? I wanted to show up and see a REAL TREE not a box of fake branchesand those with darn little greenery left on them. I wanted the stuff we made whenwe were children-the bars of soap we turned into little scenes from theNativity- the magazines that we schellacked and folded into a sparkly Christmastree-WHERE WAS MY CHRISTMAS???? I rummaged through the boxes of splintered andbroken ornaments and looked at the sad plastic tree and told Anabelle and Billyto get in the truck.  And we droveto WalMart and grabbed a couple of carts and were running and jumping andgliding on them down the long empty corridors. We found the last Tree-and itwas not the Snoopy variety missing whole chunks of limbs-IT WAS GLORIOUS. Andit was like 10 bucks. And then we went out in the cold to the Nursery area andgot miles of forgotten and trampled garland. We got all the remaining redribbon and the little tree lights in white from the deserted WalMart on thatChristmas Eve and we raced home, the giant tree riding high in the trucks bed.At Home we worked until 3 am and by the time we had finished the house wasablaze with Christmas and we three lay down beneath the now shortened tree (wesawed off a good 3 feet). Laying there with the smell of pine and the twinklinglights and the strung popcorn we howled and howled. And then I wrote it alldown and Atlanta Homes & Lifestyles audience evidently laughed as well.

I know it sounds tough but do keep your sense ofhumor-its there somewhere now go and find it!

5Rules of Disengagement

1.Remember what/who you know

2.Keep your sense of humor

3.People will disappoint you

4.Look at the big picture

5.Time heals

I was told by my girlfriend, Susie, the above rules that may have been stolen from some canny thinker/author/doctor/psychotherapist but which I am appropriating for my own purposes-OUR purposes and applying them to my divorcees and their situation.  And trust me I can turn this into a book…maybe I should…

Anyway, rule #1 is REMEMBER WHAT YOU KNOW.  I thought after my divorce that since there was ZERO demand for a designer of Alligator Bags for $9,000.00 in the United States, that I would have to fall back on skills I dusted off from my CHILDHOOD.  I was briefly (for about an hour) an interior designer. What happened was my homes and apartment throughout the years had always been photographed by Interior Design Magazines. From Wendy Goodman’s continued support at New York Magazine and Harpers Bazaar and editors at Metropolitan Homes, HG, Southern Accents and The New York Posthad built me into an interior designer at least a fashion designer that could decorate her own apartments and houses. (And we all know that I did everything with a glue gun and thumbtacks and spit.) From there I had gone on to TV thanks to my beloved assistant (now famous jewelry designer), Nathalie Martin-Schettini forcing me to write when I said I couldn’t and then do TV when I promised to projectile vomit. I went on for 4 years doing interior design segments at Lifetime Television and then HGTV, Food Network, Good Day Atlanta etc. Until my divorce when I went back to interior design and selling antiques in my hometown of Birmingham Alabama. IT SAVED ME. Literally. Because my client, Patricia Thompson, became my first investor in The Anabelle Collection.She saw how much I loved textiles and when she had spent two years working withme on her new house and developed her own fabric obsession, she thought I was on to something. She believed.

In divorce today it is frightening how often a judge will announce in open court “GET A JOB.” Usually screamed from the bench these words are enough to send many women into cardiac arrest OR AN INSANE ASYLUM... GET A JOB? Many haven’t worked in years. Many have stopped their own careers to help their husbands or been stay-at-home Moms. Many of the careers they had previously are not there anymore. Graphic Designers who used Exacto knives and Letraset in the 80’s do not know how touse all the new graphic design software programs much less have the money to pay for them.  BUT THINK AGAIN.Were you in sales? Even if the industry is defunct-your skills at sales arestill there. Were you a nurse? Can you get reaccredited? Can you work at aclinic? A divorcee I knew had been a nurse and found it tough going when she started to apply for jobs and wound up in a prison and  OMG her emails about her time at the Prison were the stuff of a David Sedaris book of humor. She thrived.

Remember WHO YOU KNOW- I can’t tell you how scared I was to call up longtime friends,designers, auctioneers, TV producers, Editors, etc and say I NEED HELP. But guess what? Many of them helped me. I got my best job ever-the one that saved me before I got the handbag collection going was at www.1stdibs.com. I am still a consultant there. And that money and that knowledge that I gained in the internet world has given rise to this site. Without the owner’s faith in me and belief and support I simply would have curled into a weeping ball of false eyelashes and faux spray tan and crawled back to Momma Jojo’s house. REACH OUT TO EVERYONE. Ask for internships. Ask for a waitressing job to get you through. Rethink what you did before and how it will translate into the new economy. And if you sense that the person interviewing you may de a divorcee then by all means mention yours. I know that goes against all that you are told. But you can sense the opening and that shared experience can be an opening.

#2 Laterthis week.

Your Happy Place

I had a meeting again tonight with another group of divorcees. All of them to a woman was desperate to have her story told-I looked around at

this group of well-dressed, educated and articulate women and thought how they must be as mothers, lawyers, accountants, writers.

They must be or MUST HAVE BEEN formidable. These were women who could run countries, feed armies and raise villages but one man

had unraveled each of them so that they would appear to someone unfamiliar with the devastation of divorce like crazy people, spilling their

stories in torrents of words and emotions. Some were still in that state of adrenaline-fueled fear that is sometimes about losing all their possessions

but more often about losing their children. As the time passed and each one relinquished the floor and their over-lapping comparisons

of ex’s and lawyers and judges stopped, I told them all to get ready because all of this torture would end-it always does and that they must

think each individually about “their happy place’. Where and when had they been happiest and it was OK to keep it to themselves or share it

and they need not feel guilty if it was college or pre-children or as mundane as a shopping trip to Loehmans or a day at the beach.

We all have one-one happy place, where we can retreat when everything seems made of putty, falling-down and spoiled. That we will never

have our sea legs again. That we are unmoored. My happiest "places" my and memories were usually of my childhood, my  father, my

mother and my brothers. Hot Alabama summers with my brothers at the Cahaba River and cousins in tire swings swarming into the

Cahaba River's warm but no doubt polluted waters. We need to grab those memories to move off of the desperation and the fear and KNOW that we can get back to that "happy place" and then some!

But we need to remember a "Happy Place" that is strictly adult-a place to aim for-a pace to be recovered. A place that with hard work and patience

and fortitude we can GET BACK. For me that place will always be with my former backer, Fred Distenfeld, who worked with

me at KLEINBERG SHERRILL and made my life so wonderful that every day was magic! Fred came around when we were absolutely down to our

last nickel and our last alligator skin when my daughter was young, a toddler. Driven off by my ex-husband who begrudged him his money and

his weekly thirty minute meetings we had come to a nasty end when my ex refused the logical decision to close our Atlanta store and factory

and move it all kit and caboodle and employees to Fred’s Long Island factory, With difficult economic times and rising rent in Atlanta for a

factory that was atop our store in coveted RETAIL space it was the only prudent decision and I AGREED but my ex knew better and sent us

headfirst into a nasty lawsuit and into years of financial distress. But my Happy Place was with Fred. At his office. At his Mother’s house

happily going through her collection of vintage bags, preserved like Vatican relics in their pristine decades old-boxes and dust-bags. Her pride

in her son and her husband (both parents wereHolocaust survivors) served up with coffee and cookies. During the darkest days of my divorce I would

go back in my mind to Fred. Always Fred. One day I can remember vividly- I am in our retail store on 65^th Street with Fred and my daughter, Anabelle,

comes in all ringleted hair and I grab her up and go to shop at a sale at Jacadi.

I for the first in a long time sure that the credit card would work and Anabelle in her patent leather Mary Jane’s and smocked party dress dolled

up to beat the band. Or Fred and I on a plane bound for Italy and a trade show talking about G-d and the meaning of existence or checking in at the

hotel and finding perfect calming rooms after the jet lag or window shopping on the weekend in Milan and me surreptitiously sketching all

of the competitions latest samples and it being a Saturday and Fred’s Sabbath me signing the checks at lunch and dinner and Fred looking

everywhere for a gift for his wife, his children. Fred always there and solid and good and protective… letting me almost exhaust myself into a

faint as I drew new bags and plotted new PR tactics. Smiling, understanding and kind. A brother. A river. A happy place.

This weekend I was a bit lax in my blogging because I was getting cauliflower ear speaking with a number of folks who contacted me off the site. From Des Moines to Manhattan, Mothers and sons, I hope I helped but I am more than ever convinced that this is a plague largely whipped into a a frenzy by the matrimonial courts or family courts (if ever an expression was less apropos). I know from my divorce that Falujah is less combustible than the courtroom and the militia more friendly. I have met many divorcees who were dealt cruel blows from my JUDGE- ( please wait just a minute while I throw another artfully thrown dart at her withering visage on my dartboard). Yes, she has a bit of a scorched-earth policy here in New York-seems to be quite  fan of the handsome and abjectly sad and forlorn looking husband and turns a blind eye and deaf ear on all entreaties vis a vis money. She has sent each and every stay-at-home mom back to work. (Women who supported their husbands through school and early careers and have been out of the workforce for decades-her favorite rejoinder-GET A JOB. "

  Has cruelly ignored  all EVIDENCE of non-payment of Child Support or Interim Maintenance. When my lawyer said that my EX had refused to pay a Doctors bill while clenching the bill in his sweaty hands (oh,  yes even the lawyers are frightened-a courthouse sport enjoyed by some ) she screeched in her special crone-ish, harpy-ish style "he is a perfect Father." Evidently not when it came to that swimmers ear emergency room visit. And when my lawyer carefully explained that YES my client did give her husband the bill-in fact she has been filling out HOME expense reports for decades she barely looked up before retorting...as if THIS had anything to do with the issue at hand "she has money." She was the one who said that my salary of TAKE HOME $261.00 a week was not enough and gave me a RAISE of $250. I was livin' large! But she has done far worse to other divorcees and trust me is not partial to the fairer sex-in fact its as if she wants to get even with all the girls who might have been the popular girls in her High School, the cheerleaders, the ones with handsome husbands with their eyes cast down and their lawyers paid up. But I KNOW FAR FAR WORSE-Judges who have taken bribes, who have engaged in cronyism, who have sent children back to abusive spouses. A Mother called me who had claimed that her husband was a sexual abuser-a pedophile and weary from Divorcees at that moment I chalked her up as a crazy until 4 months later when her 6 year old daughter had presented at the Emergency Room with an STD-I could have bashed my own head in...that I had not believed...that I had doubted...but Judges who don't listen are destroying our families. If only we could take the Judges to Court. Stay tuned for more Judges Gone Wild stories. As for my Judge she got what she deserved-her own miserable self and not a pair of pom poms in sight!

I love my God Children. I am the proud God-mother to two daughters and two sons and they are my LIFE!!! They have each in their way supported me through many a dark nite. Milyn Satterfield, my eldest, lived with me in New York immediately after my divorce so she came in for some of the bleakest, anxiety-laden, angst-ridden moments and she gave me a Christmas present that I still treasure and I read it again today. It is a Bound Book with my name as the engraved gilt title-and here are her entries (I have given up smoking thanks to Nicorette but those early days had me off the nicotine wagon but I DIGRESS). This present saw me through a Christmas when i scrounged up change to get Anabelle  a gift and got a free tree from a kind florist and decorated it with candy from the CVS. I was at the nadir of my despair and it was my first climb out of the abyss of my own fear.

Page 1- Marcia Sherrill The Handbook 

Page 2- She is listed in the Yellow Pages under "Psychology and Intervention Specialist." 

Page 3- No, she is not sick, She is just self-medicating with Thera-Flu (It's the perfect KLONOPIN chaser). 

Page 4- When she is having a meltdown, no need to worry, one hug and she's cured.

 Page 5-Don't panic if she bolts away from you when you are walking down the street, in heels of course, and in between taxis and emits a shrill cry of "I HAVE ONE". This is Marcia's simplistic homage to the French bulldog.

Page 6- You can tell the aproximate time of her departure from the apartment by how many of her footprints have DRIED. A Marcia Trademark.

Page 7- Yes, she is eating Rembrandt Toothpaste and a tube is nestled in her bra.

Page 8- There's a magnet under her skin which pulls all of the Janovic  Plaza painters in.

Page 9-Her friends are either crazy, drunk or stoned as coots (or my favorite ALL OF THE ABOVE)-EDITORS COMMENT-They aren't all crazy-there is Deenie and there were a couple of fellow divorcees with a predilection for Xanax

Page 10-Black is her signature color (it goes with her Top Hats and Hasidum Hats).

Page 11- She tis at McDonalds.......she always claimed she did and I have witnessed her in action-she says it makes them feel like they are in the service industries and she is right 

Page 12- If all taxis are off duty she will stick out a leg and both arms and this is the official Ghetto Cab flag-down.

Page 13-Her ideal moment of happiness is being with the Belle and me and takes place on the subway when a mariachi bands is bustin' out on the platform.

Page 14-Her stalkers (she has many) consist of 95% of all phone calls. The rest is business & possible a call or two from the OLDEST 9 year old you'll ever know.

Page 15- Anabelle let your Mother put on her make-up in Peace...in the subway, at the dinner table, in the taxi, at the D & D Building, at your school, at the doctors, at Tepper Galleries, at the park, at the orthodontist, on the toilet, on the phone, at the concert.....

Page 16- Dennis Leary and Tommy Lee . Say no more MMMMMMM....

Page 17- She works like a bit*h. More like a hustler really. 

Page 18-Open to all religions...Christianity, Judaism, Buddhism, Kabbalah, The Ministry of Cars.

Page 19- I assure you it is nothing you said...Marcia always thinks she has cancer...

Page 20- And she is always quitting smoking....

Page 21- Yet somehow is cancer-less and still smoking... 

Page 22- Pellegrino with LEMON thanks!

Page 23- Patience of a Saint. Schedule of a Vampire. 

Page 24- Hard to believe she is not a high-dollar hooker. Hard to believe I know, but she is a prude. I SWEAR! 

Page 25- Smokes Old Lady Cigarettes. So does Dennis Leary. is it fate with the Marlboro 100's man???

Page 26- The best MOM ever!

Page 27-And best God Mother-( Well, thats a GIVEN) 

Page 28- Why go all the way to the Library when Marcia's room is next door?

Page 29- She claims she is always early but I've noticed she always 30 minutes to an hour early-she thinks being late is dissing

Page 30- Shes's certainly got a thing for the geezers.

Page 31- She WILL get IT photographed-Whatever IT may be.

Page 32- She never eats and says she is a Chia Pet and lives on air.

Page 33- She always sleeps with earplugs and then the dog, Noel, sh*ts them out.

Page 34- Christmas stockings are always hung by the chimney with care-in AUGUST.

Page 35- Codename? Swifferella

Page 36- The worlds oldest backup singer. 

Page 37- Welcome, you've got mail-17,536 new messages and she checks it everyday!. 

Page 38- No, she just didn't do a line-she is just like that.

Page 39- Yep, she's read it!

Page 40- Wash clothes with cascade in event of no detergent (then light your hair on fire with the stove....Marcia Trademark). 

Down south we call it a HURRY UP OFFENSE (at least we who cried at the Sugar Bowl do) and thats what The Birmingham News sis for us at Victory Over Divorce today when they granted us a beautiful, informative and DEAD-ON feature about our launch this week. Jimsey at Magic City Moments had announced that we were coming but Kathy Seale (Writer/Editor extraordinaire) kick us into  end zone with this fantastic bit of journalism. WOW. The team in New York kit their keyboards and were amply rewarded for all the late night, oil-burning as we tweaked the site over the last several days and nights. This was an amazing day as I fielded dozens of emails and phone calls from my 45 first cousins and long-lost school friends from John Carroll and even Our Lady of Sorrows-thats 300 years ago. 

My favorite personal chef in Alabama is thinking of becoming our first mentor, who knew that you could take your culinary interests and parlay them WITHOUT going to school into a career cooking for folks. And my hairdresser from MOP had an idea about divorcees interning intstead of attending costly Cosmetology School-so we are getting invaluable info and ideas. Keep'em coming and God Bless Alabama! And The Birmingham News-it feels great to be  a Home Town Honey as my Aunt Gloria always likes to say!

Dealing with divorce
Posted by Kathy Seale / The Birmingham News January 08, 2009 7:27 AM

Marcia Sherrill could've used a Web site like hers, she says, when she was going through a divorce almost three years ago.

So she spent the past couple of years creating Victory Over Divorce, she says, to help others avoid some of the legal, emotional and financial tolls of divorce that she experienced.

"It does not have to happen to you," says the "49 and proud of it" mother of one, who splits her time between Birmingham and New York. "We offer you the resources: `Don't waste your money on that. Try this.'"

The new site includes informational videos from a panel of divorce-related experts, including attorneys, therapists, a social worker and a private investigator. She plans to add more experts to the panel, too, although some have been harder to come by than others.

"I can't seem to get a priest, a rabbi and a minister," she says.

Sherrill's site also offers a DivorCycle spot - a free swap meet, of sorts, for divorcees. There is info for exploring new careers, too, and links to state resources, such as divorce laws, domestic abuse and child support assistance.

Divorcees can post their divorce documents on the site, or upload videos about their divorce experiences. They can read inspirational blogs as well, and connect (or vent) to like-minded souls in a chat room or forum.

"Yeah, you can rant and rave about your ex," she says. "It's cathartic."

It's not, though, the point of the site.

"This isn't just about, `Oh, poor, pitiful me,'" she says. "It's about `Pick yourself up, dust yourself off and start all over again.'"

The site isn't geared specifically to women, either, she says. Her brother (Billy Sherrill, the site's chief operating officer) offers "a nice men's perspective.

"Women and men are blind-sided," she says. "They wake up one day and their world is in chaos."

After Sherrill's divorce, she was left with a relatively meager $27,000 and "no health insurance," she says, after a career as a high-end handbag designer and co-owner of an international fashion accessory design business with her ex for 24 years. "I had to scramble."

Nowadays, she's a design partner at Roland Antiques in New York, and a consultant with www.1stdibs.com (a site for antiques and mid-20th century furnishings).

Her interior designs have appeared in magazines such as New York Magazine, Elle Decor and House Beautiful, and she's appeared on TV programs such as "The Today Show" and "Trade Secrets."

She's also written columns and a couple of books, including "Portraits of Hope," which profiled breast cancer survivors such as Betty Ford, Linda Ellerbee and Jill Eikenberry.

Initially, she planned to write a book about divorce, too, with stories of men and women "who had been there, done that, so future divorcees could learn from their mistakes." She deep-sixed those plans, though, when she realized the potential of cyberspace.

"I thought, `I can make this so much bigger and more powerful and more helpful if I can do it as a Web site,'" she says.

Her plans, which include podcasts and streaming video, are ambitious. "I want this to be one-stop shopping for divorcees."

Even though getting there, she says, has taken more time, money and energy than she ever imagined.

"It's been frustrating, but it's been fun," she says.