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.
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