A lot of people experience immense relief when their divorce is final. All the paperwork, property inventories, negotiation, legal wrangling and such is finally over. Now you can move on into the bright, fresh day and start having fun with your kids. Right?
That’s a bit harder for most people. Being divorced may be a positive change in your life, but it doesn’t make raising your children easier. And if you thought you didn’t have to deal with your ex anymore, you couldn’t have been more wrong.
Raising kids with a person you’ve just divorced can be a huge challenge. Somehow, you have to get past the anger and hurt to work with the other parent of your child.
It isn’t easy, and so often you feel alone. When Wanda Bass was struggling to reestablish polite communication with her ex back in 2002, she decided to start with a greeting card. To her frustration, there simply weren’t any that were appropriate.
Her ex Ken discovered the same problem when he tried shopping for a Mother’s Day card. He wanted to be supportive of their two sons’ love for her, but there simply weren’t any Mother’s Day cards written for fathers who weren’t also husbands.
Luckily for all of us, Ken and Wanda didn’t let that get them down. Instead, after they got together to discuss the problem, they decided to solve it.
The result was Xcards, a greeting card company for divorced parents who still want to raise happy, healthy kids together.
“Xcards became that stepping stone for forgiveness, healing and restoration for us,” says Wanda. Today, the new company sells cards both online and at retailers that recognize divorced parents on Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, Christmas, birthdays and whenever they need help mending their co-parenting relationships.
For example, one card begins “It’s not about us,” and continues, “We have something between us that’s more important than the way we’re feeling toward each other: our children.”
Now, don’t kick yourself if you’re not close enough with your ex to start a business. Most people aren’t. Co-parenting does take effort and effective communication, which a lot of divorced parents find very hard to achieve. Getting started might just start with a greeting card.
