The Miami Herald (Palm Beach Post) had another article about divorce parties and divorces.

Friday night, a network of local self-help authors and divorce experts hosted their second divorce party at Christopher’s Nightclub in Fort Lauderdale. Their first party, on March 7, drew some 400 revelers, newly single folks who took part in games such as one titled: Toss Your Wedding Ring into the Toilet.

They danced to all the great breakup songs — cue in Gloria Gaynor belting I Will Survive here — shared ”happy divorce” stories, sipped drinks called Marriage on the Rocks, mingled around a black-frosted wedding cake topped with statuettes of a bride and groom facing opposite directions.

As gimmicky as it may sound, the party symbolizes a new era in the United States of divorce. This new divorce movement is not about promoting one particular strategy, but about expanding a marketplace that showcases a range of options. If the movement carries one message, it is this: There are as many divorce-made-bearable resources as there are marriages gone wrong.

The article talks about divorce coaches and a divorce mediator (all south Florida based).

These local divorce professionals say hostile splits are the exception these days. Ask Cynthia Tiano of Pompano Beach. She’s a self-described former ”killer” divorce lawyer turned mediator.

”In divorce, you are placed into the adversarial system — that’s the system. “It’s about somebody winning and somebody losing,” says Tiano. “The way I thought I could best help my clients was to be as aggressive as I could in that system. So I was a very, very aggressive litigator for almost 15 years.”

But Tiano says she came upon a kind of spiritual awakening.

”As I grew as a human being I came to the inescapable conclusion that these were families. And, frankly, I began to lose my edge. I could no longer justify my actions in the name of representing my client,” she says.

After getting hit with one particularly inflexible decision from the bench in 1996 — and realizing how such decisions trample good people all the time — she closed up her practice and became a divorce mediator.

Quite often, Tiano will deal not only with the divorcing husband and wife, but also with their lawyers and their accountants, all heightening the drama.

SKIP THE DRAMA

”My message to the divorcing parties is to recognize that divorce is really just change, and there’s no need for the drama that accompanies it,” says Tiano. “Like great change, divorce offers them an opportunity to grow, to actually thrive because of it.”

When this change involves children, it may be especially difficult to avoid the drama. But divorce coach Sedacca says this is when the parties need to set a civil tone.

”I know people going through a divorce can be angry, resentful, filled with hatred. Parents who are the most loving parents in the world can turn into total nut cases. Some of the biggest mistakes they make is to pit their child against one another,” says Sedacca.

She encourages parents to stop and ponder one question at the start of their divorce process: What will my child say about this period of our lives when he or she reaches adulthood?