Divorce recovery is the long and sometimes difficult road to the point where life seems and feels normal. Ideally, it is the point where former spouses can, if need be, talk with one another civilly.

People recover from a divorce at different speeds and in different ways. Some people look upon the recovery as a challenge; others fear it as an abyss. Sadly, some people never recover and they become twisted and bitter and fearful of an intimate human relationship with another person.

In her book The Divorce Recovery Sourcebook, Dawn Bradley Berry writes that

[p]eople who have survived wars, disabling injury, disease, terrorist attacks, and all manner of tragedies have been heard to remark that their divorces were the worst thing they had ever been through -- and yet they made it.

Often people recover from a divorce incrementally. One day they can look at an old photograph -- maybe even the wedding photographs -- they way a person might look at a photograph of historical interest.

The ancient Greeks believed that the reward of suffering is experience. And yet experience can make a person its victim. Divorce recovery, in the end, means acceptance and the ability to go forward. The ability to keep a perspective, a sense of humor (even a dark one) help in this, but in the end people recover by putting one foot in front of the other and living.

See also After Divorce (Emotional Aspects).