Joan bishop has been a family mediator for the past 15 years.
She herself is from a fractured family, a process she still recalls vividly to this day, when she had to give evidence at her parents divorce at the age of 13 years. Thankfully children of divorce don’t need to be involved in this way anymore during the divorce process.
Previously Joan worked with in the field of adoption and fostering where she picked up a lot of the skills and techniques she uses today in family mediation specifically, the importance of a positive ending and new beginnings.
Joan holds an MSc in Mediation and Conflict Resolution from the Institute of Family Therapy, University of London.
The interviews below are so important for those in the midst of divorce or those wondering how to end a marriage as amicably as possible.
Joan talks about how to establish a new way of communicating from here on, especially where there are children of divorce concerned and parents are trying to create parenting plans that will work for them and their children. She encourages couples to keep in mind that whatever happened is now in the past. Moving on to a better life after divorce and creating a positive and conducive environment for children of divorce will indeed help in reducing any negative and long term effects of divorce of children. One of the things that needs to be done to move on to new beginnings is we need to acknowledge the pain and difficulty that each person is feeling.
Coping with divorce or coping and dealing with divorce is made more manageable a process when people understand certain things about how they came to be where they are, that everyone holds their own version of the truth and that the pain experienced by the leaver and the left are indeed quite different.
Joan’s process of how to end a marriage is strutured and was created on Future Focused therapy and narrative mediation
During the mediation process, Joan provides the couples space to talk about things they really know about, which is about their relationship, they become settled and able to talk about things they feel they need to and this then decreases their anxiety.
Joan is head of mediation at www.familypartnermediation.com – 07765 886 552 – info@familypartnermediation.co.uk