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Angela Dunne

Inside Out

November 5, 2015 /
My girls thought it a stroke of genius when deciding that we should create costumes to portray that cast of Disney’s “Inside Out” for Halloween.  My dad and I are always up for a good costume and readily agreed to be part of the plot.  We stayed in character for the better part of two hours.  I played the part of “Sadness,” which is contrary to my general disposition, but given that I was better suited to “stuff my sweater” for the round character, I did my part. I snuffed out the light in my eye and ultimately channeled my
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Evidence of Eggshells

October 22, 2015 /
They walk on the most fragile of eggshells. One uneasily shifted in her seat before pushing up her sleeves – revealing the black and blue polka dots on her upper arms. Another whispered to me with her eyes cast downward that she slept with a hammer underneath her pillow. And another told me of the time he kicked her when she was pregnant, leaving the beets she had been boiling in a mess all around the kitchen. I take in these stories that are soaked in shame, reported to me with fear. I brace myself for the helpless feeling that
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Following Orders

October 8, 2015 /
“I don’t want to go,” she said imploringly with her big brown eyes starting to fill with the flicker of tears. “Can’t you tell him that I can stay with you? Please Mom? I want to be with you.”              “No. I can’t. That isn’t how it works,” was my stoic reply.  This was not the first time, nor will it be the last, that one of my daughters did not want to go to their Dad’s for the weekend. He was committing the offensive act of taking her to a hog roast in Kansas for the weekend. For my
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Pacing the Path

September 24, 2015 /
  This past weekend I tromped through the apple orchard with my family, celebrating the changing of the seasons. The soft breeze carried the sweet scent of ripe apples in the air right below the bulging branches. As my girls and their cousins raced off to the corn maze, I lazily followed and lay down in the grass and gazed upward into the depths of the blue sky. Their nervous laughter shrieked up over the cornstalks as they found the curves that turned into a continuation of the path. The divorce transition is one akin to trekking through a corn
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Integrity Intact

September 10, 2015 /
Two weeks ago I made a room full of a thousand people laugh when accepting the Better Business Bureau Integrity Award by acknowledging the societal irony of a divorce firm winning an integrity award. Laughter and jokes aside, integrity is the single-most factor that has supported my sustained career as a divorce lawyer. But more importantly, it is the most critical characteristic to manage during the divorce process. Often people come into my office initially searching for a shark. They are looking for an advocate that will squeeze every ounce out of the divorce in their favor. They want to
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Defensive

August 27, 2015 /
A year ago this month I made a mistake that I still feel embarrassed about today. When my former spouse asked about his new wife coming to the annual Meet the Teachers night a couple of days before school started, I retorted that I did not think that appropriate. In my view, Meet the Teachers night was for parents and their children to meet the teachers. Not for step-parents to also meet the teachers and be included in this family event. I was wrong. But you see nothing puts me in the all-too-familiar, yet unflattering, defensive mode faster than any
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Revelation Reality

August 13, 2015 /
“Mom?” I turned around and saw the sick look on my almost nine-year olds face.  “Max is in the bag.” We were packing for a trip to the pool and I grabbed an old bag out of my closet, tossed it on the bed, and absent-mindedly told her to put the towels in it. Max is our Christmas elf. You know the one – the one with creepy eyes that follow you wherever you move and works magic for 24 days in December under the guise that he is reporting any bad behavior to Santa Claus.  Well, he was in
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Vacation Vex

July 30, 2015 /
The lump in my throat hardens as I watch them walk away. They are walking away into vacation for two weeks without me. I resist the overwhelming urge to run after them, to buy a plane ticket to join them, to start sobbing in front of strangers. I pretend not to count the minutes they are in-flight and I nonchalantly check my phone every 30 seconds until the safe arrival message is received. Fortunately, my children are going off to visit my parents for 1 week and then will travel again to visit their dad’s parents for 1 week. They
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Rocky Road Recovery

July 16, 2015 /
I remember feeling sluggish.  I remember having a hard time getting out of bed in the morning.  I remember when brushing my teeth at the end of the day felt like a chore. I remember the year I got divorced and all of the lethargy that went with it. And notwithstanding the constant feeling that my feet were being pulled down by quicksand, I couldn’t let my life stop. I still had a business to run, bills to pay, clients for whom to advocate, and daughters to raise. I look back now and feel amazed that I got through it.
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Disneyland Dad

June 18, 2015 /
I have a confession… I have a Disneyland Dad. I have a dad who is not called Grandpa by my girls, but Funpa. I have a dad who takes my girls bowling and to Funplex and makes adventure out of everything. I have a dad who introduced my girls to mochas and minions. In every way he fits the definition of a Disneyland Dad. The term Disneyland Dad dates back to an era when parents without custody and without much parenting time spent it entirely in fun and games with their children, while the custodial parent was left with the
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