My parents divorced when I was nine, and I spent half the week at my mom’s and the other part of the week at my dad’s. The nights would alternate.

Now that I’m in my twenties, I realize that I learned very good organizational skills from living in a divorced household. Packing for a sleepover on a daily basis definitely taught me how to think ahead. In retrospect, I am also very flexible and adaptable.

However, there are definite tips I can suggest to make it easier for your kids.

1. Have your children keep a copy of their school schedule with them all the time (or leave a copy at each house) so that they always know which books, sports equipment, ballet shoes, etc. they’ll need for the next day.

2. Create a homework space at each house. I used to do my homework in my bedroom at my dad's house and in the kitchen at my mom's house.

3. Always have your kids save and back-up their work, or travel with their laptop if they have one. When I was a kid, we had floppy disks and always carried a case of three in my backpack (now they have USB memory sticks). If they’re going back and forth between houses they may have to start a paper at one house and finish it at the other. They should always back up their work on a memory stick and carry it with them.

4. Kids, don't feel bad for yourselves. There are a lot worse things in life. In the end this challenge will probably only make you stronger.

5. Help make your kids’ new home more homey. Create something for them at each house so they can feel at home while they’re there (whether it is decorating their rooms or keeping their favorite food in the fridge).

6. Encourage your children to get extra school flyers. Sometimes I gave it to one parent and not the other, leading a parent to not know of a school event. But parents, you should also ask the school so that it automatically gets sent to you, too.

I commuted back and forth between my mom's and my dad's house every other night from the ages of nine to fourteen.

I was fortunate enough to have divorced parents who got along uncommonly well and lived only five minutes apart. This was hardly the typical divorced family situation. Living in two households inevitably has its drawbacks though, regardless of the relationship your parents may have.

In addition to the general inconvenience of keeping all of your things in two different places, the pre-pubescent years tend to render you with hormonal mood swings and bouts of self-consciousness.

I'm not going to lie. It wasn't easy. I always had to plan out everything I would need for the next 24 to 48 hours well in advance and remember to pack it all up before leaving each time.

Sometimes I would forget things for school, which meant a late night trip back to the other house again to fetch it. I had to give all of my friends four different phone numbers to reach me at — the main line at each house and the kids’ line (this was before cellphones).

I would feel guilty about making plans with my friends when it was Mom's or Dad's night. I always felt more at home in the house I grew up in, which was my dad’s. It's hard to make the second house really feel like home after divorce.

There are some perks too, though. Two houses means two sets of closets, two bedrooms to decorate, two Christmas mornings, two different refrigerators! I always had another home to escape to if I got in a fight with a parent or a sibling and needed to get away. I got more one-on-one time with each parent than the typical teenager with married parents gets. I got two sets of vacations, two "how was your day?" conversations.

Part 3 of a 3-part series:

Something shifted for Clare Bean when she met her fellow single mom, Morgan Siler. There were the obvious parallels in their lives. Both were late 20-something single moms. Both had a son around a year old. Both lived in suburban Portland in neighboring Westside communities.

There was the electric boost of connecting with a like-minded soul.

A year later the women are partners in the upstart networking website Iheartsingleparents.com.

“You can do what you love to do,” Bean says. “You just have to figure out what it is, plan it out and go for it.”

She and Siler share office space in Portland’s trendy Pearl District, from which they manage the site and their individual pursuits. Bean is a graphic and web designer; Siler is a photographer.

“There’s nothing like doing your passion for a living,” Bean says. “Even though we’re not really making a living yet.

“Coming from the corporate world, I was just dead.”

Working for herself provides Bean with the flexibility to spend time with her son, Colby, who is now 2. She is Colby’s custodial parent. He lives full time with her, but spends a few days a week with his dad. Bean separated from her son’s father during her pregnancy. The spilt forced Bean to redefine herself and her expectations, which ultimately led her to ditch her dreaded 9-to-5 routine.

“I always saw myself in that perfect family, but now I don’t have to define happiness as living in a two-parent home,” she says.

What Bean and Siler hope I Heart members gain is the same sense of community. The community (like FWW) will help them endure single parenting and give them the courage to make giant leaps of faith.

“The quality of life is so much better when you have that feeling of community and family,” Siler says. “When you have the feeling that it’s not you against the world.”

Part 2 of a 3-part series:

When Clare Bean and Morgan Siler, single mothers in Portland, Oregon, were introduced by a mutual friend last year, their quick connection shattered the isolation of mothering alone.

“It was a jolt of confidence,” Siler says. “The kind you have when you meet someone who gets you. You feel like you can accomplish so much more together than apart, whether that means you run a business together, like we do, or not.

“It’s just that partnership that allows you to live life a little easier.”

The women, both mothers of young sons, became each other’s support system and biggest cheerleaders. They’d meet up with their boys, Lucca and Colby, and bounce around the ideas that found form in a new social network site for single parents.

Their site, iheartsingleparents.com, launched a beta version in February, followed by regular meet-ups for Portland-area members. Think drinks and potluck dinners, bike rides and camping trips.

“It’s a way to not feel so alone, but also to not gather and wallow in misery,” Bean says. “To be happy and proud of who you are.”

What they’re hoping to create at I Heart is an entry point to connect people who are isolated by circumstance and the day-to-day logistics of managing fulltime work and solo parenting.

“Single parents are kind of lost in the woodwork,” Siler says. “They’re out there, but how to meet them?”

To date more than 600 members have joined I Heart trying to find the answer to that question.

“Kind of an undercurrent of the site is showing people they are empowered and responsible for themselves and the happiness in their lives regardless of the situation,” Siler says.

Part 1 of a 3-part series 

If there’s a place in the United States where families are not expected to conform to the nuclear ideal, it’s Portland, Oregon. There are “Keep Portland Weird” stickers pasted on cars all over town.

Try opening a Wal-Mart here and you’d better be ready to battle.

Walk into the country’s largest independent bookstore, Powell’s City of Books, and along with any title you can imagine, you can grab a “People’s Republic of Portland” T-shirt.

In a city that’s been labeled the most livable and also among the most bike-, baby-, dog-, public transportation-, and sex shop-friendly in the county, the reigning dress code is come as you are.

While single parenting may be less stigmatized here than it is in more conservative places (read: just about everywhere else), no amount of progressive thought, sustainable building practices, or micro-brews can change the universal truth: being a single mom (or dad) is isolating.

Enter Morgan Siler and Clare Bean. The two suburban-Portland women recently launched Iheartsingleparents.com, a website aimed at creating virtual and physical connections among single parents.

Siler, 28, and Bean, 29, were introduced last year by a mutual friend. They were each going it alone with a 1 year-old son. The connection was a godsend.

Siler had just finished graduate school when she became pregnant. She wasn’t married, and her baby’s father wasn’t interested in becoming a daddy.

From the beginning, she was on her own and searching for others like her — a mentor or a role model to give her perspective, just someone who “got it.”

“I was just interested in meeting other single moms who’d been doing it for a couple years and were genuinely happy, who felt like they had reached a level of success however they define that,” she says.

If you have children, they will probably still be insured on your husband’s insurance policy. But the ex-wife most often loses health insurance, after the final decree. Depending on her age, physical condition, and location, individual comprehensive medical insurance, for one person, can run $800 a month and more.

Davis Liu, MD, the author of “Stay Healthy, Live Longer, Spend Wisely: Making Intelligent Choices in America's Healthcare System,” has these suggestions for women facing divorce.

Consider an HAS

The Health Savings Account (HSA) was introduced in 2004. If you are young and healthy, if you don’t need to see a doctor very often, an HAS might be perfect. It allows you to set aside money, tax-free, to pay for future health care costs. An HSA has low premiums, but a high deductible. Funds go in tax-free, grow tax-free, and are spent tax-free. Your take-home pay is higher, your taxable income is lower, and it can save you up to 30 percent on out-of-pocket medical costs.

Short Term Health Insurance

Recent divorcees who have lost health coverage with their ex might consider short-term health insurance. This is catastrophic coverage, not to cover routine office visits, but to guarantee that you won’t lose the house if you need to go to the hospital because you were in a car accident. You can look through individual or short-term insurance plans at www.ehealthinsurance.com.

Part-Time Job with Benefits

If you are unemployed, you can consider part-time work for an employer that provides benefits. Companies like Starbucks, UPS, Costco, and Whole Foods Market provide health insurance to part-time employees. With increasing health care costs, these firms are becoming the exception rather than the norm.

Do Your Research

Let’s be honest. Separation, divorce, any break-up – the initial period sucks. Recently a man I loved decided to end our relationship. To our credit, it ended with love and respect. But his decision knocked me off my feet and into the void of relationship break-up.

When a relationship ends, there is nothing solid to land on.

This is when the emotional rollercoaster goes into overdrive, but it can also be a critical time to accept those feelings and roll with them.

That breakup reminds me how powerful emotions can be.

We feel the grief, sadness, and loss not only of the person, but the dreams we had and the opportunities that were not yet realized, the end of not just the future but also the shared past.

Even those who initiate the break-up are not immune from this, but it’s worse if you are the one left behind.

In this abyss there is sometimes real, physical pain. Literally, the heart aches.

It can also seethe with anger and curl up in despair.

But healing means going with our feelings, not bottling them up or denying them. If we rush the process, we risk leaving unresolved issues that will make an encore appearance in a future relationship.

Recently one of my children developed an abscess. When it burst, it was painful, but it released the toxins.

Even then, to complete the healing, the doctor had to further open up the wound. He told us to leave it open, because that was the only way healing could be complete.

Experiencing this while being in the abyss of my own break-up reinforced what I already knew to be true. Time heals.

And during that time it’s helpful to remember a few things:

1. Breathe

I try to try to celebrate each wave of grief or sadness as a sign of how willing I was to open my heart to love. Each day I feel my heart growing stronger, and I’m more able to love myself and others.

This one is a pop fly: during the Little League season, one mother is worried that her ex-husband makes their son nervous during the games. Under Little League rules this is the last year their son, who is turning 13, can compete. Mom thinks that Dad puts too much pressure on him.

She asks: “If my son is with me that weekend, and he is playing baseball, does my ex have a right to be there, even though it isn’t his weekend?"

Terry Ross, a partner at Silberberg & Ross, LLP in California, says, “Yes, by all means.

The father is allowed to attend a child's events. It shows that he is trying to share in the responsibility of raising the child.”

Ms. Ross added, "Normally the only time a parent is not allowed to attend such events is if there is a restraining order against them." but that is in extreme cases.

David Young, a former Circuit Judge in Miami-Dade County, concurred: “Unless there is a ‘stay away order,’ parents are encouraged to attend their children's events, as it shows interest in the child's upbringing.’’ A stay-away order, it needn’t be said, does not involve a father making a child nervous and putting pressure on him. It’s for serious threats or dangers to the child.

Believe us, it’s not unusual for a father to make a son nervous. And, possibly, you may be the one making your son nervous; has he overheard you saying things about not wanting his father to be there?

Remember also that your son is no doubt putting plenty of pressure on himself; he wants to please you both.

But, if your ex show ups and makes a scene, running out on the field, screaming at the referees, and misbehaving in general — more than the other dads — that’s another matter.

If he does, he should be strongly discouraged from attending. Nervous is one thing, embarrassed is another.

Operate a family under written rules? Not possible in your chaotic life? Too much like running a strict boarding school?

In his seminal book Family Rules, Dr. Ken Kaye explains why written rules solve most children’s issues, prevent squabbles, shape behavior, and keep parenting even handed. Not only that, but children can learn from watching those rules applied to their siblings.

Dr. Kaye’s book stresses that written rules can be just as useful, maybe even more so, after a divorce. Here are excerpts from Family Rules (2005):

The events that create a single-parent family are power forces in shaping a child’s development. A parent’s death, desertion, or divorce leaves emotional wounds in the child just as it does in the remaining parent.

Discipline may be necessary, but it will not be sufficient to heal the wounds. Don’t be afraid to acknowledge, “My child is in pain and needs professional help.”...

When the bitterness between you and the ex-spouse has slacked off a bit, it feels good to exchange a remark or even just a knowing smile with the one other person in the world to whom your children are as special, their development as marvelous, their needs as urgent as they are to you.

But there are dangers on that road. All forces converge to pull the two of you into over-involvement with one another.

The reality is that your family has broken up. You are divorced or you are getting divorced, and if the children are living with you then you have to make the decisions

Keep the co-parenting consultations to the minimum necessary to sustain Dad’s cooperation. But the children’s father should not be the main person you rely on as your sounding board or counselor in setting rules.

Since you cannot afford to be undermined, you will need to respect your children’s father’s feelings, values, and opinions.

If this is Tuesday it must be the Cote d'Azure. How should an ex-wife feel when a husband is taking two young children on a grand tour of Europe? A reader asks "Do I have a right to ask for an itinerary, and phone numbers for hotels, when he's dragging them across Europe? The kids are 9 and 10, two boys, and I can't imagine they are going to be very happy."

It's up to the ex-husband to deal with two unhappy boys. As for the rest of the question, about your right to an itinerary:

"Absolutely!" said Susan Reach Winters, an attorney at Budd Larner, P.C., in New Jersey. "You have every right to know where your children are, especially for emergency situations." Moreover, if you feel your ex is taking the children on something dangerous, or something you do not approve of, you may "need to go to court," she said.

"Day trips? Not so much. But longer trips, yes," said Jacalyn Barnett, whose law offices are in New York.

"When a parent asks for an itinerary for an extended trip the child is taking with the other parent, it shows the child that the parent loves them enough to want to know their whereabouts," says David Young, a former Circuit Court judge in Miami-Dade County.

It is best, the lawyers say, if guidelines for situations like these are laid down in the divorce and custody agreement. Every divorce is different, but itís important to focus on the needs of the child and not fall victim to revenge.

If you keep your children from speaking to their father, you are making them casualties in your battle with your ex. There are instances where a parent will call too much, and that is also interfering with the other parentís right to have private time with the child.

Either way, the child is hurt.