Divorce Ceremonies On The Rise
June 7 -- Barbara and Phil Penningroth are among a growing number of divorcing couples who are choosing to end their marriage the way it began — with a ceremony.
When the Penningroths decided to split in 1997, after 25 years of marriage, they hoped a ceremony would help them get over the anger and bitterness, and move on with their lives.
They held the somber ceremony in southern California, where they lived at the time, and invited close friends.
After showing a pictorial retrospective of their marriage, they returned their wedding rings and marked their separation with the statements: "Phil, I release you as my husband" and "Barbara, I release you as my wife."
They discussed, with surprising frankness, what had gone wrong in their marriage.
"For some time, I have sought intimacy outside of the relationship. We both did," Phil said.
Then they symbolically burned pages upon which they had listed all the things they would never get to do together.
"One of the hallmarks of our relationships was the friendship. We were able to do that," Barbara says now. "We really wanted to find a way to end it that didn't destroy everything."
Four years later, still friends, the couple has written a how-to book called A Healing Divorce. The couple had no children together; Phil has grown kids from another marriage.
Growing Acceptance
While the Penningroths' ceremony may seem a bit "New Age," divorce ceremonies are slowly gaining acceptance in mainstream churches and temples.
The United Church of Christ and the United Methodist Church have divorce liturgies or prayers. Some rabbis are also performing divorce ceremonies.
"When a child can witness their parents acting in a mature and respectful manner to their former spouse it is a great model to them," says David Zaslow, a rabbi who has performed more than a dozen divorce ceremonies for his congregation in Ashland, Ore.
Author and conservative family advocate Maggie Gallagher says divorce is not something to be celebrated, because children suffer.
