God has a beautiful sense of humor and has graced us with a portion of it to use as a tool of communication common to all humans.
After Break-up, Humor Helps
Coping with Divorce: Learning how to Laugh Can Help You Begin to Recover
By BRIAN GUTH
Divorce is no laughing matter.Not for Lynn Pickett, Kate Halpin, John Buckles or anyone else who's lived through the emotional gut-wrencher.
But laughter or the ability to gain or retain a sense of humor can speed the healing process, free the mind from worry, improve health and even prepare one for the next love of their life.
Pickett, Halpin and Buckles leaned on their senses of humor when life hurt the most. It didn't change the outcome -- their marriages ended as do about 40 to 47 percent of marriages in the United States, according to the Divorce Statistics Collection Web site -- but it helped them put their positions into perspective and helped them move forward with their lives.
They each have self-described off-beat senses of humor. How each views life and shrugs off obstacles that bog down others is something that amazes even their closest friends.
Thirty-seven years have passed since Pickett's divorce.The 55-year-old Indianapolis resident leans hard on her sense of humor and has put together a career to be proud of with family and friends all around.
She says she laughs easily and often, finding more humor in the unexpected and the unusual than in triteness. She calls her humor goofy; her friends might use a different word. "I think they would say weird because at one time I can be very witty...other times my humor is caustic and still other times, it's rather predictable," Pickett says.
Whether it's goofy or weird, Pickett has a sense of humor that she wouldn't trade. It's helped her through challenges in a career that has seen her venture into print journalism, work as a commodities broker in the agricultural industry, get her teaching certification and eventually teach high school journalism and English for Ivy Tech Community College in Indiana.
The second of seven children, she notes that her parents are still married, and her family members are her best friends.
"Humor is the great equalizer," she says. "It can bring about an atmospheric change in the boardroom as quickly as it can create a breathing space between quarreling spouses or playground rivals. I believe that God has a beautiful sense of humor and has graced us with a portion of it to use as a tool of communication common to all humans. Because of its equalizing properties, I have put it to good use with difficult customers, difficult students and their parents as well as being able to keep myself uplifted and positive."
Kate Halpin is uplifting and positive. So says her close friend of 11 years, Molly Gressly. Halpin, who lives in Dayton, Ohio, credits her sense of humor for helping her regroup when her first marriage broke up. She rallied behind her self-described "dry, a little sarcastic" disposition and found the good that can come after life's letdowns.
