08/20/2026
The past matters. But does it have to keep deciding what happens next?
I recently came across this quote from Maya Angelou:
“I have respect for the past, but I’m a person of the moment.”
It made me think about the many coparents and parents living apart I have worked with over the years.
When a relationship ends, the past doesn’t simply disappear. There may be hurt, disappointment, broken trust, or very different memories of what happened. Those experiences matter and deserve to be acknowledged.
But here is something I hope more coparents hear:
You do not have to agree about the past to begin creating a healthier present and future for yourself and your children.
One place to begin is with your values.
Think about what really matters to you. What values do you want to guide you as a parent? What qualities do you hope your children carry with them into adulthood? Kindness? Honesty? Respect? Responsibility? Compassion? Resilience?
Then comes the harder question:
How can your children see those values in the way you coparent, especially when you and their other parent disagree?
At the Interdisciplinary Legal & Psychological Alliance (ILPA, LLC), this is part of the work we do directly with coparents and families. At the beginning of most of our services, we help coparents work together to create a Coparenting Vision Statement. Values are one part of that larger process.
The goal isn’t to pretend the past didn’t happen or expect two people to suddenly see everything the same way. It is to create something they can return to when coparenting gets difficult.
Instead of staying caught in “Who was right about what happened?” the question can become:
“Does what we are doing right now reflect what matters to us and the future we want for our children?”
That can be a very different place from which to make the next decision.
We cannot rewrite the past. But we can decide what we want to carry forward and what we want to create next.
If your family could use some help getting there, that is part of the work we do at ILPA.
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