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The fog does lift eventually, but when I listen to Fiona's story, I'm reminded again of how surreal the post-separation landscape is, and how difficult it is to see your way through it with any clarity at all.

On her 49th birthday, her husband David told her, without warning, that he was leaving. He was gone two days later. She is still gingerly picking her way through the ruins of a 26-year marriage nine months later. She's regained the 10kg she lost last year. Her lips are no longer numbed, and her heart, which felt so heavy she thought it would fall out of her body, seems to beat still. She still doesn't sleep well, about four hours a night now that she's off the sleeping pills. "It's in my mind all the time ... I wake up thinking about it ... I go to sleep thinking about," she tells me.

This time last year she was having the best summer of her life. "We were in a very comfortable financial position, the two older girls were married, the two little ones were grown. We'd given a big party for my parents for their 50th wedding anniversary. I was on a high. Everything seemed absolutely brilliant. I looked really good. I felt happy and contented and healthy and loved. We had a great social life. Everything seemed terrific."

She's an engaging woman with an easy smile and kind eyes. On this particular day, a stinker in January, she wears a conservative navy dress, a plain gold chain and sapphire pendant around her neck, and no wedding ring. She's held the same senior administrative job for 18 years in a community organisation and when we eat out at a corner cafe, staff and other patrons greet her by name.

"I went down badly, but not badly enough," she says wryly. "I didn't miss one day of work .... He'd always done the grocery shopping. I had to do that, and the lawns, and the pool, and go to work, get the kids to after-school activities, cook, bring in the washing. I made this huge effort to keep doing it, to get up every morning, and get my hair done and my make-up on so that I looked all right."

None of the couples in their wide circle of friends had split up. She lived in a married world. But people rallied. Everyone close to you gets caught up in a marriage break-up. She knows that now. For months, she needed to talk. Now she's entering a different phase. She found out about a counselling group for separated parents run by Centacare. That's helped her hugely. She's regrouping. "I have to be organised by next winter," she says. "My winter social life has revolved for 18 years around my husband's soccer team. I have to find something to do in winter on a Sunday."

She and the younger children, aged 12 and 14, are still in the family home, and nothing has been settled in a legal sense, either in relation to their property or the children. At first the children had lots of questions, about where they would live, where they would go to school, what would happen to the dog. Questions about their life. "They didn't ask questions about us as a couple," she says. "I told them I would do my best to keep their life as normal as I could. Once they knew about the other woman they never asked him whether he was coming home."

The fog is still fairly thick, although she says that since Christmas she's started to feel weak rays of warmth, as though there's a sun out there.

I haven't given you both sides of the story because no one, not me, not a counsellor, a mediator, a lawyer or a judge (with respect) will ever know the truth of what happened to this marriage. Fiona has her story, and her husband will have his, which may be similar, or it may be unrecognisable. That happens. The relevant facts, however, are that Fiona and David have two children, aged 12 and 14, who still need their parents' care and love.

At the moment they don't look like candidates for shared parenting. She hasn't spoken to him since September 30, she tells me, and she doubts she will ever speak to him again in her life. I doubt that this is true, but I accept that's how it looks from inside the fog. And I wish her well in her journey.

As for myself, I am out of the dark place now and I'm reluctant to look back. It is good out here on the other side, although family life is not simple. My ex-husband and I continue to live in the same suburb, the suburb the children have grown up in, and we share their care. We are not the best of friends, but we do OK. Our past lies fairly close to the surface and occasionally bursts through, but sometimes we surprise even ourselves. Last Christmas Eve, because that's the way it happened, we celebrated with our children, his wife, my partner and his two teenage children who also spend part of each week with us, and part with their mother. We enjoyed ourselves because the kids were so obviously enjoying themselves. It was amazing to me.

My ex-husband has his own story about our separation. The children have theirs. But we've worked at what came next, all of us, and keep doing so. At some point, maybe we'll know if it's been worth the effort. Maybe our children will tell us. Maybe they'll just say, get over it. Maybe that's the best thing they can say.

Some names and identifiers have been changed.

Veteran American divorce researcher Mavis Hetherington, in her book For Better or For Worse (Norton, 2002), writes that what happens in a marriage often influences what happens after it. The emotional climate of a marriage, the roles men and women play, the habits they develop, affect their ability to adjust to post-divorce life, she says. This is what makes it so hard to generalise about post-separation parenting. Every set of ex-spouses is dealing with their own history and neutralising that history takes time. You don't begin post-separation parenting from a blank slate, although you think you've wiped yourself clean of the marriage.

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