Proud to Know Her
I first met Linda in early February of 1998. I had driven to Redding through a veritable hurricane, with fifty-mile-per-hour gusts slamming tumbleweeds into the side of my car. I had been introduced to Linda only a week earlier by a mutual friend who had given me her email address. I came to discover, as I told her, if she was the woman I wanted to spend the rest of my life with.
When we met, she had been single for twenty years. And luckily, the men she had met in the interim failed to recognize her extraordinary character, her strength, and her charm. We met in the rain, first our eyes, and then our lips. That kiss has lasted for almost two years.
Linda had come to Redding twelve years earlier. After putting herself through law school in her late thirties, she had decided to start fresh and moved from Southern California to Redding. She established a family law practice, and soon was the first woman to head the local bar association. It wasn’t for the glory, but for the opportunity to help relegate the old-boys-network to the trash bin of history.
Linda has a reputation for honesty and professionalism, and that’s not easy for a lawyer to earn these days. Linda was always clear on the law, and was able to distinguish between its intentions and its requirements.
She would come home night and night with horror stories of how the litigious approach to divorce and custody was failing everyone involved. It was difficult for me to listen to her, not only for the sordid lives made worse by the bureaucrats and the courts, but primarily because of the toll I knew it was taking on Linda’s peace of mind.
So I pushed on her to explore collaborative law. She took the bit between her teeth, and with her own set of crayons, as she would put it, she organized eight of her colleagues into the Collaborative Lawyers of Northern California. Now Linda has to depend less on the fickle nature of the judicial system. And it is better for her clients who can go through the process with considerably less pain and cost.
Ultimately, it represents a sea change in how people relate, at their most difficult point of contact. Linda and the others are making reasonable what was torment before. And for me personally, that is a sign that great things can happen. That we can learn from our mistakes, and realize our potential.
And that’s SetonnoteS...I’m Tony Seton.
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