Divorce? Find Laughter, Healing with Coloring Book by Northern Virginia Resident

Valentine's Day is upon us this week and if you're recently divorced and can't find anything to smile about, cheer up. Local author Debbie MacDougall and artist Ian Stinson have created "Divorce: The Comic Coloring Book," designed to help cure your blues.

The play-with-crayons coloring book combines comic relief and art therapy to help women ease emotional pain and turn a desire to bash a no-good "ex" into a far healthier and amusing exercise.

MacDougall created the book (with illustrations by Stinson), drawing on her own trials and research. Her divorce case was ranked among 2013 and 2015's top cases in Year in Review by Virginia Lawyers Weekly. (Read more about the case here.)

The coloring book is accompanied by MacDougall's interactive Web site, Comic Divorce, where the motto is "Sharing is Caring." Visitors are encouraged to post their own illustrations and tales of divorce.

MacDougall, whose case is now being appealed to the Virginia Supreme Court, found after creating the coloring book that she's not alone in trying to come to grips with the fallout.

"Many women will tell you how lonely they felt while processing the trials and tribulations of divorce," she said. "I wasn't able to find anything out there to provide a much-needed laugh and community during a very difficult life process."

Divorce is the most stressful life event that can happen to you beyond losing a spouse, according to the Holmes-Rahe stress scale used by doctors to assess vulnerability to illness. An estimated 1.2 million couples become divorced each year.

Art therapy has been found to be effective in helping treat emotions in people suffering from cancer, depression, dementia and PTSD, by allowing them to express themselves when it's often difficult to put their feelings into words.

"That is when I decided an interactive coloring book could provide a community of positive support and laughter to let others know there is a gleam of hope," MacDougall said.

The result: "Divorce: The Comic Coloring Book" (Create Space, Copyright 2016, $12.95, available on Amazon.com). Read reviews on Amazon here.

"This coloring book is a way to change your outlook," she said. "Readers get to color some beautiful images that I hope allows them to frame some of the issues of divorce in a new way."

PHOTO of "Divorce: The Comic Coloring Book" cover, courtesy of the author.