My friend has a magnet on her fridge: Growing old is not for sissies. We used to laugh about it…when we were a little younger. But then it keeps on happening, this aging. It’s quite a transition, not really one we are ready for in many ways. We have watched others make the journey before us and for some it seems to be fairly straightforward, for others not so much.

During my career, I have talked to many women who were left depressed, anxious and frightened by their birth experiences. Their memories were not of the experience they had expected or wanted, but of a situation in which they had control and sometimes their voices taken from them.

“Therapeutic jurisprudence says that the processes used by courts, judicial officers, lawyers and other justice system personnel can impede, promote or be neutral in relation to outcomes connected with participant wellbeing such as respect for the justice system and the law, offender rehabilitation and addressing issues underlying legal disputes. Developed by Professors David Wexler and Bruce Winick in the United States in the 1980s in the context of mental health law, it is now seen to apply to all areas of the law and across cultures and is the subject of international study and development.”