On the campaign trail, Gov. Sarah Palin proudly holds her baby son, Trig, who has Down syndrome, and promises “to help families who have children with special needs.” You don’t have to know trigonometry to realize what that adds up to.

Gov. Palin addressed that issue in a speech today in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, to groups that deal with special needs. " ... [T]he truest measure of any society is how it treats those who are most vulnerable," she said, and brought up another way special needs has affected her family: her sister Heather has a 13 year old son with autism. Gov. Palin proposed three ways to better serve families with physical or mental special needs children:

• School choice for parents, with federal funding that will follow the child.

• The full funding of government's obligations under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act

• Strengthening the National Institutes of Health, to work on long-term cures and providing better information to families

Gov. Palin also urged extending the Vocational Rehabilitation Act to teach special needs children the skills they need to live independently. But having a special-needs child not only requires expensive, life-long therapy for the child — it requires marital therapy as well.

A little-known fact is that the divorce rates for parents with special-needs children is tragically high. According to the documentary Autism Every Day, the divorce rates for these parents soar to as much as 80 percent. A recent study in The Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology revealed that parents of a child with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder are nearly twice as likely to divorce by the time the child is 8 years old.

And when I contacted various special needs organizations to get a figure for divorces, spokespeople were reluctant to give a firm number, but acknowledged that it’s “very high.”

When you get divorced, you quickly learn who are your friends and who are your frenemies. Madonna must be smiling because Gwyneth Paltrow and Trudie Styler are publicly rallying behind their pop star pal.

And let’s face it, when you are emotionally raw, you need faithful friends to vent to, even if you are a superstar.

Paltrow, who is married to Coldplay singer Chris Martin, sounds like she is giving the cold shoulder to Madonna’s soon-to-be ex, filmmaker Guy Ritchie. “I'm supporting her in all the ways that I can,” says Paltrow. “I'm just there for her. I speak to her a lot.”

Paltrow spoke about their friendship at the premiere of her film “Two Lovers” at the London Film Festival. She, like Madonna, lives part time in London.

Producer Trudie Styler, who is married to Sting, and is responsible for introducing Madonna to Ritchie 10 years ago, confirmed that their relationship had been in turmoil for quite a while.

“I love them both,” she told Access Hollywood with the diplomacy of a U.N. ambassador. “Obviously they’ve been struggling for a while. They're both dear friends of mine and all good things sometimes come to an end.”

And then she added, “I think they're destined to become great pals.”

Every divorced woman can’t help but monitor who is in her camp and who is in her ex’s camp. Although conventional wisdom says that a friend shouldn’t be asked to choose sides, it is very hard for someone getting divorced to share their innermost thoughts, knowing that you could be talking to a spy. Friends get divided into categories.

Some are cashmere. Some are wool. Some are polyester.

Here's your pet's pet peeve. Your beloved animals suffer anxiety when you separate or divorce, just as you do. In fact, the People's Dispensary for Sick Animals in London has added divorce to the list of events that can lead to "acral lick dermatitis."

Other causes of ALD – a constant chewing, sucking, and licking of a part of the body – are dogs who are isolated or bored, punished continually, or who have nervous and stressed owners. Sean Wensley, a senior vet at the People’s Dispensary for Sick Animals, says, “As a result of such licking, the area can become raw and itchy, which in turn leads to further licking or chewing."

Pets mirror our emotions. If your parrot plucks his feathers feverishly, your poodle pouts with downcast eyes, your calico cat meows mournfully, vets translate these things as a form of depression because, folks, they are "furry" upset by the disruption in the house.

And why shouldn’t they be?

As Wensley says, “Cats and dogs, like young children, are sensitive to adult human emotions and, when these become tense or unpredictable, this can cause stress-related heath problems.”

What are more symptoms?

"Dogs that are stressed can show signs of compulsive disorder,” he says, including chasing their own tails. Cats, he says, “can be prone to 'wool sucking' which, as the term suggests, involves sucking or chewing on woolen items such as blankets.”

Parrots sometimes pull out their own feathers after losing a mate — which, in a way, includes a human live-in companion — or experiencing some other type of trauma.

And that’s not all. The hospital’s studies show that when their owners split, pets can develop serious long-term nervous symptoms, including chewing on and biting themselves.

Love can be sweeter the second time around. At least that's what Nicole Kidman is saying about life with country crooner hubby Keith Urban. The Australian superstars just had a baby girl named Sunday Rose.

In an interview with Elle magazine she said, "I didn't foresee it, that you can meet somebody who you have a deep and more profound love with. I don't mean to take away anything with Tom [Cruise], but I would hope that he has the same thing — I know he has the same thing with Katie. You move into a stage where you're able to be a more fuller person in your relationship."

At FWW, we could have told her that.

You learn from the past and snatch those memories and migraines and turn it around. It's called reinvention and is a script worth noting.

In fact, Kidman also discussed what us girls talk about often. Navigating solo after heartbreak can be lonely at first. "I went through this long period of being alone," she concedes. "I was very, very damaged, and I did not want to jump into a relationship because I would have nothing to give, just shreds of what I was."

But time — and girlfriends who've been there, done that — help heal those wounds, and suddenly a cute singer serenades you out of your doldrums and becomes your dream guy. And then, Poof, the science of love, instead of Scientology, creates the magic.

It could be a script right out of her many movies, including the upcoming Australia. Yes, reel life pales in comparison to her real life now. Looking back, Kidman acknowledged that, at one time, "my screen life was far more exciting and beautiful than my real life."

Not anymore.

You’ve seen them at dinner, the couples whose fighting escalates to shouting matches or those who close their eyes into slits, purse their lips and fire off sarcastic put downs at their mates over their Chardonnay or Coors Light.

They seem like they’re heading for divorce.

Not necessarily. Some people fight and like it.

John Gottman, Ph.D., professor emeritus of psychology at the University of Washington in Seattle, says there are three types of fighters:

• The ones who validate the other person’s experience and work it out together. (“I understand why you spent the rent money on a motorcycle for your mid-life crisis.”)

• The ones who fight vocally. (“You middle-aged, mindless jerk! How could you?”)

• The ones who agree to disagree. (“Ok, I guess I’ll have to figure out another way to pay the rent.”)

As long as the verbal fighters understand each other and aren’t bothered by it, they can stay together. Husband and wife know it’s a way to let off steam and so they manage their expectations.

In a study, Gottman discovered that couples argue about the same issues 69 percent of the time. As reported in “Psychology Today,” his long-term study of 670 couples showed that couples don’t actually resolve their problems, but learn to live with them.

Should they change partners, they’ll just get a different set of unresolved issues.

So what’s the key to happiness? “Establish a dialogue with the problems, learning to live with them much the same way someone learns to live with a bad back," he says.

The trick is to acknowledge your partner’s limitations.

Uh-huh. That’s not hard.

Gottman, however, also pointed out that the positive interactions in your relationship have to outweigh the negative arguments five-to-one.

Otherwise the couple won’t last until their silver anniversary, or even their fifth.