Leah Marie:
If you are barely keeping it together and trying to figure it all out by yourself, it is only going to be harder. You are not supposed to go through something like that by yourself. Divorce is one of the hardest things a human being can experience.

Suzanne Simpson:
Good morning, or good afternoon, wherever you are, Leah Marie. I want to talk to you today about working with our kids during a divorce and moving from shutdown to connection. My main goal today is to answer the questions so many parents, and moms especially, across North America have when they are going through a divorce: how do they reconnect with their kids, and how do the kids come out okay, when we know kids can shut down and pull away during a divorce? So today I have with me the lovely Leah Marie. Leah, you are a certified divorce recovery coach, a twice-divorced mom, the founder of Mindfully Ready, and the co-host of the podcast Divorce with Sam and Leah. What I love about your work with moms navigating divorce is that it aligns so closely with what I found in my doctoral research about what we all need as human beings for wellness. But let’s talk about you first. What can you tell me about your story?

Leah Marie:
I have learned a lot of lessons the hard way. When I was sixteen, I witnessed my mom have an asthma attack in our home, and she passed away. She was only forty-one. It was traumatic and it completely turned my world upside down. Five years later, my dad died of pancreatic cancer. I am an only child, so it was very much a case of, “okay, Leah, go figure the world out.” I did not realize it at the time, but my coping mechanism became serial monogamy. I was hopping from relationship to relationship, using them like buoys to stay afloat, to keep myself tethered to something. It was not until my second divorce that I had my real wake-up call. I remember thinking, I do not want to keep doing this. I was clearly picking the wrong partners for the wrong reasons, and I needed to understand why. That is when I did a deep dive on myself and worked to cultivate self-awareness, to really understand my patterns and my unhealed trauma, and everything that was leading me to the decisions I was making, so I could make better decisions and get better results. Once I had those tools and learned how to truly cultivate self-awareness, I had this incredible toolkit I could use to empower other women. That became a passion of mine, and it is literally what I dedicate my life to now: helping other women and moms through divorce, and specifically through the recovery process. All the things that come up, like building your confidence, finding your identity, rebuilding your self-trust, and releasing the guilt, the shame, and the feeling of failure.

Suzanne Simpson:
What do you find is the number one challenge? I know there are many, but if you had to narrow it down to the single foundational challenge of divorce for an adult, what would it be?

Leah Marie:
I think it comes down to two things. One of the most challenging parts of divorce, if you have kids, is co-parenting. You are divorcing someone you would otherwise walk away from completely, but because you are raising human beings together, you are somewhat stuck with them until your kids are grown. That can be incredibly complex. The other piece is the healing itself. How do you forgive yourself and find yourself again, so you are not repeating the same mistakes? There is a whole rebuild process: how do I get to a place where I feel whole, happy, fulfilled, worthy, and lovable, without needing a romantic partner to prove that to me?

Suzanne Simpson:
That is deep. It cuts right into the soul, into what we need as human beings. What percentage of the moms you work with have children, would you say, roughly?

Leah Marie:
High. I would say ninety percent, if not more. That is who I speak to, because that is me. I am the mom who went through it, so I am really sharing my own experience along with my clients’ experiences. Most of them are moms, yes.

Suzanne Simpson:
So the complexity multiplies exponentially once children are involved on so many levels. I have seen this as a teacher. I taught for thirty years and saw what kids go through. You mentioned co-parenting as the biggest piece at the start. Is co-parenting really the largest challenge, or are there other factors involved?

Leah Marie:
It is, but I also think the biggest challenge is yourself. How do I get to a place where I have confidence in my choices? Where I can set boundaries? Where I can regulate myself when I am triggered? Co-parenting is manageable if you are lucky enough to have a co-parent who is collaborative, someone who wants to be on the same page, work as a team, and put the kids first. That is great when it happens, but a lot of the time, that is not the dynamic you are in. So you end up trying to do one of the hardest jobs on the planet, raising children, with someone who is a poor teammate and who often makes things harder for you or tries to come between you and the kids. That is really complex. Learning how to navigate that, how to stay true to yourself, how to nurture your relationship with your kids, how to focus on what you can control and let go of the rest, all of that comes down to working on your mindset and how you respond. You do not want to be emotionally reactive to everything that is going on. You want to be strategically responsive. That inner work is really at the centre of divorce recovery.

Suzanne Simpson:
You have talked a lot about working with moms who have toxic partners or ex-partners. Let’s say someone is in that situation: kids involved, and a toxic co-parent. If you had to prioritize the top three responses for dealing with that, what would they be?

Leah Marie:
Number one: if you are dealing with someone who is genuinely high conflict, keep all communication in writing. You should not be having conversations with them by phone or in person. Use a co-parenting app if you can. If you have to, email is next best, then text message, though I am not even a big fan of that because I do not like them having that kind of access to you all the time. But keep it in writing. That gives you an advantage, because if you are talking to someone in person or over the phone and you are the kind of person who gets triggered, shuts down, or does not know what to say in the moment, it is easy for someone to manipulate that. Written communication gives you the chance to read something, close it, go for a walk, and process it. You can decide whether it even requires a response. If you are triggered, you can deal with that first, get yourself regulated and grounded, and then come back and respond objectively. Number two: focus on what is actually in your control. One of the hardest parts of divorce is co-parenting itself. You are not around your kids all the time. You do not have a say in every decision, what they are doing, when they are doing it, who they are spending time with. When you share custody, you lose some of that control, and that is hard. But it is also the reality. If you want to see your kids one hundred percent of the time, you have to stay married. That is simply how it works. So if you are sharing custody, you have to give some of that control up. That matters if you do not want to lose your mind for the next eighteen years, or however long your co-parenting journey lasts. When your kids are with you, in your house, that is where your attention goes. Most of what happens when they are with your ex, and I am not talking about situations where your kids are in danger, is outside of your control. Obsessing over it, needing to know every detail, wanting to talk to them all day, interrogating them the moment they come home: none of that goes well, and it will affect your relationship with your kids. Third, it is important that you focus on you. What are you doing outside of the divorce and the co-parenting? Do not let that become your entire life. Who are you outside of being a mom and an ex-wife? What are you doing to fulfill yourself, to meet your own needs, to regulate yourself, to get to know yourself, to heal, to pass the time? Do you have creative outlets? Do you have hobbies? You need more going on in your life than obsessing over your co-parent or your divorce.

Suzanne Simpson:
Putting your own oxygen mask on first. I have been talking about this a lot lately, including with Sam. We have to be well ourselves in order to be there for everybody else, and for our kids.

Leah Marie:
Yes. Even if you think you are doing a good job, and you might genuinely be doing the best you possibly can, if you are not taking care of yourself, it is impossible to show up as the best version of yourself for your kids. You can pretend, but your energy will be different. The decisions you make and how you show up will be completely different than if you are truly pouring into yourself and modelling that for your kids.

Suzanne Simpson:
Let’s shift gears. I have been asking about the co-parent, but I want to spend the rest of our time on the kids: how we work with children during and after a divorce. Can you tell me the top three challenges you see parents navigating with their kids’ own responses and behaviour during or after a divorce?

Leah Marie:
This depends on age, but I think some kids struggle with anger and resentment. That is common. I think some parents struggle when their kids have a hard time on transition days, either not wanting to go to the other parent’s house, or coming home from the other parent’s house completely dysregulated, having meltdowns, lashing out, and struggling to settle back into a normal routine. And if you are dealing with a high-conflict situation, moms also struggle with the things being said about them at the other house, and their kids coming home believing it or repeating it. That can get complicated too.

Suzanne Simpson:
I want to dig into each of these. Let’s start with anger and resentment. What language do you teach moms to use, and how do you coach them to position themselves with their kids around that? And I would add one more piece I have seen in the kids I have worked with: a loss of self-worth, a sense of brokenness, or the perception that they were somehow part of the cause of the divorce. That is its own layer, their own self-perception in the middle of it.

Leah Marie:
Yes, internalizing it. First, it is important to understand that you are not your child’s therapist. If you can get your child in front of a third party, someone who is not emotionally invested and is not mom or dad, they can go, feel comfortable, talk, and open up. I think that is wonderful, because that person is equipped and trained for it, with tools to help. I recommend getting your kids support alongside your own. I feel like everybody needs a therapist at least once in their life. Remember, too, that your kids are going through this on their own timeline. They are their own people, their own little humans, and they are processing this in their own way, on their own journey. It will take the time it takes, and that is okay. Part of supporting them is giving them healthy outlets, which comes back to your own coping mechanisms. If you are angry, do you come home and pour yourself a drink? Do you doom-scroll? Do you shop? Whatever your coping mechanism is when you are angry, that is what you are teaching your kids. A better approach is: let’s regulate ourselves. Let’s get outside and go for a walk. Let’s get some fresh air. Let’s lift some heavy weights, push some weight around. Let’s put on a playlist and dance, or scream along to it. Let’s scream into a pillow. Let’s journal it out. Let’s talk about it. What are the healthy ways to process what you are going through? Those are the coping mechanisms you want to use yourself, and then teach your kids. On transition days: this is hard to answer in general, because it really depends on what is happening and how old your kids are, since everyone reacts differently. But when your kids come home lashing out, having a meltdown, and completely dysregulated, one important reminder for moms is that this does not necessarily mean you are doing anything wrong. Often, when kids are in a space where they do not feel safe or able to be themselves, they bottle things up. When they get home and let it out, that is actually a sign they feel safe with you. They know they can come home, let it all out, and you will love them anyway. You are not going anywhere. They are processing to the best of their ability, until you give them better tools. It can be hard as a mom to go days without seeing your kids, and then have them come home and be a nightmare, and think, what am I doing wrong, they do not love me, they hate me, they do not want to come home. Usually, that is not what is happening at all.

Suzanne Simpson:
Can I add something? I hope she never hears this, but I once had a really difficult teaching partner, night and day from me. We joked that it was like a bad divorce, because one of us allowed everything and the other did not. I understand now how tricky that transition is when the two homes are not on the same page, when one parent allows everything, “go at it, fill your boots,” and the other does not. One of the things you mentioned that I want to come back to is talking to your kids. Talk to me about that reconnection moment, right at the transition, when they come back to you after having free rein at the other house and now they are back in your home. Are there things you have seen in those first moments of reconnecting that help with the transition, both in what you say and what you do?

Leah Marie:
I think sometimes the answer is: do not talk to them right away. You do not need to pounce on your kids the moment they walk in. Think about it this way: if you have had a terrible day at work and you walk through the door and take your shoes off, do you want someone coming at you immediately with questions and demands? No. Sometimes you just need a minute to decompress, to go into your room, play video games, watch TV, have a snack, whatever it is your kids like to do. So the mistake to avoid is pouncing on them the second they come home. If you know they are likely to be a bit dysregulated, give them the time and space. Say something like, “I’m here when you’re ready,” or “dinner will be ready at six, do what you need to do, I’m glad to have you home, I love you.”

Suzanne Simpson:
That is interesting, because when I said “talk,” I was picturing something like, “how was your school day, what happened in your classes.” There are different ways to talk to someone, aren’t there? “Tell me about your time there” is very different from “what’s been going on the last few days.”

Leah Marie:
Right. “What did you do, where did you go, who did you see, what did you eat, what time did you go to bed, did you shower, did they put clean clothes on you.” You do not want to interrogate your kids, even if you genuinely want to know what is going on over there. When kids come home from a regular school day, maybe that greeting works. But if you know the transition itself is difficult for them, that is probably not the moment to jump straight into conversation. Let them settle, get to a more grounded place, and then start talking.

Suzanne Simpson:
I want to ask about something else you mentioned: one parent saying things about the other. I am not divorced myself, but I have heard this often, and it strikes me as incredibly difficult when someone is saying negative things about you to your own children. What do you do with that? It seems awful. I cannot imagine.

Leah Marie:
It is awful. It hurts, because you do not want someone turning your own children against you, especially when the claims are completely false. Depending on how serious it is, you may need to talk to your attorney about what needs to happen legally. But I think it is important to help your kids understand that everyone is entitled to an opinion, and that does not make it the truth. Your ex will not be the last difficult or toxic person your kids come into contact with. They will meet difficult people at school, difficult teachers, difficult bosses, difficult boyfriends and girlfriends. So give them the tools to navigate that dynamic. I would not go the route of “did your dad tell you this, and that’s not true, how could he say that.” You can go there, but it is not productive. It is more useful to ask, “how did that make you feel when you heard it? Do you have any questions for me? Your dad is entitled to his own opinion and his own perspective, and so am I. If you’re curious about my perspective on what happened, ask me, and I’ll be honest with you.”

Suzanne Simpson:
I love that, because the natural, human instinct is to go on the defensive and strike back. I once spoke with a psychologist about this. He said he has never seen it go well when a parent tries to pit a child against the other parent, because every child wants both their mom and their dad.

Leah Marie:
Yes, that defensive instinct is so natural.

Suzanne Simpson:
And the moment we try to break that bond, it does not end well later. The other thing we talked about on your webinar was this idea of proving it, proving them wrong through how you live, showing them.

Leah Marie:
Exactly. Just show them how you live your life, and the pieces will start to come together for them. Kids are perceptive. They come to their own conclusions earlier than you would think. They will be at the other house hearing “mom does this, mom says this,” and then think, “but whenever I’m at home, I never actually see mom doing or saying that.” That is interesting to them. So just live your life and prove them wrong by showing them the truth.

Suzanne Simpson:
themselves. I think that is the most powerful response, because eventually kids grow into adults and they see it for

Leah Marie:
That is the hardest part: being patient and waiting for that to happen.

Suzanne Simpson:
I cannot imagine. I know people with very broken relationships with their children, and I was actually talking about this just this week: every child wants a relationship with their parent. We are wired for that. I also think a genuine request for forgiveness from us as adults, and I have had to ask for that myself, “I was wrong about this,” is powerful for restoring relationships.

Leah Marie:
Yes, and sometimes that is complicated too. As a mom, if your ex was abusive, or is genuinely a difficult parent, and your kids still love them and want a relationship with them, that can be hard to process. How can they still want to be around this person? But at the end of the day, we all just want our parents to love us.

Suzanne Simpson:
I have a friend whose almost-ex-husband is using drugs, and she knows it, but she still wants her kids to have a relationship with their father while also trying to protect them. What I respect about her is that she understands every child wants a relationship with their dad. So how do we protect our kids and still make that safe for them? You cannot micromanage another person, so someone could genuinely spend their whole life struggling with addiction, and you cannot control that. Before we move to the wrap-up questions, I have one more. I have always had a lot of empathy for single parents doing it all. I am also the first person to push back on the “lean in” idea, that we can have it all. We can have it all, just not all at the same time. Talk to me about this: finances are tight right now, more people are using food banks than ever before, and there are single parents working well beyond twelve-hour days. How do you stay present for your kids in the middle of what feels like everything at once: physical insecurity, financial insecurity, possibly housing insecurity, emotional turmoil, psychological strain? You could list nearly every challenge in the human psyche and find it inside a divorce.

Leah Marie:
I think you have to let go of the idea of perfection. Give yourself grace. Your kids do not need hours upon hours of your time every day. They just need a pocket of time where they have your full attention. They do not need you to be perfect. They need connection. So find ways to sprinkle that in throughout the week, moments where you can really be present. You do not have to be good at everything all the time, especially during a divorce and the recovery that follows. That is not the season to try to excel at everything. You are doing what you can, and there are a lot of balls in the air. Give yourself grace, and remind yourself you are human, and it is okay for your kids to see that. You do not need to pretend everything is fine or that you have it all together, because sometimes you do not. Talk to your kids about that. Say, “Mom’s having a hard day today. I had a tough day, but I’m going to be okay, and I love you. I’m going to get through it. Here’s what I’m going to do: I’m going to journal for a few minutes, get some fresh air, use the coping tools I’ve taught myself to get through this.” Model that for your kids: how you handle difficulty in a healthy way.

Suzanne Simpson:
So what I am hearing from all of that is that we need grace with ourselves. It is full of grace.

Leah Marie:
One hundred percent. We are so hard on ourselves, on the expectations we hold ourselves to and the way we talk to ourselves, our inner critic. You have to shut that down. You have to become your own cheerleader, and practise talking to yourself the way you would talk to your best friend if she came to you with the exact same situation. What advice would you give her? Would you tell her she was a bad mom? Never. So treat yourself the same way, with compassion.

Suzanne Simpson:
There are so many moments in a divorce that can chip away at your self-confidence and self-worth. So you are already entering that territory carrying your own hurt and pain, and now we are saying you also have to extend yourself grace. It really is a daily work in progress, because it is challenging. We all are.

Leah Marie:
We are, though. It never ends. You never reach the top of the mountain and think, “I’m done, I’m good now, I never have to work on myself again.” That is not realistic. It is one foot in front of the other, every day. We are all just doing our best.

Suzanne Simpson:
We all are. I feel very strongly about what we owe our kids, because I believe they come first, but I also believe firmly that we need grace with ourselves, and to hold ourselves accountable without judgment. Taking responsibility as parents, because we are raising little human beings, and I have seen adults who were shaped by difficult upbringings, but our kids do not need us to be perfect. They never have. They want us present. They have never once asked for perfection.

Leah Marie:
No. And it actually helps create emotional safety when they see that you are not perfect, that you are human.

Suzanne Simpson:
Exactly. Okay, let’s move into our three wrap-up questions, coming back to this idea of reconnecting with a teenage child during a divorce, or strengthening that connection to avoid disconnection. What is one single, practical thing a parent can do this week to bring in more connection, as an antidote to their own turmoil and their child’s challenges during a divorce?

Leah Marie:
With teenagers especially, I think it is important to find ways to meet them where they are. Figure out what they are genuinely interested in. One thing I have been loving lately: I have a fifteen-year-old daughter, and we will pull up ChatGPT, because this is the world we live in now, and I will prompt it with something like, “I’m a mom who wants to connect more deeply with my fifteen-year-old daughter, give me some questions we can ask each other to get to know one another on a different level, things we might not have thought of ourselves.” Suddenly you have twenty questions, and it is wonderful, because it surfaces stories we might never have thought to talk about otherwise. Even small things like that, ways of communicating that go a little deeper than the daily “how was school, do you have homework,” can make a difference.

Suzanne Simpson:
And the key is that we cannot interrogate our kids in every conversation. Sometimes it is just about time together, exactly like what you described.

Leah Marie:
Yes. What do they actually like to do? My daughter loves getting boba sometimes, the tea drink. So I know that is her thing. We get in the car, put on music we both like, she gets to be DJ, and we go get boba. Sometimes that is it, especially being realistic: if your kid is a teenager, they probably do not want to spend hours hanging out with you. That is just the reality. They are with friends, or in their room, or doing their own thing. So it is about finding those small windows, “let’s go grab some boba.” Twenty or thirty minutes of the day, but you had that moment of connection doing something you both enjoyed.

Suzanne Simpson:
I love that. Okay, second wrap-up question. We talked about the brokenness that can come with divorce for a parent, and having to rebuild yourself and put things back together. With everything that adult goes through in a divorce, where have you seen that change relationships for the better? How does it shift the relationship between parent and child as the parent does their own healing, their own self-regulation work, and puts their oxygen mask on first?

Leah Marie:
Because you show up as a completely different person. When I was going through my divorce, I was so dysregulated, and I did not even know it. I just knew I was stressed and overwhelmed, and the smallest thing would set me off. I would be yelling and screaming at my kid. I had no patience. I was, day in and day out, just trying to stay afloat. I was not going to show up as my best self for her in that state. Once I learned how to regulate myself, how to process my emotions in a healthy way, how to become more mindful and self-aware, I could show up as a completely different version of myself. Now, if something happens, and life happens, if she says or does something that triggers me, I recognize it. Instead of reacting in the moment, I tell myself, “I can feel that I’m triggered right now, I need a couple of minutes before I respond.” I will go to my room, or go outside for a walk, and get myself back to a grounded, centred place. Then I can go have that conversation or ask that question, and it produces a completely different result than if I had responded while emotionally reactive and triggered.

Suzanne Simpson:
Can you speak to how your kids respond now that you are more connected and regulated? Do they still blow up?

Leah Marie:
They receive it much better. It leads to a more productive conversation, and you are not stuck in a constant cycle of damage and repair, damage and repair. It creates a steadier relationship and steadier conversations with your kids, because you are steadier.

Suzanne Simpson:
And I said this to Sam too: I believe this is learnable. Neuroplasticity. We know we can learn to keep our cool, even when it feels hard.

Leah Marie:
One hundred percent. It is a beautiful part of our brain. Yes, we are shaped and conditioned by everything we grew up with, but there is also this thing called neuroplasticity. We have the power to actually rewire our subconscious and our brain. It just takes consistency and awareness. It is possible.

Suzanne Simpson:
Yes. And do not say it is not possible, because it is, even if it does not happen all at once, or every single day. Okay, last question. For a parent in Canada, the United States, or anywhere in the world who is barely holding it together during or after a divorce, what is the one thing you want them to know about getting through this?

Leah Marie:
Get support. If you are barely keeping it together and trying to figure it all out by yourself, it is only going to be harder. You are not supposed to go through something like this alone. Divorce is one of the hardest things a human being can experience, right up there near the top of the list, just under the death of a loved one. It is genuinely that hard. You should not have to do it by yourself, because you are not meant to. So get support, even if it is a free support group, a therapist, a coach, or people who truly understand, not just your mom or your best friend, people who really get the complexity of what you are living through and the dynamic you are in with your co-parent. Talk to people who have the tools and the guidance to help you navigate it with more clarity and confidence.

Suzanne Simpson:
That is so true. We were never meant to go through this world alone, were we? Leah Marie, thank you so much for your time. Where can people find you? I have a list here, but I would love for you to share it yourself.

Leah Marie:
I am everywhere on social media: Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube. My handle is @MindfullyReady, or you can go to mindfullyready.com. I have a free divorce recovery kit there to get you started, along with plenty of other support and resources. And of course, Divorce with Sam and Leah, on Apple, Spotify, and everywhere else you listen to podcasts.

Suzanne Simpson:
Leah, thank you again so much for your time.

Leah Marie:
Thank you so much for having me.

Suzanne Simpson:
Thanks for listening. You can help by saving this episode for later and sharing it with a parent who is going through a divorce or has been through one, and needs to hear this message about extending themselves grace and supporting their kids through it. I am Dr. Suzanne Simpson. Subscribe to this channel, click the link below, and I will see you next time.