Ep. 9 - Radical Empathy: Co-Parenting Without the Drama

Staying in a marriage for the sake of the kids often sounds like the noble path, but white-knuckling through a connection-less partnership eventually drains the life force out of everyone involved. When the internal cost of "staying" outweighs the fear of the unknown, the decision to leave isn't a failure—it's an act of preservation. In this episode, we sit down with Morli, an e-commerce CEO and mother, who navigated the end of a decade-long marriage while pregnant with her second child.

We sit down to discuss the practical and emotional logistics of what she calls "unmarrying." Our conversation covers the technicalities of maintaining a 50/50 parenting split that actually accounts for the mental load, the unconventional choice to move just across the street from a former spouse, and the utility of "radical honesty" during therapy. Morli shares her unique philosophy on preserving family wealth by bypassing traditional litigation and how the "D-word" provided the unexpected courage she needed to exit a high-level corporate career to launch her own brand.

The unglamorous truth is that even the most "amicable" separations involve moments of profound grief, especially when new partners enter the frame or the silence of a house hits for the first time. You’ll walk away from this conversation with a blueprint for intentional language, a better understanding of how to audit your own friendship circle, and the reminder that you are the only one responsible for your own happiness.

Transcript

What Bitter Or Better Promises

Speaker 1 0:00

Welcome to Bitter or Better, real stories of divorce and resilience, the podcast that gets real about the messy middle of divorce and what it takes to come out stronger on the other side. I'm your host, Abby England, marketer, national board certified health and wellness coach, and author of the upcoming book, Bitter or Better, and I've personally earned my divorce Kevlar. This podcast isn't legal advice. It isn't tips and tricks and don't forget and hacks and how-tos. There's plenty of other podcasts out there interviewing lawyers, therapists, accountants, all sorts of divorce scientists. This podcast is raw, real conversations with everyday people who have jobs, kids, responsibilities, commitments, and yet they've weathered the heartbreak, rebuilt their lives, and found unexpected strength along the way. Because while divorce can break you, it can also make you better. You are not alone. Let's hear someone else's story and see what resonates.

Meet Morli And Her Mission

Speaker 1:02

Hi, I am Morli Desai, and I'm a single mom preneur. What does that mean? That means I gotten married a couple of years ago, and I've got two young boys that I pour all my love into. And the courage that it took to actually get unmarried is I took that courage to then fulfill my lifelong dream, which is to be an entrepreneur. So what exactly do you do? So I am the owner and CEO of an e-commerce skincare brand. That seems like it would somehow align with your personal values. Yes. My mission in life is to empower women. And through my brand, I help women relieve their skin insecurities like hyperpigmentation so that they can show up in the world in their most authentic and beautiful cells.

Speaker 1 1:54

Oh, I love that. Because it sounds like confidence has been a journey for you.

Speaker 1:59

Absolutely. Something that I have dealt with hyperpigmentation my whole entire life, being able to help other women with their hyperpigmentation issues. The number one word that comes up when I talk to my customers is this has helped me get my confidence back.

Speaker 1 2:16

We're definitely going to talk about confidence here today. I think it's fitting that you're one of my first guests because in how we met, can I have you share with our listeners how we met?

Speaker 2:29

We have a mutual friend who is a fashion designer. She needed some models to display her beautiful clothing, and we met on a photo shoot.

Speaker 1 2:43

So when people ask us, how do you guys know each other? There's no other way than to say we met on a photo shoot.

Speaker 2:50

Yes, exactly.

Speaker 1 2:52

You and I got really close because I remember I was in the muck of it, and you were a few rungs above me on the divorce ladder, and being like, it'll only get better one way or another. You're in the worst part of it. And it was so helpful.

Speaker 3:11

Yes.

Speaker 1 3:12

We're gonna be getting into a fairly vulnerable chapter of your life. Why did you agree to sit down with me and open the book on this?

Speaker 3:23

A couple of reasons. One is in your vulnerability is how you move past things. When you're constantly repressing things, they just get buried. But if you can actually be vulnerable and let them out, I think that's a way to heal and to move through the journey. The other reason is I think there's a lot of things that I've learned going through this process. If I can help someone that is in the pit that is going through it, realize that there is so much beauty and growth and intentionality that you can have through the process of getting unmarried, I would love that. And if I had that when I was going through it, I know I would have benefited greatly from it. You've certainly helped one. She's sitting in the chair next to you.

Speaker 1 4:10

So I'm hoping with this podcast, your story and strength and resilience resonates with others as well. So maybe let's start from the beginning.

How They Met And What Worked

Speaker 1 4:21

How did you and your former spouse meet?

Speaker 4:25

Yeah, we met in grad school in Pennsylvania. I got there a couple of days early to just get settled. And the night before classes started, I had met a couple of people. And so we were hanging out at a bar. And one of the guys that I had met, um, my co-parent, was his roommate. So we showed up. We just immediately clicked together. There was just something about his energy that I remember in my head being like, okay, yeah, I think, yeah, I like him. I like what he's got going on. At the laws of traction, it kind of brings you together. Yeah. It took us a year. We were in like a big friend circle of dating other people in the circle until we finally came together. But we were really good friends for that year before we finally got together. What attracted you to each other? Like I mentioned, his energy, but we also had very similar values. He is very close to his family. He is very rooted in his authenticity. And what I liked about him is that he just is very solid in who he is. He's very kind, a very intentional person. And he's also now the father of my children. And these are still the things that I still love about him and think that he is an excellent father. He just has a lot of care in him for other people.

Speaker 1 5:45

You're gorgeous children, by the way. They're beautiful boys. So describe the family dynamic.

Speaker 5:51

It continues to evolve. I call it like we're in a modern family where when we got unmarried, it was during the pandemic when we separated and we knew that we needed to have two different separate households. It was very fortuitous. A house in our neighborhood came up for sale. We decided to just go ahead and buy it. We're still married at the time and weren't sure if the separation would be permanent or not. But we said, you know what, it's still a good investment. If we end up reconciling, we could always set it up as a rental. And the place was literally across the street from the house that we had been occupying. Because of the pandemic, and because the my boys were one and two, we had to do a lot of parenting together. So we did dinners every night through the pandemic. We went on trips together through the pandemic. We still acted as a very close family unit. We saw our boys every single day, even though we were physically living in two houses. And it actually was a blessing because during the pandemic, when someone was sick, it was a lot easier to quarantine than if we were stuck in one house. And that went on for three years. And then just recently, my co-parent has gotten engaged. He had met someone a year ago. He has gotten engaged and they have moved to a new house, which is only a mile away. But is it that same convenience of being able to just run across the street to grab a pair of soccer cleats or something when you forget something? But also just mentally now there's another co-parent in the relationship. And so we are going through that transition right now. Wow. Okay. I definitely want to circle back to that.

Speaker 1 7:37

Um let's maybe rewind the clock. And

When Marriage Expectations Collided

Speaker 1 7:41

what happened?

Speaker 7:43

How did the D-word come up? Yeah, we were married for 10 years. When I think back and on our relationship, we met in grad school. We got married when we were 30. So we had this independent life through our 20s. We had careers, we had ambitions for careers. And coming out of grad school, we ended up moving out to Colorado for my job. And then I just became the main career person where fortunately I had opportunities to move abroad and then move back to the States. And my co-parent just he was like still trying to find that job or that career that he wanted to invest in. And so we did a lot of moving. And I've always been very focused and very motivated. And in my corporate job, I put it first a lot when we were married. And it required me to be on the road a lot, especially when we lived in Singapore for a couple of years. I was probably gone three out of four weeks. I was being fed because I was getting all of these different relationships and experiences and stuff. And I think it was hard on my co-parent, who is a natural extrovert in his personality and really needs to be around people and felt himself struggling in our marriage because I just was gone a lot. I think it was just a fundamental difference in expectations of what it was to be in a marriage. And I can't speak to him and what his experience was, but for me, my expectation was to have a marriage where I was allowed to have a lot of independence and a lot of opportunity to focus on things outside of the marriage. That expectation that was not, it was hard. I was not being met. I would get a lot of guilt. I would get a lot of feeling like I wasn't being supported in my career because of being gone a lot. And even when I was physically there, a lot of times mentally, I would still be there. And then when we had children was where it really came to the forefront because then I had to focus on that. And I really struggled where I felt like I wasn't able to put myself first in my marriage. I had to put the kids first, I had to put my co-parent, I had to put our marriage, I had to put my job, and then I put myself. And I fundamentally was not happy in that situation because I felt like I kept giving, giving, and giving, but I had this constant feeling of I wasn't enough. It wasn't enough. And so ultimately that feeling of not feeling enough was what made me decide that, yeah, this isn't serving me in this relationship.

Speaker 1 10:25

That's a lot. That's a lot of feelings to have while still being a mom and a wife and a successful corporate director at the time. So mentally you made the decision. But how did it get spoken into the air? How how did it come to fruition?

Speaker 10:43

Looking back, we were in couples therapy from early on in our marriage. And in the beginning, it was like it was a lot of prophylactic. We did a lot of counseling when we got engaged, just because I think that's always a really good thing to do is to go through premarital counseling and making sure that you're thinking about the right things when you're entering a marriage. And so we had this culture, fortunately, of honest communication, but honest communication with the support of someone. And we we struggled with some intimacy problems. And I think a lot of it was just with me being gone, was just a common theme of like he wasn't connected to me. And the other thing, too, is I am an introvert. So I would be on these business trips, I'd be giving everything I had. I would get home and I would need to go into my shelter a little bit. And it just didn't match what he needed, which is I had been gone and he needed me to come back and we needed to connect. And luckily, we had a relationship where we could be brutally honest with each other through using our therapist.

The Therapy Moment That Changed Everything

Speaker 11:47

The kids were really what magnified it. And I just remember being six months pregnant with my second child and sitting in the therapist office and him saying, I just don't have these romantic feelings. I've lost my intimate connection with you. I don't have them anymore. That was a wake-up call for me of okay, what do it got? Like it was one of those, what do I do now?

Speaker 1 12:12

Like, so you have one child already, who's maybe one each, and then you're pregnant. Not even one. Not even one. Okay. And then six months pregnant with your second child. And you're in the therapist's office, and your husband tells you what?

Speaker 12:27

He lost the connection. He said, I have love for you, but I'm not in love, right? He just that connection that we had, he just had lost it.

Speaker 1 12:38

If you don't mind, let's go back to that moment. What were you feeling when you heard that?

Speaker 12:47

Being pregnant and having all of these hormones. And I was in that nesting phase where all I wanted to do was save my marriage because I'm about to have his child. We've been married for 10 years, and the man says he's no longer connected to me. It was just fear and panic. Yeah, fear is the only thing. Like, what do I do with this? I'm about to have a child. It's a very distinct memory. And then there's still trauma around that marriage. I think it's also like a feeling of being abandoned.

Speaker 1 13:22

Man. The intent of the podcast is to have people share their stories so that others either feel a sense of connection to it or feel a sense of gratitude, maybe in their own situation. And when I hear that you are about to have two young kids and about to go through a divorce, I can't imagine what that must have felt like.

Speaker 13:51

At the time, it was this feeling of what do I do now? Like feeling very lost, very sad, very just everything. Angry and yeah, just scared. I I don't know what to do.

Speaker 1 14:08

Yeah. Unfortunately, when it happens, you still have to go through the process. And it sucks and it's emotional, and you're angry and scared and anxious and nervous, but you still have to go through the process of divorce. So then what was the next step?

Speaker 14:27

For me, I needed to understand while he was being brutally honest, and as hard as it was to hear that, I am grateful that he he was honest. He didn't stuff it down, he didn't try to spare it. Again, that's his thing. He is authentic and brutally honest to a fault, where you're like, okay, that was a punch in the face, but he was just speaking his truth. And so I needed to have radical empathy and try to put myself in his situation and try to find

Trying Everything Before Ending It

Speaker 15:02

some kind of understanding and acceptance. And the thing that I am grateful for is that through the whole thing, he was transparent, he was honest, he was sticking to his truth. I will always be grateful because we never lost trust. He never cheated on me, he never lied to me, he never buried his feelings and gave me the silent treatment. We went to therapy every single week and it was brutal, but every single time showed up and he said exactly what he was thinking and feeling. And I'll always be grateful for that because I never had to wonder. I never had to guess. I never had to worry about is there something else going on? And that is a gift because we could get to the crux of the crux. We didn't have to fight up here. We could fight at where the thing was. And again, doing it in the safety with a therapist who had been with us for a couple of years till then and knew everything. It gave me the strength of, okay, as long as I keep showing up and doing the hard thing of being there and hearing it and then also doing my journey. And he said, I'm going to let you make the decision about our relationship. So I don't know if this was out of cowardice or this was out of compassion, but he said, I'm not going to ask for a divorce. I will stay if you want to stay in this marriage. I want this to be a mutual decision, or at least have you in it. And so I said, I want to try as hard as we can to see if we can get the connection back. And so we worked six months, probably six months to a year, where we tried a lot of different things. And I feel like I can truly walk away and say, we tried everything. And again, just to be radically candor, like we tried opening up our marriage to see if there were other places that we could get connection. It did not serve me, especially being a pregnant six-month, a six-month-old. I was not going to go out and find other partners. Ironically, my co-parent did not have any trouble. That's not me to judge on that relationship. I closed our marriage and said, I'm not consenting to this, I'm not actually comfortable. And so we tried it with the closed marriage again. It wasn't working. He came back to the table and said, This isn't working. I'd like to open it up again. And at that point, I felt like I had tried everything. And I wanted to then put myself first and say, This isn't serving me. I will be better served to be on my own for us to be unmarried. Wow.

Speaker 1 18:00

You really did try everything. We did. Oh my gosh. That's you mentioned wanting to put yourself in his shoes or be empathetic to the situation. And the fact that you would experiment with opening up your marriage when you're six months pregnant. I can't think of anything more empathetic or compassionate. I cannot imagine what that was like for you. It was like feelings on top of feelings on top of feelings.

Speaker 18:34

Yes, I have distinct memories of after my child was born being up in the middle of the night, feeding my child, and having tears running down, like rocking my child, and like seeing this beautiful human and just feeling so like scared and so vulnerable, but feeling so much love at the same time. Yeah, feelings on feelings, but just also I'm gonna get through this. Like I have what's important, which is I've got these two little humans and I've got myself and I've got choice here, which is again what I'm grateful for. Where I eventually said, I think we've tried everything. I am not interested in opening up in an open marriage. It doesn't serve me and what I need. I would like to explore separation now.

Speaker 1 19:30

Thank you for boldly sharing that. You did have choice. So you've you made the decision that, okay, we're gonna try separation. What did that look like?

A Slow Separation During The Pandemic

Speaker 19:40

And this was hard too because it was like it wasn't like a clear, okay, we're separated, he moved out. Again, this was like early 2020, late 2019. We still kept sleeping in the same bed. We still kept going on and we would be coming back up to therapy. And our therapist would be like, you're you need to separate more.

Speaker 1 20:04

You need to get out of the same bed.

Speaker 20:07

Yeah. And so then we're like, okay, so then he moved upstairs. We've got a one-year-old and we've got a newborn. We're all hands-on deck, and it just happened slowly by slowly, where I felt like we caught we kept getting separated over and over again at each kind of separation phase. And so then he moved out of the room. And then eventually, like a couple months later, the house came up. He moved out of the house, but we were still having dinner together every night. We were still hanging out with the kids together. We were going on vacations together. We were like staying in the same room together. Then we got separate rooms. Then we started doing optional dinners. We started handing off the kids a little bit more. And so it happened like that when he eventually met someone, I think that was where it was like, okay, we can't keep doing this. Right. The whole entire time, our therapist was like, you're not separating enough. You're not separating enough. But I don't regret any of that. It was a two to three year process where I feel like now we are obviously he is engaged to someone else, like we are separated. But for the kids, I think it was really nice for them to feel like we were still a family.

Speaker 1 21:25

So they experienced a gradual progression of separation. Yeah.

Speaker 21:31

And they're young enough that I just don't even know if they remember when they were like one and newborn when he ended up moving into a different house. They're five and seven now. It's only now that I think they're starting to ask the question, or I just think they thought it was normal that everyone had multiple houses when it was just that was what their normal was. And everyone just went back and forth and not, it wasn't anything unusual.

Speaker 1 21:56

That is all that they know, and they don't know any differently. Talked about different gifts throughout this that might also be a gift to the children, is they didn't experience the separation as maybe like someone older than six years old. Well, you are very intentional with the language that you use and don't use.

Why She Says Unmarried Not Divorced

Speaker 1 22:22

What is this nomenclature that you've adopted and why is it so important?

Speaker 22:28

Really, the separation was meant to be a trial, right? To see if this is what serves us and then figure out the next. When I was in the separation and I was living on my own, and I had then decided to put myself first, it felt right. He was allowing me to come forward and say, okay, so I was the one after about six months separation, being like, I would like to go ahead and finalize this divorce, where I reluctantly was like, gosh, I don't know if I really want to be a single mom to two little humans. I actually really loved the independence. It felt like I was coming into my own. And so I said, let's go ahead and finalize a divorce. I think we would have been comfortable living in a still married but separate household, so we could do whatever. We didn't think society could understand that situation. Our families couldn't understand that situation where we still had a lot of love for each other. We still were a family, but we had an opportunity to create connections with other people. People struggled with it. And so we said, why don't just let's finalize it? Society isn't ready for these gray type marriages. When we were going through it, we had the gift of being very intentional about it because we had worked through all the emotions already. So we could be very intentional. We were intentional with our words. So we don't say divorce, we say we got unmarried. We don't call each other ex-husband, ex-wife, we say co-parents, right? Because these are words that we associate more with what our truth is.

The Three Co-Parenting Mantras

Speaker 24:12

And kind of we have three mantras of humming out of our marriage, which one was the kids always come first. So every single decision has to be made because our relationship now centers around that. While we are friends, that's not the primary relationship we have anymore. We are parents. Two was you are responsible for your own happiness. We gave each other blessings because he actually was like, when we were still separated, we weren't even f officially divorced. He wanted to go out and start dating again. And I was like, you don't need my blessing. You were in charge of your own happiness. I don't want to ever feel like I am responsible anymore. And in that same way, I also became a lot more not selfish, but full of self, where I was like, I'm going to start prioritizing myself and I'm going to ask for what I need. Where before I didn't feel I had that power. And so I tell people there is nothing like a legal document that says you have 50-50 custody to have a 50-50 partner where I didn't feel like we had that in our marriage. And granted, it was still the very, very early stages where a lot of it depended on me physically to help my kids. But it's one of the things I absolutely love about a relationship is I have a true 50-50 parent and it is glorious. And it's not just the physical take take care of them, but it's also the mental load, get shared 50-50 between us.

Speaker 1 25:42

And that is not how it typically, I don't know, I don't have children, but in listening to other friends and please elaborate on this, that percentage is not 50-50 when you were married.

Speaker 25:54

Yes. And not through any fault of his own. I think we also get programmed as women and as mothers that we have to carry a lot more of the mental load that then gets converted into the physical load. Even this morning, I had on my list I had to call their dentist to get like this thing up screened. I just procrastinated. And my co-parent was like, Have you called the dentist? And I was like, No, can you do it? And he said yes. And he took care of it. And he's actually been to the last two or three dentist appointments. And I always joke when I meet um a guy that's yeah, I'm a total 50-50. And I was like, What is your kid's dentist name? Can you answer that? And in every single situation, they have had no idea. And I was like, nope, come back to me when you know your kid's dentist name. That's a good point. And when you've gone to the dentist with your kid, then you can prove to me that you are a true 50-50 parent. Yes. And then the third thing is preserve wealth. We did not do lawyers. We um did not do mediation. We had a counselor, which I honestly thought that she was not even worth the value because we actually told her what we wanted. And it was very clear we're splitting everything 50-50. We structured things in a way that we had stuff set aside for the kids. We don't have to um nickel and dime each other. There is extra stuff that's been set aside that will pay for all the kids that we have 50-50 ownership to. I only have to worry about myself and my livelihood, which gave me the courage and the strength to transition out of corporate and to go after my dream and be an entrepreneur. And I don't think I would have done that had I not had the courage of I can do this, I can do hard things. I just got out of a 10-year marriage and I am thriving. I didn't have the financial fear of leaving a very stable job that was not serving me to then take the roller coaster that is entrepreneurship.

Speaker 1 28:01

So you took us through the three pillars that you and your co-parent agreed upon as you're going through this process.

Tools For Healing And Rebuilding Friendships

Speaker 1 28:11

What tools did you personally lean into during this time?

Speaker 28:18

Mm-hmm. I continued to go to therapy. There is a there was a lot of feelings, right? I mean, there's so much coming out of a 10-year marriage and a relationship. So we had our couples therapist, but then I went to another woman that was then my therapist that was just focused on me. So that was really important. I decided that I was never ever going to be in a situation where I put myself last. And so I really did a lot of work on what does that mean to put myself first? And for me, it was really understanding what my priorities in life were. And it also coincided with me turning 40 and having this kind of midlife reset. I'm going to invest in my wellness. I'm going to invest in my relationships. One of the things that was really eye-opening was because I traveled so much and my co-parent was the extrovert. He defined our friendship circle. He was the one that was like, oh, I made dinner plans with whatever. And I was just tagging along. Coming out of the marriage, and it was also the pandemic, I lifted my head and I had no one. I had no friends. Luckily, I had family that's local that really supported me, but I didn't have the girlfriends. And I think it was just because I didn't invest in the girlfriends. I let it all happen. And so one of the things that I did was I invested a lot in girlfriends, in relationships, in finding people that were in the same storyline. And I honestly think, Abby, I manifested you, right? I was probably, I think this was what, 22? 20, 22. 22, yeah. So like I had been one year divorced, and I was really just craving beautiful girl friendships. And you came into my life and we just bonded over these life experiences. Right. I did a lot of work on that. And then I'd promised myself that I would always explore and grow and have an open mind and know that, yeah, if I could get through this, like I can get through

Kilimanjaro And A Personal Rebirth

Speaker 30:25

anything. For my 40th, and to celebrate getting unmarried, I decided to take a trip to Tanzania and climb Kilimanjaro and do this life-altering safari. It was also the 10-year anniversary of my dad passing, and he actually grew up in Tanzania. And so it was just like these beautiful moments of rebirth and re-establishing myself and just saying, okay, this is a new life, but it's a life that's filled with joy and love and compassion and just making sure that I'm spending like the 2,000 weeks that I have left on this earth. Yeah, weeks left. And in a very intentional, beautiful way that serves me.

Speaker 1 31:09

If if you could go back or talk to the you that was in bed, crying, scared, nervous, anxious, angry, what would this tell that, Morley?

Speaker 31:27

No. It's so interesting. I would just give her a big hug and I would just say, You're gonna like just flower through this, right? And I knew this at the time. I'm gonna be okay. I have what's important here. I'm gonna be okay. But I think if I could go back and just wrap my arms around that person and just pour as much love and say, Yeah, this is important. This is growth. This is what you need to understand what is truly important to you and to live a life full of joy and love in the most, in the best way you can. I think it would just be to give my love. And I knew intuitively at that time, because I had been in other relationships nowhere as long and as intense as a 10-year marriage, but they I always came out of them in this renaissance where it became like fuel of this rebirth and this regrowth. I knew fundamentally that that would happen. I felt in control of my relationship with the co-parent at every moment. We never lost trust. I was never wondering what was going on. And I will always be grateful for that because that took a lot of courage on his part to show up and be honest the whole time because it could have been a very different situation if he

Honesty Vs Betrayal And Moving Forward

Speaker 32:43

wasn't as courageous.

Speaker 1 32:44

Yes. Honesty is a gift. I'll say in my own situation, he was not truly honest. He never mentioned anything about an affair. And it was all these other reasons. You're not this anymore, you're not that anymore, you're not this, you're not that. For months, I carried around so much guilt and pain. Oh, Abby, if you would have done this, or if you would have done that, and just second guessing myself all the time. And it wasn't until I found out it was an affair that I was like almost freed of those feelings of inadequacy, in which I could say, oh no, it's not me. It's about you. As brutal as maybe it was to hear whatever he said. Hopefully, for some listeners, the honesty is a gift as well.

Speaker 33:41

Yeah. And I think that's why my co-opar and I continue to have a very positive, strong relationship. And through every step, like again, I am grateful that in therapy he warned me that he was going to propose. And so when he did get engaged, we have a lot of mutual friends reaching out and being like, How are you doing? Are you okay? And I'm like, Yeah, I'm okay. I am very happy for him. This is what he needs to be happy. And selfishly, I need him, I want him to be happy because of our two little humans. And so I am grateful that I've never been blindsided. And that's a true gift that he gave me. And it also forced me then. I had to show up also and truly think about what I needed. And again, like mantra numbers two was you are responsible for your

Values That Lead To A New Career

Speaker 34:31

own happiness and your own self. You go get it, and you've got the blessing of the other person to go after it.

Speaker 1 34:38

Going through this process, what values crystallized for you? You mentioned your priorities. What became crystal clear as going through this process?

Speaker 34:51

Living your truth, right? And being in your authentic self and what is serving you. A key thing was when I looked at my corporate job, I loved that how stable it was, but it was sucking the life force out of me. And I was still traveling every other week. Every single time I had to get on a plane and leave those two babies, a part of me was like being wrenched out of me. I didn't want to do that anymore because I had the courage from leaving the marriage. I was like, I can leave this. I'd always wanted to be an entrepreneur. I did it cold turkey saying, I'll figure it out. I don't know what that means, but I'll figure it out. Making sure that always or leading with those priorities of putting myself first, that it's not selfish to have a nanny and have a Saturday morning where I can rest or go to yoga and have someone else watch my children. These are important things because you can't put yourself first and you can't make sure that you are full and whole, then you can't show up for the people that need you to be full and whole.

Speaker 1 35:56

So you come out of this as a renaissance woman. What gifts or opportunities did your divorce bring you?

Staying Resilient Through New Transitions

Speaker 36:08

Just the courage to go out there and take risks and do things. If I had not gone through the divorce or the unmarrying, I would have never left my stable corporate job and gone after being an entrepreneur. And I absolutely love it. And it's my destiny. And I love the control. I am there for my kids. I have time to pour into my relationships. And I can live my mission, which is to empower women, through that, which I don't feel like I've ever lived in true alignment with all of that before when I was married.

Speaker 1 36:45

How does it feel to now have multiple sources of fulfillment to live in your truths? What does that feel like?

Speaker 36:56

But it's still a constant struggle, right? I still also give myself grace that I'm human. So, like when my co-parent did get engaged, there are feelings of grief and annoyance and like now we've got a co-parent three-way. There's still moments of that, but there's also this underlying contentment of I'm not reaching for an end. I'm living in the everyday and appreciating it. I think the resilience to get up each day and go through the hard things and stay present and in the now and to process the feelings that come with being human, I wouldn't have been as equipped had I not gone through that difficult transition, but very um beneficial transition.

Closing Thoughts And Share The Story

Speaker 1 37:38

Resilience is the theme of this podcast. So thank you for being my friend, but then also for coming on and sharing all of this.

Speaker 37:46

You are very welcome. I think this is an important thing to share our stories with other people. I remember going through it and just looking for any point of connection or any point of commonality. I listened to a lot of podcasts when I was going through my divorce, and there wasn't like a perfect match. So again, listening to these stories and being able to see, okay, here's where I resonate, here is where I am, and then seeing that people have moved through it and they are in a much better position. I think that's really important.

Speaker 1 38:18

Thanks for listening to Bitter or Better, where we turn heartbreak into healing and survival into strength. As Brene Brown says, vulnerability is the last thing we want to show, but the first thing we look for in others. That's what this is all about. Real people showing up, sharing their stories, and reminding the rest of us that we're not alone. If this episode resonated with you, share it with someone who might need to hear it too. And remember, you have a choice better or better. See you next time for more real stories, real people, and real resilience.