Almost immediately, the lawyers started sending me their clients. It became clear that there was a real, tangible need here.

Then, something totally unforeseen happened.

The lawyers started to share the impact these cases were having on their own mental health. I was stunned – they were suffering anxiety, depression, uncertainty.

This was clearly a much, much bigger issue than I had initially suspected.

At times, it was honestly overwhelming trying to track the full impact difficult divorces were having on the system. The clients, the lawyers, and ultimately the law firms themselves, were all being damaged by the psychology of these cases. It was like finding a monster that had been hidden in plain site. I spent more hours than I care to mention, trying to piece together the network of influence – it was shocking.

Thankfully, throughout those early days, Sharon continued to be my rock. She reinforced what I was observing and doing in my client sessions. Her decades of clinical experience giving me the boldness to merge my personal experiences with my professional knowledge – a general no, no in traditional therapy. She kept me authentic and strong for my clients. She kept me focused on the women.

And I also let myself trust the results: my ladies were calmer, more focused, and positive, and the feedback from the referring lawyers was that they were amazed at the rapidity by which I had centered their clients, many of whom had been spiraling for months, sometimes years. This reassured me that I had found a system that worked.

But I still had a huge problem.

The thing that I knew would help women the most would be knowing that I had walked that path too – truth was, I was still to ashamed and scared to admit it.

How could I genuinely help other women come out of the shadows, if I couldn’t?

Read on Difficult Divorce Day 5

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Difficult Divorce Day 1

Difficult Divorce Day 2

Difficult Divorce Day 3