Can a high-conflict divorce really turn around — even when only one parent is willing to try? That’s the question at the center of this episode, and Alanah answers it with her own story.

When Alanah first reached out to Elaine Taylor-Klaus, she was deep in a high-conflict divorce. She and her co-parent — an attorney and a pediatrician, both smart and trained to argue — were deadlocked over their daughter’s health and wellbeing. Litigation was on the table. And Alanah, by her own admission, was fully in warrior mode.

It was a colleague who first named it: In your professional life, being a warrior makes sense. In your co-parenting relationship? It might cost you everything.

That one reframe started a 10-month journey with Elaine that changed the trajectory of Alanah’s family.

What do you do when your co-parent isn’t on board?

This is the question Elaine gets most often, and it’s a key moment in Alanah’s story. Because her co-parent wasn’t on board. Not at first.

Instead of filing litigation, Alanah took the pleadings she’d already drafted — full of allegations and grievances — and distilled them into a parenting covenant. She asked herself: What do I actually want at the heart of all of this? The answer wasn’t a courtroom win. It was mutual respect, co-authorship of her daughter’s health decisions, and an independent third party to help them navigate.

She presented that covenant to her co-parent. He said maybe. She didn’t give up.

What does alignment look like in a co-parenting conflict?

Elaine talks about this a lot in her coaching work — the difference between looking for agreement and working toward alignment. Agreement requires you to find common ground on logistics. Alignment starts with the one thing you already share: you both want your child to be okay.

In high-conflict divorce, that shared center can feel impossible to access. But as Alanah describes it, the space in the middle is always the kid. And once you can locate that, you have a starting point.

What is “texting from the ledge” in co-parenting coaching?

One of the most powerful things about working with a coach over time, Alanah says, is real-time support in tough (and important) moments. When the drops-off go sideways, or that text lands wrong, and the old reaction is right there, waiting. Elaine calls it “texting from the ledge,” and it’s exactly what it sounds like. You send a message in the heat of the moment, and someone pulls you back to what actually matters.

That kind of support — practiced, in context, over real life — is what allowed Alanah and her co-parent to actually build new patterns that stuck, instead of just talking about them.

The turning point.

Elaine remembers the exact moment she knew this was officially a success story. A drop-off coincided with a coaching session. Alanah and her co-parent ended up in the same location. They sat down together and shared a single earbud for the Zoom call — something that would have been unthinkable just months before.

“No matter how much the bridge has been burned,” Alanah says, “it is still possible to rebuild.”

Co-parenting is a verb.

That’s maybe the most important reframe in the entire episode. Co-parenting isn’t something you figure out once and then have. It’s something you practice — continuously, imperfectly, with real stakes. It’s about the actions you take, the willingness to recommit, the choice to get on track again, even after you’ve backslid.

As Alanah puts it: Our life is never happening only to us. It can be happening for us.

What this episode is really about.

If you’re in a high-conflict co-parenting situation, this episode is not going to tell you it’ll be easy. It’s going to tell you it’s possible. 

Alanah closes with a simple, direct message to anyone listening who thinks their situation is too far gone: “I don’t know if it gets much worse than where I was. And so if you’re listening and you think, ‘Yeah, but she probably didn’t have it as bad as I do’ — that’s probably not true.”

One person. One shift. That’s where it starts.

Resources and next steps: If you’re navigating a high-conflict co-parenting situation and want support, learn more about working with Elaine and the team at ImpactParents.com. Sanity School® for Parents offers a coach-approach framework for parents of complex, neurodiverse kids, and for parents who are doing the harder-than-expected work of co-parenting through conflict.

What to expect in this episode:

• The parenting covenant strategy: How Alanah transformed a stack of legal pleadings into a clear, shared vision, and how to distill what you actually want from a conflict so you can start working toward it.
• What to do when your co-parent isn’t on board: Practical guidance on enrolling a resistant co-parent in a new vision without forcing it on them.
• Why alignment beats agreement: The crucial difference between trying to agree on specifics and starting with what you both already share: your child’s well-being.
• Real-time coaching and “texting from the ledge”: Why practicing new patterns in the middle of a real conflict, not just during a coaching session, is what makes change stick.
• The shift from “have to” to “get to”: How Alanah moved from feeling like a prisoner in her co-parenting dynamic to feeling genuinely liberated and what that shift actually required.sode

High-Conflict Divorce to Co-Parenting Peace: A Real Success Story

Related Links:

• Success! Coaching Group Members Share Powerful Stories
• Parenting Siblings: Neurodiversity, Conflict & Fairness
• The 4 Sources of Conflict in Your Family: Part 2
• How Do I Get My Kids to Talk to Me? 4 Communication Tools
• Positivity & Communication, one of the 4 cornerstones in the Impact Model as taught in sanity School

Our Discussion

Elaine: So most of us know that when we have complex kids, one of the many challenges we face in our lives is the parenting dynamic, the co-parenting dynamic, and the relationship of the parents who are trying to raise these beautiful, complex beings. And sometimes we find ourselves in a conflict that we don’t know how to get ourselves out of, that’s got more conflict than we expected, and we don’t really have the mechanism to find our way through.

So if you’ve ever been in a conflict with your co-parent, your partner, your spouse, this conversation is for you. I wanna welcome our guest today, Alanah Odoms. Alanah, thank you for being here today. We get a success story. Yay. 

Alanah: I’m so happy to be with you. Thank you for inviting me, Elaine, and I’m so happy to be with our guests.

Elaine: I am as well. So, let me set the stage a little bit. When I first met Alanah, I wanna say it was a couple years ago now.  You were in the middle of a high-conflict situation in your, in your family dynamic.  I’m gonna let you introduce that rather than me trying to explain it.

Alanah: Yeah, sure. So yes, when we first met, I was in a high-conflict divorce. My co-parent and I were really locked, kind of deadlocked on an issue that involved the health and wellbeing of our daughter, and it looked as though that might lead us to litigation. And I’m an attorney and he is a pediatrician, and so we were really kind of in, I think, a dynamic where both of us were kind of relying on our professional expertise to kind of negotiate the conflict. And really, that was really leading us to a place where our daughter’s wellbeing was not being kind of placed at the center. And I actually remember a colleague of mine saying to me, Alanah, in your work, you very often are someone who is like a warrior, a champion, somebody who can, you know, fight and seek justice and does all these things.

And so I really wanna caution you that in your dynamic with your co-parent, being a warrior may not be the role that you need to be leading with. And that really resonated deeply with me, because the last thing I wanted to be in, and that still holds true today, is to be in a war.

Elaine: Right … 

Alanah: because you can only fight a war for so long, and even if you win the war, you may lose many battles in between, and part of what you lose is pretty much the soul and the wellbeing of your child. And so that really got me on a journey, frankly, and that journey led me to you. I really realized that instead of armoring up and getting tools that I could use in a courtroom and otherwise to kind of fight, I needed to armor up in a different way. I needed to focus on what was the most important thing. What did I actually want to get out of this conflict? What was the most important thing to me and how could I protect my daughter in the process and center her? And that was really kind of what led me to reaching out to you and kind of seeking your advice and your counsel.

Elaine: Yeah. So, there was this shift in how you needed or wanted to be. You were still armoring up, but the focus shifted from armoring up for battle to really focusing on, okay, what does this kid need and what do I need to do and be, we’ll talk about that in a little bit, to be able to support what, what’s best for this kid. And so that was the first major shift. 

Alanah: Yeah. And I don’t want to understate how powerful that shift is because that shift isn’t something that can come from anyone else except the individuals that are involved in it. Meaning, you can get as much advice from others, and there will be many people who will give you advice on how to armor up and how to fight.  That shift has to come from inside, and it has to be… It’s really about courage because it takes courage to take and focus inward as opposed to focusing outward. And it takes courage to think about who you’ve been up until today, and who you would like to be in the future.  And that has a lot to do with kind of putting your ego aside. It has a lot to do with thinking about some of the hurt feelings and anger that you are still processing even though you feel like you may have processed those things. Thinking about the things that you’re still holding onto, and being ready to let those things go in service of the greater goal of moving toward your child’s best and highest self, and your best and highest self 

Elaine: You know what strikes me, there are two things that jump at me from what you just said.  One is that what I’m hearing is your hindsight. Right? How much you had to learn to let go and shift, but you didn’t know that at the time. And then the other thing, and I think both of these deserve our attention. The other thing I’m hearing, because I know a lot of people listen and go, “But that’s great, but what if your co-parent’s not on board?”

Alanah: Oh, I love that question. Mine wasn’t either. 

Elaine: That’s what I was gonna say, let’s start with, okay, so even if you get this message from a coworker that says you really may not wanna be in warrior mode, you wanna shift how you’re doing this, you’re still in a battle with your co-parent.

Alanah: Yes, you are. 

Elaine: So how did that unfold? How does that… 

Alanah: Let me give you the nuts and bolts, ’cause I think this is a really important shift. Just because you shift doesn’t mean that your co-parent will shift, and just because you make a decision that you’re going to drop your armor and that you wanna have a new way forward doesn’t mean that they’re gonna embrace that immediately. No way. But what you have to be is you have to be very persistent, and you also have to be able to set forth a vision, and you have to be able to enroll your co-parent in that vision. And that doesn’t mean that they will accept it the first time you present it. So when I made this shift, I literally took the pleadings that I intended to file in court which had numerous allegations in them, all terrible, negative allegations and turned those things into a parenting covenant. What I actually wanted to get from all of those mean things that I was alleging in the pleadings, at the heart of it I wanted to have- mutual respect and partnership in making decisions for our daughter’s health that would impact her positively for her future.  That’s what I wanted. That was the heart of the litigation, right? So I had to literally distill down these paragraphs and paragraphs that I had written that were all about how I was not being considered, how I didn’t think what we were doing was in her best interest, to think about, okay, well, what is the goal?  The goal is for us to get on the same page together, for me to feel, as her mother, that I’m being considered, that I am being able to co-author this journey of what her health and wellness will look like. That was the heart of it. So you’ve gotta distill down what you really want? And in that parenting covenant, I literally listed out those things.

For us, it looked like having an independent person to assess her health and wellbeing, right? An independent pediatrician, an independent psychiatrist. But the third thing was that it really looked like getting some support that neither one of us could provide to one another. Being two interested parties, two parties that were deadlocked for so long that we couldn’t negotiate the situation on our own, I knew we needed help, and at the end of the day, so did he.  But I had to be the one, because I was able to at least… I was a little bit further along the path in terms of thinking about what I really wanted. I think he was just angrier at me at the time. I was clear-headed enough to think about, what does the vision look like, and how do I present it in a way not to slam it down his throat or ram it down his throat, but how do I enroll him in this vision?  And I literally sat with him and presented this parenting covenant and asked him for these three things, and he said maybe. For the first couple months, he kind of put me off.  You know? And it took some time. It wasn’t a silver bullet. It wasn’t anything like that. But I didn’t give up, because I knew at the end of the day, however long it took me to enroll him in this new vision of what we needed to do was going to be far shorter than a protracted litigation that lasted for decades and decades and really hurt our whole entire family.

Elaine: Well, and the word that comes to me in the coaching language that you’re describing is that you stopped trying to figure out where do we agree and disagree, and you started going for alignment. And I remember having these conversations early with the two of you, about where are you aligned? And you started by selecting a place where you felt like you could both be aligned, and then worked towards enrolling alignment, getting buy-in for alignment before you even started with the logistics of what you could agree or disagree to, right? Right. 

Alanah: Yeah, that’s right, and I know for people who’ve been in high-conflict situations for a long time, there aren’t many places where you have felt alignment.  And so alignment feels like perhaps something that might be impossible, but I think when you are able to kind of step back and you are getting, I think, the appropriate kind of guidance and support with helping you kind of see where those, you know, concentric circles, where is that space in the middle? The space in the middle I can tell you is always gonna be your kid. It’s always 

gonna be your kid.  How you decide to kind of like to use the language to articulate what spaces or parts of it, you know? But at the end of the day it’s your child, and I think even with the most contentious situations, at the end of the day you both want the best for your child.

You both want them to be healthy. You both want them to be prosperous. And I think what the research shows is that a high-conflict divorce is one of the most impactful and harmful, detrimental kind of objective indicia of harm that you could do to your child. And so at the end of the day, none of us want to be doing the number one most harmful thing that we know will impact the outcome of our children.  And so if you can just align around that, that if we continue in this way, we know for certain that our child will have 

Elaine: Your child will be harmed. 

Alanah: Yeah, will be harmed, and I couldn’t stomach that. 

Elaine: All right, let’s take a quick break and then we’ll be right back. Welcome back everybody. My guest is Alanah Odoms, and we are talking about a success story of coming to Impact Parents and getting the support that was what you needed for your family. And you’ve kind of set the stage by talking about the ground, what it took to be in a high-conflict divorce, what the risks, what you were very clear the risks were, and the vision and clarity you had that what you needed was some support to be able to come and to work with the alignment you had with your co-parent to be able to do that and come together in support of your, of your kid.  And one of the things that was the big issue in your dynamic was the health and wellness. It was really the medical management of your child’s condition. 

And which is kinda, I’m not quite sure how you found me, but what led you to my Zoom room, right? And so when we started talking, first I met with you, and I’m gonna shortcut it for a minute, then I met with your co-parent.  And then we had a number of discussions to talk about whether this would be a vehicle that would work. So I do a lot of, of parent coaching and couples coaching, and it’s a little different to do divorce coaching, which is really divorce parenting coaching, which is what this was. But we came to agree that it might be, we would be willing to try and see how it would work. And I remember saying to you, “I can’t guarantee you that everything’s gonna be all rosy at the end of this. But I can guarantee you that you will have a way to communicate with each other and talk to each other and work through conflicts moving forward,” right? And I remember you’re, like, ’cause you, you come into it, you want it all fixed. And so part of it was about beginning to set what are realistic expectations and what are not.   So anything else you want to add before we talk a little bit about what it was like for the three of us to come together? 

Alanah: No, I think it was great for you to help us kind of take aim at the things that we wanted most.  I remember that from our kind of early conversations of like, what are the things that, you know, when we walk away from this experience, if we hadn’t tackled, that you would feel like this wasn’t a successful experience for you? And kind of narrowing those things, because you will have a laundry list. You will want everything to be, you know, copacetic, and hunky-dory, and kumbaya. But this wasn’t that. This was really… You know, fundamentally, I think we moved from a place of having very little mutual respect- 

 to a place of actually having the foundations of respect for one another, and everything is possible when you have that core foundation of respect.  Even if you disagree very vehemently on this strategy or that strategy, this tactic or that tactic. Right. At the end of the day, that core respect has to be there, and I think that’s the most important thing that we got, and I don’t know that I… I don’t even know that I thought that that was possible, to be honest.

Elaine: Yeah. No, I don’t think you did. Because there was so much hurt on both sides and so much anger on both sides. And, you know, and so having a third party that brings you back to the child, brings you back to alignment, and then begins to specify the alignment, which is what we did in, in that discovery, was help really articulate what are the areas that you’re trying to achieve alignment and get clarity on?  Talk a little bit about what the process was like for you, because it was not an immediate turnaround. Like, so once we got through the discovery and we got clear on the shared vision, right? You’re still in this conflict situation. 

Alanah: You know, in many ways it was really beautiful because our time together kind of spanned maybe about 10 months, and so we were kind of doing life as we normally would, but we kind of had the benefit of you kind of quarterbacking us a little bit as we were going along.  And that was, exceptionally helpful because we kind of got a chance to practice some of the skills as we were going through life, just as we normally would. And I, you know, it was kind of us on Zoom together, so it would be kind of me kind of jumping out of meetings, and same thing with him jumping out of meetings.  But it was really beautiful because I think very rarely do you have the opportunity to kind of step back from the everyday kind of the pace of life, which I think kind of creates a certain inertia that makes you respond in the same ways that you normally would. To pull back from that and say, “Hey, take a second here,” and I always love your Zoom because you’ve got this really beautiful message, and I’m sure we’ve all seen it if you’ve had the opportunity to work with Diane or with Elaine or any of the other folks.  You’ve got this really beautiful message that you kinda, you just need to pause. You have to breathe. You know, anything that you’re holding, you know, kind of just let that go. And so that’s such a beautiful reminder, I think, for folks that are, you know, we’ve got our jobs, we’ve got other kids that we’re managing. We have busy lives. We’re doing all these things. But to take a moment to really step back and, and give some real kind of perspective to your parenting, to some perspective to your co-parenting relationship, some perspective to how you are working, in partnership with your child. All of that is just such a really lovely experience.

Elaine: The word that comes up for me as we say that is it’s the invitation to be present for a moment. To stop being in the doing of it, and to pull back and be conscious about how you want to be as a parent and a co-parent and a daughter and a friend and a worker and all of the things.  There’s this awareness to how am I showing up, and how do I want to show up, and what’s the gap, and what would, what will it take to move that gap?  Right?   And the thing about the time that it takes, and I love that you point to that, is because I remember what I call texting from the ledge, right?  Because they are in your life, and so you are having these events happening. And to be able to have somebody coach you through it real time while you’re in the conflict, help you figure out, how do I want to respond to the fact that this was late, or that showed up early, or this didn’t show up at all, or whatever the dynamic was, it really, kind of calls you to practice the tools in that moment instead of the reaction that from the previous way of being 

Alanah: Absolutely.  So many texts from the ledge that you responded to, for me, did bring me back to what is the most important thing. And, you know, to be very honest, I think we all tend to kind of put ourselves or at least, like, explain situations based on our own perspectives. But I can say what I was doing oftentimes was I was reading into language and reading into communications with a lot more emotional baggage than what was actually being presented, and I think you were really great in helping me identify that, right?  And so I’m a person who feels deeply. I’m also… I mentioned I’m a lawyer. I work with words all day long. Like, words have meaning to me. They really mean a lot. But at a certain point, right, especially if you’re talking about a co-parenting dynamic with an ex-spouse, someone that you’re not in a relationship with, there’s not a lot that you need to be holding onto outside of the core things that are involving your kiddo.  And so kind of letting those pieces go was really important, and that was something that we worked on a lot together, and it was a great check and balance on me. You’re not always right. Even if you are the one who’s holding a vision or you’re the one who’s helping to bring things to resolution, there are things that we’re all doing that are kind of frustrating the process, that if we can kind of get present enough and be willing to kind of let some things go, which in the end, that’s kind of what it’s about.  Holding on and letting go. We talked about that a lot. You know, how much are you willing to let go of, and so, and how much can you hold on, in order to kind of get what it is you really want? And at the end of the day, what we really want is we really want a unified kind of vision to the greatest extent you can establish that.  Co-authorship. You want mutual respect. You want collaboration. You know, all of those things that we all seek, you know, in our other relationships. We want those things, you know, with our co-parent as well. And it is possible. It’s not perfect. Certainly not perfect, but it is possible. 

Elaine: Well, you know, I have a moment that I remember as when I knew that we had turned the corner and that this was officially a success story, and I’d like to hear what your moment or what, what your awareness is of that.  But I’d like to share the story. ‘Cause I remember it so vividly. There was a drop-off happening, and, and so usually we were on separate, you two were on separate Zoom, right, with me, and the three of us were there together but in three different locations, and you two ended up in the same location.

And I remember so vividly you sat down together, you shared an earplug. Do you remember this? 

Alanah: I do. 

Elaine: And the three of us had a session and it was so dramatic because it was unthinkable that that could’ve happened just a few months before. Right? And it might not happen ever again. 

Alanah: It might not.  But it’s true. 

Elaine: It was able to happen because it was all of those things you just pointed to in terms of mutual respect and collaboration. So that was the moment where I knew, okay, they’ve, they’ve got the tools they need. They have the capacity now. They are ready to continue this dance into the future.  What’s your awareness of what has shifted for you? 

Alanah: Oh, wow. I’m really glad that you brought that story back to my attention because I had forgotten, as we do with these things. Right.  Yeah, that was a huge turning point for us. And in many ways, I had always wanted that to be possible for us, but so much had transpired that it just didn’t feel like it would be a lifetime kind of circumstance.  And I think what I learned through this process is that no matter how much the bridge has been burned, it is still possible to rebuild. And frankly, it may burn again in some places, and it is still possible to begin again, with the process that I think we’re in a lifelong process.  You know, I think about this a lot because I think about,  I work on the project of democracy, and so I’m always thinking about how to rebuild. And of course, you know, depending on what time in history we’re in, we’re always talking about how do we begin again? How do we create something that’s new, and inclusive, and supportive, and powerful that is healthy and safe?  And there are many times where we backslide from that, and then there’s always kind of this idea that we have to recommit.   So I think that’s what this process taught me, that you are always in a project, that co-parenting is not a noun, it’s a verb. It’s what you do. It’s how you are. It’s what you, not as much as what you believe, but it’s about the actions that you take, because beliefs are static things that can kind of become, you know, positions rather than really creating actions themselves, right.  So less about what you believe, more about what you do, and this practice of kind of recommitting and believing about, you know, believing what’s possible even if you haven’t seen it, right? Because it has to be about, it’s about vision. It’s about creating something, and co-authoring that process with the person who you’ve been tasked to create it with.  Because as much as we would love to rewrite history and perhaps begin again with someone new, that ain’t this life.  We’ve got what we’ve got. This is the journey, and we’ve got to say yes to that journey, and recommit and begin again. 

Elaine: So we don’t have to. We get to, right? We get to. We can choose to or not.  And when you were first in the process, you weren’t choosing that. 

Alanah: No. 

Elaine: And you came around, both of you came around to be able to choose a path that was in service of your kid, first and foremost, and ultimately in service of yourselves as well, right? I mean, we do benefit. When our kids are in a better place, it serves all of us.

Alanah: Yes. That’s right. That is an important shift that, you know, having to do something versus getting to do something. Yeah, getting to a different place with your co-parent is an opportunity rather than an obligation. And I think we lose agency when we feel as though we’re being made to do this or that, right?  You feel very disempowered. I know that was a place that I was in because I was being forced to comply with things that I didn’t agree with, or I was being made to be feel as though I didn’t have as much agency as I had. And I think feeling like you have agency and the other person feeling as though they have agency, and that being something that you can kind of, you know, negotiate together is a very big deal, and it is something proactive and powerful as opposed to disempowering.

Elaine: So, we need to start wrapping the conversation. What, from your lens, what makes this a success, a success story? 

Alanah: You know, I felt for a very long time that I was almost like I had a life sentence, like almost like a jail sentence. That I was going to be a prisoner of a dynamic that never really allowed me to be free, to be happy, to be a great mom the way I wanted to be, because I felt like I would always kind of be, maybe alienated in a way, or not respected, or not really supported.  And that dynamic has changed. I don’t feel in any way that I am a prisoner to this situation. I feel like I am a person who is liberated in the sense of realizing that the agency comes from within, and it is a choice. Our life is never happening only to us. It can be  happening for us. And as much as we are able to kind of get out of that kind of like cocoon of like what we’ve been doing and the way we’ve been being, and avail ourselves of resources and support to kind of get out of that, is the litmus test for how free we can be.

Elaine: Yeah, for sure. That’s beautiful. As we wrap the conversation, Alanah, is there anything else you wanna share that we haven’t touched on that you think it would be helpful for parents who are listening to this? 

Alanah: Yeah. I mean, just a real personal, you can do this too. You know how people say, I was in a bad situation.  I don’t know if it gets much worse than where I was. So if you’re listening to this conversation and you think, “Well, yeah, but she probably didn’t have it as bad as I do,” or, “There’s probably things that are more complicated about my situation,” that’s probably not true. This situation was probably as bad as it can get, and so what makes it a success is that, you know, coming from where we were to where we are now, is just transformational growth, and that is possible for you, too.  And there isn’t anything that, you know, you should feel like is too bad that you can’t come back from. You always have that power to come back. And so just to really be encouraged and to, you know, stay curious. Stay curious about what’s possible for you, because there’s always a great possibility when you are open to it.

Elaine: Well, and what really strikes me in what you’re saying and in your story is that you started off choosing to find a different way to look at what you were dealing with. So I wanna circle back to where you started. It happened because you made the choice to say, “Okay, how else can I look at this and approach this?  Because what I’m doing isn’t working.” And so we tend to get stuck in the rut of this is how I’ve done it. And so sometimes it’s that invitation, that opportunity to shift the paradigm, to shift the perspective, to say, “Okay, what else is also possible? How else can I look at this?” And that, that was the trigger moment, right, in a good way, right?  That was the pivot point for it. And it had to come from one of you. It didn’t have to come from both of you. One person had to be the one to say, “I’d like to try to do this better. Will you join me?” And, you know, sometimes especially when we’re in contentious situations, but also when we’re just dealing with contentious kids, we get tired of being the big person.

Alanah: Oh, yeah. 

Elaine: Right? We get tired of it, and as you said earlier, that’s, sometimes that’s our journey. 

Alanah: That’s right. Yeah, so if you are that person, if you’re the person who feels that inspiration for a new way, feel blessed honestly that, that, that insight has been given to you. It means you’re special. It means that you are a special part of your family, that you’ve, you’ve been placed in that really trusted position to be able to help your family get to where you need them to go.

Alanah: And, I think that’s beautiful. 

Elaine: I couldn’t agree more. I really wanna acknowledge you and your co-parent and your beautiful child, now not such a child, and the powerful work that you have done together and that you continue to do. And I know it’s not all rainbows and unicorns. The hardest thing that I’ve learned working with couples, especially divorced couples and divorcing couples over the years, is that there’s a certain amount of when you’re co-parenting not together, there’s much more you can’t control, and you kinda have to allow your kid to experience that co-parent’s way of being in the world, and then you have yours, and to be able to do that without maligning the other is a true art.  And it’s an art some of us have to cultivate. And, so I really just wanna acknowledge you for the work you’ve done and for the gift that is to your child, to your family, and to all the generations that will come as a result of having made that shift for the one child in your life right now.  Right? ‘Cause that’s got a cascading impact. 

Alanah: Oh, for sure. Absolutely. Well, I really appreciate that, Elaine, and I have told you this, with the amount of gratitude that I have for who you’ve been to us is absolutely limitless. You haven’t just been a coach, but you’ve been a friend, and that is absolutely profound in the sense of, you know, there are a lot of people who have a lot of opinions about the way that you should do parenting and working with a kid with exceptionalities and all of those things, but in the end, I think we’re all looking for someone who can hold space for us, who can, encourage us, inspire us, to give us a new perspective, to not hit us over the head and kinda while we’re doing it to give us the space to kind of make mistakes, and you have been that person for both of us.  And I think the most important thing about the way that you… what makes you effective is that in order for people to give themselves space and acceptance, you have to model that. You modeled that for both of us. Both of us came with all of our kind of pluses and minuses, and I think you created a space that both of us felt like it was a big enough space for us to be who we were.  And in doing that and allowing us to be all of who we were, we could kinda let go of some of the stuff that wasn’t so helpful. 

Elaine: Wasn’t serving, yeah.  But it’s a beautiful awareness. What I like to say about coaching is that my job really is to create a space for you to have a conversation with yourself.  And in this case, it was creating a space for you two to have some really important conversations with each other with some guardrails in a way that sets you up for success with it, and that’s really what the coaching process is about and why I’m so grateful I get to do what I do. I don’t know if I ever told you, my husband and I now do two to two couples coaching, so we work separately and then together, and that’s been a lot of fun as well.  So, as we wrap this conversation, and I know that you’re a words person, we often like to ask our guests do you have a favorite quote or motto that you’d like to share before we complete? 

Alanah: Yeah, there’s a woman that I love. She was a civil rights activist. Her name’s Dorothy Height. I have a wood etching of her face on my bookshelf in my office with the word justice written next to it.  And Dorothy said that she wanted to use everything in her being, her hands, her heart, her mind, all in service of justice. And that really guides my work, of course, professionally, but very much so personally. Because when I think about justice in a family, it means that everyone feels like they have a place.  That everyone feels safe, that everyone feels like there is a future that includes them where they can be everything that they’re supposed to be, parents and children alike. And so that’s what I’ll leave you with. 

Elaine: Oh, I love that. That’s absolutely beautiful. Thank you. So thank you again for being here and for doing the work that you’ve done in service of your life and your kids and your family, your kid and your family.  To those of you listening, take a moment and ask yourself what are you taking away from this conversation? What’s your insight? What’s your awareness? What’s your aha? Maybe divorce has nothing to do with your world, but there was something about conflict that caught your attention. Like what are you taking away, and how might you bring that forward with you into your life this week?  And as always, thank you for what you’re doing for yourself and for your kids. You make an extraordinary difference. If you like what you’re hearing on this podcast, please take a moment to like or follow or subscribe wherever you’re listening, leave a review, whatever works for you. It helps us reach more people, and we really appreciate that. Next up on the podcast is gonna be my dear friend and colleague, Jeff Copper. We’re gonna talk about cognitive ergonomics from the inside out, a new way of managing ADHD, and I highly recommend it. He’s brilliant, and he’s really put a lot of thought into the conscious effort of managing ADHD.  And on that note, thank you everybody for being here. Thank you, Alanah, and we will see you all on the next call. Take care, everyone. 

Alanah: Thank you. Bye.