112. Using Mediation Post-Divorce with Elisa Ford
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NOTE: Following transcript is not edited.
WTTOS 113 Edited
[00:00:00] You are listening to Welcome to the Other Side, the podcast for parents navigating the turbulent waters of divorce and getting their footing in a new land. I'm your host Meg Gluckman, certified coach and divorced mom of two kiddos, and I'm ready to share strategies for how you can move on from your divorce.
[00:00:20] How to co parent without drama and how to thrive in your post divorce life. You are not alone on this journey. There's so much we can share together. Let's jump in.
[00:00:32] Hello friends and welcome back to the podcast. I am thrilled today to have a guest on you. To talk with us about mediation post divorce. This is a topic that I've really wanted to dive into because as much as we try to get our parenting plan just right and figure out exactly how we're going to co parent, through the divorce process, there's always stuff that comes up.
[00:00:59] Life, [00:01:00] life, right? And so I wanted to bring on someone who can help us think about resources that are available to parents after divorce for dealing when we have challenges or issues come up that we really haven't been expecting. So I am very pleased to introduce you to Elisa Ford and she is a mediator and a lawyer And she owns Trailhead Mediation.
[00:01:27] Welcome, Elisa. Thank you. I'm excited to be here. She also is probably my cousin from like 17 generations past. So you all, I'm going to post a picture of us. It is hilarious. We, we really can't, can't believe the similarity.
[00:01:46] And we have the similar hair. We got a similar smile. We got, it's just hilarious. Anyway. And Elisa's over in Seattle. So she's pretty, pretty close to me too. So we get to hang out a little bit and talk about [00:02:00] mediation and divorce and co parenting All that fun stuff. So, Elisa, will you introduce yourself a little bit more and tell us how you got into mediation, why you like mediation and just a little bit about who you are.
[00:02:14] Yeah, sure. Well, I have been in legal practice for about 20 years. I went to the University of Washington. And over the last decade prior to entering into mediation was really focused on immigration, particularly family immigration and humanitarian mediation. I think that that was kind of the perfect entryway to mediation because brought to the surface something that is so powerful about mediation that isn't available in other places.
[00:02:42] And that is the importance of personal agency. People who know their lives, who know what's right for them, who know what they can and cannot do, being the ones to make the decisions in their life, you know, being with immigrants who are doing all the paperwork and doing all the right things and are still in a state of [00:03:00] suspended animation for years and years, really brings home what not having that agency can do.
[00:03:07] And so that's kind of how I started to walk down that path. And that's one of my favorite things about mediation. That's so awesome. And that's what I've heard from so many folks who have used mediation as part of their divorce process too, is that feeling that we're in control, like we, we get to decide what our future looks like together.
[00:03:29] Yeah, I mean, there are times, of course, when there need to be in structures, there need to be structures in place to protect. So the court is there to protect the best interest of the child. And sometimes those structures are necessary, but sometimes they become boundaries that keep us away from doing what actually is in the best interest of a child, because they are based on rules that work for large groups of people, but may not always apply to your family, or they don't allow the flexibility to do what you were talking about before, which is [00:04:00] respond to the fact that life rolls on and that what worked at one point does not always work for the next 60 years, you know, and parenting goes beyond kids going to school.
[00:04:10] They grow up, they have their families and you want to still be a part of their life. It could be a long haul. You, you could be in it for a couple decades at least. And it really is about more than the parenting plan. The parenting plan is the basic, we gotta have these decisions, but there are so many things that either don't fall within that parenting plan or that even if they're in the parenting plan are not really, not really something that the court can enforce very effectively.
[00:04:39] So it may be there on paper and it may be hard to get it out into the. Life of reality. Yeah, things are happening. Yeah. Yes, absolutely. So I definitely want to come back. Let's make sure I'll make sure we circle back to what's the enforceable versus the just the the agreements that aren't necessarily court enforceable, but are so helpful [00:05:00] and essential to have in so many different things.
[00:05:02] Can you back us up a little bit and just give us an overview of like, what is mediation? How does it work? Yeah. So mediation is a collaborative and voluntary process. People work with a neutral party, the mediator who facilitates the conversation. Facilitators come in a variety of styles and with a variety of experience, but the basic idea is that they are most in control of the process.
[00:05:29] They set the tone for the room. They help the parties work with each other and communicate with civility and effectiveness. They keep focus. You may have a facilitator who's more on what we would call the evaluative end where they have some subject matter expertise that people want to tap into. They might be asking for, you know, opinions or, or, or someone to point them in the right direction or they might be mediators that are more on the facilitative end and they're really not there to deal with substance.
[00:05:59] The [00:06:00] substance is left entirely to the parties or mostly to the parties. And that mediators really they're keeping that conversation going. So it can happen in a lot of ways, but basically the parties are there. They are the decision makers. They decide whether they're staying, they decide whether they come to an agreement.
[00:06:16] And that's really different than a lot of other decision making contexts where somebody else at the end of the day is making a decision. Mm hmm. Mm hmm. Be it a judge or yeah, a trader, a tradition, you know, if you're dealing with folks around the world, there may be customs that are traditional decision making processes.
[00:06:36] You might have a religious figure who does that. There are all kinds of ways that a final decision is often made by somebody not immediately involved. But mediation is different. The final decision is in the hand of the parties, which I love. Let's take a example and talk through a little bit what it might look like for two parents who are divorced and now they're co parenting and they [00:07:00] have something come up that they're in disagreement about.
[00:07:05] Start us from the very beginning, How do they choose a mediator? What makes, what makes a good match? Do they have to be on good communication terms? Do they have to be friendly to be able to come into mediation? Give us a sense of how those two parents might walk through.
[00:07:25] Yeah, so there's a lot of questions there. Let me know if I'm missing one of them as I start, start in. But the first place is that both parents do have to be willing to use mediation as their decision making format. Sometimes folks are familiar with mediation having used it during the divorce process.
[00:07:42] Sometimes they're not. Sometimes there's a lot of fear around picking a mediator. Will my partner be picking somebody that's going to kind of benefit them? So there can be some kind of wrangling around that. Any mediator who's worth their salt is neutral. So this is something I think a lot of co parents [00:08:00] could take a breath on.
[00:08:01] And if they're interested in mediation, go ahead and allow that other party a little more into the process in terms of picking a mediator because your mediator is neutral. So if it really worries the other person that they have some big role in deciding that may be a place where you can. Give them that feeling of power without actually handing anything over.
[00:08:21] But there are mediators that you can find in a million different ways here in Washington state. Specifically there is no requirement that mediators have any specific training, which often surprises people. So there are certifications that are available. We have local dispute resolution centers that have a certification process.
[00:08:39] We have a statewide organization called the Washington Mediation Association, where you can be certified. That shows that you've done some additional training and have some additional experience. So there's, you know, you can, most family attorneys have mediators that they work with. Many people can find recommendations that way.
[00:08:56] I think one thing people need to be thoughtful about when they pick a mediator [00:09:00] is how many resources do we really want to spend on this? How much training does our mediator really need to have maybe during the divorce? You really need someone familiar with, financial issues, deep family law issues.
[00:09:12] Maybe you really need somebody with a legal background. You may need a mediator who's a former judge or attorney. Later on in the process, you may not be dealing with primarily legal issues or may, they may be legal issues in the sense that you'll have to modify a parenting plan, but they're not deep issues.
[00:09:28] Somebody who is a frequent. Mediator in the parenting context can completely do those things and you don't have to pay The higher fee so it's really it's really situation and issue dependent on how much training someone needs Sometimes people like to work with mediators who have no legal background at all.
[00:09:45] There are mediators who are coming at it as therapists or former medical professionals. Everybody brings a little something different. Of course, that makes it so much harder to figure out what you need when you already got a million questions on your [00:10:00] mind. But it also means that there are a lot of possibilities for a match and you can interview a few people and just see who feels good.
[00:10:05] I think that's actually the most important thing. Training is important and you want to have somebody who who is trained, but you also have to feel comfortable. You have to feel seen in the room. Ultimately in mediation, you are guarding the substance, you are guarding the offers and what you will or will not do.
[00:10:25] And you need a mediator who's going to allow you to do that. I loved it. the recommendation of interviewing multiple mediators. Like if, if that first one you call isn't like, Ooh, like a solid fit. If there's some flags that come up for you or you're just don't feel so at ease speaking with them. .
[00:10:44] Call somebody else. Try another one. There's a ton out there. You can just find one that you actually, you just feel good interacting with. . And the great thing about mediation is typically, particularly in the post. Dissolution space, you're mediating a discrete number of issues. [00:11:00] It's not like force where you have 5 million things.
[00:11:02] Now you're probably down to five or six that are really immediate and you need to do something about now. And so if you schedule a mediation session, you hire someone, you might try them for a couple hours and be like, Oh, I thought that was going to work, but it's not, but you're not so far down the rabbit hole that you can't just make another choice.
[00:11:19] Beautiful. I think that's such a great recommendation too. If, if you don't know if it's a good fit, you can just try it. You can try it and it's, it's not going to break the bank probably for, for one session. You do want to make sure that you are allowing the person you're mediating with They need to feel comfortable too.
[00:11:40] Not because you're coddling them or you need to like babysit their emotional well being. It's not that at all. You're not responsible for someone else's well being, obviously. But if they are not comfortable, you're not yet very far. So it's about what works and ultimately being attentive to someone else's comfort.
[00:11:57] With a mediator is going to get you to a better [00:12:00] result. Awesome. . So you talked about, there's probably just a concrete number of things. And I mean, I know of folks who just have one thing. They have one issue that has come up and they're unable to resolve it just by talking with their other parent, but they might have a list of five things. Okay. These five things that we need. So let's talk right now actually about what some of those things might be. Let's, let's , give some ideas of post divorce. And when you say disillusion, I want to say for us lay folks, it's post divorce, like the divorce is finished.
[00:12:38] What are some of those issues that folks might bring to mediation? Yeah, I don't want to be like a Pollyanna about mediation, but this is one of the things I love is that there are a huge number of issues that people can bring in and you might bring in something and you might intend to talk about that.
[00:12:54] And then you might've thought you could never get that far and didn't even let yourself think about other issues. And [00:13:00] yet, because you now felt empowered to deal with that, suddenly you can bring those into, and then of course the person you're mediating with may have their own issues. So it's great because you can talk about everything.
[00:13:09] Whereas in court, there are issues they don't want to hear about, and they're certainly not going to add something late in the day. But anyway, the kinds of issues that come up post divorce really run the gamut. We've got kids whose parents divorced when they were one or two, and who now their parents realize they've got some learning needs that are different.
[00:13:26] They may be negotiating What needs to be part of the IEP process? How are we going to, not just who's making decisions at school, the court's probably taking care of that. The court's probably said you're both going to do it together. So now, okay, we're doing this together. We're in this team project.
[00:13:42] How are we going to actually do this? What's important to us? How are we going to make sure that the diagnosis is right? Are we both going to have confidence in that? How are we going to select providers? Are we going to unify rooms rules across houses to make this a better process for a kid with needs?
[00:13:58] So, you know, a lot of those kinds of things [00:14:00] with kids with special, special needs you might have Kind of one off things that for some reason you just can't come to like maybe somebody has got a possibility of a trip that's emergent that you really have to switch weekends on, but you just cannot get in a space to talk to each other.
[00:14:16] You might have a special opportunity that comes up. I mean, who knew your kid was going to be so good at soccer that they can get on this really great and yet super expensive team, you know, when you negotiated that you were going to both split. Expenses over soccer, and that's in your parenting plan, but holy heck, is that expensive?
[00:14:35] So, I mean, it's that kind of thing, and it runs the gamut and mostly they're things that the law doesn't have much to say about which team your kid is on, unless you wrote that into your plan, and maybe the court can help you enforce that, but the law doesn't have a specific opinion. These are things that are value judgments, and they're trade offs, and they really are family dependent.
[00:14:53] Should your kid have a bat mitzvah? If they have the bat mitzvah, who's going to be there? On the BEMA, doing the first [00:15:00] thing. Like, these are, these are family decisions. And they're so contentious and so hard to do through parenting app and text. Yeah. Well, and just a couple others that come to mind too is social media.
[00:15:16] Absolutely. Yeah. . Also something that Especially if you've been divorced a few years, maybe it wasn't such a big issue and now, you know, now it is or your kids reach a certain age and now it really becomes an issue or, you know, kids start driving and what are our rules going to be about that? Can we get on the same page around expectations around that?
[00:15:40] When are kids ready to be left at home alone? You know that I have, I'm a mom of twins. I have one child who was ready to be left alone and another child who that would not have been a good plan. But you know, you've got different plans for who's picking up, who's dropping off, maybe all those things come [00:16:00] together.
[00:16:00] You have to have a conversation about those things. And sometimes your parent co parent may have feedback about something that you hadn't thought about. Both kids are focused on, both parents are focused on safety, but there are aspects of things that we need that dialogue on. And social media is a huge, great, great example of that, because all kinds of things go into that.
[00:16:22] Kids maturity, how much a parent in a particular home is monitoring, what is the impact of that social media on that particular Child, and then also all the parent dynamics, like who's just tired at the end of the day and doesn't feel like parenting and does not want, is overwhelmed and needs a little babysitting from, from mama YouTube, you know, who's maybe trying to be the kid's friend because they don't get to see them as much and doesn't want to be the bad person taking away that device.
[00:16:50] Who's really nervous about not being able to reach their kid every minute of every day and needs to deal with their own anxiety over separation of their child, just because [00:17:00] they're still getting used to that, you know, it's such a complex issue. And again, parenting apps. They're great. Texts are great, but they become, they become such a poor helpmate on many, many suits.
[00:17:13] And we really have gotten out of practice often talking to each other. And it is a skill. It's a muscle. Yeah. And there's something that's just lost in doing that written communication. The, the intricacies, how we can really explain, like. What's going on behind our rationale for something, where we can easily ask questions like being able to come into a space with a third party, who's going who's going to hold it.
[00:17:42] I think that's such a big piece the mediator is there to hold this space. space so that you both feel like you have time and space to talk about what you need to talk about and ask your questions and, you know, let things sink in. [00:18:00] But it just reminds people that they can. I think that divorce can be a trauma and people remember, they get captured in the brain, the situation of the divorce and how bad communication was during the divorce, how painful it was.
[00:18:15] And they feel like they want to avoid that situation. It's like any other fear you have, you, you know, you went into the room once and, or you went camping and there was a bear and maybe you don't want to go camping anymore. But maybe if you had a little exposure to walking in the woods and you were okay, maybe you could realize I do have that.
[00:18:31] I can do that. And that does happen in mediation where people who are just out of practice. talking to one another because of that fear of what had been going on before and now realizing in a supported environment, in a private environment like mediation, Oh, I do have the skills to do this. We can talk to each other and we can work this out.
[00:18:52] And then they take that and don't need mediation anymore or maybe don't need it as often, you know, all that kind of thing. Yeah, it's [00:19:00] like we had this muscle at one point in our relationship because at some point we were in a good relationship with each other. We had this muscle. We lost that strength.
[00:19:09] We haven't been practicing it the same way. I love the idea of like the mediator is like getting us to like just start lifting weights again. We're, we're going to start building that skill. We're going to develop that muscle again. Obviously. Not everybody is going to get back to a place where they're easily communicating.
[00:19:25] But for some folks, it might. And I think it's a mistake, actually, to look back at what was our communication pattern before and trying to reestablish that. You don't have the same relationship. There's no reason to expect that you Should or even want to have that level of intimacy, that level of trust, those things may not be appropriate in your new relationship, but that doesn't mean that you can't find something that works and doesn't take so much of your time and energy.
[00:19:53] I always think about with the parenting apps and the texts. You're just picturing the parents. They write this, then they take it back. Then they write this and they take it back. They're spending [00:20:00] all this energy. Did I say the wrong thing? Did I write the wrong thing? And then on the receiving end, what is he?
[00:20:05] Why is that tone? Why? You know, there just isn't the grace that we extend to people. In other formats, you know, you're saying things you wouldn't say you're using a tone you might not use and you're already scared and so you're afraid of seeing them say what you think they're going to say, you know, for example, I had a funny one the other day, I wrote a friend, she was invited my boys to a birthday party and I wrote back fun with an exclamation point.
[00:20:34] And then two seconds later, of course, after hitting send, I realized that what I had actually sent was capital F, capital U, F U, exclamation point. Now, luckily, Luckily, this one's to a friend. I was immediately like, I'm not fun. Sorry about that. And we had the grace and we were in a communication space where we could extend that and it was okay.
[00:20:55] Had that been a co parent? Might not have been great might have been [00:21:00] hard to convince somebody that that's an accident, you know, so, you know, again, getting that muscle up to talk in person to build that trust in what people are really saying is something that mediation is great for. Yeah. Yeah. Let's talk a little bit of the examples that we've gone through so far are things that.
[00:21:23] probably wouldn't be entered into a parenting plan. They're not going to be modifications to a parenting plan, but sometimes folks do come to mediation because they do need to modify their parenting plan. What are some of the situations where they would need to modify a parenting plan? Well, so there are different kinds of modifications.
[00:21:42] There are minor modifications and major modifications. So where parents agree The great news is that for both major and minor modifications, often in court, where both parents agree, you can just go ahead, write up your plan, file it, [00:22:00] and a court will, will let you do that. For most minor modifications, that can really Be the difference between a court being willing to look at it or not, because in Washington State in particular they do not want you coming back to the drawing board and taking up all their time, all the time.
[00:22:16] And so they'll say, well, you have to prove that there's some significant reason why that somebody has really moved or died or, you know, some really life. rending thing has happened and you and your co parent might be saying, but Thursdays just don't work for us anymore. So if you can get in a room and agree, and you can write that out, you can have your mediator help you write that out.
[00:22:38] You can have legal counsel look at that draft. And there's lots of ways to make sure that You know, all the procedural aspects are followed or that rights are not being trampled on, but where parents agree they can get a lot of things done they couldn't otherwise. And then that's the same with major modifications, except that a court may take a closer look.
[00:22:58] So if you're really going to do [00:23:00] something big like, Change the primary residential parent or if you're going to take a huge decision making area away from a parent, you know, maybe they had authority over health care decisions before. Now they don't. Those are things that courts, because there is a public interest and an interest in the child, they may take a harder look at.
[00:23:18] But the court wants to encourage families to make their own decisions and get off their docket. So they're happy. They're happy if you come in and you've thought about it and you want to do Valentine's Day and your former partner really wants to two weeks instead of three over the summer, the court's happy to, to deal with that.
[00:23:39] You just make the agreement and file it. And yeah, we'll leave that simple. Yeah. And I can imagine that probably the most frequent need for that is when one of the parents moves or has a significant job change where, you know, they had a very particular schedule before and they don't have [00:24:00] that anymore.
[00:24:00] And it's very different. Or also where maybe the parents, you know, got divorced when the kiddos were very little. And so they created a parenting plan that really made sure that the kids got a lot of kind of short blocks with each parent so that, you know, they were frequently seeing both parents.
[00:24:22] But now they've got teenagers who aren't so excited about. switching up twice a week. They just want to stay in one place for a while or something like that. It makes sense to have a different schedule. . And this is one of the things, we had talked about maybe coming back to this, but the effectiveness of what the court can do.
[00:24:43] Let's say you've got a 17 year old. Six to brawny, not excited to be switching houses every weekend and has just said, I'm not doing it. You guys can have whatever you want in your plan. I am not doing it. One parent [00:25:00] is entitled to that time and is saying, send my kid over.
[00:25:04] The other is saying, what am I supposed to do? Get the jaws of life and lift this kid out of their bed. What am I supposed to do? And I'm going to ruin my relationship with this kid, constantly fighting about something. This is a big kid. You could go to court on that issue. You could get a enforcement order, you could put the parent who's not getting that kid in the car in a bad situation, they can be fine, there's, you know, all kinds of enforcement opportunities, if you want to call them, that's going to take time, it's going to take money, you get the order, is that kid, is that order going to pick up the kid and take him over?
[00:25:40] Is that kid going to appreciate the strong arming and how much you're not listening to them? Is that parent who was previously maybe cooperating with you on some stuff, going to feel super excited about giving you a weekend swap when you want it? You know, there's all kinds of consequences. that stemmed from court enforcement that [00:26:00] just don't make it worth doing, you know, it's just not actually effective.
[00:26:03] I'll let you keep going, but just the thought too, of being the parent who's getting the teenager who doesn't want to be there. Like what kind of, Relationship, what kind of quality time are you having with that kid that feels so forced to be there? Absolutely. It's really destructive of all the relationships.
[00:26:23] Whereas if parents can kind of come together and say, what can we work? What can we work with for now? What's going to work for now? And sometimes in mediation, especially with kids that are older, you can bring that kid into the room. There are various schools of thought about this. Obviously, you don't want a kid taking responsibility for visitation decisions, but there is a place for a child's voice and a child's thoughts and mediators.
[00:26:49] who work with children and not all of them do, but mediators who have some training in that and go down that path will understand ways that might be appropriate to allow that voice to be [00:27:00] incorporated. And that can be hugely relationship repairing between the kid who doesn't want to be there and the parent where the kid doesn't want to be.
[00:27:08] But it can also just take away the time and the resources. I mean, the resources! That it takes to go a different path, you know? Mm hmm. Mm hmm. Yeah, specifically like that court path. The resource difference is huge, huge. Yeah, yeah. Spend that money on college, you know? Yeah, there you go. Let's do something else.
[00:27:31] Let's do that. Talk to me a little bit about, issues that come up that aren't, about parent plan modifications. All these, these different things that we might not predict coming up and they come up and we, we can work through them. Then we have a, certain category of things that might require a parent plan modification.
[00:27:54] And then we also have parenting plans that say we agree to [00:28:00] meet quarterly or we agree to meet twice a year with a mediator to just kind of have a co parenting meeting and go through. Like, we'll make our agenda. We'll see what is hot button topics at that time. Yeah. So often divorce attorneys are putting these in now.
[00:28:21] They are done in a lot of different ways. It may be that they're staging at particular developmental er, you know, times like, okay, we know we're starting preschool at this age. It can be tricky to specify a particular format like mediation. Parents that do that probably already have some comfort with the process.
[00:28:41] But I think most often parenting plans don't have that provision in it. The good news is you don't have to have it in the parenting plan. You can completely decide with your parent at any time we need to be meeting on a certain schedule. And honestly, that's a hard thing for courts to enforce anyway.
[00:28:57] But what it does is it sets an expectation between [00:29:00] the parties. And I think that's why people include it. And it gives people already the first step in my mind if I'm really pissed off about something I'm not just going to file with court and take your time. We're going to do this extra thing first.
[00:29:14] I think it's brilliant. I think we all know that those things are coming and that that conversation needs to be happening and it may need to happen at different intervals at different ages. I think one of the things that's important when you set that interval is treat it as a minimum. What do we know is the minimum that we want to be meeting?
[00:29:30] And then from there, you can always say, this has been helpful, not helpful. Let's do it less or more. What has been your experience with the parenting coach? Are you seeing folks? wanting to do those more? There's a huge spectrum. There's folks who just don't feel like they need it because they are communicating.
[00:29:47] And I could imagine that if, if there was an issue they couldn't resolve that they, because they are communicating so well that, yeah, they would automatically want to reach out to a [00:30:00] mediator or a coach to just help them with that, that one issue. Then there's other folks who they appreciate having decided early on that they were going to meet at these regular intervals so that they aren't trying to deal with a lot of , little tensions.
[00:30:20] that they can just kind of save them and then they know that they already have a space where they can talk about them. I think there's so much relief in just knowing, okay, I don't have to bring this up to him at handoff or I don't have to do it, you know, over an email, like I will save it for November when we have our meeting.
[00:30:39] And I'll bring it there. I think that can be helpful to know that you have a time and space to be able to do it. And it normalizes the tool. It normalizes that I'm not calling a meeting because this is an emergency and everybody's mental alarm bells all over the, all over the place. I'm calling a meeting because this is our plan for how we were going [00:31:00] to deal with all the stuff.
[00:31:02] You were saying, there's certain, , developmental mile markers or certain big decisions, especially parents that are getting ready to send a first kid maybe off to college and there's a lot of decisions. There's financial aid, there's, you know, are we okay with the kid going anywhere in the country?
[00:31:21] That could be a real big decision making area , let's treat this a little bit differently than just deciding whether we're going to swap a weekend. . And I think it's important for folks to realize too that mediation is not therapy, but it saves emotions.
[00:31:39] So you might propose to your co parent, we've got an issue, let's just go see a counselor, there might be a lot of resistance to that they're not ready to get into a space of Let's be vulnerable together. Let's look back through the ages and see what we did and who's responsible for what.
[00:31:56] People are not ready. They just want to figure out who's picking up on [00:32:00] Thursdays. There are important emotions that are part of actually coming to decisions. And so mediators are so great at saying, I can see, you know, this is really affecting you. This is, this is having an impact on you.
[00:32:13] Let's talk about that for a minute and then let's refocus and take what we need from that emotion to get back to a solution oriented space. How are we going to address that feeling for you? How are we going to move forward understanding that the reason you don't want to do it is this? You know, and so it's, it's that I think, and again, I'm super enthusiastic about mediation, but I think it's that lovely balance of walking that fence rail.
[00:32:36] Emotions are important, but they're not the only thing in the room. We're not in the no emotion space of court, where we're automatically pit against each other, and we're not in counseling. We don't need to be that vulnerable. We don't need to look back as much. We can really tread that, tread that line.
[00:32:51] Yes. And just reiterating what you said, that results focus. Okay. I could talk to you forever, obviously, [00:33:00] Elisa, about this. I think this is such a good primer though on what mediation is and when you might use it post divorce and kind of the different, the different roles it can play.
[00:33:13] depending on what's going on. , I hope that more and more folks know that this is a resource for them, that it's available for problem solving. You don't have to stay in tension. You don't have to stay in a battle with a co parent. You can, you can tap into a mediator to help you resolve it.
[00:33:34] And the quicker we are able to do that, the less conflict we're bringing. Back to our homes as well, so you don't have to call or pay for the full calvary for every issue. You can really concentrate and minimize your resource use and just get done what you need to get done. So good. ELisa, tell everyone where they can find you on the interwebs.
[00:33:58] I have a website [00:34:00] www. trailhead mediation. com. I have just started a blog. So if you are looking for a little more advice, you can look there and I'm, you can find me by email and phone on, yeah, from my website. Folks can call you and just have a little chat to see if you would be a good match for what they're doing.
[00:34:22] Yeah, for me or any other mediator, you would call and schedule a short consultation, and you kind of get a sense pretty quickly of where people are, how that might work for you. And that's pretty much how all mediators do it. . And then depending on what folks are bringing, you would probably make the recommendation of, Oh yeah, we can do that.
[00:34:39] Like, let's just start with one session and see how it goes. Or let's plan on, it'll be a number of sessions because we're not going to deal with everything. All at once. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, you give people an estimate. How long does it normally take to look at these kinds of issues? Yeah, fabulous, .
[00:34:57] Thank you so much for being on and for [00:35:00] sharing all your knowledge and your wisdom and your enthusiasm for mediation. I really, really appreciate it. Thank you for having me. All right, y'all, that's what we have for this week. Talk to you next time. Bye now.
[00:35:13] Hey friends, hope you enjoyed that episode. For extra support with divorce or co parenting, swing by my website, meggluckman. com. There you can grab your free PDF of five questions to prep for any divorce or co parenting meeting. And you can also check out my fearless co parenting class for loads of practical tips.
[00:35:36] If you're craving more personalized guidance, explore one on one coaching. I'd love to support you to make your divorce or co parenting journey smoother and a whole lot less stressful. Whether it's just one coaching session to help you prepare for a co parenting meeting, or whether we work together through your entire divorce process, you deserve support as you navigate these [00:36:00] important and challenging times.
[00:36:02] Check out my free resources and learn more about coaching at my website. Meg Gluckman dot com. Thanks y'all!
Does decision-making with your co-parent post-divorce feel stuck, like you're hitting your head against a wall, or like you're in a maze with no way out?
I feel you!
Mediation might be just the right option to lubricate the conversation and get to a decision.
Join me and my guest, mediator & attorney, Elisa Ford, to talk about:
What is mediation?
What kinds of co-parenting issues can it help with?
What happens when your 6'2" teen doesn't want to stick to the parenting schedule?
How you can use mediation to more smoothly work through issues like:
kids on social media,
deciding on IEP or unique education plans,
special expenses,
kids driving,
college decisions, and more.
You can learn more about Elisa here.
Happy Listening!
