andrea (00:01)

What if I told you that one decision that you make during your divorce could affect your child's anxiety for years? Yeah, yikes. We're gonna get into it on today's episode of How Not to Suck at Divorce.

Well, that was a heavy way to start a conversation, wasn't it? Apologies in advance.

But today's episode is one that every divorcing parent needs to hear, even if you don't like everything that you are about to hear. Our guest today is retired judge and current mediator, the honorable Michelle Lowrance She has spent

Decades watching families navigate divorce from every angle possible. And she's going to challenge the way that you think about parenting, about conflict, mediation, and what your children actually need during this process. And this is not about guilt. This is just about giving your kids the best chance to come out of this divorce, okay. Okay? All right.

Let's get into the conversation.

Morgan L. Stogsdill (02:35)

Today, we are joined by the Honorable Michelle Lowrance, retired domestic relation judge, mediator, author, and one of the most respected trailblazing voices in family law and divorce mediation. Judge Lowrance spent nearly two decades on the bench in Cook County, Chicago after practicing family law for over 20 years prior to that. She's also the author of The Good Karma Divorce, which you can find on Amazon.

and has devoted her career to helping families navigate divorce with less destruction, less trauma, and more humanity.

How Not To Suck At Divorce (03:07)

the Honorable Michelle Lawrence is not only a child of divorced parents, she's been divorced herself, and she's recognized as a pioneer in the mediation space because of her holistic approach. She's also had numerous appearances on national news outlets, as well as being a regular contributor for Huffington Post. So.

my gosh, I'm out of breath with that intro. My God, you are accomplished. With that, Judge, Honorable Michelle Lowrance welcome to How Not to Suck at Divorce.

Michele Lowrance (03:34)

Me too.

And I am so happy to be here because there is so much complications and things that aren't talked about that you guys are talking about and becoming thought leaders in an unfathomable, painful life experience. And what you guys are doing to put labels on the difficulties and the emotions.

and to give people a filter to look differently. I can't tell you how much I applaud and how much it is needed. Thank you.

Morgan L. Stogsdill (04:18)

Thank you. So what should we call you, Your Honor, Judge LaRance? We want to be respectful to you. What should we do?

Michele Lowrance (04:23)

Please,

Michelle works for me.

Morgan L. Stogsdill (04:26)

children are a huge focus for you and a huge focus for a lot of high conflict cases. mean, truly, money is one thing, but you're never going to see people at their worst unless you're talking about their children.

And so what I wanna know from you, Michelle, what is your, in your opinion, what divorce behaviors hurt children the most?

Michele Lowrance (04:44)

First of all, I want to say why it is that it's so inflammatory and so evocative of emotions. When a divorce happens, people are afraid of a few things. Loss of contact. Can't kiss your child goodnight every night like you're used to. Loss of impact on who they become. Loss of relevance.

And yes, fear of loss of love. So these are the fears that come to everybody, which is why people fight over parenting time, as if Tuesday night would be the medicine for those fears, which it's not. But people think that their safety with their children is the percentages of parenting time.

And they think it legitimately. It's not. It's the thing that costs the children everything if you go to fight over that extra

But if you figure it out in mediation or in a settlement, you can sit in the same room when they graduate. Every time there is a handoff of parenting time is not the opportunity for re-triggering the anxiety system. For people who fight it in court, every time there's a pick up on Friday,

The children have anxiety. Imagine. Anything you do for 21 days, you build a fast track to the anxiety of Mingdala. They do that for their whole life. They become highly anxious children.

let's say your child is playing soccer and you're fighting it out in court and you have a high conflict divorce. What is the child thinking about? Both parents are in the stands. Who am I going to go to after the game is over? If I win, who do I hug first? Will I hurt daddy's feelings if I talk to mommy first? Will I lose mommy's love if I give daddy a hug?

and they have these scales of justice. have to always be balancing,

How Not To Suck At Divorce (06:30)

Listen, this is hard to hear. This stuff, guys, this is not easy. This is not the kind of conversation that kind of floats in one ear and out the other while you're on an afternoon walk. So I want to acknowledge that for a minute. And I also want to acknowledge that if you're listening to Michelle right now and you're thinking, well, she's a little harsh. What is she nuts? That's not going to be me. I want to let you guys know that that was me.

That was me, and that is the experience that my children had for several years. there are certain things that are out of our control when it comes to this stuff. Obviously, it takes two people to be willing to have something ⁓ successful come out of mediation and

I was not the aggressor, because I'm like almost perfect, but I probably could have tried harder to, and more creative, I should say. I shouldn't say try harder. I could have gotten more creative with my legal team when I was going through my divorce to figure out.

How else can you work with somebody who does not want to be worked with? And it goes back to what do they really want? Beyond just what they're saying, you know this person, you should know this person better than most. What really matters to them? And how do I, a lot of people think, well, I am putting the kids first. Yes, and your ego.

Michele Lowrance (07:52)

Hello.

How Not To Suck At Divorce (08:07)

And everything that Michelle just said about how you identify as a mommy and as a daddy, that does get in the way. And it is impossible for it not to, but it's totally possible for you to stop it and say, OK, hang on. That's a me feeling. That's not a baby Chad or a baby Brenda problem. So I'm going to stop that because I don't want that to become their issue, which

segues me into my next question because Michelle, you famously talk about this phrase called heroic parenting. And I want to know more about that.

Michele Lowrance (08:43)

Mm-hmm.

Heroic parenting is going into your problem solving child centered and not the hero of not indulging your anger, no matter how legitimate, mind you.

is heroic parenting. That's simple. I don't like what she did. She has turned the children against me. She has told them about the divorce before we planned to do it. Check many boxes of wrong. Is that the price that your children are gonna pay for her bad behavior?

Does that mean that you can't say, we see things differently, honey? You can't say how heroic parenting is not saying, I have to tell my children the truth about their mom or their dad. They deserve to know heroic parenting is chewing out the side of your mouth. I mean, it's not easy. And let me say, I am not being preachy. I did a lot wrong in my divorce. I didn't know.

How Not To Suck At Divorce (09:20)

Hmm.

Like what?

Like what? List it out. Come on, is, this is for safe here. No one's listening.

Michele Lowrance (09:44)

Well, don't tell daddy that

I'm dating what's his name. And daddy would say, don't tell mommy and ⁓

Morgan L. Stogsdill (09:52)

you

Michele Lowrance (09:53)

You know, your dad is crazy and that was just horrible and he wasn't. And I learned to say, we see things differently. He's my best friend today.

Morgan L. Stogsdill (10:01)

That's the craziest part about it. Her ex-husband is her best friend today.

Michele Lowrance (10:05)

And my second best friend is his wife. But boy, that's called letting go. And letting go is the simply the greatest favor you can do for yourself. Life will take care of anybody's comeuppance. It is not our job to hold the marker. It is our job to let go for our children. And if somebody's a bad dude or mom or female or whatever,

Life will take care of it. We don't have to imprint our children indelibly because they are half that other parent for better or for worse.

Morgan L. Stogsdill (10:39)

That's what I think people forget. That's what I think people forget is that you procreated these children. They're not my children, they're your children. They're our children. They are our children. And now we have to figure out how to do what's best for them together. And a lot of times that is exactly what Michelle is saying. You've got to bite your tongue and they can't handle the truth because they are children.

So you have to be very careful with how you're dealing with it. But I want to go back to what Michelle was saying because she did get pretty like, you know, to the point about what can happen to children if they are dragged into the court process. And the way that I see it is a little bit more upbeat when you're talking about that because...

Michele Lowrance (11:21)

Well,

anything would be more upbeat than what I'm talking about.

Morgan L. Stogsdill (11:26)

Fair point. I'm to be the glass half full here because the reason you're telling people that, and that's something that you tell Brenda and Chad when they're coming to you in mediation, they have children, they're having bumps on parenting, you tell them this is what your path looks like in the future if you don't figure it out here because your only other path is court. And this is what happens if you keep fighting like, you know, cats and dogs, two children, this is scientifically proven.

And the reason I think that Michelle does that, and I want to speak for her, but when I'm doing it with clients, the reason is to keep them in the process and keep them focused. Because nobody, even the worst person, generally does not want to hurt their children. So I want to talk about our listeners and what they

Michele Lowrance (12:09)

Let's talk about

good medicine, Morgan. There's good medicine. none of this has to happen. It all depends upon the quality of your joint parenting. because we don't know how to joint parent, whoever learned that in high school. We never learned that. I love six weeks of a parenting coach. I love for any couple to have Dr. Jones. If a year now we have an issue,

We know where to go. We have a problem solver. To me, if I was, you know, queen of the world, like her highness thing, I would tell everybody they have to do a couple of months of parenting coaching so they understand, no, we are not gonna parent the same.

And here's how we do conflict together. And here's how we do argument. And here are the Bill of Rights for our children. They never hear us argue. You know, and the children deserve a Bill of Rights too. And all of this stuff, it can be done and the children can thrive and it can be okay. This is not all gloom and doom. It's just, you you gave me the mic, you invited me.

So if one parent can do something different, that's for me what it's all about.

Morgan L. Stogsdill (13:18)

All right.

Michele Lowrance (13:18)

Don't try and figure this out alone, man. It's too big. It's too difficult. And scientists have said it's almost as difficult as losing a loved one through death. So allow you to take care of yourself.

Morgan L. Stogsdill (13:33)

Michelle, you wrote a book, The Good Karma Divorce. It's on Amazon. We're going to link it in our show notes, but give us a blurb about what it's about and why you wrote it quickly, if you don't mind.

Michele Lowrance (13:43)

I'm glad you asked me that because people think that it has to do with, the karma will get them and that you'll be a good guy and that'll all be wonderful. It only has to do with this. When you get a divorce or a separation, a breakup, you will not be the same when it's over. You can completely be the sculptor and the scripter of who you become.

So good karma divorce is for yourself. It's for your family, but who do you want to be when you look in that mirror when it's over? So that's what it really means.

Morgan L. Stogsdill (14:15)

Love it.

I love it. And our listeners can go and get the book whenever they want. And we'll link it again in our show notes. But Your Highness, Honorable, whatever you want to be called, Judge Lowrance thank you for joining us today. This has been

Michele Lowrance (14:24)

Yes.

Morgan L. Stogsdill (14:30)

phenomenal.

andrea (14:30)

That conversation was really hard for me to even have at times. And you guys heard me say, like, I made a lot of those mistakes. And I, you know, I talk about all the mistakes that are or a lot of the mistakes that I've made ⁓ during my divorce and or but admitting that I made mistakes that impacted my kids.

Mental health, that's still hard. I don't think that the takeaway here is to try to do everything right, because I think that's just setting yourself up to fail and to be really hard on yourself. Just be more mindful. And if you can do one tiny thing differently, do that.

Be mindful of how hard the transitions are with the kids when they can feel that conflict. And again, so much of this goes back to if you can avoid going to court and figure something out in mediation, please, please, please do that. And ask your attorney to help you get creative. Before we all leave each other here.

Can I ask you for one favor? If this episode made you stop and think, if it gave you a different perspective, or if it helped you feel even just a little bit less alone in a very lonely process, could you take just 30 seconds and leave us a review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify or wherever you go? I know everybody asks reviews, but I just want to tell you why specifically we are asking.

Every single review that you leave tells Apple that this show is worth sharing to other people. And this show I believe is so important because we are supporting people in one of the hardest seasons of their life. So your review can help somebody else get this information. We read all of the reviews that we get, and they mean.

So much to us, and we're so appreciative. So thank you so much for being here. Thank you for trusting us. Thank you for sharing your thank you for trusting us. I promise that you are going to get through this phase that you are in right now. And you hear us say this on every single episode, but divorce is a marathon, it is not a sprint. You have to pace yourself.

Please utilize all of the modalities of support that we have to offer, whether that's our private community, whether it's popping over to our social channels and see what we have going on over there, whether it's using the divorce crash course, any of the other guides, listening to the playlists that we have on our podcast, or just emailing us, ask us a question, ask us for a referral.

We're doing everything that we can to help you get out of this thing in one piece. And remember, my friends, even when you think you don't, you got this. And we have got you.