SPEAKER_01: 0:03

Hey, I'm Danielle Black, and I'm the coach you need if you're struggling with all things post-separation. I don't play by the old rules. I specialise in child-focused, evidence-based parenting arrangements that put kids at the center instead of keeping them stuck in the middle. Let's go. Hello and welcome back to the Post-Separation Abuse Podcast. I'm your host, Danielle Black, and I'm thrilled to introduce you to Trudy, our specialist coach, who works alongside me here at Danielle Black Coaching. Trudy brings her own unique expertise to supporting parents who are navigating post-separation challenges, particularly those dealing with high conflict situations and the ongoing impacts of family violence. There are so many things that I love about working with Trudy, one of them being that she is also committed to child-focused, evidence-based approaches. She's not just another generic divorce coach in the post-separation space. She truly understands the complexity of what protective parents face when they are fighting a system that seems to be failing them and their children. Whether clients choose to work with me or with Trudy, they receive the same specialized support that prioritizes children's safety and development over outdated assumptions and ideologies about fairness between adults. Both Trudy and I are committed to challenging the harmful myths about post-separation parenting and helping parents to make decisions based on what children actually need. So without further ado, welcome Trudy. Hi, thank you for having me, Daniel. Pleasure to be here. Thank you. It's great to finally have you on the podcast. I know I've been threatening to bring you on for quite some time. Kicking and screaming. But here I am. It'll be fun. It'll be completely painless, I promise. Oh, I'll hold you to the net. Yeah, okay, fine. You can do that. All the listeners have heard as well. You'll all keep me honest. So I've got some questions to help everyone get to know you a little bit better. Is that okay? Yeah, far away. We're just going to start off with some simple things that I think will also be fun. Number one, would you say that you're more of a morning person or a night owl?

SPEAKER_00: 2:34

I'm definitely a night owl.

SPEAKER_01: 2:36

Complete opposite to me.

SPEAKER_00: 2:37

Yes.

SPEAKER_01: 2:38

And Trudy and I have discussed this before actually about me being a complete grandma when it comes to the time that I go to bed, which is often, you know, no later than 9 or 9.30. But then it's not uncommon for me to be up at like 4 or 5 am in the morning getting started on my work day. Trudy, how late do you tend to stay up?

SPEAKER_00: 2:59

12 to 1am is not uncommon.

SPEAKER_01: 3:03

Wow. See, I just could not function. You you have my admiration. Um I'd be falling asleep.

SPEAKER_00: 3:11

My brain seems to just get started at 11 a.m. It's frustrating, but it would be nice to be in tune with the rest of the world and the school schedule, but you know, our brains are what they are and we can only fight them so much.

SPEAKER_01: 3:24

Exactly. Exactly. Sometimes it's better just not to fight it and just go with it.

SPEAKER_00: 3:28

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 3:29

Next question. Coffee, are you a coffee or tea drinker in the morning or something else?

SPEAKER_00: 3:35

Definitely coffee. I am fully addicted. Um, but I also love my tea. So yes, those are m two of my great loves, tea and coffee.

SPEAKER_01: 3:47

I don't mind a cup of tea, but I am also more of a coffee drinker. That tends to be a Melbourne trait, I think.

SPEAKER_00: 3:54

Oh yes.

SPEAKER_01: 3:56

But I have tried to wean myself off the caffeine. I'll I do have some decaf as well, just so that I can limit the caffeine intake.

SPEAKER_00: 4:04

Well, you must be doing it successfully if you're getting to bed at 9 30, and probably better than me.

SPEAKER_01: 4:09

I cannot drink anything caffeinated after like 1 in the afternoon, 1 pm. Just can't do it. Anything beyond that has to be decaf.

SPEAKER_00: 4:20

Yep, you've got it, the science down pat.

SPEAKER_01: 4:23

Or be staring at the ceiling otherwise.

SPEAKER_00: 4:26

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 4:27

Next question: Beach or mountains?

SPEAKER_00: 4:31

Ooh, that is such a hard choice because I live where I have a fantastic view of the mountains, and that is something I'm so grateful for to wake up every morning and be able to look out my window and see the Brindabella Mountains in Canberra. So I love them and I love bushwalking. But if I had to choose, I would choose the beach for sure.

SPEAKER_01: 4:52

Okay, yeah. It can be a tricky one, isn't it? I do love both, but I'm probably more of a mountains person. And I am surrounded by mountains. I'm actually quite lucky where I am situated in regional Victoria. I'm about an hour away from everywhere. So I'm an hour away from Melbourne, from the city. I'm an hour give or take away from various beaches. I'm an hour away give or take from Mount Borbore and other mountainous areas. And so I I do love the bush, do love bushwalking.

SPEAKER_00: 5:26

See, you're in the perfect position. You get to experience both worlds. Like it's right on hand to nick down to the beach or get into the city. So I think you're in a great spot by the sound of that. It's to both worlds. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 5:39

And so you probably picked up there, listeners. Trudy and I live in completely different states. She's in the ACT and I'm in Victoria, but somehow we make the magic happen. Yep. Now I was gonna ask you dogs or cats, but I already know the answer to that because I know you're dog sitting currently.

SPEAKER_00: 5:57

Yes. I well, I have to say I started out as a cat person. We had cats growing up. Even at one stage we had 18 kittens, which is totally bizarre. But yes.

SPEAKER_01: 6:08

Oh my goodness.

SPEAKER_00: 6:09

Yes. So we had two cats drop their litters in our yard when we were kids. So we ended up keeping about six cats. So I grew up with cats and I love cats, but um I've kind of switched to be a dog person later in life.

SPEAKER_01: 6:25

And I never had a dog growing up. We had one cat. That was pretty much it as far as the pets go. And we've got two cats currently at home, have never had a dog, and I think that's why I mean I'm not anti-dogs. I just can't see myself ever having a dog as a pet because it's just not something that I've ever experienced.

SPEAKER_00: 6:47

I think that it would definitely help if you have had the men's childhood to know what you're in for. I was totally unprepared when I got a dog. So it was challenging, I found. Even like if you I guess maybe because it was before kids and before that responsibility. So I guess it's a good uh starting point before you have kids to learn.

SPEAKER_01: 7:07

You know, I really don't think I could have a dog as well as four children. Oh yeah, I wouldn't recommend it. Yeah, no. They're hard work, but you get what you give, you know, so they're definitely true, like with so many things in life.

SPEAKER_00: 7:23

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 7:24

Next question phone call or text message? Oh text message. Or does it depend on the person? Well, I'm the person and the topic at hand.

SPEAKER_00: 7:37

Yeah, you know, like if you call me, you probably won't get off the phone to me because I will keep chatting. But I somehow my choice is always text for some reason. I d don't know the logic.

SPEAKER_01: 7:48

I like texts for quick things. There are some things, I mean, you know this with me. For listeners, it's not uncommon for Trudy and I to record voice messages to send to one another, because if we had to put everything that needed to be shared in a text message, you know, it would be the text message to end all text messages. It would be that long. And sometimes Trudy sent me a text message and then I've just said, Can I call you? Because I've thought I just don't have the time to be putting all of this in writing or recording a message. And our longest phone call, Trudy, I don't know if you remember this, was four and a half hours. So, listeners, that is what happens when Trudy and I get on the phone to one another. Yes.

SPEAKER_00: 8:34

I do like the voice. You are converting me to the voice messages because that is a really handy tool. Like, you can just get your message across quickly without having to tee up schedule. So I do like that. That's probably gonna be my new favorite.

SPEAKER_01: 8:48

You know, so I can be expecting more audio messages from you. Yes. Okay, next question sweet or savory?

SPEAKER_00: 8:56

Oh, sweet. I'm trying to fight it, but it's impossible. I'm losing the father. Don't fight it.

SPEAKER_01: 9:04

See, I'm both. Sometimes I just really crave the saltiness of something, but then it's not uncommon for me to have something savory and then immediately want to have something that's a little bit sweeter, just to balance out my palate. I'm a bit of a mixed bag where food's concerned. Well, at least you're balancing it.

SPEAKER_00: 9:25

I think that's better than just totally sweet.

SPEAKER_01: 9:28

It's not good if you're going back and forth a lot, like, oh yeah, I've just had something savory. Now for something sweet, oh you know what? I feel like something savory again.

SPEAKER_00: 9:36

Yeah, it tends not to be the health food, doesn't it? Well, precisely, yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 9:40

Okay, now for something a little bit more in-depth. Hopefully, listeners have learned a little bit more about you and me so far in our conversation. But for something that's a little bit more in-depth with Trudy, is there something from your own post-separation journey that has shaped the way that you coach?

SPEAKER_00: 10:03

Yeah. Well, I think obviously having experienced gone through, you know, four years essentially of court proceedings, I've learnt a lot, and there's a lot of things that I've taken from that experience, and you know, my ex current my ongoing experiences being a co-parent all come into how I can approach coaching and having that insight on how to help guide others. But I guess one key thing has been on reflection, realizing that I have the power that you have as a parent, regardless of waiting for permission from the court or waiting to get orders or for a lawyer to give you permission to act on what you believe is in the best interest of your children. I now see that that power lays with you right from the beginning, and what it requires is the strength to stand up and be willing to say what you think is in the best interest of your kids. I think that in the beginning I didn't realize I had a voice. I didn't know that my voice was important. I was scared to speak up, but I found when I reflect, I see I had more power than I realised I had, and I could have spoken up and held a stronger boundary in the start, which would have helped. So I try to help clients see what I missed and what I didn't understand about where my powers lie and what you do have power to do, regardless of court orders or not.

SPEAKER_01: 11:31

That's such a positive and powerful insight, Trudy, and it really resonates with me as well, was very much the same for a long period of time in my journey in terms of not recognising the power that I did have and not taking action for a whole variety of reasons, like you know, one not realizing that I had the power, but also two, I really didn't have that inner capacity. I hadn't been doing really as much as what I could have to support my nervous system and just that emotional discomfort. And I was also worried about taking action and then getting into trouble for taking action or for advocating their regrets that I have on my own journey. And you're right, you see that with clients that you work with, I see that with clients that I work with. I think it's really common. And just for everybody listening, it's one of the reasons why Trudy and I are so passionate about this work, because we learned so many things in our journey the hard way that if we could go back in time and do things differently, this is one of the key things that I think we would both do differently. We would both do what we could to step up and advocate for our kids much earlier on, because it is so much more straightforward to get more protective arrangements in place for your kids when you are advocating at a much earlier stage in the journey. Is that something that you'd agree with, Trudy?

SPEAKER_00: 13:04

Yes, completely. And just what you said about that fear of thinking that you can't, that you'll be in trouble if you actually try to advocate and enforce what you know is right and is in the best interest. That fear is real, and I hear it in clients' voices, and I think that's where we have the power to help people. That's something that through my journey you are able to help me with and give me the strength and the guidance to overcome, and which ultimately changed the projectory of my case and my outcome. And I know I owe a great deal of that strength that I got from you and your support. And I hope that I can be that same support for clients as well, because I know how much difference it makes, not only to the outcome, but also to the client as a person and their well-being and the stress that you feel throughout the journey.

SPEAKER_01: 14:04

Absolutely. And thank you for sharing that about your own journey, Trudy, and for that testimonial of what coaching was able to do for you. I think it's common for people to try to go it alone. And there are so many resources. I mean, there's this podcast, there's other podcasts, there's books, there's courses, there's all kinds of things. But in your experience, was having one-on-one coaching support something that you feel was a really valuable and necessary part of you just feeling able to advocate a little bit more or to just stay the course with the court journey?

SPEAKER_00: 14:49

Oh, completely. I admit to reading a lot of resources and doing a lot of research to try and support myself and the case, but the difference happened when I engaged with yourself and getting that one-on-one support. That was where things changed, and not only like for my case, but for me as a person being able to cope and move forward through like the trauma of the whole situation, of you know, the grief and everything that you experience with separation. It extends as far as how to help with dealing with issues with my children coping and knowing how to support them and being in a better place. Once we deal with our own emotions, we can better support our children and we can be a better friend, a better daughter, a better worker. It affects your life in every aspect because the conflict and the stress that comes from separation, and especially if you're dealing with ongoing conflict or post-separation abuse, it seeps into every part of your life. And by engaging with support, you take back that power to contain it. It's not no longer just you're not talking about it with your family non-stop. You have a space to vent, you can work through the emotions, and then you can come up with a plan and a strategy of how you're going to cope and how you're going to move forward. And that enables space in the rest of your life as well. So there's so many aspects that it affects, and I can't say how much it changed my journey and how much it helped me.

SPEAKER_01: 16:30

Again, amazing insights, Trudy. And I think it will be really helpful for people who are listening, maybe who have been contemplating reaching out for one-on-one coaching, but maybe not really sure if it's the right step for them. Just hearing the way in which it really helped you is really valuable for people to hear. And exactly as you said, so many of our conversations when we were working together, they weren't just about the nitty-gritty issues. It was often things about radical acceptance, about just managing emotions in your nervous system, about how can I best explain something to the kids, all of those sorts of things. And also you mentioned the grief, like just having to come to terms with the fact that this is really not what you anticipated for your life, the loss of the dream. They're all the sorts of things that both Trudy and I now in our coaching work support clients with. And as Trudy just pointed out, it doesn't just make you more able to advocate, more able to stay the course if you do end up in the court system, but also to be a more present and tuned-in parent when you are with your kids, to be able to be a more focused and present employee or whatever your work happens to be, to be a more present friend or family member. Because when you've got that support with coaching, you no longer feel the same need to be relying on other people in your life for that emotional support. And that really then means that you're better able to support friends and family members when they need it. It means that your relationships are no longer potentially one-sided, or that we're not inadvertently draining friends or family members with needing to lean on them all the time. I know that for many of our clients, Trudy, we really are the core backbone of their support as they're navigating all of this. And what that means is that they're then able to have conversations with friends and family members where they don't have to talk about their ex at all. They don't have to talk about the court journey at all because they get to talk about all of that sort of stuff with us.

SPEAKER_00: 18:51

Yeah, I think that's really important because it creates the space in their life for their normal life to exist. So that the separation and whatever conflicts going on doesn't consume them. But that is so key for your mental health and for moving forward and being able to see a future and maintaining your relationships with everyone, which is so important. So it does play a wider role when you zoom out as well. So there's so many aspects that coaching is beneficial for. Obviously, firstly and foremostly, it's to help you act as a protective parent and to navigate and give you that emotional support. But we often don't think about the big picture moving forward and our life and the effects that these things are taking on us.

SPEAKER_01: 19:40

Really valuable insights, Trudy. And I think now that we also have the post-separation parenting blueprint to support our work, I think that's also going to be a really valuable resource. Whether or not people choose to engage with us in one-on-one coaching, or whether they maybe they book a couple of standalone sessions now and then instead of working with us via a package, or maybe they'd never connect with us one-on-one at all, but instead engage with the blueprint. My hope is that parents as early on in their journey as possible will have access to information that will help them to get an understanding of what is protective, what is age appropriate and developmentally appropriate and of course safe for their kids early on in the process, so that they at least have a bit of an understanding as to what arrangements ideally should be in place with a view to then knowing what to advocate for. And I know that was something that I just had absolutely no understanding about whatsoever. And when new clients come to me now, oftentimes they're in the very same boat. And so for me, I'm more than 17 years post-separation. And yet there is still a huge lack of information in the one spot available for parents to let them know exactly what it is that their kids need at each different age and developmental stage. And that's why I'm so passionate about the blueprint and why I know that we're going to have so much fun with it with our clients because it's just an excellent foundational reference point, full of research, full of the evidence. You've already had an opportunity to have a bit of a play around and a look into the blueprint, Trudy. What were some of your first impressions?

SPEAKER_00: 21:39

Yes, well, it's just the depth of the information that you've put together is amazing. And the format that it's in. You've taken the time to really think about what is going to be the most beneficial for people while they're in this journey. It's a resource that I see is essentially like a manual that I feel like it's like they're going to have your knowledge, your wisdom, and all your research and understanding of being a protective parent put into a really understandable context and in a way that they can access it at any stage that they need. It's like a manual that they'll have in their back pocket to go through their journey. It's not something that you would just need at the beginning of a separation. It's something that will be useful all the way through to when your kids are teenagers. And I think that it would be an invaluable resource to have there that you can just pick up and go through at any stage and go, okay, this is what I'm dealing with. What is there to help me understand what's going on, what I should be doing, or what signs should I be looking for? What does this mean? My kids are doing this, what does this mean? You can reconfirm people's gut instinct, they can find the answers they're looking for without having to do hours and hours of research and trying to figure out what's going on. I have to say, the only thing I'm disappointed about is that this didn't exist when I started my journey because I can see it would have saved me so much heartache in moments when I was unsure I was questioning myself, or the lawyers were telling me certain things that I didn't feel was right, or my ex was telling me something was in their best interest and I didn't agree, I could have referred to this and gone, well, wait a minute, there is some evidence to point against that or for that, and this is why. And it would have been a vital resource in having that knowledge to reply to my lawyer, to my ex and to be able to understand why I was feeling what I was feeling, why I wanted certain arrangements, and to be able to back it up with facts.

SPEAKER_01: 23:48

Absolutely. I thank you so much for the insight, Trudy, and you've really helped to capture exactly why I created the resource and put it together the way that I did. I want it ultimately to be something that people can come back to again and again and again post-separation. It's not a course in the sense that you just work through each module and each lesson and you just tick them off and that's it. You know, you've done the course, you never have to look at it again. It is something that is designed for you to come back to again and again, you know, initially when you're wanting to learn, okay, what does the research actually say is best for my particular kids, for my kids' ages, or I've got one who's a toddler, and I've got one who's autistic, and I've got one who's a teen. What's appropriate for them based on their age and development? But then also, things are going to change along the way. You might have one child who is fine to go and spend time with the other parent for whatever time is in the parenting plan or the parenting orders. But things often change when kids become teens. They often do want far more agency and autonomy, which is actually appropriate, and that's supported by the evidence. And that's all covered in the blueprint as well. There's also stuff in there about adult kids, the way in which family separation can impact adult children, whether or not the separation occurs when they're already adults, or whether the separation has occurred years ago, but they're still feeling the impacts of it because of disruption to family traditions and those sorts of things. It really is a living resource. And I know Trudy and I have already had conversations about the way in which our coaching is going to continue to inform what we add to the blueprint over time. And whoever purchases access to the blueprint, you have that for life. So it's just a it's a one-time payment, lifetime access. You can come back to it as often as what you need to. And I agree with you, Trudy. I wish something like that had existed, but unfortunately, it took me going through what I had to go through and our clients going through what they had to go through so that I could get the knowledge and the understanding of what it actually takes for parents to become protective. And those steps are number one, we need to know what our kids need. We need to understand the evidence base. Number two, we need to grow our capacity, our tolerance for uncomfortable emotions, growing our window of tolerance, being able to soothe our nervous system so that we can stay the course. And then number three is being able to stand firm with that strategic advocacy. But we really need those three steps. If you think about your journey, can you see the way in which those three steps have played a part?

SPEAKER_00: 26:58

Oh, definitely. Like I think that when I reflect, and I have to say, when I was reading through the blueprint, I can see how your coaching had actually developed me and produced this outcome for me as a protective parent. I can't take credit for that solely. It took me a bit to get my strength. And it was your guidance and your knowledge, and you had that roadmap of where you were taking me and the skills that you were teaching me. And I feel like I am a product of essentially what this blueprint is. And that's a really strong protective parent. And I have to say, wow, thank you for letting me be like a product of like all your knowledge. And and the way that you are able to teach those skills, I think that you bring with your knowledge the ability to teach people in a way that they can take on board the lessons and they can digest it and actually put it into action. And it's really clear in the way that you present the course that it's in a way that is friendly to people who are going through stress and you may not have time to sit down and read pages and pages, you know, hours to just sit through a course. It's done in a way that if you've got five minutes, you can get something out of it. If you've got an issue, you know, you don't need an hour to get an answer. You can jump in and find that answer really quickly, and you can understand the information without having to read over and over and try to digest it. It's there, it's clear, it's succinct, and there's actionable steps and there's tools to make you reflect and gain understanding of your children's needs and what actions you need to do.

SPEAKER_01: 28:46

I so perfectly put Trudy, and I'm hoping that everyone who's listening to this can also hear with Trudy's own journey, with her reflections on her own journey, this is just one of the things that makes her such an amazing coach. She really, truly does get it because she's lived it. And that's what makes both of us really unique in this space, in the post-separation coaching space, or just in the post-separation space full stop, because we truly know what it is that our clients are experiencing. We've been there, we've done that, we've cried all the tears, we've got the guilt of having not advocated earlier, we've got the 2020 hindsight, but we've now also created this fantastic resource that really unpacks the steps that are actually needed to become protective and to optimize your outcome, whether you're in the court system or not. Because I do think that if people have access to the research and evidence base for particular parenting arrangements, which spoiler alert is not 50 50, if protective If parents are able to share that with their co-parent, with their lawyer earlier on in the journey, I really do believe that that will ultimately have an impact of potentially preventing some cases from ending up in the court system. Because I don't think all parents that are pushing for 50-50 would necessarily do that if they were aware that there was evidence that actually shows that 50-50 is often not in the best interest of kids, that there's evidence that talks about the importance of maintaining attachment with the primary caregiver. But that's another reason why I've created this. I don't want people listening to this thinking that Trudy and I are only working with the worst of the worst cases who are all battling through to a final trial. I mean, granted, that is a lot of the work that we do. So if anyone's in that situation, please know you are in the very best of hands with either Trudy or myself. But we also work with people really early on in separation where there's very low levels of conflict. We work with people before they've separated. So before they've even had the conversation with their partner. They're just in planning mode, they're just in thinking mode. They already want to start thinking about what arrangements might be appropriate so that they can hit the ground running. And both Trudy and I are able to support clients with that. The blueprint is also able to support clients with that. That's one of the reasons that I created it, because there's only Trudy and I who are here doing this work. There's only the two of us. So the blueprint's going to help a lot for people who may not necessarily feel that they need the one-on-one support. Trudy, if you could go back in time before your court journey, is there anything in particular that you'd tell that earlier version of yourself?

SPEAKER_00: 31:54

There's a couple of things, but the first thing would be that I don't need permission from anyone to act on my children's best interests. As long as I can wholeheartedly say that my decisions were in their best interest, then I should have taken action and not necessarily listened to all the voices around me or been scared of getting in trouble. The second thing I would say is that I wish I had given myself permission that it's okay to reach out for support, that I deserve support through it, that it's a really hard journey, and that you do need a support team and a support network. And it literally is a lifesaver to get in place a team, whether it be a psychologist, a coach like us, legal representation, and close friends, a few friends or family that actually get it. Those are really key things to put in place and you deserve that. And you know, yes, some things are gonna cost money, but it's a really hard journey. And admitting that you deserve support, I think I wish I'd just given myself the permission to have that earlier.

SPEAKER_01: 33:05

So beautifully put, Trudy, and that that's one of the reasons why we've structured our coaching also to include the Blueprint Foundation, because protective parents really do need both the knowledge and the capacity to advocate for themselves and their kids and to help to create the change that their kids deserve. And exactly as you've said there, investing in yourself in terms of getting that support, it's also an investment in your children's well being. Thank you again, Trudy, and thank you to everyone listening for being with us today. Until next time, keep advocating for what your children truly need. Trudy and I are with you all the way, but we'll talk to you soon.