Hello and welcome back to the Post-Separation Abuse Podcast. I'm your host, Danielle Black. It's so wonderful to be back here with you. I've missed the regular connection, but needed to take a big step back to recharge after a very big 2025. More episodes had been planned for 2025. However, I ultimately chose my well-being over hustle because after such a big year, I was exhausted. So I chose my nervous system, I chose my family, I chose to rest. The work that I do is deeply relational, and I refuse to show up half present, burnt out, or depleted because the work that I do with clients requires clarity, strength and leadership. And yes, I also bring those things to this podcast, not just my one-on-one and group coaching work. I value and honour the fact that you are choosing to listen to this podcast, choosing to be here with me as we explore all the things post-separation together. You are giving me your time and attention, and that's not a small thing. So if you noticed that I was quiet at the end of 2025, my going quiet was intentional, and I'm so glad that I did it. Being a highly effective coach is just as much about coaching myself and tuning into what I need as it is about coaching others and helping others to pay attention to their needs. I'm now walking back into 2026 feeling refreshed, grounded, focused, and ready to help you take back control of your world. 2026 is going to be enormous for Danielle Black Coaching, and I'm so glad that you're here with us. Later this year we're going to be launching the professional edition of the Blueprint. AI Danielle will be expanding to become more widely available, and we have new team members joining us. We are a deeply committed team doing evidence-informed, child-focused, protective parenting work, now at an even bigger scale so that we can help more parents more often. But I want to circle back to gratitude again. To everyone who listened, followed, shared, trusted me with your stories, worked with me or with Trudy one to one, joined the blueprint or engaged with AI Danielle, thank you. Thank you so much. You are why I do this. I've come back to work with an email inbox crammed full of positive feedback about both the blueprint and AI Danielle, and it's given our team here at Danielle Black Coaching a huge boost as we step into 2026. We are already fired up and raring to go. And again, I just have to say 2025 was huge. We officially launched the post-separation parenting blueprint, something that I actually debated doing in its current format, spent time thinking, debated with myself, discussed with Trudy as well as some of my admin superstars, but everyone was adamant about the launch needing to be sooner rather than later. Adamant that so many parents in Australia and around the world needed access to the information in the blueprint now, not many months or possibly even years from now when the multimedia components will be ready. So I pushed the go button. And I'm so glad that I did because the feedback that we've received has been nothing short of amazing. So many parents have been using information in the blueprint to protect their children, from refusing or resisting demands for inappropriate parenting arrangements, to strengthening their legal cases, including using the research citations in their affidavits, educating their legal team, holding firm under pressure, even when that pressure is coming from their own lawyer or barrister or even the ICL, and parents working on their connection with their children. They're children who have been influenced or coached by the other parent and trapped in coercive control patterns. The list goes on, and I've shed more than a few tears reading all of this positive feedback. I knew the blueprint was needed, but I was so focused on putting it out there that I really didn't stop to contemplate the depth of the impact that it would have. So thank you to everyone who invested in themselves and their children by accessing the blueprint. This is how we change the system. The professionals in and out of the system, the community, our society, this is how we do it. With each of us becoming more informed, becoming aware of the evidence, so that we can push back against the status quo, against the paternalistic and misogynistic ideology that dares, that fucking dares to dictate to us what is best for our kids. And let's not forget growing our capacity. In my world that means levelling up our ability to regulate our emotions in our nervous system. And this is not to say that you don't fully deserve to be angry or to be a nervous wreck. I get it, I've been there. But an angry nervous wreck is not powerful. An angry nervous wreck is not an effective advocate, especially over time. And if you're in the court system, you'll potentially be there for years. An angry nervous wreck is not credible. You deserve to be angry. And none of those big emotions or your trauma is your fault. But as you've heard me say before, they are your responsibility because no one can do it for you. You can't outsource this work. And I know that's hard because you're tired, you're depleted, you're struggling, and it's not fucking fair. We are all special to those that know and love us, but in the context of the world, no one is more special than anyone else. We're all one in seven to eight billion. None of us have a right to an easy life. None of us get to go through this life journey unscathed. Everyone has something going on. And whilst your post separation journey might be the biggest and hardest thing that you face in your lifetime, it's not going to be the only hard thing that you ever face. And this is just one of the reasons why we need to grow our capacity. Not so that we're unaffected robots, we're human. We'll always be impacted in some way, shape, or form. But rather so that we can make informed decisions when the going gets tough instead of going in the direction that we're pushed. And I know I've mentioned this before, but you may or may not believe the number of women who reach out to me in desperation because they have agreed to 50-50 care. They have agreed to equal shared parenting time. Yes, in coercive situations the majority of the time, but let's not kid ourselves. How the arrangement comes to pass doesn't change the impact to our kids, and it's very hard to undo. If it's in court orders, it can be near impossible to change practically unless the kids are older and aren't keen on the situation. I've helped many women change 50-50 parenting arrangements, but what I really want is a world where I'm not needed, where my team's not needed, where protective parents are not agreeing to age and developmentally inappropriate parenting arrangements in the first place. And this requires knowledge and capacity building. It's a mistake to think that you just need the knowledge. It's a mistake to think, well, I know what's best for my kids, and so that knowledge is all I need. The reality is that knowledge on its own is not going to help you when you're laying awake at 3 a.m. Googling information about how the family court makes decisions or googling legal precedents. Knowledge alone is not going to help you when your lawyer and your barrister are telling you, well, sole parental responsibility is really hard to get, so maybe consider letting that go. Fuck that by the way. The legal pressure is very real. And when you aren't strong internally, emotionally, on a nervous system level, all the knowledge in the world won't help you. And we haven't even touched on when the other parent is doing everything that they can to undermine you, to minimize you, to ridicule you, to replace you, to erase you. This is why you need to take capacity building seriously. This is why we have module 16 in the post-separation parenting blueprint, dedicated to capacity building, emotion and nervous system regulation, managing expectations, radical acceptance, and setting and maintaining healthy boundaries. All of those things come under the capacity heading. All of those are things that my team and I coach on. And I'll talk a little bit more about our expanding team very soon. We coach on those things, we offer co-regulation to our clients, we let our clients borrow some of our calm, some of our regulation, some of our capacity in both one-on-one and group sessions. And it's also why we launched AI Daniel last year. AI Daniel is your digital coach. It's my digital mind, a carefully developed model based entirely on my knowledge, my frameworks, my case experience, my post-separation parenting blueprint, and the evidence base that our team relies on every day in one-on-one and group coaching. AI Daniel supports parents in our community in ways that a human coach simply can't match in terms of availability and speed. My team and I need to sleep, but AI Daniel doesn't. And this is not about replacing coaching. It's about having support between one-on-one and group sessions when your nervous system needs reassurance the most. It's been life-changing for many of our clients, and I'm so proud of everyone who has used AI Danielle and has refined their co-parenting communication or enhanced their understanding of something in the blueprint, or challenged their perspective on an aspect of their post-separation parenting journey. It's one thing for a resource to exist, it's another thing to actually use it, to utilize it, not just to access information, but to take steps to integrate that information. And everyone who currently has access to AI Danielle has access for free at the moment. I'm not sure if I've ever spoken about this in any depth, but I do a lot of pro bono work, that is, working with parents for free. It's not sustainable on a large scale, and I don't currently have capacity to take on any more pro bono work. But I do what I can. And having AI Danielle accessible free of charge for the time being is part of that. I haven't yet decided how long free access will last. That's something for me to contemplate later, probably with my business management people, because the reality is creating AI Danielle and having her accessible for free costs me money. It's not hosted for free, I have to pay. The same as the hosting of the blueprint costs me money. But right now I'm footing the bill for AI Danielle, and I'm happy to do that right now because I know that many people are making use of the access they have. So many are making connections, growing their capacity, integrating information, and truly transforming themselves on their journey so much more quickly than they would have just with one-on-one coaching alone. While we're talking about AI Danielle, I want to mention one particular client who really stands out in my mind right now. To protect her identity, I'll call her Helen. This is a direct quote from Helen taken from one of her messages to me since I've started back at work this year and following our first one-on-one session for 2026. Helen says, I honestly feel like I have taken some huge fucking strides in terms of my own capacity, enforcing boundaries, letting go of trauma-fuelled reactivity, and coming at things from my daughter from a completely child-focused perspective. Without losing safety and capacity whilst doing it. Just wanted to also mention that I'm enjoying AI Danielle, peppering the responses with the teen psychology terminology in it. I'm learning new terminology daily. And I pick the words up and it allows me to dig into the detail of their meaning in the context that I've described in my chat queries. It's very helpful, and understanding the terminology takes me from a how fucking dare she moment to a moment of greater understanding of the dynamic that allows me to soften and feel some empathy for the complexity of what my daughter is navigating right now. I love this. Well, as much as you can enjoy living in a hellish post-separation abusive dynamic with my child, knowledge is fucking power here. Thank you for sharing your power. And this, my fellow warriors, is why I do this work. Because of Helen and so many other clients who are transforming themselves, their lives, their relationships, their connections with their kids, all the things. They're using the resources available to them, the blueprint, AI Daniel, one-on-one coaching, group coaching. They're using all of those things or a combination of a few of those things and taking action, integrating the information. And as you can hear in Helen's words, it's paying off in massive ways. Helen mentioned AI Danielle, and it's relevant to note that Helen also works with me a lot in one-on-one sessions. She has invested a lot in herself and is reaping the rewards. Not all of our clients need a lot of one-on-one, and that's the beauty of the way that we do things here at Danielle Black Coaching. There are options. The option to purchase access to the blueprint, to book standalone one-on-one coaching sessions as needed, or to choose a higher level of support via a coaching package. There's also the option to connect with us in group coaching opportunities, both in short and long-term ways. I'll talk more about group coaching opportunities in future episodes, so if you aren't currently following the podcast, please do that so that you're notified when new episodes drop. You can also make sure that you stay in the loop by heading to the website Danielleblackcoaching.com.au and subscribing to our newsletter. You'll see the sign-up on the home page. You might be thinking, with the post-separation blueprint and AI Daniel, do I really need one-on-one coaching? Not everyone does. It very much depends on your individual situation. The important thing to be aware of is that neither the blueprint or AI Daniel were created to replace one-on-one coaching. In my opinion, nothing can. AI Daniel fills the gaps before one-on-one or group sessions, between sessions, after sessions, and when post-separation life throws something at you that you need support within the moment. It provides knowledge and support so that you don't feel alone in those moments when you need guidance now. But it's never going to replace the depth, the nuance, the human connection of one-on-one coaching with a human coach, especially in situations that are high risk, high conflict or complex. AI Daniel can help you to regulate your emotions and soothe your nervous system in real time, but it can't co-regulate with you. Co-regulation is a concept that gets misunderstood all the time. It's not a strategy, it's not a script, it's not something that you say to calm someone down. Rather, co-regulation is nervous system to nervous system. It's what happens when one human nervous system helps another human nervous system to settle and soothe. And that can only happen through real human connection. Our nervous systems are social. From birth, we're learning how to manage and regulate stress, fear, and big emotions in relationship. Babies don't calm themselves, they're calmed by a calm adult holding them. And even as adults, that wiring, that borrowing of calm from another human who is calm, that doesn't disappear. When someone's dysregulated, whether it's a child, your co-parent, or you, the thinking, logical, rational part of the brain is often offline. And no amount of logic, knowledge, intellect explaining, or using the right words is going to help. What works first and foremost is felt relational safety. That felt safety comes from things like tone of voice, facial expression, body language, holding space and presence. It's the difference between sounding calm and being calm. And this is the part that people don't always want to hear. Co-regulation requires capacity. You cannot help someone else with co-regulation if your own nervous system is overloaded or in survival mode. This is where tools like the post-separation parenting blueprint and AI Daniel can be incredibly helpful, but we have to be really clear about how they help. Those tools support self-regulation, not co-regulation. They help parents organize their thinking, reduce cognitive overload, make sense of what's happening, and orient back to a child-focused framework when the emotions are running high. Clarity does reduce chaos, can reduce feelings of being under threat. Understanding what actually matters and what doesn't can bring a nervous system down from high alert, but they cannot replicate co-regulation. A digital tool cannot read your body language. It can't hear the strain in your voice, notice when you're holding your breath, or slow the pace when your system's overwhelmed. It simply cannot attune to you in real time. Co-regulation requires a human nervous system in relationship with yours. Someone who can stay steady with you when everything else might be feeling really unsteady. And that's why air one on one and group coaching spaces matter, especially in high conflict or high stress post-separation situations. In those spaces, co-regulation happens not just through information and knowledge, but through relational felt safety, shared calm presence, and being seen and understood by others who are also holding steady. This also helps us to understand why chronic ongoing conflict, family violence including coercive control, unpredictability, emotional upheaval and withdrawal after separation have such a big impact on our children. It's not just the events that have an impact on our kids, it's the loss of reliable, predictable, consistent co-regulation. If you're the parent that has historically provided those things, it's the loss of reliable, predictable, consistent access to you. Our kids don't need us to be perfect, but they do need adults in their world who are resourced enough, who are capable enough to be predictable, present, and regulated most of the time. And this is where one-on-one coaching comes in. Not just for co-regulation, that of course is part of it, but it's not at all the whole story. The deeper part of coaching is in integrating the knowledge and information and going deeper with the capacity building. Coaching is a space where you don't just get through the crisis that's right in front of you, you're actually actively developing the skills, the insight, and the steadiness to handle the next crisis differently. In one-on-one coaching, the work is highly tailored. We're not talking in generalities, we're looking at your children, the context of your situation, your specific history. All the things that define your individual circumstances and situation. And supporting you in making decisions that are defensible, child-focused, and sustainable for you. They can include things like pressure testing decisions before you make them. So helping you to unpack benefits and risks, pros and cons in a way that is deeply nuanced and informed because the coaches here at Danielle Black Coaching have been there and done that, and we're all coaching in areas that we specialize in. It includes reality checking, fears, hopes, and catastrophic thinking. Unpacking complex situations, helping to strengthen boundaries so that those boundaries are protective rather than reactive. One-on-one coaching also includes our clients learning when to take action and when not to. Enhancing their discernment, their understanding of will this particular thing matter in the long run or not. So over time, our clients are building high-level discernment. They stop outsourcing their judgment and are able to trust their own capacity to think clearly under pressure. Group coaching offers something different but equally important. It provides normalization without minimization. When parents hear others wrestling with the same doubts, pressures, and grief, something big shifts. The shame can soften, the isolation reduces, people then realize it's not that I'm failing, this is genuinely hard, and I'm not the only one. Group spaces can also offer perspective. You learn not just from your own situation, but also from watching others navigate theirs, seeing patterns, consequences, and turning points that are a lot harder to spot when you're primarily inside your own story. And importantly, both one-on-one and group coaching slow the process down. What I mean by that is that decisions post-separation are often made in urgency, fear, panic, exhaustion. Coaching creates the opportunity to press the pause button. It creates a space where informed decisions are made consciously rather than emotive decisions made reactively. And that matters. Speed can sometimes feel like relief, but it rarely leads to good outcomes. Coaching also helps parents distinguish between what is uncomfortable in my situation versus what is unsafe. What is a genuine child need versus pressure from an adult. What requires action versus what requires endurance. Those distinctions are protective. They can reduce unnecessary conflict and prevent parents from being pulled into endless reactive cycles. And coaching helps parents to hold the complexity of what's going on without collapsing into black and white thinking. There's space for grief and feelings of relief. You can be firm and compassionate. You can protect your child without unnecessarily escalating the conflict. That kind of capacity doesn't come from information alone. It develops in relational spaces, coaching spaces, where thinking and feeling is supported, challenged, and strengthened over time. So while tools and resources absolutely matter, and as I've said before, the post-separation parenting blueprint underpins all of our coaching work, there are moments in this journey where relational support becomes the difference between truly surviving it and actually growing through it. Coming at the other side, dare I say, feeling like you are, in fact, a better parent. Feeling like you are a better, more capable version of yourself. That's absolutely how I feel on this side of my journey. And so many clients that we've worked with share those sentiments as well. If you're listening to this and you're interested in one-on-one or group coaching support, you can learn more about that by heading to the website danielblackcoaching.com.au. And we'll be doing a deeper dive into some of the small group experiences that we've got coming up. They're going to be starting in late February this year. I'll be unpacking those in greater detail in future episodes, but if you'd like that information sooner rather than later, you can head to the website. If you go to the services menu, you can find more information about both one-on-one coaching and also small group experiences. If you're curious about things like coaching packages, the first step is to book a one-on-one initial coaching call with one of our team. That is either me, Danielle, our senior coach Trudy, or our new senior coach Bridget. A one-on-one coaching session is the starting point for longer term coaching if after that first session we both decide to continue working together. And you just heard me mention Bridget. She's the newest member of our team. We're so excited to welcome Bridget. Bridget specialises in supporting parents that are navigating shared parenting without court orders. Parents who want to prioritize their children's developmental needs in ways that are informed, intentional, and sustainable. And this includes supporting parents to parent protectively, to maintain appropriate boundaries, and make defensible evidence-based child-first decisions, whilst minimizing unnecessary conflict, but also protecting their own emotional and mental health. Originally from the US and now an Australian citizen, Bridget understands the additional complexity that separation and co-parenting can involve for expat parents, particularly the experience of navigating high-stress family transitions, while extended family and other support networks are based overseas. Bridget has lived experience navigating high conflict separation as the primary caregiver to a neurodivergent child, and has over seven years of lived addiction recovery experience and supports clients who are concerned about their own relationship with substances or habits or who are navigating addiction or dysregulation in the other parent, with a strong focus on boundaries, insight, and self-protection. We're so excited to have Bridget on our team. From early separation through to final outcomes and life after separation, the team here at Danielle Black Coaching has been there and done that. And we've helped hundreds of Australian protective parents, just like you, to optimize their outcomes, protecting themselves and their kids with holistic in-the-trenches support and the kind of insight and strategy that only comes from having experienced separation and the system firsthand. And we're here to help you too. So if you'd like to connect with one of us, please do head to the website. Again, you can explore one-on-one coaching by going to services and then just scrolling down those different options there. Under the About menu, that's where you'll find more information about the team, about our mission more broadly. On the Meet the Team page, there's also a quiz that you can take if you scroll down. You hit the button that says Take Me to the Quiz, and that page has some questions for you to go through that can help you to get an understanding of which coach might be the best fit for you if you're not sure. Trudy, Bridget, and I are looking forward to forging a lot of new connections and relationships in 2026, and as strange as it may sound, we're also looking forward to helping to end a lot of relationships in 2026. Not the healthy relationships, of course, the ones that are corrosive, the ones that are unsafe, the ones that are coercively controlling, the ones that are destabilizing to children, the ones that are slowly eroding a parent's sense of self. If you spent 2025 hoping that it would get better, hoping that they would change, hoping that next year might be calmer, kinder, safer, and deep down you know that that's not your reality, then we want this to be the year that you stop waiting for a miracle and start creating a plan. And this is where Danielle Black Coaching shines. We don't panic push people into court. We don't fuel unnecessary legal warfare, and we absolutely do not encourage just hanging in there to see if it improves when all the evidence is showing that it won't. We help you to get crystal clear on what's happening, what you and your children need, what safety, stability, and security actually look like, and when it's time to formally structure arrangements or involve lawyers. Most parents go to lawyers too early and end up with enormous legal bills before they even understand their situation well enough to advocate early. And that's not strength, that's panic. What we do is different. We help you to stabilize, to step back, to see clearly, to build a protective plan, and to bring in legal support strategically and intentionally in a way that's child focused and necessary. Not like throwing spaghetti at a wall and hoping that something sticks. So if you are contemplating separation, if you're already separated in court or parenting without orders, we are the coaches for you. We will help you to reset, breathe, reorient, and move into 2026 with clarity, courage, and leadership. We want this to be your year. Because your children need one anchored parent. They need one adult who can see clearly. And if you're listening to this podcast, then I'm guessing that's you. So welcome to 2026. We're back, we're strong, we're an amazing team, and we're here to help you take your power back. Thank you so much for being here on this first episode for 2026. I value your time so much, and I'll look forward to chatting with you again soon.