The Post-Separation Abuse Podcast
The Post-Separation Abuse Podcast
Hosted by Danielle Black
A direct, evidence-based podcast for people navigating all-things separation and divorce, including; post-separation abuse, family violence, parenting, property settlement and the family law system - with a relentless focus on protecting children and building a life beyond separation. Because, the advice your lawyer gives you is only the beginning. Family law tells you what the system can do. This podcast helps you understand what to seek, what to challenge, what to bring into the room - and how to live with the decisions, and move on with your life, afterwards.
Danielle Black is a specialist post-separation parenting coach and the founder and principal coach of Danielle Black Coaching. Having navigated her own complex separation, and guided hundreds of clients to successful outcomes, Danielle and her coaching team specialise in helping protective parents to optimise the outcome for themselves and their children, and support clients to navigate post-separation situations that other professionals don't properly address.
Drawing on her extensive tertiary qualifications, developmental science, research, trauma-informed practice and both professional and lived experience, she examines how abuse can continue after separation, how systems and professionals respond, and what genuinely informed decision-making and credible advocacy requires when risk, fear or power imbalance is present.
Because understanding family law is not enough.
Having a lawyer is not enough.
A lawyer can advise you about the law, legal process and evidence. But optimising your parenting outcome also requires knowledge of child development, attachment, coercive control and trauma; the capacity to remain strategic under pressure; and the confidence to advocate for what you and your children genuinely need.
This podcast examines all of those layers.
It challenges the assumptions that routinely shape post-separation outcomes: the fixation on 50/50 shared care, the misuse of “friendly parent” ideals, the belief that compromise is always constructive, and the fantasy that engaging the right professional means you can safely hand over the strategy, decision-making and advocacy.
Across the podcast, Danielle explores:
- how post-separation abuse operates through parenting, financial and legal processes;
- what children need after separation - and why adult notions of fairness are an inadequate guide;
- what lawyers and other post-separation professionals were, and were not, trained to understand;
- why standard co-parenting frameworks often fail families affected by coercive control and other forms of family violence and post-separation abuse;
- how to assess the benefits, risks and real-world costs of negotiation, litigation and other pathways;
- how knowledge, capacity and advocacy can materially change outcomes;
- and what comes next, when separation and survival no longer occupy the centre of your life.
Expect direct language, research-backed analysis, practical guidance and a few cuss words - not platitudes, false balance or simplistic promises of justice.
This is not only about understanding what happened in your situation.
It is about making informed decisions now - and becoming the author, and authority, of what comes next.
To go deeper, explore The Post-Separation Parenting Blueprint™, Danielle’s flagship program for parents building the knowledge, capacity and advocacy skills needed to make informed, protective decisions after separation.
Learn more at danielleblackcoaching.com.au.
Episodes
119 episodes
117. The Good Girl Contract - part five: The Contract after separation
This is where the lens widens. Parts 1 through 4 focused on the Contract as it operates in the woman herself - her history, her patterns, her practice of interrupting it. Today, Danielle takes on the intergenerational dimension. Because the Con...
116. The Good Girl Contract - part four: Interrupting the Contract
Part 4 of The Good Girl Contract series.This is where the series pivots. Parts 1, 2, and 3 were diagnostic in nature - naming the Contract, walking through what happened when we took it into adult intimate relationships, and naming the m...
115. The good girl contract - part three: The mirror
If you have been quietly noticing that you struggle to accept other people's boundaries with you - that their no’s, their unavailability, their limits land in you as evidence of your own worth rather than as data about their life - this episode...
114. The good girl contract - part two: The moth and the flame
Their woundedness was a moth to a flame to your overfunctioning.Part 2 of The Good Girl Contract walks through what happened when you took the Contract into your adult intimate relationships. Why the men who f...
113. The good girl contract - part one: Where boundaries begin (or don't)
When your childhood taught you that having needs was dangerous - that being pleasing, useful, and indispensable was the difference between love and its withdrawal - the reason boundaries are so hard as an adult is not that you are weak. It ...
112. Working as intended (Postscript): Do I even need a lawyer? An honest conversation on self-representation
If you have been listening to our Working As Intended series, and you have been quietly wondering "if lawyers were never trained in what my children need, and I have to bring all of that myself, do I even need a lawyer at all?" - this ...
111. Working as intended - Part 4: How to use your lawyer
If you've been with Danielle across this series, you now know how the family law system in Australia was built, what its practitioners were and were not trained to know, and how to test whether anyone in the post-separation space is genuinely c...
110. Working as intended - Part 3: The standard - How to tell who actually knows what your children need
"Child-focused." Two words that appear on the website of virtually every practitioner in the post-separation space. Every lawyer. Every mediator. Every divorce coach. Every family ther...
109. Working as intended - Part 2: What an Independent Children's Lawyer (ICL) actually is
Nine hundred and fifty dollars. An online module and a one-day workshop. That's the specialist training that qualifies a family lawyer to represent your child's best interests in court - and that's the starting point for part 2 of Working A...
108. Working as intended - Part 1: What your lawyer was taught (and what they weren't)
What your family lawyer was taught - and what they weren't. The first of four episodes on the architecture of the Australian family law system. Eleven mandatory areas of study to be admitted as a lawyer in Australia. ...
107. When 'parental alienation' is actually coercive control
"Parental alienation" is one of the most weaponised terms in family law. In this episode, Danielle Black takes the term apart, puts something more precise in its place - and explains why the protective parents on the receiving end of those accu...
106. Coercive control - What it is, and what it isn't
"Coercive control" has entered the mainstream - and started to lose its precision. This episode brings it back: what coercive control actually is, what it isn't, and why the difference matters for everyone."I felt trapped in my own life....
105. The 5 critical mistakes that parents make in early separation
The decisions you make in the early stages of separation can shape your family for years to come. And yet, most parents make critical mistakes during this most vulnerable time - often because they're following well-meaning but misguided advice ...
104. If their name was Brian: family violence in lesbian relationships
There is a phrase I have heard, in various forms, from many of my clients over the years:"If her name was Brian instead of Barb, the recognition and response would have been completely different."That phrase is the whole ...
103. What Mother's Day actually looks like when you're navigating post-separation abuse - and what to do with it
This Mother's Day episode is for every mother who knows the day might be complicated.For the mothers without orders, whose former partners simply deny contact on Mother's Day. For the mothers who get a few hours - children dropped in the...
102. Everyone has a biggest problem - Why your pain is valid, why staying stuck is a choice, and what it costs both you and your children
In this episode, Danielle unpacks something that comes up constantly in her work with clients: the tendency to invalidate our own pain by comparing it to someone else's. To stay in situations that are harmful - not because we can't leave, but b...
101. AI tools for protective parents: Claude.ai, ChatGPT and AI Danielle - the 24/7 digital coach inside the Blueprint
What if you had access to a specialist coaching resource trained in coercive control, the Australian family law system, attachment science, and nervous system regulation - any time of day or night, at no additional cost?In this episode, ...
100. The game is the same - 17 Years, 100 Episodes, and the debut of 'Stronger, Braver, Together'
One hundred episodes.In this milestone episode, Danielle Black does something she has never quite done before - she tells the full truth about where this work came from, what it has cost, and why she hasn't walked away.More than s...
99. Why your family lawyer can't do what you actually need - and what only you can do
Your lawyer is not trying to find the truth. And once you understand why - once you really understand how the adversarial legal system is designed and what it is and isn't built to deliver - everything changes.In this episode, P...
98. How I did it - Dating after abuse, self-trust, and deciding you're not too broken
Dating after domestic violence, coercive control, or post-separation abuse is one of the most under-discussed topics in the survivor space. Most people are somewhere between terrified and convinced it's simply not possible for them.In th...
97. Can you find a healthy relationship after abuse? A conversation with my husband - plus the debut of 'Calm is Credible'
Healthy relationships after family violence, and in the midst of post-separation abuse, are possible - but they are rarely talked about honestly in survivor spaces.In this special anniversary episode, Danielle Black is joined by her husb...
96. Family reports are not the verdict: What protective parents must know
Family Reports can be influential pieces of evidence in Australian family court proceedings - but they are widely misunderstood.In this episode, Danielle Black explains what Family Report Writers are actually assessing, why protective pa...
95. The collaboration question: When it works, and when it doesn't
Collaboration is often presented as the gold standard after separation.Parents are encouraged to communicate openly, compromise, and "work together". In the right circumstances, a collaborative approach can indeed produce faster, less ad...
94. The invisible architecture of childhood: What primary caregivers carry - and why it matters
International Women’s Day bonus episodeIn this special episode, Danielle Black explores something rarely named in conversations about parenting after separation: the invisible architecture of childhood.The planning.<...
93. Divorce coaching, narcissism & high-conflict separation: Choosing the right support
What does a divorce coach actually do - and how do you know if the support you’re choosing after separation is right for your situation?In this episode of The Post-Separation Abuse Podcast, principal coach Danielle Black ...