Single Parenting After Divorce: The Chaos, the Guilt, and the Unexpected Gifts

Single Parenting After Divorce: The Chaos, the Guilt, and the Unexpected Gifts

Single parenting after divorce can feel like carrying an endless mental checklist while trying to keep your children, your career, your home, and yourself from falling apart. In this candid and deeply personal episode of Dishing on Divorce, Mandy Barr and Deanna Coyle share the realities of parenting after separation—from exhausting commutes, financial stress, forgotten pickups, and complicated schedules to the heartbreak of missing milestones and no longer being with your children every day. Drawing from their own very different divorce and co-parenting experiences, Mandy and Deanna explore what it means to be the default parent, how parenting roles can shift after divorce, and why even cooperative co-parenting requires communication, flexibility, vulnerability, and tremendous effort. They also discuss repairing moments when stress comes out sideways, apologizing to your children, recognizing personal triggers, and letting go of the pressure to be the perfect parent. Along the way, they share practical strategies such as shared online calendars, visual schedules for younger children, maintaining meaningful traditions, attending school meetings together, and creating consistency between two homes. This honest conversation is a reminder that good parenting does not mean getting every moment right. It means being willing to reflect, communicate, repair, and keep showing up with love. Single parenting may be overwhelming, messy, and unpredictable—and it can also create deeper relationships, greater resilience, and a powerful appreciation for the time you share with your children. You are not failing. You are learning, adapting, and doing the best you can with what you know today. Connect with Mandy and Deanna: concierge@vestadivorce.com

The Divorce Money Map: Financial Clarity Through Life’s Hardest Transitions with Donna Kendrick

When life changes in an instant, the decisions that follow can feel impossible, and some conversations about finding your way through those moments stay with you long after they end. This episode with Donna Kendrick, CFP®, CDFA®, is one of them. Donna understands what it means to stand in the middle of life-altering change and not know what comes next. After becoming a young widow with three children, Donna rebuilt her life one decision at a time. Today, she uses that experience, along with her financial expertise, to help others navigate divorce, widowhood, and major life transitions with greater clarity, confidence, and support. In this heartfelt episode of Dishing on Divorce, Mandy and Deanna sit down with Donna Kendrick, CFP®, CDFA®, founder of Sephton Financial, co-host of the Widow Wisdom and Wealth podcast, and author of The Divorce Money Map. Donna shares the personal story that shaped her work: becoming a young widow in 2013 after the sudden loss of her husband, Greg, while raising three young children. Through grief, uncertainty, and the overwhelming financial decisions that followed, Donna found support from a financial advisor who helped her slow down, understand what needed immediate attention, and begin rebuilding her life. That experience ultimately inspired Donna to become a Certified Financial Planner and later a Certified Divorce Financial Analyst, helping others navigate major life transitions with both financial clarity and deep compassion. Together, Donna, Mandy, and Deanna have an honest conversation about widowhood, divorce, blended families, mental health, financial planning, and the emotional weight of making major decisions during crisis. Donna also shares insights from her newest book, The Divorce Money Map, a practical workbook designed to help people organize their finances before, during, and after divorce. In this episode, they discuss why not all assets are equal, the importance of understanding the “quality of money,” why people need the right professionals in the right roles, and how financial clarity can help reduce costly mistakes. This conversation is tender, wise, practical, and full of heart. Donna reminds us that while we cannot control every part of life’s hardest transitions, we can focus on our next best minute, lean into the right support, and move forward with greater strength, clarity, and hope. Connect with Donna: https://sephtonfinancial.com/ [https://sephtonfinancial.com/] Free Gift: https://donnajeankendrick.com/6-week-challenge/ [https://donnajeankendrick.com/6-week-challenge/] Connect with Deanna and Mandy: concierge@vestadivorce.com

Before Divorce: Can Your Marriage Be Saved? with Dr. Chavonne Perotte

Before someone decides to divorce, there is often a sacred and painful question sitting beneath the surface: Have I done everything I can? In this episode of Dishing on Divorce, we are joined by Dr. Chavonne Perotte, a life and marriage coach who helps individuals and couples slow down, look beneath the surface of conflict, and understand what is really happening in their relationship. This conversation is for anyone standing at the crossroads of marriage and divorce. Maybe you are wondering whether your marriage can be repaired. Maybe you feel emotionally exhausted and unsure whether you are making decisions from clarity or from pain. Maybe you have tried therapy, avoided hard conversations, repeated the same arguments, or quietly carried resentment for years. Dr. Chavonne offers a compassionate and deeply grounded perspective on what it means to take personal responsibility, understand relationship patterns, create emotional safety, and decide what comes next from a place of honesty rather than fear. Whether the path forward is repair, discernment, separation, or divorce, this episode is a reminder that clarity and healing are possible, and even the hardest relationship decisions can be approached with grace, intention, and care. Connect with Dr. Chavonne: https://drchavonne.com/ [https://drchavonne.com/] Connect with Mandy and Deanna: concierge@vestadivorce.com

Finding Yourself Again After Divorce and Heartbreak with Deborah Knight

What if the hardest part of divorce or heartbreak isn’t losing the relationship, but realizing how much of yourself you lost along the way? In this heartfelt episode of Dishing on Divorce, Mandy and Deanna reconnect with longtime friend and colleague Deborah Knight, relationship coach, motivational speaker, and author of Disconnected Self: A Soul Parable for Women Ready to Return to Themselves. Deborah shares the deeper “why” behind her work: helping women recognize the patterns that keep them feeling unseen, disconnected, and misaligned with who they truly are. Through her experience as a coach, matchmaker, healer, and guide, Deborah has seen the same themes appear across generations — women saying yes when they mean no, silencing their needs, staying small, and losing themselves in relationships, work, caregiving, or life transitions. Together, Mandy, Deanna, and Deborah explore what it means to come back to yourself after heartbreak, divorce, or any major life shift. They discuss boundaries, self-trust, dating after divorce, loneliness, spiritual healing, meditation, joy, and the power of asking for help. This conversation is a beautiful reminder that healing is not about becoming someone new. It is about remembering who you were before life, fear, heartbreak, and expectation caused you to disconnect from yourself. Deborah leaves listeners with a simple but powerful piece of wisdom: “Smile. It sets a lot of things straight.” Connect with Deborah: coachdeborahknight@gmail.com Get Deborah's Book: https://www.amazon.com/Disconnected-Self-Parable-Return-Themselves [https://www.amazon.com/Disconnected-Self-Parable-Return-Themselves/dp/B0GY5NKHKF] Connect with Deanna and Mandy: concierge@vestadivorce.com

Divorce, AI, and the Truth About Confidentiality with Amanda DuBois, Esq.

What you share with AI, your journal, or even a divorce coach may not be as private as you think. In this episode of Dishing on Divorce, we sit down with Amanda DuBois, Esq., family law attorney, author, advocate, and founder of DuBois Law Office, one of the longest-standing women-owned law firms in the Pacific Northwest. Amanda’s career has taken her from high-risk labor and delivery nursing to medical malpractice law, family law, fiction writing, and criminal legal reform. Her unique background gives her a powerful lens on the value of human life, the emotional complexity of divorce, and the systems that shape people’s lives. In this conversation, Amanda shares why people going through divorce need to be extremely careful about what they share with tools like ChatGPT, why AI-generated legal strategy can create more work and cost more money, and why not everything shared with a divorce coach, journal, or online tool is protected or confidential. We also explore Amanda’s award-winning Camille Delaney mystery series, including The Complication and Unshackled, as well as her advocacy for formerly incarcerated mothers working to reunite with their children. This is a thoughtful, eye-opening conversation about law, privacy, justice, resilience, and holding onto your vision even when life does not unfold as planned. Connect with Amanda: https://amandadubois.com/ Connect with Deanna and Mandy: concierge@vestadivorce.com