Divorce with Carolyn

It’s one of the words Carolyn hears most in the Women’s Divorce Academy community, and it’s the one that keeps the most women stuck. In this solo episode, Carolyn sets the diagnosis question aside – nobody can answer it from the outside, and it turns out you don’t need to – and asks a more useful one: is this how your ex behaves, and what do you do about it? She walks through how capable women end...

Content note: This episode discusses domestic and family violence. If you need support, in Australia you can call 1800RESPECT on 1800 737 732 or visit 1800respect.org.au. Support services outside Australia are listed below. If you’re in immediate danger, call emergency services. There’s a lot of talk about leaving an abusive relationship. What comes after gets far less attention. Eleven years ago,...

Carolyn spent a year believing she couldn't afford a lawyer, so she went without one. She now calls it a mistake – and an expensive one. This episode is about keeping the bill down, from someone who sends them. Perth family lawyer Ella Hickman walks through what legal help actually costs, what runs the meter up without a woman realising, and where to put your money when there isn't much...

Carolyn gets asked one question more than any other: where do I start? This episode is her answer – the TRUST Method, the five-stage path Women's Divorce Academy is built on, and the reason the order you do things in matters more than any single piece of advice you'll be given. She takes you through all five stages, and she's honest about the one she got badly wrong herself. A decis...

When Carolyn started working at News Corp, Mel Wilson was her boss – a journalist who seemed to have everything together. Carolyn had no idea Mel was going through a separation too. Ten years on, Mel talks about what was happening underneath. A six-month-old and a three-and-a-half-year-old. A household budget sum that came out at zero. A job interview where she did something her future boss would...

A note on this episode: Di describes emotional and financial abuse in her marriage. If anything here lands close to home, the support services below are available any time. Di Geddes knew her marriage was in trouble on the day she married. She stayed for 21 years. What finally ended it wasn't a single moment – it was her eldest son standing in front of her and asking her to do something. By t...

Carolyn's children were twelve, six and four when she separated. They're teenagers and young adults now, and their verdict on divorced parents is two Christmases, more holidays, and the nuisance of footy boots left at the wrong house. The worry sits with the mothers. Stephanie Pinto is an emotional intelligence coach and paediatric anxiety therapist, and here she and Carolyn get practica...

Carolyn invited Stephanie Pinto on to talk about raising emotionally intelligent children. The conversation kept turning back to the mothers. Because emotional intelligence is straightforward enough to explain and almost impossible to practise when you're the one coming apart. When you're making decisions you don't fully understand, at a pace you didn't choose, with children wh...

Ten years on from separation, Carolyn is still in regular conflict with her ex-husband. It looks different now than it did at the start – but there always seems to be something in the process. In this solo episode she opens up the arrangements she and her ex made at the beginning. One of them held. One of them didn't. And the reason the first one nearly came apart isn't the reason you&ap...

Episode summary Helene has been through two separations so she's in a rare position: she can look back and see exactly what was different the second time round, and why it made all the difference to how she got through it. In this conversation, she talks about the work she did between the two relationships, the exercise she still uses with her own clients to work through hard emotions, and ho...

If you've ever lain awake trapped in a thought loop or composing a message you'll never send, this conversation is for you. Journalist and copywriter Rachel Smith joins Carolyn to talk about what writing can do that talking can't.  Rachel runs Letter To My Ex, a site where thousands of people around the world have written to the person who broke their heart, and she spent years as a...

Content warning: this episode discusses domestic and family violence, including deaths. There are links to support services below. If you've sat at the kitchen table late at night working out whether you can afford to leave, this episode is for you. You're not weak, and you're far from being the only one. New ABS figures put divorce near its lowest point since 1976 – in the middle o...

This week, Carolyn sits down with Sharon Collon from The Functional Family to talk about parenting through separation when ADHD is part of the picture – whether that's your child's, your own, or both.  Sharon breaks down why transitions between two households cost the ADHD brain more than our neurotypical cousins, and shares tools you can use straight away: a "circular to-do list&qu...

Starting or rebuilding a business while your marriage is ending sounds like the worst possible timing – but for business mentor Karen Dennett, it was exactly when things started looking up.  In this conversation, Karen and Carolyn talk about what it actually takes to build something of your own when you’re low on money, energy and self-belief. You’ll walk away knowing how to work out the lifestyle...

Charu Moorjani had everything she thought she was supposed to want. Married at 23, on the right life path, ticking all the boxes in the right order. But on day one of her honeymoon, her body gave her a message she couldn't ignore — she was admitted to ICU in Macau with Guillain-Barré syndrome, a life-threatening immune system disorder that left her on a ventilator for a month. She went on to...

Angela knew her marriage was over long before either of them did anything about it. What followed – infidelity, separation, court proceedings, full-time sole parenting in a regional town on a very low income – was by any measure a brutal few years. What she built on the other side of it is extraordinary. In this episode, Angela shares her story honestly and without filter — the dark days, the ther...

Download your FREE Child Support Paper Trail guide: https://www.womensdivorceacademy.com/child-support-paper-trail If you've ever felt like the child support system isn't working — you're not imagining it. In this episode, I'm joined by Crystal Paduch, founder of Child Support Consultants and a former Services Australia child support caseworker, to talk through exactly how the...

Patricia left her marriage with a washing machine, a toddler, and a baby on the way - with no family nearby or government support - and built a life from there that she never thought possible.  Patricia is the author of The Pleasure Lit Way, and in this episode she talks about leaving, rebuilding, and what it actually means to feel safe in your own body. We talk about the domestic violence cycle P...

Sarah Gallucci gave up her journalism career at 24, became the primary parent, and spent 13 years holding everything together in a marriage that looked fine from the outside. Her body knew it was over long before she did — she just kept overriding the signals. In this conversation, Sarah talks about what it actually feels like to disappear inside a marriage, the $30,000 collaborative divorce that...

Trigger warning : This episode contains discussion of domestic and family violence, including coercive controlling behaviour. Support is available - links below. Ex-detective Anthony Macklin has seen it all – burner phones hidden behind lounge furniture, spy apps that disappear from your screen but keep recording, tracking devices in children's teddy bears. In this episode, he breaks down how...

Psychologist Dr Marny Lishman on why being alone is an unexpected gift – and why the messy middle of healing does the real work. Alone and lonely get treated as though they mean the same thing. They don't. In this episode, I sit down with psychologist Dr Marny Lishman to talk about her new book, Only You: The Unexpected Gift of Being Alone. We unpack why so many of us rush from one relationsh...

Ten years ago, Carrie left a 16-year marriage. She had three young daughters, no certainty about what came next, and a question she couldn't shake: Am I allowed to do this? Ten years on, her daughters have told her they're glad she left. And she describes her post-divorce life as her best years. In this conversation, Carrie shares the moment she knew, the financial mistakes she wishes sh...

Your divorce doesn't have to become trauma. That's not a platitude – it's something somatic therapist Natalia Rachel can explain precisely, and it changes everything about how you approach recovery. Natalia draws a clear line between distress – what's happening to you right now – and trauma, which is what happens when a past experience of threat keeps living in you long after i...

Building a support network during divorce isn't optional – it's infrastructure. In this conversation, Carolyn talks with her close friend Gillian about the real art of asking for help: why it feels so hard, how to do it practically, and who belongs in your support team – both personally and professionally. Gillian shares her own experience navigating an unexpected separation, building a...

Alyssa thought she'd married the love of her life. What she didn't know was that her husband had been deceiving her in almost every way imaginable - an affair, gambling debts, drug use, and lies that unravelled her entire sense of reality. When he told Alyssa he wanted a divorce, she was completely blindsided. What followed was one of the hardest seasons of her life. Severe anxiety and d...