In Between Them

Mike was 7 years old when his parents divorced. Nearly 50 years later, the memory is still vivid. He had an older brother, and when the news came, he was genuinely shocked — he hadn't seen it coming. It was the late 1970s, and Mike brings a thoughtful lens to this conversation on how the cultural moment itself — the rise of feminism, women entering the workforce, and the broader shift toward femal...

Vivienne was in 5th grade — about 10 years old — when her parents told her and her brother they were getting divorced. In this episode, we get something rarely told on In Between Them: a story of a divorce done well. Not frictionless. Not perfect. But handled, in every way that mattered, with the children at the center. What stands out immediately is how Vivienne frames the news itself. She descri...

Over 40 episodes of In Between Them, I've sat across from adults who were kids when their parents divorced — different ages, different cultures, different kinds of families. And when I ask each of them at the end of their episodes what their parents could have done differently, the answers overlap more than you'd ever expect. So today, I'm giving you a list. Ten things — not from me, not from a te...

40 episodes in. For the first time on In Between Them, it's just me. I started this show thinking I was starting a podcast. 40 guests later, I've realized I was really starting a listening practice — and the patterns that have come up, from people with wildly different ages, backgrounds, cultures, and family stories, have stopped surprising me and started teaching me. In this solo episode, I pull...

I feel honored to have heard this difficult story from a man who has made a beautiful life for himself and his family, much different than the way he was raised. Craig was seven years old when the divorce hit. What followed was a childhood spent between two homes that were hard in very different ways — and often left him feeling like he had no real home in either. His father was mean, angry, quick...

Veronica isn't a child of divorce — but she is, in a very real sense, the perfect adult voice for the In Between Them mission. She grew up in Russia inside a deeply dysfunctional home, with an alcoholic father and a highly critical mother. At 17, she came to the United States. Since then, she has navigated two marriages, two divorces, and the raising of three children — with an unwavering commitme...

Bella was a child of divorce — but not a young one. She was 18 or 19 when her parents' marriage ended, and in this episode she articulates beautifully something that gets almost no airtime in the divorce conversation: what happens when parents treat their adult children like confidants. The divorce came as a shock. Almost immediately, Bella was put in the middle. She became a bridge — the shuttle...

If you have ever "dreaded the ding" — that moment your phone lights up with a message from your ex and your whole nervous system braces — this conversation is for you. In this expert episode, we sit down with Sol Kennedy, founder of BestInterest, the AI-powered co-parenting app he built after living the very reality it now helps solve. Sol shares his own moment of realization — the middle-of-the-n...

Jarrel was 12 or 13 when his parents divorced — on the heels of a new house, new neighborhood, new middle school, and none of his old friends. His significantly younger siblings meant that from day one he was cast as caretaker. The new house never quite felt like home. His father was angry, and the small things would ignite him. Doors slammed and Jarrel would freeze mid-thought: was that for me, o...

This is a special collaborative episode of In Between Them, featuring Ashley Noelle — founder of Blended Bond. Two different angles on the same mission: helping parents do divorce better for the sake of their children. Ashley landed on Blended Bond by living every version of a blended family a person can live. She was raised in one. She married into one. She divorced. And she is now engaged, movin...

Susannah B was two years old when her parents split, growing up in 1970s New York City inside a creative family: her mother was singer-songwriter Carol Hall, the composer of "Free to Be… You and Me," and her father was a professional photographer working the same downtown creative scene. She has no memories of her parents together. Both agreed to stay in the city so the children wouldn't have to m...

Leslie was six years old and living in Argentina when her parents divorced — inside a family already navigating heavy loss, including the recent death of her grandfather. In Argentina, therapy is deeply woven into the culture, so Leslie and her sisters were placed in therapy right away. That early exposure to psychological language has been one of the through-lines of her entire life. Her parents...

Steph Clymer was three or four when her parents divorced — an only child with very few clear memories of the before, which she now considers something of a blessing. She had no intact family to mourn. In this conversation, Steph offers a perspective that is rare on In Between Them: a story of a childhood divorce that landed softly, and a life that has flourished around it. Her arrangement was refr...

In this expert episode, I sit down with Lisa Zeiderman — Managing Partner at Miller Zeiderman LLP, matrimonial attorney, CFL, and Certified Divorce Financial Analyst — for a conversation about what most parents miss when going through a divorce, and, more importantly, all the ways divorce can be done better. There are choices at every step — before, during, and after — that meaningfully change the...

Mariah was just shy of her third birthday when her mother left her father — a Dear John letter, and Mariah in tow. They were gone for about six months. Then her parents reconnected, tried again, and that reunion held together, in name, until she was 13. What lived inside that decade of "trying again" was anything but simple. Home was tumultuous. Home was toxic. Both parents were struggling with me...

Amanda was five when her parents separated, ten when they divorced, and about twelve when she started what she calls "split living" — an early 50/50 case before that was really the norm. She has no memory of her parents happy, and today she'll tell you clearly: they were never two people who should have been together. Life with her mother was chaotic. Amanda knew deep down she needed to live with...

Cat was 14 when years of volatility in her home finally came to a head — not because her parents chose it, but because her school finally made it real. The staff had been watching Cat, and they were seeing behaviors concerning enough to reach out to her mother. That call was the catalyst. Her mom got out. And Cat's own memory is that her mom had been trying, for as long as Cat could remember, to f...

James was three when his parents divorced. In an arrangement that flipped custody conventions of the time, his dad was awarded primary custody — because between his father and his grandparents, that side of the family offered the more stable home. His mom got 35 days a year. All of it was difficult, but Dad was the anchor. James walks us through what he calls the "hostage exchange" — the emotional...

Heather was an only child whose parents divorced when she was very young — too young to remember the before, with no real memories until the age of awareness, when she began to realize she lived differently from her friends. What sets her story apart on In Between Them is what came next: she successfully navigated a 2-2-3 schedule for her entire childhood. Why it worked is the part most adult chil...

Kelly was 14 when her parents' divorce arrived out of nowhere. The oldest of five — a mix of biological and adopted siblings — she watched the family split down a line that would shape the next decade: Dad took the older girls, Mom took the younger children. Both parents had new partners almost immediately, and Dad moved Kelly and her sister four hours away from everything they had known. What fol...

Ashlynn's parents were never married. She grew up full-time with her mom — one of four kids by four different dads, in a household supported by welfare and church. Her dad was in her life, but shockingly not on her birth certificate and not until she was two. Her entire childhood was built on the foundation of two people who had never been together and never got along. Both parents spoke badly abo...

Becca's earliest memories aren't of her parents fighting — they're of a quieter kind of disconnect, and of hiding, every so often, for reasons she couldn't name at the time. Her parents divorced when she was around three. In an unusual twist, her mom initially kept the family home, then later moved out and her dad moved back in. The same-neighborhood logistics made the back-and-forth easier — but...

Tara grew up in Texas, one of many siblings, inside a relationship that broke and rebuilt itself again and again. Her parents split and got back together several times — a cycle marked by volatile fights and an underlying fear her mother carried, even when Tara, as a kid, didn't fully feel or understand it. What she did experience, several times, was the middle-of-the-night pack-up. The quick gath...

Mark was under two years old when his parents divorced — too young to remember the before, but old enough to spend the rest of his childhood inside the after. In this episode, Mark walks us through one of the most unconventional family arrangements we've featured on the show: a split where his dad first took the two younger siblings and his mom took the two older ones — and then, on what Mark call...

In this expert episode, we sit down with Carol Barkes — America's leading neuroscience-based conflict expert, TEDx speaker, mediator, and consultant — to talk about something every divorcing parent or any professional working with divorce parents needs to understand: what is actually happening inside our brains in the middle of a conflict, and why do well-intended parents make so many mistakes? Ca...