Episode Details

In mediation, a parent is asked what custody schedule they want. Having spent two years describing in detail what the other side wants, they have no answer. Tess Abalos would say that is not indecision. It is what happens when your intentions and your values have come apart, and a conflicted mind never decides.

Tess Abalos is a holistic health coach and licensed massage therapist based in Stamford, Connecticut, where she has run her own practice for around two decades. She works with clients on both the physical and the energetic side of health, and much of what she teaches sits outside the treatment room: nutrition, environment, and the mindset work she credits for her own career and her own life after divorce. She is also a friend of Lisa's in real life, and the person who came up with "from puddle to ninja" over breakfast one morning, which Been There Got Out has used ever since.

Tess lays out the sequence she uses. Start with beliefs and values, the ones that were yours before any of this, and check whether your intentions are actually aligned with them. Then begin with the end in mind, and let yourself name the outcome you want without judging whether it sounds achievable. Then look for the result both households can live with, which she frames as the thing that lets everyone move on rather than a concession. Clarity follows from that, certainty follows clarity, and action follows certainty.

Lisa connects it to the preparation she does with clients before mediation, writing down the must-haves, the can-live-withs and the absolutes rather than handing those decisions to a third party. The two of them also talk about what a steady diet of family court horror stories does to a person's sense of what is possible, why staying steady gives your kids someone to model, what to do with a sense of injustice that will not let you sleep, and why Tess prefers the word confidence to the word hope. Both share how they wrote down what they wanted in a partner years after their marriages ended, and what happened next.

As always, this is strategic education, not legal or mental-health advice for your specific situation.

🎓 What you'll learn

• Why coercive control leaves people unable to decide even small things, and where clarity starts
• How to check whether your intentions actually line up with your own beliefs and values
• Begin with the end in mind: naming the outcome you want before you sit down to negotiate
• What to write down before mediation: your must-haves, your can-live-withs, your absolutes
• What a steady diet of family court horror content does to your sense of what is possible
• Why anger spends the energy you need for the case, and what looking for a workable outcome buys you
• Why one steady parent still gives kids someone to model when the other parent won't be one
• Confidence instead of hope, and why negotiating from desperation invites moving goalposts

⏱️ Chapters
0:00 Intro
1:00 The story behind "from puddle to ninja," and Tess's practice
6:00 Where clarity starts: beliefs, values, and intention
9:00 Begin with the end in mind, and why writing it down matters
11:00 Prepping for mediation: what you want, and what you won't budge on
13:00 What you focus on, and the family court content you consume
17:00 Looking for the win-win, and what anger costs you
19:00 Being the steady parent your kids can look to
21:00 Injustice, and the question Tess asks instead
23:00 Confidence over hope, and why desperation loses a negotiation
31:00 The sequence: beliefs, end in mind, clarity, certainty, action

Keep going 💜
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📘 Been There Got Out: Toxic Relationships, High-Conflict Divorce, and How to Stay Sane Under Insane Circumstances —