Episode Details

Kristen Darcy handed her kids composition notebooks and started writing to them. No requirement to write back. Some of the entries are hard to read now, and years later her adult son called from Los Angeles after his car was broken into, upset about losing those notebooks and the cards she had tucked inside them.

Kristen is a coach who works with people moving through traumatic change, much of it divorce and much of it high conflict, and she and Lisa recorded this around Mother's Day. Their starting point is that holidays built to celebrate a parent land badly on parents in a custody fight, and that the pressure comes from every direction at once, including from inside.

Kristen's frame is entitlement, used the way almost nobody uses it in this community. Not the ex's sense of entitlement, but the belief that you are owed good things: rest, help, affection, space to take up. She describes a client who said out loud that she could not believe she was entitled to anything, and works from there into what you can actually control, which she puts at three things: how you think, how you speak, and how you act. The practical version is a pause and two questions. What am I feeling. What do I need.

The second half is about grounding before something hard. Kristen describes using the shower deliberately, letting the water carry the day off, and carrying an object into the courtroom that makes her feel protected. Lisa wears her late aunt's vintage boots to every hearing for the same reason. They talk about gratitude as a daily practice instead of a mood, about the sticky-note habit of writing down a fear and scheduling time to read it back, and about Kristen's rule of twenty minutes to fall apart followed by one action step, which her adult son now uses on her. Kristen also tells the story of the young woman crying alone on a courthouse bench, and why she would not walk past her.

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

🎓 What you'll learn

• Why Mother's Day and Father's Day land hard in a custody case, and how to opt out
• The two questions to ask when you are triggered: what am I feeling, what do I need
• A re-entry ritual for the moment your kids come back from the other house
• The back-and-forth journal: how to build a written record of connection with your child
• Gratitude as a daily practice rather than a mood you wait to feel
• How to ground yourself before a hearing, and what to carry into the courtroom with you
• The sticky-note habit: write the fear down, then schedule time to read it back
• Twenty minutes to fall apart, then one action step

⏱️ Chapters
0:00 Intro
1:00 Mother's Day pressure, and why it lands hard in a high-conflict case
5:00 Entitlement, the good kind: believing you are owed good things
8:00 What you can control: how you think, how you speak, how you act
10:00 What am I feeling, what do I need, and how to ask for it
13:00 Opting out of the day, and the guilt that follows
15:00 The re-entry ritual, and the journal you keep with your kids
22:00 Gratitude as a daily practice rather than a mood
24:00 Grounding before court: the shower, the talisman, borrowed strength
31:00 The woman crying alone on the courthouse bench
35:00 Being entitled to be cherished, and trusting yourself again
42:00 Twenty minutes to fall apart, then an action step

Keep going 💜
Book a free 30-minute discovery call and we'll help you map your next steps: https://beentheregotout.com/call
📘 Been There Got Out: Toxic Relationships, High-Conflict Divorce, and How to Stay Sane Under Insane Circumstances — https://www.amazon.com/dp/194627495X
📘 Been There Got Out: When Your Ex Turns the Kids Against You (our parental-alienation book) — https://www.amazon.com/dp/196767418