The first truth Meredith Beardmore learned in divorce was deceptively simple: she wasn’t “crazy”—she was intuitive. In today’s conversation, Meredith—a therapist, author, and creator of the YouTube channel Men With Mare, where she offers therapeutic reactions to lyric-driven songs—walks us through the moment her body knew what her brain was not yet allowed to say out loud. The arguments that looked small from the outside (like whether her son should get ear tubes) were flares on the horizon. The real fire, she later discovered, was fueled by hidden drug use, financial fallout, and betrayal. That’s when the second truth arrived: when a partner becomes an adversary, protecting your child means protecting your own knowing.

Meredith tells the story without varnish. She moved from New York City back to Ohio for family support, charged therapy to credit cards, and watched the numbers climb while her shame tried to keep pace. She names aloud what so many listeners whisper to themselves: freedom is expensive. Debt stacks, timelines stretch, and at every turn there’s unsolicited commentary from the sidelines—neighbors praising “bike rides,” strangers doubting emotional abuse because it leaves no bruise. But fast doesn’t equal free, and every hard choice became, in her words, “a down payment toward my peace.”

And then the third truth: grace. Grace for the version of you that didn’t have all the information, grace for the professional who didn’t predict the plot twist, grace for the parent who is doing it all—because she was doing it all even before she left. Meredith’s memoir, The Plan B Chronicles: Divorce Defines Liberation, braids survival writing with therapeutic tools and pop-culture echoes to offer clarity without cliché. Listeners will leave with two grounding shifts: trust your intuition even without “proof,” and treat every practical step—therapy, safety planning, strategic boundaries—as an investment in future you. It will get better. You are stronger than you know.

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