Pulling Threads, Weaving Authenticity

You've always been the one who holds it all together. So why does this feel like coming apart? If you're in the unraveling of a divorce or the end of a long relationship, this episode is for you.

Join Mindful Untangling, my community for women in the unraveling: 🧵 https://www.skool.com/mindfuluntangling

Walk through it with a guide: https://theloomlife.com

🌿 In this solo episode of Pulling Threads: Weaving Authenticity, I'm not teaching a framework. I'm describing a woman I've sat with, walked alongside, and known through many names and many stories. She's competent. She's capable. She has built a life and kept everything moving. And now a relationship that was woven into the fabric of who she is is coming apart. Maybe she's still deciding. Maybe she's in the middle of the divorce. Maybe the papers are signed and she's wondering why she doesn't feel free yet. We walk through the thoughts she doesn't always say out loud: • "I should be handling this better." • "I don't even know who I am outside of this." • "I don't want to just survive this." • "Is that even allowed?" We name her fears: making settlement and co-parenting decisions from grief, anger, or fear; becoming permanently harder and more guarded; being surrounded by people who love her but don't know this terrain. And we name what she hopes: that the breaking open is actually a becoming, and that real peace, the kind that lives in your body and not the Instagram version, is possible on the other side.

If you hear yourself in this, you're exactly where you're supposed to be. CHAPTERS ⏱

00:00 Welcome: a different kind of episode 00:45 The woman in the unraveling

01:20 Deciding, divorcing, or newly on the other side

02:35 "I should be handling this better" 03:05 "I don't even know who I am outside of this"

03:55 "I don't want to just survive this"

04:40 Afraid of deciding from grief, anger, and fear

05:25 When the people who love you don't understand 06:05 Will she find her way back to herself?

06:25 What she hopes: the unraveling as a becoming

07:40 Who The LooM Life was built for

08:25 Where to find support

ABOUT LESLIE Leslie Mathews, JD, MSW, is the founder of The LooM Life and a guide for women moving through divorce, breakups, and the end of long-term partnerships. A former attorney who has walked through her own divorce, she weaves mind, body, and soul into a holistic, trauma-informed path toward peace, freedom, and a life that feels genuinely yours.

CONNECT 🔗 Website: https://theloomlife.com

Mindful Untangling on Skool: https://www.skool.com/mindfuluntangling

Instagram: @the.loom.life

TikTok: @leslieellenmathews

Know a woman who's said "I'm fine" a few too many times lately? Send her this episode. She might need to 💛 hear that someone sees her. This podcast is for educational purposes only and is not therapy or a substitute for professional mental health care. #DivorceRecovery #LifeAfterDivorce #WomenInTransition #PullingThreads #TheLoomLife

Can't sleep during divorce? Exhausted after 8 hours, wired at 3 AM, or frozen in front of the paperwork? That's not weakness. It's your nervous system, and this episode shows you how to work with it.

Start here → https://theloomlife.com

If you're in the middle of a divorce, separation, or any major life upheaval, your body is probably doing things that feel alarming or just bizarre. In this solo episode of Pulling Threads, therapist and guide Leslie Mathews (JD, MSW) explains what's actually happening inside you, in plain, practical language.

You'll learn why your nervous system reads extended uncertainty as a threat, and how that shows up as fight or flight (the adrenaline, the bracing, the racing mind at night) or as freeze (the shutdown that stops you from making the call or filling out the form). You'll hear why none of this means you're broken, lazy, or failing. And you'll learn to treat your body as a source of information rather than a problem to manage.

Leslie closes with a simple three-step grounding practice she calls "coming back to now" that you can use anywhere, any time your body is activated.

In this episode:

• Why divorce stress feels so physical

• Fight, flight, and freeze during a life transition

• Why you're exhausted, can't sleep, or can't move forward

• What your body may be trying to tell you

• A 3-step grounding practice for anxiety and overwhelm

CHAPTERS

00:00 What divorce does to your body

00:30 Exhausted, wired at 3 AM, or frozen?

01:45 There is nothing wrong with you

02:10 Your nervous system's one job

03:05 Fight or flight: running on adrenaline

04:05 Why you can't sleep, and the freeze response

05:05 Your body is communicating with you

06:05 "What is this trying to tell me?"

07:05 The reframe: your nervous system is your ally

07:35 The "coming back to now" practice

09:00 Befriend your nervous system

09:45 If this found you at the right moment

WANT MORE SUPPORT?

→ Work with Leslie: https://theloomlife.com

→ Mending or Moving On, a private podcast course with meditations and somatic practices ($27): [MENDING OR MOVING ON LINK]

→ Mindful Untangling, a members' community for women going through divorce, with a holiday support chat: [MINDFUL UNTANGLING LINK]

If this episode found you at the right moment, share it with someone who might need it tonight.

Subscribe to Pulling Threads for honest conversations about divorce, healing, and coming home to yourself.

FOLLOW

Instagram: @the.loom.life

TikTok: @leslieellenmathews

This episode is for education and support. It is not therapy or medical advice. If you are in crisis in the U.S., call or text 988 (Suicide & Crisis Lifeline).

Keywords: divorce anxiety, can't sleep during divorce, nervous system and divorce, fight flight freeze, divorce stress symptoms, how to get through divorce emotionally, grounding exercise for anxiety, healing after divorce

#DivorceRecovery #NervousSystemRegulation #DivorceSupport #DivorceAnxiety #PullingThreads

She had three little boys, no career to go back to, and family warning her she'd earn $30,000 a year. Kris

Mills left anyway — and built a life she couldn't have imagined from inside that marriage.

▶ Deciding whether to stay or go? Start here: https://theloomlife.com/op/mending-or-moving-on

▶ Connect with Kris: https://www.instagram.com/krisbmills

On this episode of Pulling Threads, Leslie Mathews sits down with her friend Kris Mills — former first-grade teacher, stay-at-home mom of three boys, and self-described “accidental six-figure earner” — to talk about starting over after divorce when a marriage looked perfect from the outside and felt lonely on

the inside.

Kris shares how she weighed her family's very real fears against a quiet certainty that she needed more, and why scary and right can be true at the same time. In the same season her ex moved out, she started

posting recipes to about 700 Instagram followers. That small, uncertain step became her full-time work.

In this conversation:

• Trusting yourself when the people who love you are scared for you

• The “who does she think she is?” voice — and Kris's reframe: if not me, then who?

• Expanders: borrowing hope from women a few steps ahead of you

• Jealousy as a compass that points to what you want

• Boundaries, losing friends after divorce, and why it's not personal

• What a personal brand really is, why you don't have to niche down, and how to sell by serving

• Why follower counts are a vanity metric — and what actually builds trust

Whether you're deciding to leave, rebuilding your identity after divorce, or wondering if you could build

something of your own, this episode is a reminder that you don't need certainty to take the next step.

CHAPTERS

00:00 Welcome Kris Mills

01:45 Stay-at-home mom of three little boys

02:45 Leaving a marriage that looked perfect

06:45 Scary and right at the same time

09:45 “What will I do for money?”

11:15 The accidental career that started with recipes

14:45 The divorce glow-up is more than looks

17:15 Therapy, panic attacks & asking for help

19:15 Showing up online in your hometown

21:45 If not me, then who?

22:45 Expanders: borrowing hope

27:45 Jealousy as a compass

32:15 Strangers clap, people who know you watch

33:45 Boundaries & “it's not personal”

37:15 Losing friends after divorce

39:45 What a personal brand really is

43:15 Why selling yourself feels so hard

45:45 You're not selling, you're serving

51:00 Trusting your own way of doing business

53:00 You don't have to niche down

57:45 Followers are a vanity metric

01:02:00 Podcasting as a trust-building asset

01:03:45 Inside Kris's membership

01:07:15 Content hiding in everyday moments

01:10:45 Where to find Kris

Pulling Threads · Kris Mills · YouTube Package · 3

RESOURCES & LINKS

Mending or Moving On — for women who haven't decided yet: https://theloomlife.com/op/mending-or-

moving-on

THROUGH — Leslie's divorce program: https://theloomlife.com/sp/through-divorce-program

Mindful Untangling community: https://theloomlife.com/membership

Start your own podcast with Leslie (Press Record): https://leslieellenmathews.com/sp/podcast-course

Kris's personal-brand membership: [LINK — get from Kris]

Kris on Instagram: @krisbmills

ABOUT YOUR HOST

Leslie Mathews, JD, MSW, is a former attorney turned therapist and guide for women moving through

divorce and life's biggest transitions. Learn more at https://theloomlife.com

Instagram: @the.loom.life | TikTok: @leslieellenmathews

If this conversation helped, subscribe and send it to a friend standing at her own threshold.

This podcast is for educational purposes and is not a substitute for therapy or professional advice.

Keywords: how to start over after divorce, rebuilding identity after divorce, moving on after divorce at 40,

coping with divorce loneliness, divorce recovery podcast, personal growth podcast for women over 40,

building a personal brand

#DivorceRecovery #StartingOver #PersonalBrand #WomenInBusiness #PullingThreads

What if the first call you made when you were thinking about divorce wasn't to a lawyer? Olivia Dreizen Howell, co-founder and CEO of Fresh Starts Registry, joins Leslie Mathews to talk about what people actually need when life comes apart, and why so few of us know how to ask for it.

🧵 Free 15-minute resource chat with Olivia: https://calendly.com/oliviafreshstarts/divorce-resource-consults-

free

🧵 Not sure yet whether to stay or go? Mending or Moving On: https://theloomlife.com/op/mending-or-moving-

on

🧵 Going through divorce now? THROUGH with Leslie: https://theloomlife.com/sp/through-divorce-program

Olivia grew up in a family where divorce was "the water we swam in," and she still felt isolated and scared when

her own marriage ended in 2019. So she and her sister Jenny built the world's first divorce registry. Today Fresh

Starts is a network of about 180 vetted divorce professionals, with free workshops, free e-books, a magazine

and several podcasts, all free for the people going through it.

In this episode:

• Why the first stop on the divorce train isn't a "shark" lawyer

• The hidden barriers to getting help: unsafe phones and inboxes, unclear pricing, and not knowing what you

need

• How a stay-at-home parent can start building a nest egg

• How to choose a divorce coach or strategist without getting the ick

• Building your hype team: coach, CDFA, real estate and mortgage pros, therapist, healer

• What divorce professionals miss about what's happening inside the home

CHAPTERS

00:00 Welcome: who shows up when life falls apart?

01:50 Meet Olivia Howell & Fresh Starts Registry

05:20 "Divorce was the water we swam in"

07:20 Two sisters, two very different fresh starts

10:40 Bootstrapping a company with heart

11:50 Free 15-minute calls & why it's not just for divorce

14:50 The real barriers to getting help

20:40 How to reach out safely

22:20 Pricing, the ick & stay-at-home parents

25:10 Why your first stop isn't a lawyer

31:00 How Fresh Starts keeps support free

33:20 Shame-free, inclusive & naming emotional abuse

36:20 Why free support matters so much

38:30 No upsell, no obligation

42:40 What divorce professionals miss

45:20 What's really happening inside the home

50:30 Building your hype team: who's in the network

53:00 Where to find Olivia

CONNECT WITH OLIVIA & FRESH STARTS

Fresh Starts Registry: https://www.freshstartsregistry.com

Free e-book, How to Get Divorced as a Stay-at-Home Parent: https://www.freshstartsregistry.com/books-

inventory/how-to-get-divorced-as-a-stay-at-home-parent

Free workshops & events: https://www.freshstartsregistry.com/public-events-1

Divorce Guide Magazine: https://www.freshstartsregistry.com/divorceguidemagazine

A Fresh Story podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/a-fresh-story/id1652881132

Newsletter: https://freshstartsregistry.substack.com

Instagram: @freshstartsregistry | @oliviahowell

Threads: @oliviahowell

Divorce professionals, join the network: https://www.freshstartsregistry.com/join-us

CONNECT WITH LESLIE

https://theloomlife.com

Instagram: @the.loom.life

TikTok: @leslieellenmathews

This conversation is for education and support. It isn't legal, financial or therapeutic advice. If you're in danger, call 911. The National Domestic Violence Hotline is 1-800-799-7233, or text START to 88788.

#DivorceSupport #FreshStart #DivorceRecovery #SingleMom #PullingThreads

Divorce coach or therapist? If neither feels quite right, there's a reason, and it isn't you. Here's why I call

myself a guide.

▶ Work with Leslie: https://theloomlife.com

▶ Still deciding whether to stay or go? Start with Mending or Moving On:

https://theloomlife.com/op/mending-or-moving-on

When a marriage or long-term partnership ends, therapy can feel like it's for something broken.

Coaching can feel too "let's make a plan" while the ground is still shifting under your feet. So capable, high-functioning women white-knuckle it alone, or settle for support that's close but not quite right, and

wonder why something essential still feels missing.

In this solo episode of Pulling Threads, Leslie Mathews (trauma-informed therapist, former attorney, and

a woman who has walked through her own divorce) names the difference between coaching, therapy,

and guidance. She explains why divorce isn't a problem to be solved. It's a passage to be moved

through, and passages need guides.

In this episode:

• Divorce coaching vs. therapy: what each one does well, and where each one falls short

• Why you're not stuck between options. You're in fog.

• What a guide actually does (the mountain-in-the-fog metaphor)

• The four dimensions Leslie holds with every woman: emotional, nervous system, practical/legal, and

transformational

• Why cortisol, hypervigilance, and numbness are your body trying to keep you safe

• Why highly capable women often find divorce the hardest thing they can't "figure out"

• The LooM Life: unraveling as the beginning of a new weaving

CHAPTERS

00:00 Why I call myself a guide

01:00 When therapy and coaching don't quite fit

02:25 What was missing in my own divorce

03:10 What a coach does, and when you can't do coaching

04:20 What a therapist does

05:05 What a guide does: the mountain in the fog

06:45 The four dimensions I hold with every woman

09:00 Unraveling as the beginning of a new weaving

09:20 Who this work is for

10:10 A passage, not a problem to solve

11:20 How to work with me

WHEREVER YOU ARE IN THE PASSAGE

→ Deciding whether to stay or go: Mending or Moving On https://theloomlife.com/op/mending-or-

moving-on

→ In the thick of divorce: THROUGH https://theloomlife.com/sp/through-divorce-program

→ On the other side and ready to land: Mindful Untangling community

https://theloomlife.com/membership

→ Work with Leslie as your guide: https://theloomlife.com

If this episode landed for you, share it with a woman in your world who's in the fog right now. It might be

what gives her the words for what she needs.

CONNECT

Instagram: @the.loom.life

TikTok: @leslieellenmathews

Website: https://theloomlife.com

Pulling Threads: Weaving Authenticity is a podcast for women about the hidden patterns and truths ofmajor life transitions: divorce, the end of long-term partnerships, identity, and becoming who you are on

the other side. Not the sanitized version. The real one.

Guidance and coaching through The LooM Life are not therapy or legal advice. For therapy with Leslie

(Florida residents), visit https://loomlifetherapy.com.

#DivorceRecovery #DivorceSupport #LifeAfterDivorce #WomenInTransition #PullingThreads

You drove home replaying a comment that was “just a joke.” Someone close to you gets a little sharper every time

your life gets better — and you’re starting to wonder if you’re the problem.

You’re not. Here’s what’s actually happening, and what to do about it without blowing up the relationship.

→ Work with me: https://theloomlife.com/coaching

This episode is about the person who needs you to stay small. It is not a diagnosis, and Leslie is direct about why: a label becomes a place to hide, and you end up spending all your energy proving what they are and none of it on what you need to do. So instead, patterns — five of them. Your joy reads as a threat. They correct you, always wrapped in “I’m just being honest.” They devalue the person who makes you happy. They invite you back into who you used to be, which isn’t nostalgia, it’s recruitment. And the one that tells you everything: how you feel after you leave.

Then the harder question — why your happiness bothers them at all. Their comments aren’t a map of your flaws.

They’re a map of their discomfort. Every relationship has unspoken rules and a role for each person, and when you heal, you stop playing your part. Harriet Lerner named the response decades ago: change-back reactions. Nobody says “change back.” They say “you’ve changed,” like it’s a crime.

This matters more than venting. Decades of research on couples and their social circles — including a 16-year study

of married couples — found that the negative side of friendship, disapproval and interference, predicted divorce

more strongly than the supportive side protected against it. Someone chipping away at the person you love is

applying pressure, and pressure works.

Leslie shares that she is living a version of this right now, from both sides: the person who changed and heard

“you’ve changed,” and the partner watching someone she loves do brave, hard work while others pull at the

threads of it. What she’s had to learn — you can’t out-kind someone’s envy.

The last third is practical: trust the aftertaste, take your joy to people who can hold it, stop defending what they

criticize, right-size the relationship instead of ending it, what to do when it’s your partner’s friend, and how to

build a circle that roots for you.

For anyone who has been told they’ve changed like it was an accusation.

CHAPTERS

00:00 The person who gets meaner when you’re happy

01:20 Five patterns (and why I won’t diagnose them)

04:10 Why your happiness threatens them

06:55 What the research says — and my own version of this

08:20 Why empathic people keep them close

10:00 Healing uphill: when your circle punishes progress

11:30 Six things you can actually do

14:15 Your happiness is not a provocation

MORE

Ongoing support for women: https://theloomlife.com/membership

Instagram: @the.loom.life

This channel is educational content, not therapy. Watching does not create a clinician-client relationship. Therapy

clients are seen in Florida only, through loomlifetherapy.com.

You keep waiting to feel like yourself again before you start doing the things a person like you would do.That is the wrong order, and it is why so many people try to come home to themselves,

fail, and decide something is wrong with them. Nothing is wrong with you. You were given the wrong instructions.

→ Work with me, one on one: https://theloomlife.com/coaching (open to men and women)

Finding yourself is the wrong verb. Finding implies she is somewhere — misplaced, behind something — and that enough journaling or enough quiet will locate her. That is not how a self works. Leaving is an event; a self is a practice. You act your way back.

This episode walks the four wrong turns almost everyone takes on the way. Blowing up your life, which feels decisive and takes you with you. Getting a hobby, which treats a missing self as a scheduling problem. Finding a new person, a new group, a new community — the one that looks exactly like recovery and is the single most common way

people lose themselves twice. And waiting, which does not look like anything at all and is the most common of the four.

Then the thing that actually works. There is a principle at the heart of one of the best-studied treatments for depression: action comes before motivation. Not after. You do the thing — small, scheduled, often before you want to — and the feeling follows. Applied to a lost self, that means you stop making decisions and start running experiments, because a decision says "this is who I am now" and that pressure is

exactly what keeps people frozen.

Leslie gives a two-question test to run on anything you try: did I lose track of time, and if the person in my life disappeared tomorrow would I still want this? She works it through with golf, which she took up two years ago and which happens to be her partner's sport — and the honest question she kept asking herself about whether it was hers or his. Plus why going back to who you were at twenty-five usually disappoints,

what self-expansion research suggests instead, the four quiet signs it is working (including irritation, which everyone misreads), and the way the people around you will react when you start taking something back.

Not finding. Acting. One experiment this week, one direction, two questions afterward.

CHAPTERS

00:00 Finding yourself is the wrong verb

01:40 The four wrong turns

05:25 Action comes before motivation — and running experiments instead

08:40 The two-question test, and what golf taught me

11:55 Go new, not back: self-expansion instead of nostalgia

14:15 Four quiet signs it is working

17:00 How the people around you react, and your one experiment

THE SERIES

This is part of The Three Anchors. Start with the first episode: The You, the Me, and

the We — [URL PENDING, see A9]

MORE SUPPORT

Going through a divorce, or rebuilding after one — THROUGH:

https://theloomlife.com/sp/through-divorce-program

Ongoing support and community — Mindful Untangling Membership:

https://theloomlife.com/membership

Instagram: @the.loom.life · @loom.life.therapy

This channel is educational content and is not therapy. Watching does not create a clinician-client relationship. Leslie is a licensed therapist in Florida only; Florida residents seeking therapy can find that at loomlifetherapy.com. Everyone else, the coaching link above is the door.

You can name every birthday, every grade, every photo — and still not recognize the woman in them.

This is the episode about the decade so many of us lose, and how to tell the difference between sacrificing for your

children and disappearing into them.

Work with Leslie → https://theloomlife.com/coaching

Leslie spent her thirties running four other people’s lives with the same intensity she had brought to a legal career.

From the outside it looked like a woman doing a great job — the school events, the photographs, the new creative

hobby everyone praised. From the inside there was no one left in there. She goes back into that decade honestly here,

including the part of the story that usually gets left out: she was not a martyr. Stepping away from the law was partly

devotion and partly escape, from a profession that never fit her, and the shame of that second half is what keeps most

women from looking at any of it.

She walks through the three anchors every woman needs — a place to go, a thing to do, something that is hers alone

— and shows how ordinary, devoted motherhood quietly reassigns all three. Her place became their places. Her thing

to do became their schedules. Even photography, the one thing she had fallen in love with, turned into a service she

provided to a school. It still looked like an anchor. It had stopped being one.

Then there is the moment it broke open. A retreat in Costa Rica, a circle of strangers, a blank sheet of paper, and a

woman who could have written out her children’s schedule from memory but could not write one sentence about who

she was.

The back half is the practical part. What psychologist Dana Crowley Jack called self-silencing, and what the research

does and does not say about what it costs. The clearest test Leslie has found between sacrifice and disappearance —

sacrifice is temporary, specific, and chosen, and you can still name what you gave up. And three questions, about

ninety seconds in total, that show you which anchor went first. The one you gave away first is usually the one that

leads you back.

If you are in the thick of it with young children, take this as a warning. If your house has gone quiet, take it as a door.

Either way, you do not have to wait for them to leave home to start.

CHAPTERS

0:00 The woman in the photographs I don’t recognize

2:30 The three anchors every woman needs — and where they go

5:30 Not a martyr: when motherhood is also an exit

8:45 Costa Rica, a blank page, and the moment I saw it

11:30 Self-silencing: why devoted, capable women disappear

14:00 Three questions — which one did you give away first?

18:30 Photography, travel, and the way back at 50

MENTIONED

The Three Anchors episode — [URL pending, see flags]

Dana Crowley Jack, Silencing the Self

The Loom Life · Pulling Threads, Weaving Authenticity · Publishing package

MORE FROM THE LOOM LIFE

Mindful Untangling Membership — ongoing support for the long haul: https://theloomlife.com/membership

Instagram: @the.loom.life

Florida therapy clients only: @loom.life.therapy · loomlifetherapy.com

This channel is educational and is not therapy. Watching or commenting does not create a clinician-client relationship.

Leslie Mathews, JD, MSW, provides therapy only to clients located in Florida, and only through loomlifetherapy.com.

You didn't lose yourself all at once. You said yes to one thing that wasn't yours, and

then another, and then another.

Shoutout to James Sexton, NYCDivorceLawyer on IG for the inspiration for today's episode!

This is the episode about how that happens — and how you come back.

→ Work with me, one on one: https://theloomlife.com/coaching (open to men and women)

If you retired tomorrow, or your kids moved out tomorrow, or your relationship ended,

would you still know who you are? Not what you do. Not who you take care of. Leslie

opens with a question she couldn't stop thinking about after hearing it secondhand: do

you have a place to go, a thing to do, and something to be passionate about? Lose

those three and you lose your inner compass. And once your sense of self goes blurry,

the relationship goes blurry too — because every relationship is the you, the me, and

the we. If the me falls apart, there is nothing left to hold the we together.

This one is personal. Leslie tells the story of the years she stayed home with her two

youngest, when her place to go became their school, her thing to do became their

schedule, and her passion became photographing their lives. She talks about not

recognizing the woman in her own photographs from that decade, and about the women's

retreat in Costa Rica where she was asked to write something about herself and

couldn't think of anything to put down. Then she tells a harder, more recent story:

the stretch after her divorce when an old abandonment wound woke up inside her

relationship with her partner Frank, and she lost months to worrying — along with her

friends, her family, and the attention her new business needed. What Frank told her

when she finally came back to her own life is the turn the whole episode rests on.

Along the way: what the research says happens to your sense of self after a

relationship ends, why people in relationships tend to have fewer close friends than

single people, self-silencing and what it appears to cost the body, the friendship

numbers that make retirement so much harder on men than anyone expects, and why family

systems therapy holds that a real "us" needs two whole people in it — not two halves

looking for completion.

For women in the middle of motherhood, marriage, an empty nest or a divorce. And for

the men in their lives, who are living the same story from the other side.

CHAPTERS

00:00 Would you know who you are?

03:00 Why we lose ourselves — and why it isn't weakness

06:15 The three anchors: a place, a thing, a passion

07:50 What the research says about a blurry sense of self

10:00 When I disappeared into motherhood

14:10 Self-silencing, and what it costs the body

15:40 For the men: when work is all three anchors

18:00 Retiring into nothing

19:20 My abandonment wound, and what Frank said

22:20 Two whole people: differentiation and the real "us"

24:40 Why good, loving people hand themselves over

26:30 Coming back

MORE SUPPORT

Going through a divorce, or rebuilding after one — THROUGH:

https://theloomlife.com/sp/through-divorce-program

Ongoing support and community — Mindful Untangling Membership:

https://theloomlife.com/membership

Instagram: @the.loom.life · @loom.life.therapy

This channel is educational content and is not therapy. Watching does not create a

clinician-client relationship. Leslie is a licensed therapist in Florida only; Florida residents seeking therapy can find that at loomlifetherapy.com. If you are looking for coaching, the link above is the door.

Divorce advice for women from an attorney who has spent 20 years representing women only. Heather Quick, founder and CEO of Florida Women's Law Group, joins Leslie to share what two decades of women's stories have taught her about courage, boundaries, and becoming, and the hard truths about divorce that no one prepares you for.

Heather built a Jacksonville family law firm where women represent women, and in this conversation she pulls back the curtain on the parts of divorce that blindside so many of us: why the financial affidavit feels impossible (and why accuracy is your protection), what child support actually covers, and what it never will, why the house you're fighting for may be the thing draining you, and why the first six months are for feeling, not deciding. She and Leslie also get honest about mediation, preparation, and the choice at the center of it all: will you be the victim of this divorce, or the heroine of it?

Whether you're contemplating divorce, in the middle of it, or rebuilding after, this episode is a masterclass in walking through one of life's hardest seasons with clarity, preparation, and self-trust. Because your story doesn't end when a relationship does, sometimes that's exactly where it begins.

IN THIS EPISODE:

00:00 Welcome & meet Heather Quick

02:00 From prosecutor to family law

04:30 Why a law firm for women only

08:00 The compassion gap in family law

09:30 Your lawyer is not your therapist

11:00 Starting with YOUR goals, not their assumptions

14:30 How prepared clients win mediations

19:00 The six-month rule: feel first, decide later

20:00 50/50 time-sharing, the kids & the house

25:00 The financial affidavit: overwhelm to armor

30:30 Footnotes, receipts & being questioned in court

33:00 What child support actually covers

36:30 Extracurriculars, medical costs & future expenses

42:00 Strategy over survival mode

44:30 Victim or heroine: the choice is yours

47:30 The fears that come true, and the ones that don't

52:30 Grief, goodbye ceremonies & closure

54:30 Yoga, breath & your nervous system

57:30 Real women's stories: life after divorce

01:02:30 Where to find Heather

CONNECT WITH HEATHER QUICK:

Firm Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/4womenlaw/

Podcast Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/womenwinningdivorce_/

Heather's Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/heatherquick_/

Women Winning Divorce Podcast: https://women-winning divorce.captivate.fm

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@FloridaWomensLawGroup

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/heatherbquick/

READY FOR SUPPORT?

If you're a woman navigating divorce and you're done doing it alone, THROUGH is my 8- week divorce coaching program built to help you move from surviving to becoming: https://theloomlife.com/throughdivorceprogram

CONNECT WITH LESLIE:

Website: https://theloomlife.com

Therapy (Florida): https://loomlifetherapy.com

Personal: https://leslieellenmathews.com

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/the.loom.life

TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@leslieellenmathews

SUPPORT RESOURCES:

Divorce can bring up more than any of us expect. If you're struggling, you don't have to carry it alone, call or text 988 (US) or find free, confidential support worldwide at https://findahelpline.com

#DivorceAdviceForWomen #DivorceRecovery #FamilyLaw #WomenSupportingWomen #PullingThreadsPodcast