If you have been listening to our Working As Intended series, and you have been quietly wondering "if lawyers were never trained in what my children need, and I have to bring all of that myself, do I even need a lawyer at all?" - this episode is the rest of the answer.

Danielle opens with information that she hasn't shared on the podcast before - the fact that when she was dragged into the court system all those years ago, there was not a lot of money for lawyers. Her stepfather (the person who, in any other circumstances, would have been the ally every self-representing parent hopes to have) was a family law specialist for his entire forty-year career, but could not help her because he was living with an illness that was taking him rapidly from the family. 

This episode is what she has learned from being on both sides of the self-representation conversation ever since.

The episode walks honestly through who actually self-represents in Australian family court, and why access to legal representation in this country is distributed by wealth in a way that should be a source of national shame. It names the category error at the heart of the entire current market - that understanding the legal process is not the same as understanding what to seek within it, and that what to seek is not a legal question at all. 

It walks through the four capacities self-representation actually requires - time, emotional, nervous system, and educational - most of which are invisible to the products currently being marketed and sold to people navigating separation and divorce. It names the specific trap of guns blazing self-representation, where the absence of a lawyer's tempering influence becomes exposure rather than freedom. And it lands the strategic middle position that most protective parents actually need to be in: "I have a lawyer, and I know how to use them - because I also have a coach."

This is also the episode where Danielle positions the Post-Separation Parenting Blueprint directly. Not as a legal-navigation product. Rather, as the knowledge, capacity and advocacy layers that answer the questions that no legal-education product can answer - because it is not a legal question. And it is where she owns, clearly and unapologetically, why not being a lawyer is a strength of her work rather than a stumbling block.

The Post-Separation Parenting Blueprint is the structured way through this work - built for protective parents equipping themselves with the substance the legal profession was never required to have. 

AI Danielle is available any time, any hour. 

Both at danielleblackcoaching.com.au

Support: If you are in Australia and need to talk to someone, 1800RESPECT (1800 737 732) is available 24/7. In an emergency, call 000.

Explore the supports offered by Danielle Black Coaching

The Post-Separation Parenting Blueprint™
👉 https://www.danielleblackcoaching.com.au/the-post-separation-parenting-blueprint-1

AI Danielle - Your 24/7 Digital Coach
👉 https://www.danielleblackcoaching.com.au/meet-ai-danielle

1:1 Coaching
👉 https://www.danielleblackcoaching.com.au/1-1-coaching

The music you hear in this outro is 'Calm is Credible' - an original track created exclusively for the Post-Separation Abuse Podcast and Danielle Black Coaching.  You can listen to this song, or download free, by visiting danielleblackcoaching.com.au

About Danielle Black Coaching:

Danielle Black is a respected authority in child-focused post-separation parenting in Australia. With over twenty years’ experience across education, counselling and coaching - alongside her own lived experience navigating a complex separation and family court journey - she supports parents to think strategically, build capacity, and protect their children’s safety and wellbeing within complex legal and relational systems.

Through Danielle Black Coaching, she leads a growing team of specialist coaches and a structured support ecosystem designed to provide professionally held, evidence-informed guidance for parents navigating high-conflict separation and family court processes.

Learn more at danielleblackcoaching.com.au

This podcast is for educational purposes only and not legal advice. Please seek independent legal, medical, financial, or mental health advice for your situation.

If you've been with Danielle across this series, you now know how the family law system in Australia was built, what its practitioners were and were not trained to know, and how to test whether anyone in the post-separation space is genuinely child-focused. 

This final episode of Working As Intended brings the arc to ground. You still need a lawyer. You still have to work with these professionals. You can't opt out of the system entirely. So what do you actually do with everything you now know?

Part 4 answers that question. Specifically: how to use a lawyer for the things they're genuinely expert in, without deferring to them on the questions they were never trained to answer.

The episode names something Danielle has observed and experienced across almost two decades of navigating the system and the post-separation space: many clients of hers who have sought sole parental responsibility - informed, prepared, and willing to hold firm - have been successful. This episode explains why the gap between "my lawyer told me it's very hard to get" and "my clients get it" is not a gap in the law, especially now that the 2024 amendments have actually moved the law in favour of genuinely child-focused reasoning. It is a gap in what the lawyer does not know how to do, and a gap in what the parent brings to the process. Both are closable. One is only closable by you.

Danielle also names the feedback loop that keeps the system stuck - the way lawyers' outcome predictions become self-fulfilling when clients defer to them, and the way individual informed parents holding firm slowly reshape what lawyers tell the next parent who sits across from them. Your case is not just your case. When you hold firm, when you bring the knowledge, when you achieve the outcome the developmental science supports and the lawyer said was hard to get, you become a data point. A small, specific contribution to the evidence base that eventually shifts what lawyers tell the next parent.

The system was not built to see your children. You were. And in a system that has never been required to prioritise what children need, a parent who arrives knowing exactly what their children need, and why, and how to demonstrate it, is a genuinely powerful force.

The Post-Separation Parenting Blueprint is the structured way through this work. Module 17 covers coercive control. Module 19 covers parental alienation. Module 16 is the capacity work. The whole of the Blueprint is built for exactly what this series has been describing - equipping protective parents to bring into the room the knowledge the system never required its practitioners to have. AI Danielle is available any time, any hour. Both at danielleblackcoaching.com.au.

Support: If you are in Australia and need to talk to someone, 1800RESPECT (1800 737 732) is available 24/7. In an emergency, call 000.

Explore the supports offered by Danielle Black Coaching

The Post-Separation Parenting Blueprint™
👉 https://www.danielleblackcoaching.com.au/the-post-separation-parenting-blueprint-1

AI Danielle - Your 24/7 Digital Coach
👉 https://www.danielleblackcoaching.com.au/meet-ai-danielle

1:1 Coaching
👉 https://www.danielleblackcoaching.com.au/1-1-coaching

The music you hear in this outro is 'Calm is Credible' - an original track created exclusively for the Post-Separation Abuse Podcast and Danielle Black Coaching.  You can listen to this song, or download free, by visiting danielleblackcoaching.com.au

About Danielle Black Coaching:

Danielle Black is a respected authority in child-focused post-separation parenting in Australia. With over twenty years’ experience across education, counselling and coaching - alongside her own lived experience navigating a complex separation and family court journey - she supports parents to think strategically, build capacity, and protect their children’s safety and wellbeing within complex legal and relational systems.

Through Danielle Black Coaching, she leads a growing team of specialist coaches and a structured support ecosystem designed to provide professionally held, evidence-informed guidance for parents navigating high-conflict separation and family court processes.

Learn more at danielleblackcoaching.com.au

This podcast is for educational purposes only and not legal advice. Please seek independent legal, medical, financial, or mental health advice for your situation.

"Child-focused." 

Two words that appear on the website of virtually every practitioner in the post-separation space. 

Every lawyer. 

Every mediator. 

Every divorce coach. 

Every family therapist. 

Every family report writer. 

The language is everywhere - and in part 3 of Working As Intended, Danielle walks you through how to tell, in thirty seconds, whether the person using those two words actually has the knowledge they're claiming.

This episode widens the lens beyond the legal profession to the entire industry that has built itself around post-separation parenting. It opens on a family doctor advising a mother with serious safety concerns about her ex's capacity to care for their two-year-old to "give him a chance, how else is he going to learn." From there, the episode walks profession by profession - coaching, mediation, post-separation parenting programs, parenting orders programs, family therapy, the professional development circuit - naming what the credential actually requires and what it does not.

The episode also introduces an argument Danielle hasn't made publicly before: that family report writers are the load-bearing role for the entire family law system's claim to be child-focused. Every other professional in the system who has not been required to study child development has, in effect, outsourced that requirement to the report writer. 

If the report writer doesn't have the knowledge either - and there is no uniform requirement that they do - the system has no foundation under any of its claims about children's best interests. A specific anonymised case example - a play therapist identifying a trauma response, a family report writer reading the same presentation as grief - lands the cost in concrete terms.

The episode closes with the one question to ask every practitioner in this space, the test that takes thirty seconds and tells you almost everything you need to know about whether you are going to trust them with your children's story.

A dedicated standalone episode on family report writers will follow the conclusion of the Working As Intended series.

The Post-Separation Parenting Blueprint is the structured way through this work - built for protective parents bringing the knowledge the system never required its practitioners to have. 

AI Danielle is available any time, any hour. 

Both at danielleblackcoaching.com.au

Support: If you are in Australia and need to talk to someone, 1800RESPECT (1800 737 732) is available 24/7. In an emergency, call 000.

Explore the supports offered by Danielle Black Coaching

The Post-Separation Parenting Blueprint™
👉 https://www.danielleblackcoaching.com.au/the-post-separation-parenting-blueprint-1

AI Danielle - Your 24/7 Digital Coach
👉 https://www.danielleblackcoaching.com.au/meet-ai-danielle

1:1 Coaching
👉 https://www.danielleblackcoaching.com.au/1-1-coaching

The music you hear in this outro is 'Calm is Credible' - an original track created exclusively for the Post-Separation Abuse Podcast and Danielle Black Coaching.  You can listen to this song, or download free, by visiting danielleblackcoaching.com.au

The music you hear in this outro is 'Calm is Credible' - an original track created exclusively for the Post-Separation Abuse Podcast and Danielle Black Coaching.  You can listen to this song, or download free, by visiting danielleblackcoaching.com.au

About Danielle Black Coaching:

Danielle Black is a respected authority in child-focused post-separation parenting in Australia. With over twenty years’ experience across education, counselling and coaching - alongside her own lived experience navigating a complex separation and family court journey - she supports parents to think strategically, build capacity, and protect their children’s safety and wellbeing within complex legal and relational systems.

Through Danielle Black Coaching, she leads a growing team of specialist coaches and a structured support ecosystem designed to provide professionally held, evidence-informed guidance for parents navigating high-conflict separation and family court processes.

Learn more at danielleblackcoaching.com.au

This podcast is for educational purposes only and not legal advice. Please seek independent legal, medical, financial, or mental health advice for your situation.

Nine hundred and fifty dollars. An online module and a one-day workshop. That's the specialist training that qualifies a family lawyer to represent your child's best interests in court - and that's the starting point for part 2 of Working As Intended.

In this episode, Danielle walks through the structural reality of Independent Children's Lawyer accreditation in Australia, including the Australian Institute of Family Studies finding that there are no uniform professional development requirements for ICLs across jurisdictions. 

From there, the episode pivots into an argument you won't hear in most family law commentary - that the pre-1975 system, however sexist in its assumptions, was accidentally more aligned with what attachment science would later confirm than the reformed system that replaced it. And what the 2006 transactional lens cost children.

If you've ever wondered why the person appointed to represent your children's "best interests" appears unfamiliar with what those best interests actually require - this is the longer answer.

The episode opens with a brief clarification refining two specific points from part 1.

The Post-Separation Parenting Blueprint is the structured way through this work - built for protective parents equipping themselves to advocate for their children with the knowledge the system never required its practitioners to have. AI Danielle is available any time, any hour. Both at danielleblackcoaching.com.au.

Support: If you are in Australia and need to talk to someone, 1800RESPECT (1800 737 732) is available 24/7. In an emergency, call 000.

Explore the supports offered by Danielle Black Coaching

The Post-Separation Parenting Blueprint™
👉 https://www.danielleblackcoaching.com.au/the-post-separation-parenting-blueprint-1

AI Danielle - Your 24/7 Digital Coach
👉 https://www.danielleblackcoaching.com.au/meet-ai-danielle

1:1 Coaching
👉 https://www.danielleblackcoaching.com.au/1-1-coaching

The music you hear in this outro is 'Calm is Credible' - an original track created exclusively for the Post-Separation Abuse Podcast and Danielle Black Coaching.  You can listen to this song, or download free, by visiting danielleblackcoaching.com.au

About Danielle Black Coaching:

Danielle Black is a respected authority in child-focused post-separation parenting in Australia. With over twenty years’ experience across education, counselling and coaching - alongside her own lived experience navigating a complex separation and family court journey - she supports parents to think strategically, build capacity, and protect their children’s safety and wellbeing within complex legal and relational systems.

Through Danielle Black Coaching, she leads a growing team of specialist coaches and a structured support ecosystem designed to provide professionally held, evidence-informed guidance for parents navigating high-conflict separation and family court processes.

Learn more at danielleblackcoaching.com.au

This podcast is for educational purposes only and not legal advice. Please seek independent legal, medical, financial, or mental health advice for your situation.

What your family lawyer was taught - and what they weren't. 

The first of four episodes on the architecture of the Australian family law system. 

Eleven mandatory areas of study to be admitted as a lawyer in Australia. Family law isn't one of them.

The system isn't rigged. It isn't broken. It's working exactly as it was designed to - and the problem is what it was designed for.

This is the first of a four-part series on the architecture of the Australian family law system. The system was built to adjudicate disputes between adult parties - to resolve property, allocate parenting time, and produce court orders. It was not built, in its foundations, to see children. 

And when we ask that architecture to do something it was never built to do, it produces, predictably, the outcomes we often see - children ordered into arrangements that are at best inappropriate, and at worst doing serious and lasting harm that could be prevented.

In this first episode, I look at one of those foundations: how the lawyers inside the system were trained. 

There are eleven mandatory areas of study required to be admitted as a lawyer in Australia - known as the Priestley 11. None of them is family law. None of them is coercive control. None of them is child development. None of them is trauma. None of them is post-separation abuse. A specialisation that, for most family lawyers, rests on a single elective subject - if it was taken at all - and on whatever they "pick up on the job".

This is the foundation. And it is producing, predictably, what foundations like this produce.

In this episode:

• The focus: the system is working as designed; the problem is what it was designed for
• The Priestley 11 - the eleven mandatory areas of study to become an Australian lawyer, none of which is family law
• Why this is a structural argument, not an attack on individual family lawyers
• And, in the closing minutes - what practising family lawyers themselves say about the training gap, in their own words

For protective parents navigating this system, the work I do in the Blueprint is built for exactly this - becoming the expert in your own situation, because, as this episode shows, the people advising you may not be. It's there if and when you want to go deeper.

Coming next: what an Independent Children's Lawyer (ICL) actually is, and what an ICL was actually trained to do.

Support: If you are in Australia and need to talk to someone, 1800RESPECT (1800 737 732) is available 24/7. In an emergency, call 000.

Explore the supports offered by Danielle Black Coaching

The Post-Separation Parenting Blueprint™
👉 https://www.danielleblackcoaching.com.au/the-post-separation-parenting-blueprint-1

AI Danielle - Your 24/7 Digital Coach
👉 https://www.danielleblackcoaching.com.au/meet-ai-danielle

1:1 Coaching
👉 https://www.danielleblackcoaching.com.au/1-1-coaching

The music you hear in this outro is 'Calm is Credible' - an original track created exclusively for the Post-Separation Abuse Podcast and Danielle Black Coaching.  You can listen to this song, or download free, by visiting danielleblackcoaching.com.au

About Danielle Black Coaching:

Danielle Black is a respected authority in child-focused post-separation parenting in Australia. With over twenty years’ experience across education, counselling and coaching - alongside her own lived experience navigating a complex separation and family court journey - she supports parents to think strategically, build capacity, and protect their children’s safety and wellbeing within complex legal and relational systems.

Through Danielle Black Coaching, she leads a growing team of specialist coaches and a structured support ecosystem designed to provide professionally held, evidence-informed guidance for parents navigating high-conflict separation and family court processes.

Learn more at danielleblackcoaching.com.au

This podcast is for educational purposes only and not legal advice. Please seek independent legal, medical, financial, or mental health advice for your situation.

"Parental alienation" is one of the most weaponised terms in family law. In this episode, Danielle Black takes the term apart, puts something more precise in its place - and explains why the protective parents on the receiving end of those accusations are almost never the ones doing the harm.

Your child loves you. They may simply not feel safe to love you.

This is the reframe I want every protective parent who has watched their child pull away to carry, because it changes everything.

"Parental alienation" is one of the most weaponised terms in family law. It is invoked, again and again, by parents accused of abuse to discredit the parent who has tried to protect their children from them. It is also gestured at to name a phenomenon that is genuinely real: one parent deliberately damaging a child's relationship with the other. The same term carries two very different things, and that ambiguity is precisely what makes it so easy to weaponise.

In this episode I take the term apart, and put something more precise in its place - drawing on the work of Dr Emma Katz, the current Australian legal framework, and what I have learned from years of working with protective parents through exactly this. I address gender carefully, because the statistical pattern matters, and it is not the whole picture. And I offer two things to anyone living through any version of this: a framework for staying in your own lane when you are the one being accused, and a way of thinking about recovery and connection if your relationship with your child has been damaged.

This episode follows episode 105. Coercive Control: What It Is, and What It Isn't. If you haven't heard that one, I'd recommend listening to it first as it sets the foundation this conversation builds on.

In this episode:

• Why "parental alienation" survives despite being scientifically discredited - and how it functions as a coercive control tactic in its own right 
• Dr Emma Katz's reframe: parent-child relationship sabotage, and Child and Mother Sabotage (CAMS)
• A note on gender and direction - most often, but not only
• What the current Australian family law landscape (post-2023) actually says, and how it differs sharply from the United States
• Staying in your own lane: a framework for responding to accusations from a grounded, protective place
• Recovery and connection when your relationship with your child has been damaged: presence over pressure, autonomy over fixing

If what I've described is your life - whether you're facing these allegations or living through the sabotage itself - the full version of everything I've worked through here lives in the Blueprint: Module 19 for this, and Module 17 for the coercive control underneath it. It's there if and when you want to go deeper.

Support: If you are in Australia and need to talk to someone, 1800RESPECT (1800 737 732) is available 24/7. In an emergency, call 000.

Explore the supports offered by Danielle Black Coaching

The Post-Separation Parenting Blueprint™
👉 https://www.danielleblackcoaching.com.au/the-post-separation-parenting-blueprint-1

AI Danielle - Your 24/7 Digital Coach
👉 https://www.danielleblackcoaching.com.au/meet-ai-danielle

1:1 Coaching
👉 https://www.danielleblackcoaching.com.au/1-1-coaching

The music you hear in this outro is 'Calm is Credible' - an original track created exclusively for the Post-Separation Abuse Podcast and Danielle Black Coaching.  You can listen to this song, or download free, by visiting danielleblackcoaching.com.au

The music you hear in this outro is 'Calm is Credible' - an original track created exclusively for the Post-Separation Abuse Podcast and Danielle Black Coaching.  You can listen to this song, or download free, by visiting danielleblackcoaching.com.au

About Danielle Black Coaching:

Danielle Black is a respected authority in child-focused post-separation parenting in Australia. With over twenty years’ experience across education, counselling and coaching - alongside her own lived experience navigating a complex separation and family court journey - she supports parents to think strategically, build capacity, and protect their children’s safety and wellbeing within complex legal and relational systems.

Through Danielle Black Coaching, she leads a growing team of specialist coaches and a structured support ecosystem designed to provide professionally held, evidence-informed guidance for parents navigating high-conflict separation and family court processes.

Learn more at danielleblackcoaching.com.au

This podcast is for educational purposes only and not legal advice. Please seek independent legal, medical, financial, or mental health advice for your situation.

"Coercive control" has entered the mainstream - and started to lose its precision. This episode brings it back: what coercive control actually is, what it isn't, and why the difference matters for everyone.

"I felt trapped in my own life." 

It's a phrase I hear again and again from clients, it's how I felt all those years ago,  and it captures something the technical definitions can't quite reach.

In recent years, "coercive control" has moved from the margins into legislation, headlines, and dinner-table conversation. That shift is profound and overdue. But as the term has become more widely used, it has also become more loosely used - and when everything is called coercive control, the word begins to lose the meaning that the people who have genuinely lived it depend on. 

If everything is coercive control, then nothing is.

In this episode I bring the precision back. I walk through what coercive control actually is - a deliberate, sustained pattern of behaviour designed to dominate another person and strip away their autonomy, producing fear and compliance - and some of the tactics that make it up. 

Then I draw the harder lines: how being "controlling" is not the same as coercive control, and how to think clearly about the trickier middle ground, including withholding contact with children, post-separation behaviour, and reactive behaviours. I also address who perpetrates coercive control: a framework that is gender-neutral in principle, alongside a statistical reality that is anything but - held in a way that erases neither women's overwhelmingly documented experience nor male victims.

This is a measured conversation, on purpose. The precision I'm arguing for is exactly what the people whose lives were shaped by coercive control deserve.

In this episode:

• What coercive control actually is - pattern, intent, domination, fear, compliance and loss of autonomy
• The tactics that constitute it
• Why "controlling" behaviour is not the same as coercive control
• The trickier middle ground: withholding contact, post-separation behaviour, and reactive abuse
• Who perpetrates coercive control - the framework, and the statistics
• Three questions to ask yourself if you're unsure
• Where to find support, and where to understand this in depth

If this episode gives you language for something you have been living, the work continues in the Blueprint - Module 17 in particular is the extended treatment of coercive control, the foundation the rest of it is built on.

Support: If you are in Australia and need to talk to someone, 1800RESPECT (1800 737 732) is available 24/7.   In an emergency, call 000.

Explore the supports offered by Danielle Black Coaching

The Post-Separation Parenting Blueprint™
👉 https://www.danielleblackcoaching.com.au/the-post-separation-parenting-blueprint-1

AI Danielle - Your 24/7 Digital Coach
👉 https://www.danielleblackcoaching.com.au/meet-ai-danielle

1:1 Coaching
👉 https://www.danielleblackcoaching.com.au/1-1-coaching

The music you hear in this outro is 'Calm is Credible' - an original track created exclusively for the Post-Separation Abuse Podcast and Danielle Black Coaching.  You can listen to this song, or download free, by visiting danielleblackcoaching.com.au

About Danielle Black Coaching:

Danielle Black is a respected authority in child-focused post-separation parenting in Australia. With over twenty years’ experience across education, counselling and coaching - alongside her own lived experience navigating a complex separation and family court journey - she supports parents to think strategically, build capacity, and protect their children’s safety and wellbeing within complex legal and relational systems.

Through Danielle Black Coaching, she leads a growing team of specialist coaches and a structured support ecosystem designed to provide professionally held, evidence-informed guidance for parents navigating high-conflict separation and family court processes.

Learn more at danielleblackcoaching.com.au

This podcast is for educational purposes only and not legal advice. Please seek independent legal, medical, financial, or mental health advice for your situation.

The decisions you make in the early stages of separation can shape your family for years to come. And yet, most parents make critical mistakes during this most vulnerable time - often because they're following well-meaning but misguided advice from friends, family, or even professionals who don't understand child development or the realities of post-separation parenting.

In this episode, Danielle walks through the five most damaging mistakes she sees parents make repeatedly in early separation:

• Avoiding conflict at all costs

• Believing "50/50 is best"

• Believing you need the non-primary parent's agreement for everything 

• Making permanent decisions based on temporary emotions 

• Accepting generic advice for your situation

Each mistake comes with its own version of harm. Each is avoidable when you understand what your children actually need from this transition, and how to advocate for it.

This episode was originally recorded as private content for those on the Post-Separation Parenting Blueprint™ waitlist in mid 2025. It is being released publicly because the conversation it opens is one every separating parent deserves to hear early - not after the patterns have set, not after the precedents have been established, but at the moment when getting it right matters most.

If you're navigating the early stages of separation, or supporting someone who is, this is the episode to start with.

The Post-Separation Parenting Blueprint™ is the comprehensive course that takes you the rest of the way.

Explore the supports offered by Danielle Black Coaching

The Post-Separation Parenting Blueprint™
👉 https://www.danielleblackcoaching.com.au/the-post-separation-parenting-blueprint-1

AI Danielle - Your 24/7 Digital Coach
👉 https://www.danielleblackcoaching.com.au/meet-ai-danielle

1:1 Coaching
👉 https://www.danielleblackcoaching.com.au/1-1-coaching

The music you hear in this outro is 'Calm is Credible' - an original track created exclusively for the Post-Separation Abuse Podcast and Danielle Black Coaching.  You can listen to this song, or download free, by visiting danielleblackcoaching.com.au

About Danielle Black Coaching:

Danielle Black is a respected authority in child-focused post-separation parenting in Australia. With over twenty years’ experience across education, counselling and coaching - alongside her own lived experience navigating a complex separation and family court journey - she supports parents to think strategically, build capacity, and protect their children’s safety and wellbeing within complex legal and relational systems.

Through Danielle Black Coaching, she leads a growing team of specialist coaches and a structured support ecosystem designed to provide professionally held, evidence-informed guidance for parents navigating high-conflict separation and family court processes.

Learn more at danielleblackcoaching.com.au

This podcast is for educational purposes only and not legal advice. Please seek independent legal, medical, financial, or mental health advice for your situation.

There is a phrase I have heard, in various forms, from many of my clients over the years:

"If her name was Brian instead of Barb, the recognition and response would have been completely different."

That phrase is the whole problem, distilled into one sentence.

This solo episode is for two audiences at once.

The first is every woman who has experienced family violence or post-separation abuse perpetrated by a female partner - and who has watched as professionals, police, and even community bystanders failed to recognise what was being done to her.  If that is you, I want you to know I see what happened. The pattern is real. The response was inadequate. And it was not because your experience didn't matter - it was because the system we have built to recognise family violence is built on a gendered template, and when neither party fits that template, the template fails.

The second is the post-separation professionals - lawyers, mediators, family report writers, Independent Children's Lawyers, police - who handle these cases without realising how much they are missing. The bias is correctable and this episode is a direct invitation to do better.

In this episode I unpack what the research actually shows about intimate partner violence in lesbian relationships, why minimisation happens so consistently across professional and community contexts, the specific dynamics of stalking and coercive control when both parties are women, and what naming abuse honestly does - and does not - mean for the broader LGBTQIA+ community.

Content note: This episode discusses family violence, post-separation abuse, coercive control, and stalking, including the specific ways these are minimised in lesbian relationships. 

If you need support: 1800RESPECT 1800 737 732 (24/7 family violence and sexual assault support, available across Australia) | QLife 1800 184 527 (LGBTQI+ peer support).

Explore the supports offered by Danielle Black Coaching

The Post-Separation Parenting Blueprint™
👉 https://www.danielleblackcoaching.com.au/the-post-separation-parenting-blueprint-1

AI Danielle - Your 24/7 Digital Coach
👉 https://www.danielleblackcoaching.com.au/meet-ai-danielle

1:1 Coaching
👉 https://www.danielleblackcoaching.com.au/1-1-coaching

The music you hear in this outro is 'Calm is Credible' - an original track created exclusively for the Post-Separation Abuse Podcast and Danielle Black Coaching.  You can listen to this song, or download free, by visiting danielleblackcoaching.com.au

About Danielle Black Coaching:

Danielle Black is a respected authority in child-focused post-separation parenting in Australia. With over twenty years’ experience across education, counselling and coaching - alongside her own lived experience navigating a complex separation and family court journey - she supports parents to think strategically, build capacity, and protect their children’s safety and wellbeing within complex legal and relational systems.

Through Danielle Black Coaching, she leads a growing team of specialist coaches and a structured support ecosystem designed to provide professionally held, evidence-informed guidance for parents navigating high-conflict separation and family court processes.

Learn more at danielleblackcoaching.com.au

This podcast is for educational purposes only and not legal advice. Please seek independent legal, medical, financial, or mental health advice for your situation.

This Mother's Day episode is for every mother who knows the day might be complicated.

For the mothers without orders, whose former partners simply deny contact on Mother's Day. For the mothers who get a few hours - children dropped in the morning, collected later that same day, no unhurried time for the burnt toast or the homemade card. 

For the mothers whose former partners will withhold the children; yet again prioritising themselves and their own desire for revenge over the needs and rights of their children.

For the mothers whose children are refusing to spend time with them, and who carry that grief privately. 

For every mother who is going to perform "fine" on Sunday because there are children watching.

And we haven't even touched on those of us who have complicated relationships with our own mothers...

I share something I haven't shared publicly on this podcast before, and I talk about the landscape of Mother's Day for separated mothers still navigating post-separation abuse. 

This episode also introduces the four private audio channels available exclusively to Post-Separation Parenting Blueprint™ members: Blueprint Radio, Calm & Grounded Audio Collection, the Stronger Braver Together album, and the Blueprint Audio Library (rolling out from late May 2026).

Content note: This episode discusses the experience of mothers separated from their children on Mother's Day, including through family court proceedings and post-separation abuse. It contains personal disclosure. Please take care of yourself as you listen.

If you need support: Lifeline 13 11 14 | 1800RESPECT 1800 737 732 | Both available 24/7 across Australia.

Explore the supports offered by Danielle Black Coaching

The Post-Separation Parenting Blueprint™
👉 https://www.danielleblackcoaching.com.au/the-post-separation-parenting-blueprint-1

AI Danielle - Your 24/7 Digital Coach
👉 https://www.danielleblackcoaching.com.au/meet-ai-danielle

1:1 Coaching
👉 https://www.danielleblackcoaching.com.au/1-1-coaching

The music you hear in this outro is 'Calm is Credible' - an original track created exclusively for the Post-Separation Abuse Podcast and Danielle Black Coaching.  You can listen to this song, or download free, by visiting danielleblackcoaching.com.au

About Danielle Black Coaching:

Danielle Black is a respected authority in child-focused post-separation parenting in Australia. With over twenty years’ experience across education, counselling and coaching - alongside her own lived experience navigating a complex separation and family court journey - she supports parents to think strategically, build capacity, and protect their children’s safety and wellbeing within complex legal and relational systems.

Through Danielle Black Coaching, she leads a growing team of specialist coaches and a structured support ecosystem designed to provide professionally held, evidence-informed guidance for parents navigating high-conflict separation and family court processes.

Learn more at danielleblackcoaching.com.au

This podcast is for educational purposes only and not legal advice. Please seek independent legal, medical, financial, or mental health advice for your situation.