I started practicing law in 2008. At that time, I was a criminal prosecutor, but family law started becoming the primary focus of my practice in 2013. When I got married in 2009, I immediately had two stepchildren. They lived with us full-time, and I really wanted to be able to commit to family first, and working on family law gave me more flexibility.
It also taught me a lot about what different children go through with divorced parents. Family law gives me an opportunity to help people try and get on a positive track moving forward.
I became friends with Madeline Tuckfield, the co-founder of Divorce Doulas, because our daughters went to kindergarten together and they became best friends. In 2019, she was going through a divorce.
All of a sudden, within a year, she had gotten divorced, moved out of her home, and transitioned into single parenthood with no local support system. Her mother had also died unexpectedly. At the time, her children were 3 and 4 years old. She quickly realized that she needed to process all of this grief in a way that allowed her to be present with her children.
We were talking about work and life one day, during a playdate, in 2020, and I brought up that one of the biggest issues that I see in my practice revolves around a lack of communication.
I told Madeline: "One of these days, I'm going to start something that says, 'How should I respond?'"
So many problems escalate from a person being triggered by a divorce and giving an angry response. Then, the next thing you know, everybody's in court over something that could have been prevented.
That's when the idea to start the Divorce Doulas started. Madeline was able to relate because she had also been through a traumatic divorce whilst having two children. So, after drafting and creating personal courses, our business launched in October 2021. Our focus was to give those people the resources and tools to move through a divorce smoothly, from a legal and emotional standpoint.
At the time, I had so many clients, and I knew what they were going through. It was almost insulting to them to generally have to pay a huge bill for a divorce attorney without feeling supported. So, Madeline and I began to put courses together on our website.
These courses explained how to prepare for the initial filing for a divorce, how to prepare for mediation, what to expect from an attorney, how to even choose an attorney, and what you should expect once you start going into court.
Generally, I see that a lot of people have a lot of anxiety when they first start going to court. And of course, that's natural. They're not supposed to be good at divorces-that's my job. But arming them with those tools gives them the confidence to believe that they can move through a divorce, especially in a high conflict situation whereby a parent is threatening to take the kids away.
Madeline's aim, on the other side of that, is to help people gain more spiritual and emotional guidance to manage the trauma that comes with a divorce. She is incredible at helping people really identify their emotions and take personal responsibility for them. We do that through meditation practices. In order for kids to have those best chances moving forward, they need to have strong, present, and authentic parents, which is why our aim is to help people move through a hard experience and come out on the other side with a great, optimistic future. Madeline's been in the trenches of her own divorce personally, which allows her to share her experiences with others who are in a similar situation.
One of the inspirations behind calling ourselves doulas is that they don't have formal medical training. Yes, I have my legal experience, and Madeline works in film production, but a doula takes her ability to nurture and help people through a process, and I think that's very valuable, which is why I love the word.
This is also why we wanted our courses to be available to everyone. Our prices vary from $30 upwards. We know that so many women are going through financial abuse to where their ex-partners will drain their bank accounts, which is terrifying when they have kids. We also have a Facebook group membership for as little as $30 a month. Single parents in general are our focus, and they are truly incredible. When you are getting out of an abusive relationship or going through a contentious high conflict divorce, it can feel like you are being buried and silenced. This is why we wanted our Facebook group to be accessible to as many people as possible.
The kind of women that we have found gravitate to us the most are typically women between the ages of 25 to 45, who are usually in a very high conflict situation with younger children involved. When we start contacting them, the aim is to help them identify and create healthy boundaries for themselves. It's not about keeping someone else at a distance or keeping someone from their children. It's about keeping them safe. So, we help them create those boundaries by allowing them to be specific with their communication.
We find that narcissism comes up a lot, and we see a great amount of gaslighting. One particular client comes to mind. She originally came to us with 10,000 pages of messages that had gone back and forth and it included a lot of manipulation and gaslighting. This other person was always trying to beat her down.
It was very clear when we started to review the messages that this person wanted to trap our client by constantly bringing her back into court, which ties into what we previously mentioned about financial abuse. There were even notes whereby this other parent called the doctor and said that they feel like our client may have a personality disorder that is affecting their children.
So, to help, we touched base with that individual regularly while offering our services and emotional support. The change we have seen has been shocking. After six months, she was able to know how to respond to her ex-partner without retaliating to any accusations. She would outline what is going on with their kids while being an effective parent. She can encourage her children to have a meaningful relationship with this other parent and has been masterful at keeping the kids away from some of this and allowing them to have their own experience with the other parent.
I watched her gain full-time employment and become a strong individual and a good example to her children by grabbing herself up by the bootstraps and moving forward. So much of that is attributable to her inner strength and who she is, we just helped her identify it.
Other stories include me having to tell a client that sleeping on the floor of her children's room in order to avoid her husband is not a reflection of a healthy marriage. Oftentimes, when people are trying to save their family or their marriage, they can't see a situation for what it is.
Usually, it can take someone who's ready to do the hard work a short amount of time to move through the divorce process. Madeline, for example, did a lot of hard work and come out of it on the other side being a present and authentic mom. But generally, it depends, because everybody is so intricate and unique-we all heal differently.
We're pretty ambitious about the Divorce Doulas and we are hoping to expand into retreats in the near future. These will allow people to gather together and share their experiences whilst also meditating and focusing on their healing process. Sooner, rather than later, we are looking to open a divorce group coaching Bootcamp, a set of weekly webinars walking our clients through all the legal information, whilst offering them personalized support.
People are so fascinating. Their experiences are so diverse. Playing a part in their journey is so exciting to us. You have empathy for what they're going through, but it is also exciting to see them go through that, so that they can have this amazing life.
So often, I hear people say that they have given a person the best years of their life. But our hope is that as they go through the process, they'll look back and say that they gave them some years, but not their best years. The best is so very much in front of them.
Courtney Cooper and Madeline Tuckfield founded Divorce Doulas in 2021, a program dedicated to empowering single parents in their journey through court. Courtney is also a family law attorney and Madeline is a film producer.
All views expressed in this article are the author's own.
As told to Carine Harb.
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