In this episode, my long-time friend Trisha Perez joins us to tell her story of divorce. Trisha has a bright, colorful personality, and is a performer, public speaker, and entrepreneur. But in her marriage that wasn’t always as apparent. In our conversation, we unpacked her divorce using the 4 phases of transition, laid out by Nancy Hetrick.
According to Trisha, the anticipation phase started almost from the beginning of her relationship. Friends and family members expressed concerns that her partner was dimming her light. She even saw some of those early signs of incompatibility, but she repressed them, not yet ready to acknowledge the problems of her relationship. It took years and many conversations, but eventually, Trisha realized it was time to move on and she initiated her divorce.
I was there to support her not only as a friend but also as a financial advisor. We did lots of planning and helped her parse out her and her spouse’s multiple homes, businesses, and finances. She chose to do mediation, knowing it would be a longer process but that she would be able to maintain her intention for peaceful, collaborative separation.
Of course, there is no easy, “clean” divorce. Trisha had the extra difficulty of navigating mediation during the lockdown in 2020. Communication was difficult, it was hard to get as much support, and in retrospect, she wishes she had been in a place to advocate for a forensic expert to go through their shared finances. But after 2 years, she finally made it out the other side.
Since 2022, she’s been working on finding her voice again and remembering things she used to love and think about before her marriage. The beginning of her ‘passage’ phase was marked by filing taxes as a single person for the first time and taking in what it means to live practically after divorce. In our conversation, she emphasizes that the process is inevitably painful and it requires courage to even question your marriage, let alone getting to the end of divorce. Now, Trisha is in the “messy, messy, messy, fun, fun, fun” stage of finding comfort and confidence in self-discovery.
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Divorce might be the end of one chapter, but it’s also a brand-new journey filled with hope and growth. Join us for practical tips for financial empowerment and insights to make this time a little less daunting.
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