How To Do A Friendly Divorce and Protect Your Kids
Transcript:
Hello. I’m Patricia Grass. Welcome to passion time. I’m here with an old friend, Juli Hall. Thank you so much for joining me again. It’s so great to see her again. We’ve known each other for 20 years, but today we’re going to talk about something really, really important it’s affecting. So unfortunately it’s affecting so many people and that is divorce, but there is a way of doing it right. And she’s going to share with you a program that she created, uh, with some other people I’m sure. Um, so that people can go through divorce in a better, more rational, more loving, more emotionally stable way. So thank you so much, Juli, for joining us. My pleasure. And I wanted to ask you, what is your passion and how are you living your passion?
Great. So my passion is making a difference for other people and, uh, and then having people empowered to make the kind of difference that they want to make. So it’s a ripple effect and, uh, and how I’m living my passion is everything I do in my life is focused on making a difference with other people.
And you do very well. So in fact, I met Juli when we went together to Romania with, uh, cherish our children international. But we’ll talk about that later. I want to, I want you to share it with me. How bad is it now with regards to divorce in America?
Yeah, it’s pretty bad. So I’ll just, uh, I’ve got some notes with me. So I’ll give you some statistics. So in this is according to the Texas department of health and human services. In 2012, there were 80,030 divorces in the state of Texas involving 62,196 children. So that was 2012, two years later, it went from 80,030 divorces to 125,588 divorces. And you can get the idea of the increase of the number of children that it affects. Exactly. So it’s, it’s on the rise. And my view is that there, there are people that don’t officially get divorced and they’re just completely suppressed or their relationships aren’t working. They don’t get divorced and they’re in difficult situations in their relationships.
So we’re having major relationship issues. Yeah. And you created with your ex-husband, uh, called something called, uh, co-parenting into the future. Yeah. Um, I’ve met both of you and I’ve seen both of you at work after it, before you were divorced and after you were divorced and almost the same. So share with me how you and your ex-husband worked on this and why you felt it was important.
Okay. So it came to our attention that, uh, from, from a friend of ours, that was an attorney that there were parenting courses out there and that in the state of Texas, that it was mandated. If you were going through divorce and you had kids, you had to take a parenting course before you got your divorce decree. And this friend of ours, who was an attorney said, you know, the ones that are out there just really not making a difference. And he said, I’ve watched you and Mark, you guys really need to put together a program. So that’s how it started. And that’s why we took this on. Now
Tell me what the course is designed to do, because it’s not an inexpensive course by the way, and it’s online. But tell me what it’s designed to do.
It’s first of all, it’s not designed to give people tips and techniques. It’s not at all. It’s, you know, when, when you go through a divorce, there’s whatever you’re dealing with personally, there’s whenever your spouse or former spouse is dealing with personally, and then there’s the matter of the kids. So it’s designed to have people clear up, get what I call get complete about the past in your relationship with your former spouse, so that you can move forward and create a partnership. So it’s designed to have you get complete with however it’s been and take all the blame out of it. Right,
Right. Instead of saying, Hey, you know, you got 80% of the fault here or whatever, it’s, it’s, let’s both take responsibility for what we did exactly. Um, tell me some transformative stories, because you’ve already started working with this program and you’ve already seen what it can do.
Yeah. I mean, and we were shocked with it, what it could do. So then we used our relationship. We were the Guinea pigs in, in designing the program. Okay. So we went from not being at each other’s throats, but not too far behind that to, we are now a hundred percent partners. We were partners in the raising of our kids. We were partners with absolutely everything. And that was like unheard of, and unthinkable. So that’s what happened with us. And our kids are in great shape. That’s what matters. And, and then, you know, we did a number of pilots, uh, before we launched it. And the people that did the pilots, we were shocked at what people got out of it. One guy, um, who’d been divorced for about three years. He called his ex-wife, who had not talked to in a long time just to get into communication with her.
And he communicated about how much he had been blaming her and what he discovered in the courses that he saw, where it was his responsibility that the marriage broke up. He had never seen that. And he’d never said that to her. At the end of the conversation, you know what happened? She wanted to get back together with them. They didn’t, but that’s how healing that conversation was. So that was one thing. Um, another, uh, another young man who did the program, I talked to him today. He did it maybe five years ago. He said, you know, people have continued to come up to me and to my former wife and ask us how come you guys are so great with each other. And how have you managed to have your parenting with your kids be so effective? So how he and his former wife, uh, are viewed out in the world is they’re really effective with, with what they’ve done.
What does it take? Those sounds like you have to be mature about what happened.
Yeah. And everyone can be, everyone can be, I don’t care what the circumstances are. Mark and I, since we led these pilots, before we launched the program, we heard the most unbelievable stories, situations that people were in – unthinkable things. And it’s possible to restore relationship no matter what has happened in the past.
So your program could also help people stay together, maybe, well, maybe people are thinking about getting divorced because it isn’t working out, but maybe there’s something that they can learn through the course about relationships in general. And now you’ve worked things through.
We’ve had people in that situation do it, and they did stay together. They worked it out.
That’s amazing. What do you think is the hardest part? And obviously this is a very personal question because everybody’s got a different reason for divorcing, but there are some general clues, right? What is the hardest part of divorcing do you think?
I can just speak for myself. The hardest part for me was the breakup of my family and, and what it was going to do to my kids. That was, that lived with me. But I mean, it still lives with me. You know, that, that, uh, we had a family and we don’t have a family. We have a, not that we don’t have a family, we have a family it’s just a very different form. But, uh, that was the most difficult thing when it happened was, you know, the, Oh my gosh, my family’s breaking up. And, and dealing with that,
Would you say one of the hardest things when you’re going through a divorce is forgiving not only your spouse, but also forgiving yourself?
Totally because it’s listen, how many divorced people or, people going through divorce, or when the relationship’s not working, the first thing you hear is what the other person did wrong and the blame. And then it’s not, you don’t just hear it from that other person. You start hearing it from the people that know them and everyone has to take sides. So there’s an enormous amount of blame.
Yes. And that doesn’t lead to anything. Um, one of the things that I noticed though, is a lot of my friends were getting divorced is that they, they want to work it out for their kids. For example, whether it’s a male or female, it doesn’t matter. It, it, it varies. And yet the spouse does not, they’re angry. They don’t want to deal with it. Uh, they’re in, they’re in the blame game. What, how do you handle that? And can someone who has that situation benefit from this?
Definitely. Cause it just takes one person. It really does just take one person, if you and I are in a relationship and we’ve been blaming each other, we’ve been living together and there’s been all this unworkability. And then all of a sudden, I come to you and say, look, can I, can I talk to you for a few minutes? And I just want you to listen to what I’m saying. And I, and I take full responsibility for causing the breakup of our relationship, that opens up room that really does open up room. And communication’s a big part of this course. And people discover, it’s not like we give people information, but people discover in the course what conversations are important to have and with who and how to have those conversations.
Well, and I think that, that you have to share also that you and your ex-husband are specialists in communications skills, and that gives you the credibility too, to be able to communicate better with people. Yeah. And assume responsibility for your actions and whatever. Yeah. Tell me, um, I’ve seen, I’ve seen a lot, but I’ve seen you with your now husband and your ex, uh, with his new wife and the kids and it’s all this great. I don’t know. There’s just good energy around you guys. What did your kids say after all this? Have they, have they had comments about, Hey, isn’t this great and, and my parents got divorced, but you know, we’re all together. We have holidays together. We vacation together and it’s all good.
Yeah. I, I, you know, I don’t know. Cause they don’t, they don’t, they don’t share about that. Um, but we, the point is, is that it is just, like you said, and Mark, Mark, by the way, isn’t married. Oh, I thought he was okay now. Yeah. Yeah. But he does have a girlfriend and we spend every Thanksgiving together.
Yeah. You spend time together and you actually enjoy each other’s company, so you’re good friends and that’s what could lead. Okay. So anybody who’s watching this, going through a divorce or thinking about going through a divorce? Yeah. Why should they, do the course?
Because it will make a profound difference is they actually start to get present to impact that it’s having on their kids. And that’s why people should do it is for their kids’ future. Cause it really ultimately makes a difference for the kids. That’s the most important part, I guess when you have kids, Juli, thank you so much for joining us and uh, tell us the website that people can check your, your program. Yeah. It’s co-parenting into the future.com. So it’s all one word co-parenting into the future.com. All right. Thank you so much. And thank you for joining us. Make sure you subscribe to our channel right down here and we’ll see you next time.
