The Undoing

I was excited to read Starshine Roshell’s article “Divorce Coach in Your Corner?” which addresses divorce coaching and the coach’s important role in the divorce landscape. Divorce coaching is similar to life coaching, except that it helps people around the experience of going through a divorce.

Roshell mentions that it’s funny to apply the idea of a coach — who typically helps people “do” things — to the deliberate “undoing” of a thing: a marriage. Let me correct and clarify that argument by saying that the elements of developing someone while they are simultaneously dissolving something is simply on the same continuum. It’s called “change.” And change is exactly what a coach facilitates in her/ his client.

A coach is a catalyst for change. Never should a coach share the same bed as a therapist. Different, different, different! A coach builds like an architect vs. a therapist who deals with the past. The beauty of coaching is that the coach believes that the client already has the answers, and these answers are teased out through strategic questioning.

It’s empowering when the client produces their own answers. That’s sustainable change because the client, not the coach, is creating their own vision piece for the future. Clients will respond to inner revelation much better than outward suggestions. The person going through divorce can count on their divorce coach to be their accountability partner, cheerleader, and co-equal strategist. I myself went through the CDC [College for Divorce Coaching] course and can personally vouch for them as an excellent program to become a divorce coach.

Hats off to Roshell for highlighting the valuable field of divorce coaching.