Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Welcome to Law and More. My name is Kate Ryan. I'm a partner at IBB and a family lawyer. This is a special series and one of three episodes where I will be inviting a guest speaker who is a divorce or separation coach to talk to me about the benefit of coaching for clients that are going through a divorce, a separation or a family breakup. The reason that I am talking to these three coaches is because IBB are launching a coaching service. This is really important because having coaches available at the very beginning of your journey will help your emotional and mental well being and will also support the decisions that you may need to make during the legal process. In this episode, I will be talking to Tosh Brittan, who is a relationship resilience coach, also known as the divorce goddess.
Can I just ask you tosh how did you get the name the divorce goddess? Because it's absolutely fabulous.
[00:01:00] Speaker B: Thank you so much, Kate. Really appreciate you having me on. And, yeah, the divorce goddess. So I was sitting in my home in 2014. Everything was collapsing around us financially and obviously our relationship, the two not intertwined, two children and my ex phone to say, I can't pay the rent this month. What do I do? And I was thinking, oh, my goodness, me and the money mind monkey fears were jumping in, and what do I do? Like, what do I do? And I thought, I'm just going to start writing, and I'm just going to write, and I'm going to write how I feel. And if this resonates with other people, then hopefully going to help them.
And I was thinking, twulse goddess? And I think Nigella was in her prime then.
And I thought, oh, God, I'll just chuck it out there and see what happens. And the blog just got loads of traction. And people would say to me in business meetings, we don't want to know about this, but just tell us about your blog. And then about six weeks after I started writing it, I was picked up and put on TV and sky news and ITV, channel Five, Radio Five, the whole lot, and talking about mediation and a kind of divorce and a good divorce. I think the mediation laws were changing in 2014, and suddenly it became a thing.
[00:02:26] Speaker A: And I would love to know how you also decided, given your journey, which I know you'll come on and talk to us a bit more about as well, how you arrived at your current role as a relationship coach with all of the experience that you've had. Can you tell me a little bit about your journey?
[00:02:44] Speaker B: So in 2012, we agreed to get a divorce, and I moved back to the UK. With the children and really just through the whole process of finding out exactly there was very little help available at all to anybody going through a divorce. And I remember going to a counselor and she said, I don't know what to say, I have no experience. I'm just going to give you a hug. As she was sort of like picking me up, just like was like crying my eyes out. And I just thought, okay girl, you got to get yourself in order. You got to get yourself sorted out, get your mental well being sorted out, your emotional well being. You got two children, you don't know what is going to happen in the future. And I think this is so often such a thing for so many people is the fear of the unknown. And then I talk about it a lot in my book, the divorced mind Monkeys. And they can be very loud and really how to manage them. So my journey was a personal journey. I hit a wall one day making a cup of tea and I started crying. I went and locked myself in the downstairs bathroom. Children were at school, was there for about 6 hours and just thought, you have got to make some changes, you have got to start being kinder to yourself, you've got to think about self care.
I just sat in silence, like a sort of meditation, I guess, back in the day, and just doing some breathing. And I felt really calm afterwards. And then I just started somebody said, oh, you should try Mindfulness. So I did an eight week mindfulness course and it was so impactful, it changed my life and so much so that I trained to be a mindfulness teacher, an MBSR mindfulness based Stress reduction teacher in 2015. And mindfulness underpins my coaching. And it really is, as my tagline is, your divorce is about you, not your ex.
And obviously people were sort of like, my goodness, you're so calm, what are you doing? And I just started sharing what I was doing to help people.
And through it, my coaching business has evolved and I've just rebranded as a Relationship Resilience because I really believe every relationship we have and the fallout or whatever comes of it is it begins with ourselves. And it's until we truly, truly make friends with ourselves that we can have better relationships, whether that's with a spouse, workplace, whatever, moving forwards.
[00:05:18] Speaker A: I know from doing my job that most of my clients come and see me in such a state of shock trauma, so low that they really don't know where to go next.
I had one particular client who could not make any decisions. She couldn't understand how she was going to move forward. She couldn't put herself in the future. She didn't have a clue with regards to how she was going to finance herself. She was suddenly responsible for all of that. She didn't know how or where the money was coming from. And she'd really lost all of her identity because she was a person within a marriage. And then all of a sudden she was just flung out to sea on her own. She came to see me. The person that left. When she'd got through all of this, she was a completely different person. She'd got what she needed to from her settlement. I had guided her through that very, very difficult journey from when she first came in to see me to resolving all of the legal stuff that she needed to and getting her a settlement. You must see this quite a lot as well. How would you cope with that?
[00:06:29] Speaker B: Well, I was just going to say, I thought you were describing me earlier on in your description of your client. I was that client and I can actually remember walking up the stairs to my lawyer's office and literally just my stomach was in knots. I had, like, a rock in my stomach. And I remember walking up the stairs, and I think for many clients and certainly perhaps those you've worked through it's that sense of, I was walking up there feeling I was going to be judged. I felt ashamed. I felt a failure. I was feeling deep grief and sadness and fear. You mentioned fear and that is enormous. So first of all, I can empathize one of the things that I get my clients to do is to visualize a friend who has been through a divorce and invariably they kind of sort of roll their eyes and they go, yes. And I ask them, how does that person feel?
And invariably it's like, oh my God, they feel so angry. And then I ask them, do you want to be that person?
And immediately there's like, the hell no or no way.
And then we start creating a framework. It's like a present moment. What can you do now?
Because none of us know. And I think the last few years has demonstrated we don't know what is going to happen in the world or in our lives. And so often divorces sort of like come out of nowhere anyway for many people. So it's really about what the small changes you can do now in your life. And actually we create an intention document as well, so that's helpful. It's like their true north document. It's their commitment to themselves, their intention. And it's a very powerful thing. And it really is about and I think we're going to talk about this, that sense of empowerment, having some control, where you kind of feel like everything in your world has just been thrown upside down and nothing is as it seems is to just feel like you can start building foundations for your future.
[00:08:47] Speaker A: It might seem strange to those that are listening. Divorce, separation and empowerment going together.
Do you want to explain a little bit more about that? Because I really like the word empowerment is very powerful and I think it would give clients that are in such a lost state to be able to grasp that concept. Often, hopefully at the beginning of the journey if they can, or certainly they don't have to wait until the very end when everything has fallen apart. They need to grab that sense of empowerment from quite an early stage, I would imagine, for them to really be able to move forward and get that momentum that they need often, which seems probably completely unlikely to them if they've just come out of a relationship or they've just been told, I don't want to be with you anymore. I've been seeing somebody else.
[00:09:37] Speaker B: I've got this lovely poster in my house and or piece of art on the wall and it says, this is the first day of the rest of your life and it's by our front door. And every day is a chance to begin. And just because you've got to maybe in your 40s or 50s or 60s or whatever age you are, and divorce sort of explodes into your life, that doesn't mean to say that you cannot begin. And every day you have an opportunity to begin. And it's your choice as to whether I talk about this a lot, whereas you want to fall into that victim pit, which can only get deeper every time you choose to go into the victim mindset. And that's not to say you can't be a victim, because we all have moments where human, but to consciously make that choice, to say, do you know what? I'm going to choose a wiser, more conscious, responsive option, or words, actions, or even in a way of thinking as opposed to anger and bitterness and resentment, to be that person you don't want to be in five years time.
And every time you choose a more conscious choice of actions, words and thoughts, you are effectively filling up that victim pit as opposed to sort of digging it deeper every time you fall in. And it really is about choice. And so often clients come to me and I love them and I'm like, right, I am quite bossy. And they go, yeah, we really need bossy. And I said, it comes with a big heart and I want you to be accountable and I'm going to give you homework because people need to feel held. Which is why I think it's such a brilliant idea having the coaching panel with a law firm as well. Because I remember somebody said to me, oh, you need to make all these phone calls. And I literally was I didn't know where to start. I didn't know who to trust. And obviously when your world is blown apart, trust is enormous. And it's about trusting yourself. And I guess that's what my work is all about. It's about trusting, coming back to you, working on yourself each day, doing the homework, if you choose to do the homework, showing up for yourself, choosing to see your divorce as an opportunity rather than this is it. Because as we know, if you're just going to turn up every day and go, this is it, this is my life and everything. It's just going to feed that mindset and your life is going to get harder as a result.
So choosing to go, do you know what? I'm going to practice gratitude, or I'm going to do a bit of journaling this morning, or I'm going to learn to do some deep breathing, or I'm going to get myself out for a walk, or perhaps eat healthily.
Maybe not have the wine bottle out during the week, drink more water, get to bed early, stay off social media. All of these things, you are showing up for yourself, you are empowering yourself with. And so often people think empowerment is like, got to go and climb a mountain, which obviously you can do at some point, but it is small actions and then they're manageable actions.
[00:13:03] Speaker A: And in your book, Tosh Kindness For Conflict A Guide To Separation And Divorce, you speak a lot about kindness that really sort of shines through, I think, in how you approach the work that you do. Why is that so important?
[00:13:18] Speaker B: Because ultimately, I believe that when we go through big life events, we have a choice. You can either feed into the anger and resentment, or you can choose to be your own lighthouse and be a beaming, shining light to other people to show that we can change the divorce tide by being kinder to each other, because we have a choice. And people so often say to me, they go, yeah, but kindness is weak. You're showing your weak side. No, not at all. Kindness is clever, it's being the bigger person. And ultimately, if you want to go to sleep at night and know that you did your best and you were kind, then you don't end up feeling guilty or I wish I hadn't said that, and beating yourself up more, or just generally being unkind to yourself. So I think the kindness element really is for you. And my whole thing about Divorce Goddess was that kindness is a choice. It's about your values. You don't have to join somebody, your ex just because they're being unkind. You can be the bigger person.
[00:14:37] Speaker A: Thank you, Tosh. It's been so lovely talking to you today. Would you let people know, those that are listening, that feel they want to get in touch with you? How can they do that?
[00:14:45] Speaker B: You can find me on my website tosh britain. And Britain is spelled B-R-I-T-T-A-N or you can find me on Instagram at Divorce Goddess, and there's my podcast, Divorce Goddess as well, which I am very much excited about having you on very soon. Kate.
[00:15:03] Speaker A: You can find Tosha's details in our show notes. Thank you very much for listening today. If you would like to find out any more about IBB, please do visit our website, ibblaw co UK. Thank you.
