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Michelle: Hi everybody. I'm Michelle Harrell, your host for Beyond the Dose. Welcome back to another week. This week, I'm very honored and excited to have Gwendoline Van Doosselaere join us. Gwendoline is a divorce coach and mentor and runs Artemis Divorce Coaching.

Gwendoline and I met through one of my local networking groups here in the Portland metro area. We met for coffee and discovered that we had so many things in common — namely divorce, which I think is a story a lot of women share.

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As we were chatting, I just thought, there are so many parallels between what we go through in a divorce and the things that women and men go through during a divorce that are parallel to a psychedelic experience, a psilocybin experience. My own divorce was the catalyst for a lot of transition and transformation in my life. It was what I like to call the beginning of my healing process, which sounds odd, but it really was. It kind of breaks us open. So I wanted to have Gwendoline on to talk through what divorce coaching is, why you'd want it, and how she can help others. Gwendoline, welcome to the podcast.

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Gwendoline: Thank you so much for having me, Michelle. I'm really honored to be here. I adored our conversation and our coffee talk, so it's exciting to get to do this in a different format.

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Michelle: So tell us a little bit about your story and how that led to you becoming a divorce coach.

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Gwendoline: My divorce story, like so many people's, came after years of deep contemplation and realizing something just didn't feel right in my marriage. The thought of actually divorcing was devastating. I kind of had it on the back burner for a long time. I did everything I could get my hands on to remedy my relationship — what internal work did I need to do, what could I do differently? It was years in the making.

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I would say to my partner, "I love you, but I don't like how you're treating me." And I finally made the decision to divorce when I still very much loved him. There's this misnomer that you divorce once you don't love somebody. On the contrary — I had to learn that you can love somebody and that still isn't enough. It's not enough for a healthy relationship.

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Some of the pivotal moments in my divorce journey were looking in the mirror and not recognizing myself anymore. I didn't have flush to my face. I looked gray, like I wasn't alive. I was stuck in survival mode, and my kids were only ever getting to know me in survival mode. They weren't getting to know me as an actual human, as the fullness of me. For so many women, I find that our kids are a huge motivator for divorcing — wanting them to get to know us and to have a different example of what a relationship and a joyful home life can look like.

I think it's important to note this because so many people are stuck in the divorce decision and it's —

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Michelle: It's devastating.

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Gwendoline: It's really paralyzing. Some of the things I found myself thinking were, "Maybe in my next lifetime I'll be happier. Maybe in my next lifetime I'll be in a happier marriage." The pain or thought of divorce was so catastrophic that I was willing to entomb myself in this unhappy life.

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I had these rescue fantasies that somebody was going to come and pluck my kids and me out of our life. Everything changed when I realized — no one's coming. No one's coming to rescue me. The only person who's going to rescue me is me.

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Once I could accept that, I realized that divorce is, yes, the end of a marriage — but what it really is, is a super deep spiritual journey. It's an invitation to become the fullest, most responsible, supremely sovereign version of yourself. To realize that this lifetime is your responsibility and how you walk through it is yours.

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There's a lot of fear that accompanies divorce, but there's a difference between the fear of "be careful with this knife, you're going to cut yourself" and the fear of becoming. I luckily had the experience of meeting the fear of becoming. The bigness of that fear was commensurate with the fear of metamorphosis and transformation. It was so big because my potential to transform was so big.

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Michelle: There were so many things you said that I wanted to touch on — like the joyful home, bringing joy back. My ex and I were stuck in constant bickering, constant scorecard-keeping. At some point I thought, this is not a healthy model for my children. I was also the instigator of our divorce, and I think there's this misnomer that the one who wants the divorce, it's easy for them. Honestly, I was devastated as well. Nobody gets married and wants to tear their family apart.

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Anyone out there struggling with that decision — at the end of the day, I'd rather have my kids see healthy joy return to the home, even if that has to be in two separate homes, than live through day-to-day survival in a loveless marriage.

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Gwendoline: And there are so many cultural scripts we're going against in divorce, which is why it feels excruciatingly painful. You kind of realize — oh my gosh, everything I learned about how to be, everything I ever thought about love, life, relationships, myself — I thought if I behaved in these ways, life was supposed to be good, supposed to reward me. And you realize that playbook doesn't actually work. There's a deep sense of betrayal: I've been following the wrong rules this whole time.

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And there's so much research now speaking to how a home with conflict — even silent conflict — is really devastating for kids. I like it when the research catches up.

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Michelle: It's the same in all aspects of life. Anytime there's no purpose or foundation of love — how many people get up and go to a job they hate just out of survival? That eats at you after a while, at your mental health, at your spirit. At some point you become so uncomfortable that you're forced to make change, even if you're not ready.

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I was completely scared and panicked about being a single mom with a mortgage. And I think the stat is it takes something like ten years to recover financially from a divorce.

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Gwendoline: There are two statistics I like to put in contrast: women initiate 70% of divorces, and yet they can anticipate about a 40% decrease in their standard of living. The economic hit is real. Which is why divorce is more strategic than just emotional — it's both.

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Michelle: Yes, 100%. So let's talk about the transition and what happens. What do you see with women — how they shift and change and grow during this process? It's a huge life quake. Any big shift in your life can be very destabilizing at first. What do you see women coming in with and coming out the other end with?

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Gwendoline: The identity transformation is huge. There's the external one — going from being a wife, being partnered, to being single, being a single parent. But what I think is most interesting, and what I really love to witness, is how women transform internally.

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One of the big transition areas is how much space women allow themselves to take. We're taught to accommodate, to cede space to the other person. And this becomes really important in negotiations — if you're negotiating from a place of smallness within yourself, you're typically not advocating for what you actually need to survive.

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A big part of the work is helping women take up the fullness of their beings and see how they've been contorting or shape-shifting. This beautiful transition happens where women stop apologizing for taking up less space. They also relearn to see the beauty in their characteristics without pathologizing them. Instead of seeing generosity as "oh, you're a doormat," it's like — actually, this is a really beautiful gift. The propensity for deep care and love isn't necessarily codependence. These are amazing attributes, and not everybody deserves access to them.

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The relationship to our rage and anger is also a huge shift. Women have a really complicated relationship to anger for all the reasons we're not allowed to express it. We're not allowed to say we're mad if someone hurts us. We're not allowed to express the ongoing inequities we face as women. A really critical part of the divorce journey is when women actually accept and acknowledge the anger they feel. I often hear: "I'm sorry, I'm not usually so angry." And I'm like — you should be angry. This is an appropriate reaction. Once they can step into that, instead of continuing to swallow years of having been dismissed or denigrated, it shifts. Anger is a really catalyzing emotion in this transition specifically.

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Michelle: I find often in psilocybin work that there's a lot of unmet rage and anger that surfaces. But underneath that is deep sadness and grief. You have to go through the rage to get to the grief and sadness so you can release it. Do you find that as well?

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Gwendoline: I do. In my personal journey, I have a complicated relationship with anger too — partly in contrast to having been with a really angry partner, because you want to be the opposite. But what was happening was — I would meditate and the Hindu goddess Kali just started to appear in my meditation spaces. She kept popping up. When I realized what she signifies — that she is the goddess of using anger for transformation, a call for deep transformation — I thought: my psyche is going through something that my external self isn't wanting to connect to.

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That's not an uncommon experience for women going through divorce. And it is grief and sadness, but grief and sadness aren't necessarily motivating emotions. Anger comes and couples with them to move you to the next place.

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Michelle: When I work with couples or individuals with relationship stuff, the resentment that's built over years of unspoken boundaries, not taking accountability — a lot of us as women were raised to please, to bend, to do everything for everybody and push our own needs aside. But the resentment stays. At some point women get to an age where they're like, I'm tired of being everything for everybody, and they start speaking what they need. But that's not always met with open arms.

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Gwendoline: And that's a later divorce journey identity shift — it's hard to go through at the beginning. One of the patterns I see is that the person who initiates divorce tends to be the person who over-functioned in the relationship. One of the archetypes helpful for women to identify with is the archetype of the martyr — we're socialized to sacrifice ourselves for love. You're taking responsibility for yourself, for your partner's emotions, for everyone else's emotional and psychological landscape.

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The divorce journey really requires you to know what's yours to control and what's not. Energetically, emotionally, spiritually — you've got to tuck yourself back in yourself. You're responsible for just what's happening here. You're not responsible for this other person.

It's a really hard thing to learn: I'm not going to over-function for my ex. They're responsible for their parenting. If they're going to forget to pick up the kids, that's on them. Our children deserve to fully know who the other parent is. And that connects to another big piece of the identity shift — the motherhood journey.

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So many of my clients come to me with really deep motherhood wounds. Many have had to mother performatively, mother for the male gaze, for male comfort. They've been ridiculed for their instincts, denigrated for them. They have these protective instincts saying something is not right, something is not safe — and they've been gaslit both within their marriages and in therapy spaces and in our larger society.

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In divorce, there's a lot of grief for moms to acknowledge that their protective instinct was telling them something wasn't okay for their kids. But the other side of that grief is really affirming — they get to step into the fullness of themselves as moms. It's a really beautiful transformation.

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Michelle: But also a very difficult one. My ex and I separated in October of 2017. I didn't have my full kitchen floor breakdown moment until January of 2019. That was just the beginning. There's been so much growth since then, but it is a long journey and it is not linear. There are moments where you think you're doing great and then you're right back in the grief and sadness. How do you coach clients through that and help them give themselves grace to stumble along the way?

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Gwendoline: Visually, a helpful way to see the journey is to imagine a spiral. You may be touching the same elements, but you actually need to revisit them multiple times through multiple iterations and growth stages. So many of us think: I'm going to schedule my healing, it's going to take six months. That's not how it works.

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When you open the door to healing, your body knows how much it can take in and transform. It comes in bits and pieces. In the spiral, you're going to first touch on grief and loss, then anger and rage, then fear — and you'll keep cycling through. I don't think it ever completely ends. It changes shape. One of the big lessons of divorce is realizing the depth of the transformation — so much of what you're being confronted with goes all the way back to childhood, if not before. It's super deep work.

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Michelle: If you choose to do it. Not everybody does — some people just skip through it, go right back to dating, re-partner, and relive that same trauma dance. But it can be a beautiful catalyst for growth if you really lean in.

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Gwendoline: And growth is not easy. It definitely comes with stumbling blocks and is really painful. One of the growth edges of divorce is realizing you're probably going to live the pain and the joy simultaneously, forever. What you're able to do is really appreciate the moments of joy.

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For people at the beginning of the divorce journey — when I describe how terrifying it is, I also say: you are going to come out such a badass version of yourself. When you look at people who are divorced, what you find are people who have lived through great emotional hardship — but they are so grateful for the moments of joy, for the glimmers, for the gifts of life. People who've gone through great hardship don't take those moments for granted. That joy is what carries you through.

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Michelle: And if you have children, it almost complicates the growth because we're still so focused on them. After my divorce, my main focus was making sure my children were emotionally supported. Do you see that pattern — women pausing their own transformation, picking it back up a couple of years down the road after they get their kids through?

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Gwendoline: Yes. There's the very real practical stuff — my God, my kids need to be fed, watered, bathed, they need to go through life. That's a lot. And transition days are tough. Years into my own divorce, transition days still remain tough. The kids just live the emotion of divorce through every transition period.

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One of the really interesting reframes I've been navigating with clients is understanding the timeline of trauma. Divorce is traumatic — it's the second most traumatic thing we go through in adulthood. The imprint of trauma actually takes years to de-escalate in your body. Your body doesn't really begin to get cues of safety until you're no longer in fight mode — which for some people isn't until the divorce decree is signed, which can be years after separation. Research suggests it takes about four years for our bodies to come out of just the heightened state of adrenaline and cortisol from a trauma state.

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So when clients say to me "I just want to be on my phone, I need to tune out" — that's not failing at parenthood. They're still trying to soothe their nervous system through what was utter chaos.

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We also underestimate the cognitive load and the impact of trauma on cognition. People say: I just can't think straight anymore, I can't show up at my job. There's a huge cognitive wounding that happens after a traumatic event. Women judge themselves, feel like they're not present with their kids. Sometimes the reframe is: you still need to heal. Give yourself more compassion and grace. A lot of people take mental health leaves after divorce, and that needs to be normalized.

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Michelle: I actually got laid off the same week my ex-husband moved out — not planned, very shocking and traumatic. If your spouse died, you would take time off work. Divorce has become so normalized in one way, but we still have so much to learn about the healing process.

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Let's talk about identity shift. For me it was complete shedding and then rebuilding. I was with Nike for 16 years. I lost my marriage and my job at the same time. I felt lost — who am I anymore? None of the things I had planned for my life had panned out. Everything I thought I was was stripped from me. Where do I go from here?

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Gwendoline: It's really huge. The overwhelming sentiment I get — and I experienced it too — is that women feel abandoned by God. They feel: why don't you love me, why are you putting me through so much trial and tribulation?

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Your story of losing your job immediately after losing your marriage — that's my experience too. So many other women's experiences. You have these two huge traumas coupled together. When we face financial insecurity, it's the deepest abandonment wound. It's a first chakra wound. How can I be safe in this world? How can I make my children safe in this world? It's partly why I speak about divorce as a spiritual thing — you feel abandoned by the very God who's actually orchestrating your —

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Michelle: Transformation.

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Gwendoline: Yes. And so the learning curve becomes: how do I trust?

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Michelle: And trust in yourself, right? So many of us lose trust in ourselves because we made these decisions that led to this point. We chose that partner, we chose that career, maybe we chose the divorce — and then the guilt. Especially if you have children. I had so much guilt about breaking up my family and causing my children pain.

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Gwendoline: One of the questions I hold for myself in parenting is: what do I want to tell my kids about life? The statistic is about 50% of marriages end in divorce — which means roughly a third of the adult population in the US has experienced divorce. It's a very common midlife transition.

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We grow up with this idea of the linear path — do well in school, get your degree, find the love of your life, get a house, kids, retire and buy a boat. This linear curve toward success. And when that's stripped — it's disorienting. I find myself having to interrupt that narrative before I say something to my kids. I try to tell them that life is a bunch of valleys and peaks, there are going to be amazing experiences and really hard stuff. What's really important is who you surround yourself with and the community you bring in. What really makes you rich in life is the support and the people around you. That's true in divorce too — so much of what we have to do is reshape our communities and change what we define as meaningful.

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Michelle: Let's talk about your coaching services and what that looks like. I know you have a divorce school and community that you're building.

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Gwendoline: My foundation is working with clients one-on-one. I work exclusively with women — I tend to work with moms. We meet at a regular cadence, usually every two to three weeks, which is the pace of divorce. It just doesn't go much faster.

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We talk about and address everything that divorce touches — how to work with a lawyer, interpreting legal advice, knowing what questions to elevate, understanding the process, putting together a parenting plan, looking at finances and assets, identifying the other professionals you need to bring in.

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So many people are scared of spending money in divorce — and I understand why. But what I overwhelmingly find is that people who think they're saving on that $400-an-hour lawyer consultation don't necessarily do better by the end of their divorce. It is strategic, and you are worth the investment. We underestimate — we think the legal system is going to bring us justice and understand our situation. That's just not how it works. You have to advocate for yourself and understand it inside out.

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I also understand what people are going through emotionally. I notice things like: you keep stepping away from the financial conversations, or every time we talk about your kids it comes with a lot of grief and fear. I'm not a therapist, so we're not excavating it deeply, but we're talking about how this is either helping or inhibiting your divorce decision.

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Michelle: Fear is not where you want to be when making big, tough life decisions. And knowing the questions to ask — because we don't know what we don't know. You've never done this before. You're stuck in anger and grief and sadness and fear. It feels so overwhelming and you don't know where to begin. Having somebody like you to hold women's hands and say: let me tell you what questions to ask so you don't have to think about it. So many women say I can't think straight, everything feels overwhelming. That's why someone like you is such a valuable service.

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Gwendoline: And tied to that — who we are today in the divorce process is not who we're going to be in two to three years. You're making really long-view decisions when you're in a state of fear or panic. One of the really common things I see is women in a protective stance saying "I want to be with my kids 24/7." That's completely understandable — but there will come a time when that becomes really heavy.

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You actually deserve some balance in your life. Today you may want to push for 80% parenting time, but you're going to need to make a living. You're probably going to want time to yourself. You might even want to date again. And we're horribly bad at future-casting as humans. Divorced people two to three years down the road often wish they had carved out more time for themselves, gotten more childcare support from their ex or community, advocated for the money they actually need.

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Michelle: Even thinking further down — when my kids were in middle school and elementary school, we never talked about college in the financial negotiations. That wasn't even on my radar. When my oldest was ready to go to college, it became a sticky point. I wish I had known to think about that. Having a coach might have helped.

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Gwendoline: Yes — at least to anticipate that conversation and understand the legal constraints, whether you can write it into a parenting plan or not. Not leave things on the table. That's part of what the Divorce School for Women is about — the legal part of divorce is only about 20% of the actual divorce process. So much of it is continuing to develop communication skills with your ex, learning how to navigate disagreements about the kids, taking on home and car maintenance that was historically your partner's domain. I want to create a community where there are no stupid questions — where we understand this is a really long, really deep process, and it is so much better in community.

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Michelle: It would have meant so much to have other women to talk to going through something similar. Just for the healing part of it, let alone the advice. Having that community of women feeling similar things at the same time is incredibly supportive.

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Gwendoline: It really takes divorce out of the individual experience and creates a collective pattern and script. You're like: oh, this happens to so many other people. I'm not crazy, I'm not stupid. There is a way through. I don't have to live this so emotionally close and with so much volatility.

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Michelle: Do you help women find other resources — a network of divorce attorneys, therapists?

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Gwendoline: I'm actually in the process of co-creating what we're calling the Portland Divorce Directory. A lot of us have our own referral lists, but what's really missing from the divorce world is the integrated view of all the professionals and services you need — from the right therapeutic support (someone who's domestic violence-informed or at minimum trauma-informed), to real estate professionals, financial professionals. Often you don't even realize the total universe of people you need. And for the professional network, everything lives in these separate databases — an independent lawyer referral system here, a real estate listing there. To get them synergized in a way that benefits both the professional community and the individual community doesn't yet exist. That's what we're pulling together.

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Michelle: I haven't seen that exist and I think it's brilliant. We're starting to see a more holistic approach in medical care — treating the person as a whole, not just the physical ailments. To do that through divorce would be amazing.

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Gwendoline: It's really exciting. One of the biggest takeaways I had after getting through divorce — and that I continue to see — is that it's such an underserved experience. We just do not have anywhere near the amount of support, understanding, wherewithal, or policies to tackle this huge, transformative, traumatic life experience.

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Michelle: And you're looking to change that. So where can people find you?

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Gwendoline: They can go to my website — Artemis Divorce Coaching. Artemis is the Greek goddess of children, women, and the wilderness. It's artemisdivorcecoaching.com. I'm also on Instagram and LinkedIn under the same name. You can find me online, book a session, or send me a message.

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Michelle: Gwendoline, I think a great way to end is: what changes for women when they stop fighting the divorce process and learn to accept that this is where they're at — and really lean into their next chapter?

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Gwendoline: The vision that's coming forward is a breaking open. It's this beautiful image of being able to break open at the heart space. And it's not necessarily tears and grief that come out. It's a beautiful bouquet of flowers. All of these beautiful things they've kind of forgotten about themselves, or haven't accepted, or haven't wanted to express — that they can now hold in the center of their being.
 

Michelle: Beautiful. Thank you. I see so many parallels with psilocybin work. Because it's a healing process — that's all healing, right? Thank you so much. This has been a great conversation. I've enjoyed getting to know you and your work. I think this is a big gap in the market that you're helping to fill. And thank you to everyone who tuned in to another episode of Beyond the Dose. I'm Michelle Harrell, and we'll be back again next week.

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