Figure Out Who You Are and How to Love Yourself Again with Ashley Abramson
Shedding Self-Judgment in Favor of Self Love
Getting lost in a marriage happens for a variety of reasons – you grow apart from your spouse, your kids move out, other changes happen in your lives. But at the end of the day, it may boil down to the fact that you don’t really know yourself. Ashley Abramson is a solution focused self love mentor and trauma coach who joins Seth and Pete to talk about the important journey you need to make – whether it’s before you get married, during your marriage, during your divorce, or after you’re single again – to figure out who you are and how to love yourself again.
Can you really love your spouse or kids without loving yourself first? Truly loving yourself the most at the end of the day is critical. You really don’t know what love is until you’ve learned to love yourself, as Ashley says. To be clear, self love means knowing who you are and why you do what you do. Getting curious. Bringing Awareness. Only through that can you truly know who you are.
Seth, Pete and Ashley also talk about not seeking happiness in something else because it can lead to issues, as well as a theory about why it’s important to never have anything that you’re not willing to lose. It’s a powerful conversation that may help you get to the bottom of your issues.
Plus, Seth and Pete take on a listener question about options when family court fails.
Links & Notes
Ashley and Big Miracle Energy on the web, YouTube, and Patreon
Got a question you want to ask on the show? Click here!
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Pete Wright:
Welcome to How to Split a Toaster, a divorce podcast about saving your relationships on TruStory FM. Today is your toaster still a toaster after divorce?
Seth Nelson:
Welcome to the show everybody. I'm Seth Nelson. As always, I'm here with my good friend Pete Wright. Today on the show we're talking about how we take care of the most important relationship we have in divorce. No, it's not your attorney, it's not even your kids. The most important relationship you have before, during, and after your divorce is the relationship you have with yourself.
Ashley Abramson is a solution-focused self-love mentor, trauma coach, and three-time international Amazon bestselling author, and she joins us today to talk about shedding self-judgment in favor of self-love. Ashley, welcome to the Toaster.
Ashley Abramson:
Thank you for having me here. I'm super excited.
Pete Wright:
Oh, Ashley. Okay, so as you might've heard during the intro, your focus and your journey has been from a divorce, which doesn't sound great to a rediscovery of who you are as a human being, and that is one of the real law podcast that masquerades as a self-help podcast. And so we're really interested in-
Seth Nelson:
Pete, tell people that.
Pete Wright:
[inaudible] Did I just out us somehow? I'm the worst. But this is a really important part of the divorce process, and my hunch is as wired into the legal stuff as you are, maintaining that relationship with self is critically important. So I'm hoping you would be willing to start off with a little bit of a journey of yours. Like, what did it look like, what was triggering for you in the divorce process that pushed you on this path of discovering who you are and connecting with yourself?
Ashley Abramson:
Yeah, everything.
Pete Wright:
Excellent. Yeah, next week on the show.
Seth Nelson:
Exactly. You got my joke, Pete.
Ashley Abramson:
There we go. No, I mean really everything, it was this grand realization of how much of my life was created outside of me, all of my happiness, my satisfaction, my status, and the divorce was that shiny mirror that showed me that I had no clue who I was, I had no self-love, pretty much brought me down to the ashes. I wear the phoenix on my neck because I really see my divorce process and what occurred afterwards as this burning of what I thought was and this discovery of what always was, if that makes sense.
Pete Wright:
Could you put words to describe who you are today versus who you were before your divorce? How have you changed?
Ashley Abramson:
So I know who I am. I love myself at the deepest level. I don't seek external gratification anymore because I have it within. The Ashley prior to the divorce, even though I had done tons of personal development before my divorce and I thought I was emotionally, mentally, physically the happiest, healthiest I had ever been, but it was mindset work. It was the surface level, cold showers, meditations, affirmations, which are wonderful, do not get me wrong, but I call them the icing on the cake. If you haven't baked the cake, the icing will cave in, I promise you.
Pete Wright:
That is a disgusting metaphor. Thank you for that. I have never heard that metaphor. Always bake the cake first, y'all. You heard it here. You've never before.
Ashley Abramson:
Bake the cake.
Seth Nelson:
And this is How To Split a Toaster, a divorce podcast masquerading as baking advice.
Ashley Abramson:
Yes. I'll bring the baking advice.
Pete Wright:
Okay, outstanding. We're in good shape.
Seth Nelson:
Pete.
Pete Wright:
Yeah.
Seth Nelson:
I don't think I'm going to say this the same way that Ashley did, but we've talked about this before on the show where when I was married the first time, got that one there-
Pete Wright:
I'm going to need a cowbell or something.
Seth Nelson:
I played so many different roles in my life at that time, in the role that I let go. That was no one's fault, but my own was being true to myself, who was I. I played so many different roles in my life and I forgot the most important one was to be me. I was a stepdad, I was an attorney, I was a husband, I was a son, I was an uncle. I was trying to be a provider, whatever things I was doing was always looking outward to others and how I was supposed to be in that relationship.
And I didn't take time to go for a run to spend maybe even time with friends because I was so invested in everything else that I was doing that I let a lot of things go that no one asked me to do it. Let me be very clear. This isn't like, oh, she wouldn't let me hang out with my friends and go grab a beer. That's not what we're talking about. We're talking about, I was saying, Nope, I got other things going on. I secluded myself in all these other things and lost who I was.
Pete Wright:
What do you say? Ashley, I promise I'll come back to your thread here in a second, but you guys have both distracted me. What do you say to people who say, "But that's where I get my joy. I get my joy by externalizing and supporting the joy of others and supporting the lives of others. That's where I get my healing energy." Why do I need to focus on myself?
Ashley Abramson:
I'm a firm believer that I'm not here to force anybody else into a different understanding, but I ask, what if you don't have that if you lost it all tomorrow? The same thing I would ask a billionaire that says, or a millionaire that says, you don't need money to be happy. My question to them would be, what if you lost all tomorrow, could you still find happiness? And usually, their answer is no. And then that's that stark realization of, oh crap. That's not genuine happiness or joy if it's dependent on someone else, because let's be realistic, everybody's going to disappoint you at some point in your life.+ Because we're not the identical human being. We're not the identical person. So we're always going to disappoint or come up short from what someone else is expecting from us. So if you're seeking something from someone else, it's never going to be exactly what you're seeking. Does that make sense?
Pete Wright:
It totally makes sense. And it allows me to quote my new source of all great wisdom, which is the hit film Barbie and America Ferrera, when she looks and says, oh, I don't want to change, and she says, oh, honey, life has changed, and life is changed is the source of all disappointment. Someone else changes their lives and it shakes up your worldview. And that's disappointment. I actually love your answer because it's that when you look around you and realize there's no one else to serve your externalizing of your own efforts to create joy in others, that is hollow. And what will you have?
Seth Nelson:
And Pete, this is I think the perfect time to say sometimes the people that you were serving and that you got joy from, when they leave, it rocks your world and it will rock your marriage. And what I mean by that: empty nesters-- that is a prime time for potential divorce because you've put all your focus into others, your children. No one's saying that's a bad thing. They go off to college and you look at your spouse and say, how the hell, do we even know each other? How are we going to spend time together? And that is a microcosm, I think, of what we're talking about.
Pete Wright:
And I've told this story about my parents. My dad told me when we had kids, he said, "When I left the house, it took them a long time to realize they had to ceremonially reintroduce themselves to one another," my mom and dad, they had to shake hands and say, nice to meet you. Because they were, to your point about the Phoenix, Ashley, they were substantively different people the last time they were in a relationship alone together than they were after I left. And that is, I guess that's jarring. That can be alarming.
Ashley Abramson:
Yeah, and I think too, a lot of times if you ask a person, what do you love the most? Who do you love the most in your life? If they have children, it's usually, oh, my children. And a lot of times those prickles people when I say this, but that's not possible. You cannot love your children more than you love yourself. You are not capable of giving someone else what you already are not giving yourself. So if you don't love yourself at a certain level, you cannot love your children at that level, meaning you have to love yourself the most at the end of the day.
So my flip to that question you brought me is that really joy or is that what you have been taught joy is, because if you don't know what joy is on your own, do you really know what joy is? I don't think so. And I would say the majority of my clients I've worked with in my own journey would say Ashley's right, I didn't even realize what joy was until I found it within. I thought it was all these things outside, but that doesn't even meet the joy that you can experience when you find it within, when you shift your perspective, when it doesn't matter if you're homeless or a multimillionaire, you can find the same amount of happiness because it has nothing to do with anything outside of you and everything to do within.
Pete Wright:
This also allows me to quote the second great book of wisdom, courtesy of the Federal Aviation Administration. "Always put the mask on yourself before you put it on your children." In so many ways, you get to love better when you love yourself.
Ashley Abramson:
I think you only get to love. I mean, that's probably an unpopular opinion, but I don't think you truly know what love is until you've learned to love yourself. And I think that statement, I love that because my mom worked for the FAA, my grandma worked for the FAA, my brother's a pilot. We're very FAA.
Pete Wright:
I promise I didn't know that before I made that joke. That was amazing.
Seth Nelson:
Okay. We have to pause here for a minute because I was thinking of 37 different things to say that he quotes Barbie and then the FAA manual. And Ashley, you just ruined it for me because then you just is like, Pete, I love that analogy.
Pete Wright:
Right.
Seth Nelson:
Let me tell you why. And then you list off that you basically are related to everyone that works for Delta.
Pete Wright:
It's like the FAA sort of founding family of the FAA. It's amazing.
Ashley Abramson:
[inaudible].
Pete Wright:
I don't even know where we were that you totally derailed my line of thought.
Seth Nelson:
Well, here's the thing. It is a very good point that you put the mask on yourself first, you love yourself first and then you can help others. But Ashley, I think as I'm listening to you say this, can you give an example of loving yourself first? What are you finding joy? What does that mean? Because I can just kind of hear it where someone's saying, well, I love spending time with my family. I would prefer to have dinner with them than by myself. So are there some examples we can work with here?
Ashley Abramson:
And I think self-love has so many different definitions today. People are like, I'm going to go get a massage. I'm going to practice self-love. I'm going to go buy myself this car, practice self-love. When I talk about self-love, what I mean is knowing who the heck you are, understanding why you make the decisions you do, and just a quick little story. When I really got on this journey of what I call bringing awareness and getting curious, I was moving to Florida and I was going to buy a brand new car, and I was looking at a silver car, which I've always got silver cars, my mom's always had silver cars.
Seth Nelson:
They match the planes for you. The planes are silver.
Ashley Abramson:
There we go.
Pete Wright:
She actually has an aircraft call sign on the front fender of her car.
Ashley Abramson:
I did just get a license plate today, but ... Anyway, I knew I didn't want a white car. And I get on the phone with my mom, and I'm like, "I'm getting you a new car." And she goes, "It better not be a white one." And I was like, "What?" And I realized I did not like white cars because that was a story I got from her. So you bet your assistance, I drive a white vehicle now because I needed to test that narrative because that's about learning to love and respect yourself. If you're continuing to live by narratives that you have no clue where they came from, then you have no idea who you are. So that's just a small story.
Pete Wright:
I love that pivot because I was about to make a joke about buying a white car, calling the Vengeance car against mom or "suck it mom" is on your plate. But really, I like the idea of using those as a chance to test your stories or test the assumptions that you've held about yourself all along. That's the nut of the whole story is, oh my gosh, what tape is playing in my head that I did not even know was playing? That's huge.
Ashley Abramson:
100%. Yeah. I think that's the key to self-love is getting curious, bringing awareness, and only through that can you truly know who you are versus, oh, this is Pete's story. He told me this. Or Seth said, this movie is great. That's why I love this movie. We're running by so many of those stories, and that plays into trauma and societal conditioning and everything else. But that's what self-love truly is knowing you can't love yourself if you don't know you.
Seth Nelson:
I have certainly learned about why I do things that I do. Knowing the underlying reasoning always helps me, always helps. And it took a lot of work and time to figure stuff out. And let me be clear, this is not me sitting on a couch and saying, tell me about your childhood. That's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about when someone says something, well, why do I react this way? Is it something that I'm unhappy with myself or they hit that nerve that has nothing to do with what they said? It has to do with how I perceived what they said and how I perceive myself. And I just had this conversation where someone said, "Oh my God, Seth, you're so funny." And I said, "Well, I appreciate that, but you find my humor funny, but I will tell the same joke in the same setting, and you will laugh and someone will think that was the most unbelievable rude thing to say." Same person, same setting that I'm talking, two different listeners, they perceive it differently.
Pete Wright:
Is one of them a judge, because I get that then.
Seth Nelson:
Right. Exactly, Pete. Exactly.
Pete Wright:
Can we talk a little bit about the rebuilding process? As a divorce podcast, let's bring it back to the divorce story. I mean, that's really, Ashley, it seems to me that that was triggering to you for this journey of rediscovery. Can you talk a little bit about your story with the law and your adventures in rebuilding?
Ashley Abramson:
I was blessed to have some amazing attorney friends in the process of my divorce who helped me fill out the paperwork very, very quickly and got my ex-husband to sign it before he realized some of the pensions and things I had access to. I know it doesn't sound great today, but I was blessed with that. A lot of my clients, I work with them through the process while they're dealing with it, and it gets very, very muddy and dark, and I love the name, How To Split a Toaster because in the end, it has nothing to do with the toaster and it has everything to do with you having this innate last hand up, like, I'm going to win this and if I get the toaster I win. But I'm here to say, no matter what you get, say you get the toaster, it will never satisfy you.
So when we're going through that divorce process, and I was as well focused on I think Christmas things, I think he still has some of my Christmas ornaments, and it just held so much weight that it kept me from really what was going on, the true healing that needed to occur in the process. And I destructed for a good year, year-and-a-half, went down a really dark place, pretty much was trying to kill myself without killing myself until I had this aha moment of ... I'm going to quote Wynonna Judd, "You only got two places to go when you hit rock bottom, sideways or straight up." And I decided I was going to go straight up and really start to do that work.
To me, that pivotal moment of understanding how much the weight I was placing on the things within the divorce didn't matter anymore, is like what gave me permission to just let it go and step forward and step out of it.
Pete Wright:
Isn't that though, when you talk about the stuff, what I'm hearing is that stuff is so entangled with your identity that that's the change that you're bearing witness to, is how do I let go of the stuff that represents who I was before?
Ashley Abramson:
100%. It's a huge grieving process. You're grieving so many things. Like in my divorce, I had a dog, I lost my dog, I had a son who now we're splitting time, which you talked about empty nesters earlier. He was in the process in high school moving through, leaving the house already. So it was like this dual empty nest/we don't even have a nest anymore, what's going on here. And the last thing you had to hold onto was the things because the things were your identity. And that was like the final, oh my gosh, this is really not who I'm anymore, I don't have my car.
Seth Nelson:
I've always had this theory, I call it the disattachment theory is I never have anything that I'm not willing to lose. I haven't thought about this literally in 16 years. When I got divorced, a friend of mine took me to the masters. He had tickets and I was going through a rough time and he said, let's go up and see the master's golf tournament for a weekend. It was magical. And I bought two glasses with the master logo in it. I had them for years. And about three years ago, my son dropped one and it broke, and he came into my room and he was like, "Oh my god, dad, I'm so sorry. It's like one of your favorite glasses." "It's just a glass. Did you cut yourself? Are you okay?" And he was really taken aback by it because I always really enjoy that because it was a magical weekend, it makes me think of it. I have a collection of coffee mugs where all my nephews and kids and step-kids go to college because when I have my coffee in the morning, I think about them, but they're just mugs.
So I try not to have anything that I'm not willing to lose.
Ashley Abramson:
Well, and that goes to what we were talking about earlier. That means you're not seeking your happiness or peace in something else, right? Because before we were talking about doing things for other gives us joy and hanging out with this person gives us joy, well, the truth is the majority of our, what we think is joy and happiness is in our car, is in our favorite pair of jeans, is in our coffee mug from the masters. But we don't realize that until it's gone. You, Seth had already done that on attachment to things and found your happiness and peace within. So when the cup broke, it didn't matter. But I'll bet you if it would've been shortly after your divorce and that cup broke, that was your only shining light in that moment. It probably would've been-
Seth Nelson:
No, I would've given up my child at that point.
Ashley Abramson:
Yeah, it would've been like-
Pete Wright:
Because of your son who dropped that last one.
Seth Nelson:
Yeah, exactly.
Ashley Abramson:
My former son.
Seth Nelson:
Never would've liked him anyway.
Pete Wright:
He's such a smart ass.
Ashley Abramson:
[inaudible].
Pete Wright:
Can you reflect a little bit on your former spouse's experience with this? I'm thinking in the divorce process as you're negotiating, you're sliding papers underneath his hand for signature, you are doing all of those things. Did you learn anything by essentially bearing witness to the process?
Ashley Abramson:
I mean, the statement of you really find out who someone is when it death and divorce. My father passed away when I was 18, and I got to see that firsthand. My family fell apart. It was a huge mess. This divorce was another reminder of that. I had a friend who lost her husband to cancer, and during my divorce, she came to me, and she said, "I'd give anything for my husband to be back. But that was so much easier than what you're going through now." And what I tell my clients is it's this grieving process of a person that no longer exists but does exist. His body still walking around, that name still there, he's still there. He still can talk to you, but you have no clue who he is.
And same for me. He probably had no clue who I was either because I completely self-destructed. But the cool thing is being able to witness that and then later where things are at now is only a result of the internal work I did. We didn't go to counseling and try to after divorce fix things or anything like that, but I did my work inside myself, therefore, he doesn't prickle me anymore. We don't get huge blowups anymore because I don't place things in him. Same for the coffee mug. I don't place anything in him.
Pete Wright:
Gives you the freedom to co-parent with more authenticity and presence.
Ashley Abramson:
Oh yeah.
Pete Wright:
And I imagine not putting words in your mouth, but ...
Ashley Abramson:
Definitely. I mean, when I moved to Florida, we started having weekly video calls. Me and my ex-husband and my son, and my son at the time was 20 or 19 or 20 years old. That wasn't necessary other than the fact that we could do it. And I was moving across the country. And it was beautiful.
Seth Nelson:
It's interesting you say that, Ashley, because, with my son's life, his mom and I have been divorced since he was two and a half.
Ashley Abramson:
Oh wow.
Seth Nelson:
Sometimes I would wait in the car as eager as I was to hear what he was going to tell me about his day when something big happens. And I would say, "Wait, get mom on the phone" or, "When we get home," because I didn't want him to tell it twice because sometimes it's like, oh, I just told this to dad. And then you are saying the whole story over. Now if it's something really exciting, you want to tell, it's great.
Pete Wright:
You don't want the act of telling stories to each parent to exhaust any part of your relationship with them.
Ashley Abramson:
Right.
Seth Nelson:
Exactly. Or with themselves like, oh, I got to do this again. And it's not their fault that they have to do it twice. So I always just was very intentional about that. But it reminded me of what you're saying, like, Hey, yeah, we had video chats.
Ashley Abramson:
But I think a lot of people struggle to get to that place. And I worked in child protection for over a decade and was in the middle of different divorces and custody battles. And our judge always would show, you guys have maybe seen this, there's this letter a judge wrote to a newspaper pretty much telling parents going through a divorce that, Hey, divorce doesn't hurt your children. It's how you handle it. And every time you talk crap about the other parent, you're talking crap about 50% of that child. And they know that. And it's a beautiful ... If you haven't seen it, I'll find it and send it to you. But it's a beautiful reminder of we're the adults in this. Everything we do, the way we talk about the other, the way we handle situations is hurting our child. Even if you're trying to hurt your ex-husband or hurt your ex-wife, you're really hurting the child.
Seth Nelson:
100%. And I always say "parents don't get divorced. Mom and dads don't get divorced, spouses get divorced." So you're still the parent. The other thing is, kids figure it out. You want to start passion that parent, that kid when they're 20 or whatever, they're going to figure it out. And ultimately, if they don't figure it out and they're in their thirties and forties and having kids, eventually, it's going to come back in their own children. So you're just laying minefields in minefields. That is not the way to go for your kid and your grandkids.
Pete Wright:
Well, and we should shout out Ellen Bruno, we had on the show last season, a documentary filmmaker split the early years and split up the teen years, her documentary interviewing children about their experience, watching their parents go through a divorce. Extraordinary work, and it's worth checking out.
Seth Nelson:
Yeah, it was amazing.
Pete Wright:
Amazing.
Ashley Abramson:
Yeah.
Pete Wright:
Let's talk a little bit about what you are up to. You as a coach, what is the kind of coaching that you're doing based on all of these fantastic learnings that you have done as you've risen the Phoenix.
Ashley Abramson:
As I've risen ... Well, I use the title "solution-focused, self-love mentor and trauma coach." So essentially, when I really started to come out the other end of my divorce, I had tried to Google-fix myself in the middle of the divorce, Googling all the things I'm doing, and it just kept saying, you're doing everything wrong, which created more shame and guilt. And I was like, "Man, I never want another woman to not have the opportunity to essentially rise up after such bringing you down to the bottom place." And then I created my business. So it's transformed over the years. I continue to work on myself, and essentially, I just work with men and women. My target audience is women though, to uncover the stuff that's holding them back from their truth within and really, like I was talking about earlier, find that true self-love, which is knowing yourself.
So clearing back the societal conditioning and programming and trauma, that's really what I'm up to these days.
Pete Wright:
That's the unicorn stuff. You want to talk why you have unicorns on your wall? That's your process?
Ashley Abramson:
Yes. It's the unicorn effect method. And essentially like the butterfly effect. If a butterfly flaps its wings halfway around the world, it'll create a tsunami, and I'm here to stay. When you stand in your authenticity and fully love yourself, you interacting with one person can impact 7 billion very quickly. So it's really standing in your authentic self.
Pete Wright:
And you work primarily with women or exclusively with women?
Ashley Abramson:
Primarily. I do have some men.
Pete Wright:
And when people come to you, what is the level of breakage that you're trying to break through?
Ashley Abramson:
All different levels. It's been so beautiful because though I have different target audience, marketing 101. If anybody here is familiar with marketing, you have to have a very unique niche. But even in that uniqueness, I will just get anyone anywhere. So I have some people that are 19 years old and they're just like, "I want to invest in myself now and know who I am now so I'm not 40 years old going through a divorce and trying to figure it out." And then I have people-
Seth Nelson:
Smart.
Ashley Abramson:
I know.
Seth Nelson:
I would've never done that at 19.
Ashley Abramson:
Exactly.
Seth Nelson:
Unless it came where you could get me beer underage maybe.
Pete Wright:
Yeah, right. Start contributing to your Roth and go get counseling. That's when you're 18, get it done.
Ashley Abramson:
It's huge. And to know that this generation is seeing the value in it just gives me so much hope for the future. And then I have people all the way up in their fifties who have gone through a super awful divorce and can't get out of bed every day. So I really just see myself as a clear vessel that knows the path. Back to your answers, I don't think I have your answers. I just ask really great questions, hold a space that's free of judgment, and get you to what's going on inside of you.
Pete Wright:
Fascinating.
Seth Nelson:
I got to tell you, I don't think I've ever heard it summed up that well as I ask really great questions and hold space without judgment. That's wonderful.
Ashley Abramson:
Oh, thanks. Sometimes people are like, "What, what's that?" I'm like, "Yeah."
Seth Nelson:
Well, because they've never had that, right? They've always been judged.
Pete Wright:
Right. Well, and that's what we're talking about. We're talking about identity. So much of identity is reflected through judgment. We're either judging ourselves or we're reflecting the judgments of others and how it bounces off of us. It's fantastic.
Ashley, thank you so, so much for hanging out. Where do you want to send people who want to learn more about you?
Ashley Abramson:
bigmiracleenergy.com. You can find everything there. Adventures, what I call adventures. So recent podcasts, so this will be on the Adventures page. And then I also have a YouTube Big Miracle Energy YouTube channel as well as a Patreon. So if you Google Big Miracle Energy, you'll find me.
Pete Wright:
Outstanding. Bigmiracleenergy.com.
Seth Nelson:
And by the way, Pete, I was on the website earlier and I was looking for a unicorn instead. She's got this awesome picture jumping up by the beach, and then we get on the show, she's like, "Oh, I got a unicorn hanging on wall, hanging on my wall."
Pete Wright:
"... hanging on my wall." It's like right over.
Seth Nelson:
I was like, "Why isn't that on the website?" And the reason I raised that is because before we got on the show, Ashley was commenting about all the cool stuff Pete has on his wall, which is a whole litany of past electronic coolness.
Pete Wright:
We forgot to even bring this up. We'll do it as a little coda here. I think so much about rediscovering yourself is rediscovering playfulness and frivolity that is locked away that we've forgotten how to do. And this is my effort in my office by putting old gear, little bits of memorabilia stuff other people have sent me to surround me is a way to remember this is who I used to be, and that kid was fun. He played with stuff and he still needs to sometimes be reminded what it's like to play.
Ashley Abramson:
Yeah, that's who you still are, though. That isn't an old version. I like to say Pablo Picasso has a very famous quote, and I've kind of switched it up a little. He says, "We spend half of our life learning to become an adult and the other half learning to become a child." I say remembering that we are a child, we're overgrown, unsupervised children that have to take care of ourselves now and can eat ice cream all day every day if we want to.
Pete Wright:
Dare to dream.
Ashley Abramson:
You can. No one's telling you no.
Pete Wright:
My gallbladder disagrees. Anyway.
Seth Nelson:
All right. There's a lot of problems with that scenario-
Pete Wright:
Yeah, there's baggage.
Seth Nelson:
But I understand the concept, and I'm 100% in favor.
Pete Wright:
100%. Yes, absolutely. Well, anyway, hey, this has been great. Thank you so much, Ashley, for hanging out with us.
Ashley Abramson:
Thank you.
Pete Wright:
Links in the show notes to all of the places where you need to be sent to learn more about Ashley. Seth, we have a listener question. Are you ready for this? It's a doozy.
Seth Nelson:
Yeah. Great way to start the season. Let's do it.
Pete Wright:
Absolutely. Don't forget everybody. You can ask your own questions just like the one you're about to hear, howtosplitatoaster.com. Click the button, ask a question, and you can be just like this particular anonymous by request submitter.
Seth, wondering if you'd consider a podcast on options when family law court fails. In my case, I have an excellent attorney and great therapist and a fairly black-and-white case of documented alcohol abuse disorder. And my ex-husband failed Soberlink tests prior to final judgment, a suspended healthcare license diagnoses by board-certified psychiatrists, private investigator reports. However, our judge was sympathetic to substance abuse, and my ex-husband's severe denial is supported and billed by his high-conflict attorney. He refused further sobriety testing or even abstaining from alcohol, and I didn't have the money to go to trial considering the unpredictable judge who may not have required what I was asking, which was not drinking while our daughters are in his care.
I do have primary custody 80% of the time, which protects my young children. But my goal wasn't to keep my kids away from their dad only to ensure their safety and access to a sober parent. So now we learn to live in a gray space unless there's something else that can be done. Perhaps the answer here is empowering children to ensure their own safety, but that doesn't feel realistic or fair either. That's a big story. Seth, what do you think?
Seth Nelson:
First off, it's a huge story and it's unfortunately a very common story because as we've discussed many times, going to court is extremely expensive. Let's just look at the expenses that were, in this case, suspended healthcare license. Someone had to find that, review it, figure it out, diagnosis of board-certified psychiatrist, that sounds like they had a mental health professional or social investigation that could be 20, 30, 40, 50, $100,000. Private investigator reports, they get paid by the hour and that's not cheap. Then they got to write the report. And she didn't have the money to go to her trial because you have an unpredictable judge based on something the judge said along the way that gave the impression that the judge was sympathetic to the substance abuse.
So there's a lot to unpack here, but this anonymous listener in her question gives us the own answer, which is the right answer is perhaps the answer is empowering children to ensure their own safety, but that doesn't feel realistic or fair either. I appreciate the ending sentiment. I don't know how old the children are. It's a whole lot different if a child is two years old and going over to dads in this case 20% of the time and they can't speak up. It's different when they're 13, 14, 15, and they can learn the signs of what happens when someone is drinking or suffering from alcoholism and protect themselves more.
But I think ultimately, we ask too much of our judges to make these decisions because the system and the way it's even set up, I believe is flawed. We are telling people, you need to co-parent effectively together and we put you into an adversarial system. That's ripe with contradiction and problems. We try to then say, well, parents shouldn't fight. So recently in Florida, check your local jurisdiction, there is now a presumption of 50/50 timesharing. The reason they did that, in my view, is they're trying to not have less litigation. And the arc has changed. Where fathers are viewed as being more responsible in being involved in the children's lives. Doesn't mean that they're the better parent or the best parent or they're doing what's best for the kid-- it's just a presumption, a blanket presumption, treating everyone the same.
Pete, you have more than one child. You treat them differently because they're different kids, but we try to do these blanket, we're going to treat everyone the same in court. When it's really a case-by-case basis, the law should be the same, it should be applied the same, but you have to really look at those facts. So my heart goes out to this listener because the system is flawed from the start and to ask it to correct, it would be better when it's flawed is I think asking too much.
Pete Wright:
There was a ... gosh, I'm spacing it. I should look it up for the show notes. There's a wonderful quote from a writer of young people's stuff who said, "As a way of describing a psalm for parents to their kids, that I cannot protect you from the world and the world can be a hard place, but I can show you how to respond to whatever the world gives you." Now, I'm butchering the quote, but I love that idea. I can't protect you from everything, but I can show you what to look out for and-
Seth Nelson:
100%.
Pete Wright:
It doesn't feel realistic; it might be the only choice. It doesn't feel fair, but it might be the only fair thing you have in front of you.
Seth Nelson:
Right, and I appreciate the sentiment of, I have the kids 80% of the time. My goal wasn't to keep them away, it was to keep them safe. You do know they're safe when they're not there because they're not at potential risk. I'm not saying risk because maybe days or moments that the dad is not suffering from the alcoholism at that very moment where they're drinking, maybe things are good, I don't know, but my heart goes out to you. I hope your kids are doing well. I hope you're doing well, and we really appreciate the question
Pete Wright:
And I hope your former spouse is getting some help.
Seth Nelson:
Absolutely.
Pete Wright:
Time may do what it does. All right, well, thank you so much for writing in and sharing that question. Keep them coming, everybody howtosplitatoaster.com. Ask Seth the question. That's the button, and I think we're done, Seth. We had a fantastic conversation with Ashley. Thank you so much, Ashley, for hanging out with us on behalf of Ashley Abramson and Seth Nelson, America's favorite divorce attorney, I'm Pete Wright. We'll catch you next time right here on How to Split a Toaster, a divorce podcast about saving your relationships.
Outro:
Seth Nelson is an attorney with NLG Divorce and Family Law with offices in Tampa, Florida. While we may be discussing family law topics, how to split a toaster is not intended to, nor is it providing legal advice. Every situation is different. If you have specific questions regarding your situation, please seek your own legal counsel with an attorney licensed to practice law in your jurisdiction.
Pete Wright is not an attorney or employee of NLG Divorce and Family Law. Seth Nelson is licensed to practice law in Florida.
