Danielle Barbereau
How to Navigate Divorce with Dignity and Keep Your Career on Track with Danielle Barbereau
The original specialist divorce coach: Danielle founded her coaching practice in 2010 and has worked with over 1,600 clients face-to-face. Author of 'After The Split', a book on how to best recover from a breakup. She is writing her first novel and book on having effective divorce conversations. You can reach her on email.
Divorce in midlife can feel overwhelming—whether you’re going through it yourself or supporting someone close to you. The emotional turmoil, the financial worries, and the uncertainty about what comes next can take a huge toll. But does it have to be that way?
In this episode, I sit down with Danielle Barbereau, the UK’s first divorce coach, who has spent over a decade helping people navigate separation with more clarity and dignity. We talk about how to choose the right lawyer, how to set boundaries at work so you don’t become office gossip, and why work can actually be a stabilizing force in the midst of personal upheaval.
Key Takeaways from This Episode:
✔ The most common emotions during divorce—and how to manage them
✔ Why setting boundaries at work and with friends is crucial for protecting your energy
✔ How to communicate your situation without oversharing
✔ The importance of keeping divorce out of court and how to find the right legal support
✔ Practical steps to make the process less adversarial and more respectful
Divorce is never easy, but it doesn’t have to define you. If you’re in the thick of it—or know someone who is—this episode is filled with practical, compassionate advice to help you move forward with strength and clarity.
If you enjoyed this, you might also enjoy my Life Satisfaction Assessment. It's a 30-minute program where I guide you through a deep dive into 10 areas of your life to assess what's bringing you joy and what's bringing you down. I call it Derailed and it's a fabulous place to begin a joy-at-work redesign.
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Introduction to Midlife Divorce
Lucia Knight: If you're in midlife, chances are you've encountered divorce, whether personally or through friends, colleagues or family. And oh boy, most of those stories ain't pretty. Divorce can be brutal, but does it have to be? There has got to be a better way to end relationships at our age.
Meet Danielle Barbereau: UK's First Divorce Coach
Lucia Knight: Enter Danielle Barbereau, the first divorce coach in the UK.
She's been guiding people through divorce since 2010. In this fascinating conversation, she offers practical advice on choosing the right lawyer to help you end your relationship with dignity, minimizing both drama, and trauma. She also explores how work can be a surprising source of stability in the soup of messy emotions.
And she shares simple, compassionate ways to set boundaries at work and with friends, so you don't become the center of juicy gossip mongering. Let's dive in.
Understanding the Role of a Divorce Coach
Lucia Knight: Danielle, even though I have many friends and family members who've been through separations or divorces, I don't understand it personally. What does a divorce coach do?
Danielle Barbereau: It's actually a new profession. I think I was the first one to do this and primarily it was to help clients through the difficulties of a divorce, the pain of a divorce at a time when they are very confused. But actually with time, I realized that what I really had planned to do is gain perspective on where they are.
At a time when they are in full turmoil, they can't make sense of what is happening. And they need that little bit of distance to, to understand that and be able to make difficult decisions, to instruct their lawyers. And this is where I am. I help them get that clarity to make those decisions and then to even apply those decisions.
Sometimes clarity is about decided or not to leave a relationship. And I would say that about half of my work is that. And this is hard, people who ask the question, know something is not right, but are frightened of the consequences, not surprisingly. So this is where my work is.
Lucia Knight: Wow, it's interesting you mentioned them feeling frightened. I'm super curious.
Emotional Turmoil During Divorce
Lucia Knight: What are some of the most common emotions you see your clients experiencing when going through or deciding whether to initiate a divorce process?
Danielle Barbereau: When you go through a divorce, it's a turmoil of emotions. It's an absolute soup. They are worrying for their families, for example, their children. They have guilt to deal with and feel that they are going to be blamed.
And I think confusion is probably the first thing when somebody hears uh, I'm sorry, but our marriage is at an end, it's that feeling of confusion before even hurt, and obviously there is hurt.
There is pain, loss, grief.
Even if you know that you should be leaving your partner, it is extremely scary to do so. And you know that some people are not going to understand the decisions that, so that is certainly a big thing, fear.
And I think my work is to help clients understand it and contain it. Because sometimes clients are so frightened, I lose my house, I lose this, I lose that. Actually, it's not going to happen. So we try to bring it back to size. But that's normal to feel that.
Shame, there's a shame in ending a marriage.
Humiliation, if for example there is a another party involved, somebody else is in the background. And sometimes other people know before so that's very humiliating.
Guilt, that's a nasty one because even if it's right, even if you didn't choose it, you're going to feel guilty that your marriage is at an end. Even when some people lose their partner by bereavement, they feel guilty that they're still alive. So guilt is a very, powerful emotion which has to be worked through.
So there's a super turmoil of emotions but they have to be worked through so you can get clarity and calm in those in the decisions you have to make and go through a process which frankly is not easy because, society is designed for couples. It's hard to be on your own sometimes.
Lucia Knight: That, that was an amazing answer. The myriad of emotions, it's. It's almost, I imagine, overwhelming. I'm now imagining that some people, most people in fact, might have to keep their work life moving at the same time as this soup of emotion that you talk about.
Maintaining Professionalism at Work
Lucia Knight: One of the most difficult things you could possibly go through in life.
Do you have any pointers maybe on how an individual might communicate their situation helpfully at work?
Danielle Barbereau: So I think the first thing which needs to happen is to communicate with your line manager, with people, at work, even with colleagues.
But when I say that, I don't mean that you owe them chapter and verse about everything that is going on quite the opposite, you know, some people almost see it as a bit of a juicy gossip, how's it going on? None of that.
So this is where a word which is so important to me comes into play. It's the word boundaries.
So yes, you're going to say. I'm very sorry to say that my marriage has come to an end. And however much I try to keep going, it's hard. Something like that. Pretty bland. The sentence stops having too many questions pushed back because you can only reveal what you want. And certainly at work, you don't want to be washing your dirty linen in such an environment.
And I believe in short sentences like this, like My marriage has come to an end. It's sad, but I'll keep working. Or I'll, I'm thinking what my future is going to look like at home. Whatever. Keep it simple, but don't reveal what you don't want to reveal. So simple, clear messages, but be honest.
How could you hide that there's something so monumental happening at home? It's just not possible.
Lucia Knight: So honesty but bind read honesty.
Danielle Barbereau: Exactly what you see. boundaries is so important. It's also actually important outside of work when you speak to your friends, to family, whatever. Just have these simple sentences and be kind to yourself and respect your own space. You're not a subject of gossip. No way.
Practical Advice for a Dignified Divorce
Lucia Knight: If one of our listeners is currently embarking on any kind of separation or divorce process, can you give any practical advice to help them through this process with as little trauma as possible?
Danielle Barbereau: I'm glad that it is becoming more possible. People speak of an amicable divorce, whatever. I can't say I've really seen one of those after over 1, 600 clients. It's hard. There's no disguising it. It's hard, it's tough, but it's a passage and you get to the end of that. However, there are ways of making it more dignified, more palatable, more respectful.
To me, it's essential to try to keep a divorce out of court. You know, In film, you see the big drama, see you at court. No, don't see you at court because frankly, nobody wins. It's terrible, it's traumatic, it's expensive and you probably still have to co parent if you have children at the end of that, so no.
And that points to going to lawyers who understand that and there's a lot of them, mostly if they are trained by something called resolution, which is a commitment to resolve a divorce out of court.
Those lawyers work in teams with mediators. So mediators work in the middle and try to help the clients see ways forward in terms of finance, in terms of access to children. There's also in those groups financial advisors, because nobody knows how to divorce and what that means.
So if you can find a lawyer who works in team and in team with somebody like me, a divorce coach who is going to try to make sure that often in the separation, one client is lagging behind either because they didn't know it was going to happen or because they are really struggling with the concept. So I can help keep this afloat. And I think the more you can do that in a respectful way, the better it is for you.
So when you start to understand that what you're doing is just facilitate the process and not try to score points, you're more likely to do it in a good way. And it's a win win situation because you, as a result, will be less hurt than if you do something really adversarial.
And the courts, the family law now is in favor of this kind of more gentle resolution. It's never easy, but it's less horrible, let's put it like that.
Conclusion and Additional Resources
Lucia Knight: If you enjoyed this, you might also enjoy my Life Satisfaction Assessment. It's a 30 minute program where I guide you through a deep dive into 10 areas of your life to assess what's bringing you joy and what's bringing you down. I call it Derailed. It's a fabulous place to begin a joy at work redesign.
