Glass half-full: Libby Brodie on how divorce made her a better person

Separation and a complete career change at the same time – sound overwhelming? For Libby Brodie, it was the start of something unexpected.

Kate is joined by Libby Brodie, celebrated columnist and founder of Bacchus and Brodie wine consultancy, to hear her story of navigating a marriage breakdown during lockdown – while simultaneously rebuilding her career from the ground up.

We talk about:

• How Libby navigated separation and job loss at the same time 
• The stories we tell ourselves – and why letting go of them can help you grow
• How two happy homes can be the best thing for your children
• Libby's tips for the trickiest parts of divorce - finances, co-parenting and communication 

This episode is for anyone going through a difficult chapter who needs a reminder that it's possible to come out the other side – not just okay, but genuinely thriving.

Meet Libby Brodie

Libby Brodie is an industry-renowned wine expert, celebrated columnist and founder of Bacchus & Brodie wine consultancy. As City AM's dedicated wine columnist, she's built a reputation as one of the UK's brightest female wine talents – contributing to Condé Nast Traveller, The Independent, Cosmopolitan and more.

Before wine, Libby was an award-winning theatre and film producer. When the pandemic closed every show overnight, she pivoted into the wine world – passing her Wine and Spirits Education Trust qualification with Distinction in just six months.

You can get in touch with Libby on Instagram and you can learn more about her work on Bacchus & Brodie website. You can also hear Libby talk about all things wine and wellbeing on her podcast ‘The Inner Table; The Art of Living Well’.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:05

Welcome to the Divorce Podcast, where we explore all aspects of ending relationships, separation, and parenting apart. If your marriage or partnership has ended, or you have friends and family who are separating, this podcast is for you. I'm Kate Daly, a relationship counsellor, divorce specialist, and co-founder of Amicable, the online legal service for separating couples. In each episode, we look at relationships and separation from different angles, including the emotional, legal, and social. I'm joined by experts and special guests who share their own unique stories, experience, and tips with the goal of helping people end relationships in a kinder and better way. Today I'm joined by Libby Brody, wine expert, columnist, and someone who navigated a marriage breakdown and a complete career change all at the same time. We talk about co-parenting, the stories we tell ourselves about who we are and why letting go of them can help you grow. Plus, Libby shares her honest tips for navigating the practical and emotional side of separation. This is an uplifting story about resilience and reinvention, and I hope you love it as much as I did. If you loved this episode, then please subscribe and rate us on your preferred listening platform. Welcome Libby. Thank you so much for having me. It's a pleasure to be here. It's lovely to meet you, and I'm really interested to hear more about your separation story today. I always think it's so useful when people share their stories because if you're somebody that's going through this, just knowing that other people have been through it and hearing about their experience can be a real comfort. So thank you. So let's kick off then, Libby. Tell me a little bit about your story. So what happened?

SPEAKER_01 1:52

Yeah, so I think I mean a lot of people struggled in lockdown. Obviously, it was a very strange situation to be in. And I will say that I'm not for cutting and running immediately. We did many years of marriage counselling, and obviously there were cracks before lockdown began. Very different people who react to the world in very different ways, and it showed when there was adversity. And I think you have two different styles of coping with that. I'm a real pusher, you know, almost a bit blinkered, kind of we'll just crack on, we'll get it done, we'll get it sorted. Obviously, we'll talk about this in a bit, but my career folded because I was a theatre producer and obviously all my shows closed overnight. Uh disaster. I lost all my investors' money and my money and about 15 years worth of work. Um, so my focus was right, okay, get another job, what else can I do? Do the retrain. With, I mean, theatre folded in March 2020, and I already founded and launched the consultancy back as a Brony One Consultancy in January 2021, having done levels one, two, three of the WSCT qualification at distinction, and like I was just like, let's get it done, let's crack on. And I think I was probably the same about my marriage where I was like, right, we just need a date night. We need a date night, we need a holiday, we need a, you know, we need to have dinner, romantic dinners together. We want that connection. Whereas my partner, my ex-partner, very much has shut himself off, moved to the loft, wouldn't come downstairs for lunches, didn't want to eat together, sit together, talk together, really struggled in that way. Also didn't have a job, but didn't sort of just don't really know. He moved to the loft. So I didn't see it much. And we had a one-year-old, which was obviously takes up for any any parents out there, takes up a lot of time, mental space, and energy. So I was really focused on how do we keep the house, how do I earn money, and is my son okay? Primarily. So the marriage sort of went down a bad way. And we did years of marriage counselling, but I think if you're just such different people, you react to the world in such different ways. And I remember asking him, and it was a real m standout moment for me in hindsight. I said, How do I make you feel loved? How can I make you feel more loved? What could I do? And he said, I feel really loved when you take our son away and you leave me to just have my own space and time. Because I know you're sacrificing what you want to do because you're with you're you're focusing on the childcare, so you can't do your work, blah, blah, blah. And I thought, oh, that's the hardest answer. Because to prove my love for you, I have to not see you, not be near you, have nothing to do with you, and that's how you feel loved. Whereas I'm like, when he yells me back, I was like, celebration. Uh, let's plan a day together, let's have a party together, let's have connection and togetherness makes me feel loved. Um, so it's just polar opposites, total polar opposites. It's never gonna work.

SPEAKER_00 4:47

But do you blame lockdown for that then? Or did lockdown hasten something that you think was there from the outset?

SPEAKER_01 4:55

It hastened, I think something was there from the outset. Uh, we weren't each other's people. And obviously, I'm sure lots of people hear this from friends and family, but everyone goes, we never understood why you were together anyway. You know, you were so different. And I think that's really accurate. And one of the wonderful things I I have learned through this is that I was always in my head, I think it's I blame the Hallmark movies, but I always thought you you needed a balance, you needed this balance partlet. So I'm really outgoing and sort of center stage and let's do Bish Bash Bosch, let's go. And he was very quiet and you know, the quiet guy in the corner. And I thought I needed that as a balance there, as a grounding, uh, which is nonsense because actually the best, well, not nonsense for everyone, you that might work for people, but the best couples I know decades on are the people who have common interests, are the people who are each other's best friends who say, Oh, we're gonna go and do bowling together, we're gonna go ski together, we're gonna go, we've both been reading this book in Book Hub, whatever it is. But actually, the people I think that among my group seem to get on best are the people who have just like your friends. It makes no sense to me that this romantic ideal of a hallmark, the balance, you know.

SPEAKER_00 6:09

Um, the whole opposites attract thing, isn't it? It's yeah, it's that, it's dissing that myth, isn't it? Opposite at and you know, you speak to lots of therapists. Well, I am a therapist, so speak to myself. And I think, yeah, that's uh kind of a grounding principle of of therapy is is about it's about the connections that you can make, and that that opposites attract is movie myth stuff, it's not the grounding of a great relationship necessarily. Unless you get, I guess, as you were saying, unless you get two people who both actually crave having very independent and separate lives, and then it can work as long as you're both coming together in the limited way that you want to come together or in those times when you do. So but yeah, I think you're right. I think it's the the sense of having something in common that actually makes for a very long-term relationship. So you don't blame the you don't blame lockdown in and of itself, but it certainly hastens something in your personal circumstances. And it sounds like you had trouble upon trouble then. So the which came first, the sort of marriage breakdown or the the career pivot?

SPEAKER_01 7:16

I think it all beautifully worked together, like a tornado fire on my life. So, oh no, the career folded March 2020 when they shut all live events. And I had a show that had just been flown to Australia ahead of a worldwide tour. I had a show opening in the West End, I had a show opening at Northampton that was going to tour the UK. So they all just stopped. And you've obviously spent the money on marketing the show and building the show and all that stuff, which you're not getting back. So that was awful. So then I became very focused on not losing the house and being able to live. And at that point it transpired uh that my husband also didn't have a job. So that was not great either. But we we didn't break up, I didn't leave until January 2022. And then I did go back. I came back, I was very in love. I came back with all the, you know, hoping things would be different in I think March or April, and then it became very clear that things were not different, and officially left in in July.

SPEAKER_00 8:22

So you did that whole period where effectively you were separated but under the same roof?

SPEAKER_01 8:28

Yeah, and and actually when we when we broke up in July 22, we lived together for three months, and it really made me realize I've made the right decision because nothing changed. It was exactly the same as when we'd been together. And when we'd broken up, we had separate bedrooms. He didn't want to ever eat with me or talk to me, or you know, there was no physical connection. So it was really interesting to me. I was like, wow. And actually, I think I I think we both felt therefore that we could be quite amicable because it it was just the same. And we both wanted our son to be as as fine as possible.

SPEAKER_00 9:07

And what was it like then when you were first separated, kind of not being physically intimate, no contact, but living in the same house? How did you navigate that? Because that's a scenario that so many people find themselves in, and yet it must be incredibly difficult, particularly as well if you're both at home because no one's got a job, if lockdown restrictions are imposed, and therefore there's a limit to how you escape that kind of scenario to let some of the pressure off. How did you manage that scenario, that domestic scenario with a child as well? So, what what sort of arrangements did you have in place?

SPEAKER_01 9:44

Well, yeah, by that point we'd out of lockdown. I was working, he still wasn't, but I was. And I was traveling with work and things like that as well. But I it's interesting with our son because because of the nature of our marriage for so many years, never really massively seen us together. You know, we I holidayed with friends or family, we didn't eat together, we didn't he was used to mummy having one room and daddy having another room most of the time. So that living together situation didn't impact him. And I think that was always our priority. When we first split, we did that, is it called nesting? When you keep the child in the house, and then so when we first broke up in the January, I was going to a friend's flat nearby, and then my ex would go to our holiday inn nearby, and that was we felt the best option for him as he sort of acclimatised. When my ex eventually left the house, that was much harder because although it wasn't a huge effect, like we weren't going on holidays, we weren't having meals together anymore, we were always somewhere in the house. So that was trickier, I would say. But uh with all these things, I think it's the tribe you have around you uh that really make a difference. And we had such a wonderful team at his nursery school, neighbours, friends, that sort of kept it feeling like a community and were looking out for his welfare as well and making him be as okay with it as possible.

SPEAKER_00 11:12

And presumably that meant, you know, you you had to keep some semblance of a relationship with your ex then to be able to co-parent to keep that community feel going in the best interests of your son.

SPEAKER_01 12:01

Yeah, I think that's very important to me. I actually do say that I don't think I broke very many of my or any of my main marriage vows because I my main vow was I promise to always fight for us throughout our lives. And I am, but in a very different way. Like no longer the romantic us, but the blended family us. Yeah, the us as co-parents, yeah. Exactly, exactly. And I I think that that is that can be extraordinarily hard. I mean, that it can be, because particularly actually, if you're very different people, your priorities with a child, how you might choose to parent what you think is right and wrong and okay, might be wildly different. And I think if you were together in the same house, there might be some compromise there. But I think if you're then going to your own home where you do it this way and the other partner does it that way, it can be so black and white.

SPEAKER_00 12:58

It's jarring, it's jarring almost, isn't it? Because you literally are having to smile and wave while somebody does it in the almost the exact opposite way that you might go about it. And that's hard. Absolutely opposite, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. And also, don't you think we get a bit obsessed with keeping things really consistent for kids. And I think that plays into it, doesn't it? Because you're so terrified that, you know, the fact that you're doing it differently is going to scar your child for life. But ultimately, kids learn that different houses and homes have different rules. You know, if you take your kids to granny and grandpa's or whatever, there are different rules at granny and grandpa's. And if you go to mates' houses and play dates, people have different rules. And obviously, there's different rules at school and clubs and things. So I always think kids are more resilient than sometimes we make them out to be. They can cope with differences. So you are not scarring your child for life if you have two different parenting styles and you have two different sets of rules in different homes. So it's it's really actually lovely and refreshing, you know, to hear you sort of say that.

SPEAKER_01 14:04

Well, he is, I'm very happy to say that my son is a very confident and happy individual who believes that mummy and daddy are best friends. And um, you know, and and and that is vital, I think, really, for for me, and and if you can and if you can do that, because it all sort of becomes about those little people that are involved and haven't made the decision to be in or out of that situation. But I think that you're completely right children are resilient. I mean, you look around the world at all the different ways that children are living, and it does sort of make you maybe feel that the fact that your partner might have let them watch TV all night probably isn't the worst thing in the world that could be happening to a child. And someone talked about code switching because he goes between these different households and loves being at both of them and can be himself at both of them, but they offer different things. And I will say that I know a lot of people, because once your marriage fails or it's seen as failing, I actually don't say fail. We don't like fail on this podcast. No, but I think I felt more of a failure when I was pretending that my marriage was okay.

SPEAKER_00 15:07

Yeah, I can't see that.

SPEAKER_01 15:09

That was internally worse. When I was like, my marriage is over, people go, oh, amazing. I can now tell you all the bad stuff that's happening in my marriage. And so many people came out of the woodwork and told me all these stories that I would have had no idea about. So you're not alone when you're when you're going through what you think is a bad spell in your marriage. Everyone's having them at times. And lots of people sort of said, but they wouldn't want to leave because of the kids. And actually, there's a thousand percent better off in two loving homes that focus on him than in one neglectful, cold, argumentative, distant home. I don't want I remember the marriage counselor saying to us, children mirror and repeat the lessons of their parents. And I burst into tears because I said, I don't, I don't want grow-up where, you know, thinking that it's normal that daddy lives in the loft and mummy cries all the time, you know, like I want him, I want him to have a loving, happy household, however that looks.

SPEAKER_00 16:06

I think that's absolutely right, isn't it? Because children need happy parents. And if you can be a happy parent by living separately from each other, then that's got to be best for everybody involved. And if you're miserable because you're in proximity and that's creating an atmosphere and role modeling, as you say to your child, this is what we do as adults, we put up with this, then that's that's not right. And I always ask people, well, would you want your child to have the relationship with their partner that you have with yours? And when they say, Oh god, no, you just think, well, and yet here you are persisting with this. It's like, hmm, I'm yeah, it's such a thing.

SPEAKER_01 16:46

It's such a good question to ask. I feel like you should say it louder for those at the back. You know, would you want your child to be in this situation?

SPEAKER_00 16:53

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 16:54

If not, why are you in that situation?

SPEAKER_00 16:56

Exactly, exactly that. I think if you can, if you can explain that with some compassion to people, but I think it goes to what you say, you know, when we laughed about it being a failure, we still see a lot of the time people feeling it's a failure if their marriage ends. But it doesn't have to be seen in that way. It can be seen as a transition and the path to a more fulfilling life. And it doesn't mean what's gone before is bad or not worthy of anything. It's just things might have changed. And if things have changed, I feel like I'm preaching to the converted here because as you said very at the very beginning of this, you're a doer, you're a planner, you're a like, let's just get on with this. Something's changed. I need to change my behavior, I need to do something different. Yeah, it's making a proactive choice. Yeah, exactly. It sounds like you attacked the separation with the same sense in a way.

SPEAKER_01 17:46

Very much the vigour. Yeah, I remember the first Christmas, you know, I invited the ex over for Christmas lunch when he came and my parents were there thinking, this is really weird. But you know, we did that for and then we did the following Christmases where he came over for the Father Christmas and stuff like that. And I mean, things are shifting now because both of us have other partners, and that creates other people and other families that have to be taken into account, and that's a whole other thing as well to add into it. So it it's in I'm very interested, worried about, you know, curious about how these things will develop. It's a con but that's the thing, is that just life? I mean, whether I was in this situation or a completely different situation, none of us really know what's going to happen. We're also just muddling along, trying to make the best possible choices for ourselves and our loved ones, and that's all we can really do.

SPEAKER_00 18:41

Yeah, I think it becomes stressful when we hang on and cling too tightly to a dream we might have had 10, 15, 20 years ago, and we're still desperately trying to fulfill that in some sort of misguided, as you say, Hallmark movie style. I think if you can let go and you can trust that even if you let go, you're gonna be okay, it will be different, it will feel uncomfortable, but you will be okay ultimately. I think that's what gives you the courage to try new things, to do new things. It's that faith in yourself, isn't it? And I think sometimes when people really struggle, it's because they don't have that underlying self-belief or confidence that, okay, this isn't what I planned, it's not what I want, it's not looking or feeling great right now, but I'm gonna be okay. I just need to spend some time finding my way through this and my path. And I think if you've got that kind of anchoring, it's very helpful and very persuasive, and it helps you move rather than stay stuck. So it doesn't sound like you stayed stuck, but what about your partner? Was there a sense that you were moving and he wasn't? Or did it not play out like that?

SPEAKER_01 19:49

Potentially, we are very different personalities in that way. I mean, I I think that we all tell ourselves stories about what we are, you know, and that we learn that from early on. We learn that from being little children and your parents saying you're the good one or you're the naughty one, or or you're you're really good at reading, you're really good at it, you know, you sort of, and then you tell yourself stories about what you are. And I think a lot of people, myself included, had this sort of, oh, well, if I'm not married with the kids and I'm not, and I'm not a theatre producer, which I've spent, you know, most of my life working on, and I'm not all these things, what am I? Who am I? This isn't how it was meant to be. This wasn't my life that I'd been working towards and mapping out. And and there was a real shift. And I think that's scary. People are scared of the unknown. People are almost more comfortable in their sadness or discomfort because they are used to it. And that that's at least the devil you know. I am not someone who minds going out of my comfort zone particularly, but it did give me a real pause of, well, who am I? Also, best will in the world, if you're going through a breakup, probably nasty things have been or are being said. And I was definitely not as confident as I would have would as I am now or would like to be. And I spent quite a long time sort of thinking how my why didn't he love me? You know, why didn't he want to spend time? Loads of other people seem to want to spend time with me. People think I'm a hoot at lunch, but like I uh but but why didn't this person want to be with me? And and I sort of realized, well, I I I don't particularly know. I have many, I can have many hypotheses, but I don't know. But the main thing was I really like hanging out with me. I'd hang out with me, I'd be around me, I really like me. I think it made me so investigate my own principles and values. And I am a loyal person, maybe to a fault. I do sort of PA attach and want things to work, even in this sort of situation where we're not together and I'm going, why don't we do a birthday party together? Hey, why didn't we like have a picnic? You know, I and I'm a positive person and I'm a driven person. There's lots of stuff that I actually really value. But if you're someone that doesn't like that, then you'll never doesn't like those things and sees it as like annoying or brash, or then you're never gonna, you can't look to love yourself through someone else. You have to love yourself as you are first. And if there's something you really don't like about yourself, then change it. You know, because you are what I I really do believe this passionately, we tend to think that we are our narratives and you know that that life is living us. And in fact, no, you're living life. You can change your narrative, you can change your situation, you can change what you do and don't. Like about yourself, you it is totally possible to do that because you get to choose how you live.

SPEAKER_00 22:43

Well, you did, you completely reinvented yourself, didn't you? You went from being a theatre producer to a completely different, totally separate career. And like you were saying before, when you're going through a relationship breakup and then you lose the thing in your life, which is presumably a sense of stability and pride and something you were good at at the same time, that must be a real kind of blow to the identity. There must have been a lot of soul searching at that point about, well, as you were just saying, who am I? If I'm not the theatre producer and I'm not the wife, then how did you deal with that? Because I think that would be pretty overwhelming. I think most people probably just want to shove the duvet over their head and and lie there for quite a long time. So, what was it that you did that allowed you to actually think, no, it's not this, I'm gonna get out there, I'm gonna look for something different. I mean, how did you even come up with the idea of starting a wine consultancy?

SPEAKER_01 23:40

Well, yeah, basically I just took to drink but monetized it. So um basically divorce could be a failure just led to the bottle. But um, no, so okay, I think firstly, there was no other real option. Things had been going well. So I had just bought a house with a huge mortgage. I had a child that needed providing for. There wasn't really time to wallow. It was more sort of right, okay. Well, that's a real bugger. We were catching situation. Yeah, okay. I really had sort of two, well, two things that I thought about going into because I'm I'm wonderfully unqualified apart from the uh theatre producing, because it'd been my mainstay. So I knew a bit about wine because I was interested in it. So I had some books and I asked some LEA's questions, but that's about it. So I started doing the online because it was still locked down at that point. My online WSET course, learning about it, thinking, could I could I do this? And the other one was confidence coaching, because I am quite confident and they're like people and communicating. So I was like, maybe I can help people public speak because of the theater connections and all that stuff. So I actually started studying both, and it was whatever sort of sticks first. And I got distinction in all my exams for the wine. And I thought I planned to be a delivery sort of driver, sort of doing events from my production background. I thought I could do events, I could provide the wine. And actually, what transpired was I ended up getting picked up by, or my my mate and I started making these little drunken videos on YouTube. He's a big hairy ex-rugby player and now comedian. And we called ourselves Boozy and the Beast. And we did these little like five-minute skits of like how to read a wine label, what is port, you know, and they were quite funny. And they got picked up by people, and actually Joe Marler, who played for England at the time, he basically tells me on his podcast, I ended up getting a bunch of rugby followers bands, and then I was asked to film a series with Andrew Sheridan in the Roan. And I was, um I had a website with a blog on it. I need to take that down because it's quite old now. And I was offered to be a columnist for the City AM. So I write have a weekly column there and I do video content for them as well. So basically, within four months of getting into wine, I had a newspaper column and filming a series and had been on, you know, major rugby players podcasts. And it felt like that was the universe saying, yes, this is the this is the right thing for you. And like, this is the path. And likewise, actually, it was such a relief when I stopped trying to make the marriage work. I was trying this right and that. And actually, I wasn't the right person. There was nothing I could have done to make that work. He didn't love me. I wasn't the right person. He wasn't my right person. I'd have stuck with it because I'm that kind of personality, but I'd probably have been pretty miserable and been a less good mother and a not happy person and probably quite held back if I'd stayed. So actually, and I have a partner now who is just like me. In fact, when we're out together, when we're out together, I'm considered the wallflower, which is terrifying. So he's very alpha center of the room. We love doing everything together. We rush back to open a bottle of wine and talk until our problem is we're knackered because we keep talking to like one in the morning. And there's so much connection and so much joy, and he's always got a plan, we're always doing stuff. So I think the universe goes, I don't, I'm not sure. I know the universe is a thing for everyone right now. Um it is, you know, go with your gut, the universe manifest, whatever it is, prayer. I have no idea. But what I will say is if you're fighting for something and fighting for something and fighting for something, and it's just not working, and you're wearing yourself out, and you go, okay, you know what? I'm out, and everything clicks into place. I think now I'm on the right path. And actually, my bad relationship and my divorce have made me a thoroughly better person.

SPEAKER_00 27:44

That's so interesting when you say that, because we all we often say, and I never want to gloss over anyone's pain and to pretend that this is easy or you know that divorce is a lifestyle choice of some kind. But when you are released from a bad relationship, it is an opportunity. And a decision is to kill one idea and to promote another. Decide is from the the Latin to kill. So a decision is to kill off an old idea. And if the old idea is making you miserable and sad, and a worse parent and a um a sadder person, then it's okay to kill off that idea because that releases you and them to go and find a more fulfilling life. And we only get one and it's very short, particularly when you're the wrong side of 50, it suddenly feels even shorter. And therefore, you've just got to, you've got to take the opportunity when you can and and to make something of your life. And it just feels from what you're saying, like that's that's how it hit you. It's it's released you.

SPEAKER_01 28:46

And I would like, I would like my ex-husband to be happy. I would very much wish that for him because I think it would make it much better for us as co-parents, and there is a way to move on and move forward. But you know, you also have to sort of give up your responsibility for that other person and give up trying to solve that, if you know. So I think that's quite an important thing. Like, you know, give give up, guys. No, but like this, you know, give up trying to enforce things. It doesn't work. If that other person doesn't feel that way, you can't make them. You can listen to them, and if you want to do counseling and talk that through, that's brilliant, but you can't force them to appreciate you, value you, like you, it whether you're together or not.

SPEAKER_00 29:30

Well, I always think that's where the ego comes in because we are egocentric things, aren't we, human beings? And therefore, we labor under this belief that we have control over lots of stuff that we absolutely, I don't believe, do have. And so if you can recognize where you can't control another human being's feelings, happiness, whatever it is, I think that does release you to be able to say that person is autonomous, they are responsible for themselves. I need to be responsible for myself and the things that I do have influence over. And I think that's that's a fundamental learning of getting divorced as well, isn't it? Knowing at what point your responsibility to your co-parent is about how they interact with their child, not your child, not what the other parent does and how they run or live their lives. And that's that's quite a tricky line to find sometimes, I think.

SPEAKER_01 30:28

It is, because there has been a deep connection there, and there is that, if there is that a child above, there is that connection between you and you. It would be lovely if we could all get on, you know, and it would be lovely if, you know, there are so many things that it would be lovely if, lovely if, but sadly, as you just said, we can't, we cannot rule that.

SPEAKER_00 30:48

Yeah, exactly. Well, listen, Libby, in just a moment, I'm going to ask you to share some of your top tips on how to navigate the early stages of divorce and what you learned. But just before that, if you're listening and this episode is giving you even a little bit of clarity or comfort, or just a tip that's made things feel a little bit better or more manageable, then please make sure to follow the divorce podcast on your favorite podcast app. Each week we're here with expert advice and real support to help you through your separation one step at a time. All right then, Libby. Tell us what you've learned and then end with some final top tips. What have you learned about getting divorced?

SPEAKER_01 31:29

I think it's important to reframe it as an opportunity that you are taking control of your own life and you have the power to make positive decisions in it. I think it's a great opportunity to uh take this moment in this life stage and think about what you like about yourself. Maybe what you don't like about yourself, you know, maybe what has led you to this point. And I think it's incredibly important to surround yourself with a good tribe of people. That has been an absolute saving grace, whether it's family, neighbours, friends, work colleagues, the people around you, the support network around you are fundamental. And I will, I will thank and love the people who were there for me, and loads of people actually who were there for me, forever and ever. So don't cut people off. I know it can be tempting because you might be feeling sad, flatlined, embarrassed. I don't know, but don't cut people off. It it's never the right move. And with your partner, communication, just try. Try uh civil, if if you can manage civil kind communication, I think that's a wonderful idea. We started with amicable when we were going through our separation agreement. We communicated openly about what we both had and wanted. I think two topics are obviously the most fraught when it I find when it comes to divorce, and that's finances and children. So if you are not yet getting divorced and maybe considering it, I would look very honestly at your finances and your assets and what you have and what maybe you will be inclined to share or split or enforce to by the courts, or how you can work that out in a way that might be beneficial for you both. Also, with children, unfortunately, I see many people I have witnessed use them as pawns and in a power play. If you can avoid doing that, please avoid doing that. Uh, just imagine your your child's gonna tell the story back one day. They're gonna tell that are you gonna be the good person or the bad person in it? You know, was your was your home stable, safe, and caring? Were you the one sagging off the other partner or not? You know, it that that's um that's sort of something you've got to think about.

SPEAKER_00 33:40

Oh, they're really super tips. Thank you, Libby. I think, like you say, it's that whole thing about how you communicate with your partner is so important, isn't it? And it's easy to say and difficult to do. But if you can get onto a footing where you've got an open dialogue, then no matter what arrangement you come to, you'll be able to negotiate and navigate that stuff together. And I think the minute you stop being able to communicate, that's when things become expensive and difficult and where things start to unravel. So thank you for sharing those tips. It's been an absolute joy talking to you, such a positive person. You've put such an amazing lens on divorce and separation and the opportunity that it can create. And that's so refreshing because so much of what we hear about divorce and separation is negative and downcast. And I just think sometimes we need to see it in a different way. And it's one of those things that happens to nearly 50% of marriages. So let's try and find ways of navigating it positively, and you've certainly helped us do that today. So, Libby, I'm truly grateful and thank you very much for your time. Where can people find out more information about you, Libby?

SPEAKER_01 34:49

Instagram. It's just my name at Libby Brody, L-I-B-B-Y-B-R-O-D-I-E. Uh it's Backerson Brody Wine Consultancy. Uh so yeah, just drop me a line on the Instagram and I'll get back to you. I hope if I mean I'm there for anyone who wants to chat or get any advice on this.

SPEAKER_00 35:05

Fantastic. Thank you very much. Of course, you can find me on LinkedIn. You can hear more about new podcast episodes by subscribing for updates and visiting thedivorcepodcast.com or on your favourite listening platform. And finally, don't forget, we'd love to hear from you and we'd love to be able to help further. So please share any questions or ideas you have for guests on the podcast at hello at amicable.co.uk. Thank you, Libby. It's been great talking to you, and thank you, everybody, for listening today.