What Losing Her Son Taught One Divorce Coach About Co-Parenting Conflict with Kelly Myers on Divorce & Beyond #424

Kelly Myers has been on Divorce and Beyond twice before. Once to talk about Divorce Day One. Once to help listeners avoid the divorce hangover that follows too many people into their new life. This time, she comes back to share something she has never spoken about publicly: what the loss of her son Jack taught her about years of high-conflict co-parenting, and her hope that every parent still in the middle of it will find a way through differently.

In June of 2024, Kelly lost her son Jack at the age of 23. In the year that followed, she found herself looking back at the years of high-conflict co-parenting that had defined her children's childhoods, and asking questions she could not stop asking.

What role did the conflict play?

What did her children carry because of it?

What would she have done differently if she had known what she knows now?

Kelly reached out and asked to have this conversation here, because she believes that what she learned at great cost is something other parents can still choose to learn a different way.

This is one of the most generous conversations this show has ever had. Susan Guthrie and Kelly explore the real cost of co-parenting conflict on children, what it actually looks like to drop the rope after years of high-conflict engagement, how the ecosystem around a divorce often makes things worse, and what repair looks like when you still have years ahead to offer it.

Covered in this episode:

Why dropping the rope has to start with you, and why waiting for your co-parent to change first means waiting forever

How the divorce ecosystem, including attorneys, family, and friends, can fan the flames of conflict without anyone asking what you actually want to protect

What high-conflict co-parenting looks like through the eyes of the children living inside it, and why each child carries it differently

How the BIFF communication method helped shift a years-long dynamic, and what that looked like in practice