You know the feeling before you’ve even read the words. The phone buzzes, you see who it’s from, and your whole body braces — shoulders up, stomach tight, heart already pounding. A text from your co-parent. An email from your attorney dropped into the middle of an ordinary Tuesday. And just like that, the day you were having is gone. In this episode of Divorce Happens, Olivia sits down with Fresh Starts expert Laura Lorber, J.D. — a family mediator and parenting coordinator who has built her entire practice around these exact moments. Laura mediates parenting plans for the Los Angeles courts, is trained in mindfulness and conflict resolution, and is the rare professional who is genuinely comfortable working at the edges of the hardest cases: high-conflict co-parenting, substance use, and past domestic violence. As Olivia puts it, divorce is “ninety-nine percent triggering conversations” — and this is the episode about how to actually survive them.
What makes the conversation so disarming is that it is both deeply practical and rooted in real neuroscience. Laura walks through her “seventy-two-hour rule”: a single triggering message floods your system with cortisol, and it can take up to three days before your thinking brain comes fully back online. So why, she asks, would you fire off a reply when the logical part of your brain has literally left the building? Her permission-giving reframe lands like a key turning in a lock — you can respond, “I received your communication and will get back to you by this day, at this time,” fulfill the court order, and set the message down. From there she teaches the tools she gives her own clients for emotional regulation after divorce: siloing every divorce communication into one dedicated email or co-parenting app with notifications off, belly breathing you can practice at a red light, and the “name it to tame it” exercise that moves you from raw feeling (“I’m angry”) to real clarity (“I feel disempowered — so what do I actually need?”). She even shares Dan Siegel’s hand model of the brain, the unforgettable image of “flipping your lid” the moment conflict hijacks you.
Underneath every tip is one quiet, powerful mindset shift: you are the one who chooses when to engage — it is not the other way around. That single reframe is what turns a triggering text from an ambush into something you can hold, name, and answer on your own terms. And the beauty of these tools is that they travel: they work with a high-conflict ex, a combative attorney, a difficult boss, anyone who knows how to push your buttons. For the days when the conflict feels too tangled to untangle alone, Laura also pulls back the curtain on what mediators and parenting coordinators actually do — how they step in when communication breaks down, when a parenting plan stops working, or when a case has simply become too high-conflict to move forward. Whether you are newly separated or years into co-parenting, this episode is a hug and a toolkit at once: real, grounded support for anyone learning to communicate calmly, protect their peace, and reclaim their power in life after divorce.
🔗 Check out Fresh Starts Registry:
The first & only divorce registry + support platform ➡ https://www.freshstartsregistry.com/
📱 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/freshstartsregistry/
📘 Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/FreshStartsRegistry
🎙 Podcast IG: https://www.instagram.com/divorcehappenspod/
📬 Magazine: https://divorceguidemagazine.com/
💛 The Divorce Happens Community: https://divorcehappens.substack.com/
