Navigating Fear and Anger in Divorce with Tess Worrell

In this episode of the Divorce Curious Show, host Lisa Mitchell speaks with mediator Tess Worrell about the complexities of divorce and the potential for a process that minimizes destruction. They discuss the emotional turmoil that often accompanies divorce, the role of mediation in providing a supportive environment, and the importance of addressing children's needs during the process. Tess shares her personal journey and professional insights, emphasizing the value of creative solutions and the power of mediation to foster healthier outcomes for families.

Tess Worrell Bio
Growing up, Tess often felt unwanted and unknown in her own home. She married young–hoping to create the kind of connection she wanted growing up. But, as often happens, she married someone much like from home. Instead of life with her best friend, over time she felt increasingly alone. Which gave her a passion for working with those who feel lonely and unwelcome in their own homes.

When people find their marriages simply can’t work, Tess uses mediation to help them navigate divorce or separation to create two separate homes. Homes where they feel welcome and valued. For couples, who want to stay married but need a change to make the marriage work–she offers couple’s mediation. This process helps couples resolve the conflicts coming between them and transform the home they have.

Tess entered mediation after serving as the Executive Director of the Indiana Commission for Continuing Legal Education. Tess worked with the CLE board to develop the training requirements for mediators. In the process, she fell in love with mediation. Especially in the family realm, Tess saw the opportunity for mediation to help families work through issues cooperatively and make decisions tailored to their unique needs and desires. It offered a way to divorce without destroying each other.

As  a mom of eight, Tess knows conflict! In “mediating” who got the last cookie or which sibling was at fault for the most recent scuffle, Tess honed her skills on helping those she cared about work through conflict.  Conflict should never tear people apart. Instead, she seeks to help people find answers for tough situations while also protecting their relationships.

Takeaways

• Divorce can be approached without destruction.
• Mediation helps address underlying fears and concerns.
• Children's voices should be included in the divorce process.
• Creative solutions can lead to better outcomes in mediation.
• Fear often drives decisions during divorce.
• Understanding the legal aspects of mediation is crucial.
• The emotional impact of divorce on children is significant.
• It's important to consider the type of marriage you want for your children.

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Transcript

Lisa Mitchell: This is a Divorce Curious podcast. I'm your host, Lisa Mitchell. If you're here, your life and marriage might kind of suck right now, and I've been exactly where you are. At Divorce Curious, we're going to say the quiet parts out loud. We're going to sit in the anger, confusion, and disappointment that you're feeling and talk about what it looks like to go through the before, during, and after.

Welcome to the Divorce Curious Podcast. I'm your host, Lisa Mitchell. And today I am bringing you a brilliant woman. Just imagine this. Imagine knowing someone who owns a business that provides a service that can take the fear and the uncertainty and some of the anger even out of the divorce process and focus on.

The tagline of the business, I love it is divorce without destruction. So that's who I'm introducing you to today. I am here with Tess Worrell. She is a mediator and she won't flex on herself, but I will. She's an attorney and just a brilliant business owner. Who has created a service with her team that helps people just like you, who are kind of in this divorce curious space, find the next best steps that you can take or consider that helps you get where you want to go without burning everything down in the process.

So tests. Thank you so much for joining me today on the show. I am so excited to talk to you. And I want to learn because I think for some people, the idea of having divorce without destruction, just like. Doesn't exist as someone who started with like a collaborative divorce and then it kind of went downhill from there I know how destructive it can get even when you're intentionally trying to not have it go there So absolutely really excited to learn from you on that But I want to know like of all the things you could be doing as an attorney, which you won't flex on but also as a mediator sitting in a room with people and with families that are facing some of the toughest decisions of what their life is going to look like in the immediate and prolonged future.

How did you end up deciding that that's where you wanted to put your energy and your talents? I think 

Tess Worrell: my desire to be in that room is both professional and personal. Professionally, when I was in law school, I clerked for the Indiana Supreme Court, then became a staff attorney for the court, then became the executive director of one of the court's agencies.

And I only say all that because that agency was the agency charged by the Supreme Court to create the training requirements for mediators. So in my role, I got to go take a boatload of mediation training and fell in love with mediation in the process. And the reason I fell in love with it was my undergraduate training was an interdisciplinary major of biology, psychology, sociology, and anthropology.

So basically, you know, all the stuff that makes us a bunch of weirdos, don't you? Exactly. That was the journey. You, you study people. How they develop through childhood and adulthood and how they relate to one another. And the focus of that major was taking people in a crisis And developing holistic interventions for the crisis.

So if you think about the opioid crisis We'd look at what are the biological factors of addiction the psychological factors of addiction the social Sociological factors, and how do you develop interventions that are taking into account all those different factors? And when I took mediation trainings, I saw mediation was the opportunity to do that kind of intervention for people in a legal crisis, particularly one like divorce, which isn't.

It affects family. It affects finances. It affects living situation. It affects community relationships. If you own a small business, it affects your business. Everything. Nothing, nothing gets out unscathed. Nothing. And so I was excited to be able to try and bring that approach. to families who are really struggling.

And so I was pregnant with child number four when I stepped away from that agency and began doing mediation because I could do it around different schedules. At child number six, I stepped away from working all together and was home for a number of years concentrating on mediating those births.

Pivotal questions of who gets the last cookie and who goes first on 

Lisa Mitchell: this. Your mediation skills were a force of survival. My 

Tess Worrell: children are my best trainers. Eventually had eight children, loved being home with the children. But then about 10 years ago, my husband wanted a divorce. And so I was thrown from being home to having to go back to work and having to figure out how to provide for, at that point, five children were still home with me.

And I was just single mom of five. Oh my gosh. It was terrifying. And so when I walk into a mediation room, I'm bringing both that professional, we want to help you get to the places each of you needs to be, but also the personal of, I know how scary it is and how upending the process is. And I want to ease that as much as I can for people who come to us.

Lisa Mitchell: Well, what an incredible path. I mean, both the storied professional path that you've had and the systems you've created and my nerdy little heart just loved all the things in the education realm and the holistic system realm that you spoke about and human behavior and also in addition to the professional accolades, the monumental task of you.

Raising, you know, not just a couple of kids, but a bunch of kids and having a divorce on top of that. So I, I understand now, even just in that intro, the human side of the work I could see as you were telling your story for those, those of you listening right now, like the, the sincerity that you heard in Tessa's voice was on her face as well.

So I'm very happy to continue to learn from you knowing now the frame that you have and the experience that you've been through. And how that shows up, I'm sure, in every, every table that you're sitting across from a family on trying to help them find a path forward. Thank you. That's certainly the goal.

So how do you feel, like, in comparison to your own story, how do you feel that most people are coming into that room with you? Is it, Is it fear? Is it anger? Is it just not knowing? What do you think kind of that first from a human behavior standpoint? What is the first kind of safety that people are looking to you to provide?

Tess Worrell: I think what most people are feeling and I always kind of associate fear and anger. I think people tend to be angry. Because deep down, they're deeply afraid hundred percent. And so Hiller and I both really tried to get at what are those underlying fears, concerns, and even the desires they have come from.

That's their thought out way of meeting the fear that they have. They want to be financially secure. They want to make sure they can feed their children. They want to make sure they're not going to. end up on the street. I remember in my own divorce, because I was not a spring chicken, I wasn't the 20 year old just graduating from law school anymore.

Right. And I would drive through downtown Indianapolis and see the women begging money from the street corner. I'm like, I could be like three weeks away from that's my next career path. And is anybody going to allow me to do that? back into the work world. And I think particularly there are a lot of women who've been home or who have worked part time and so they're afraid, am I going to end up on the street?

Yeah. Men who have worked their entire lives for their retirement plans. And now women as well are like, I have worked so hard. Am I going to lose everything? thing. Where are my children going to sleep? Is this parent who maybe hasn't been as involved in raising the children, are they going to even be able to get them up for school and get the homework done?

And so there's just usually a lot of fear. And one of our first roles is to identify. Those points and then provide options. So here's what we can do to address those concerns It may not be perfect But does it assuage the fear and I think most often that's what we see when couples are ending the process They're saying I thought this was gonna be horrible.

Yeah, and it You know, it wasn't a picnic, but it came out so much better than I thought it could come out. There was one, one particular couple and I have their permission to use this. At the beginning, mom arrived for the first mediation session early and she walked in and she basically said, he is not getting a minute of parenting time.

I don't care what you say. I don't care what the law says. If you try and persuade me, I'm out of here. I'm out of here. And I was like, oh, golly gee, how are we going to move this? Mediation works. Yes. So it's like, oh, it's like, oh gosh, okay. And so I'm talking with her and they had a three year old, she'd been at home, he'd been building his business, they own their own small business.

So he hadn't. He hadn't. been around very much. And as I talked with her, she was terrified that she was going to have to leave her baby boy, go back into the work world, wouldn't know how to do that. Dad wasn't going to have any clue on how to take care of them. And so as we had the conversations and as we unfolded the financial plan, and we're big believers, concrete me, Information.

Yes. Really assuages the fear. No, no 

Lisa Mitchell: speculation. No speculation. Get into the numbers and talk specifics 

Tess Worrell: for your situation. Exactly. The numbers define the options and define what's possible. So as we worked through the numbers, and I will give kudos all day long to this dad, he understood her deepest desire was to stay home until little guy.

Went to kindergarten. 

Lisa Mitchell: Yeah. 

Tess Worrell: And he agreed to live in his father's basement and give her, I want to say it was like 80 percent of his income until little guy went to kindergarten. She had to be getting ready to go back to work during that right of years. But he was willing to do that. And once he made that move, Her fears were assuaged.

She was much more willing to talk to him. They ended up equally sharing parenting. 

Lisa Mitchell: Really? From not a single minute to equal 

Tess Worrell: parenting time? Not a minute to equal parenting. And once we got to the signing of the agreement, in the last session, we had read through it, I needed to make some changes. So they were just coming back individually to sign.

She got there first. She came into the office. Signed the agreement. Went out the back door. He came down the stairs. About the time she went out the back door, and he's like, where's his wife? Where's his wife? And I said, Oh, she just went out. So I just kind of looked out the window to make sure everything was okay.

And they were laughing. He was telling a story about their little boy who had just spent the night with him. He kissed her on the cheek, walked back into the office. Signed the agreement, went out the front door, and I had said to them, I'm not sure the judge will accept this agreement because judge is going to be concerned.

Dad's going to kick, grandpa's going to kick dad out. 

Lisa Mitchell: Right. Right. Or it's too one 

Tess Worrell: sided or too far away from the standard. Exactly. And dad's going to have to ask for a change and judge is going to say that you're not meeting the standard for a change or judge is going to say, I knew this wouldn't work.

Yes. Yes. You're going to have to change it. And then wife's going to have. Depended on this, but they said, submit it, I submitted it, the judge accepted it, dad lived up to it. They had a phenomenal co parenting relationship as their little boy grew up and it was because we were able to meet the highest priorities of both people in some pretty creative ways.

Lisa Mitchell: What an amazing story. Like there's so many things I'm thinking, you know, even just relating to my own experience. My daughter was three when we, when we separated, you know, when we've been through parenting time and agreements and, and, you know, have been co parenting. She's, she's turning 19 soon. So we've been in it for the long haul, but I love the story because the quote, fear makes more decisions than data ever could.

And I think in that case, to be able to shepherd a couple at their highest point of fear and their highest point of. Uncertainty and assumption and emotion, really, all the way through to getting a point where keep the most important thing, the most important thing, absolutely experience of their son and be able to, because I'm sure if you would have asked her at the beginning, would he ever consider, right, living in his dad's basement and supporting 80 percent she would have been like, fly a kite.

There's not a way. And he probably would have been like, absolutely not. So I think a credit to the. To the value and potential of mediation and what you're able to do with your skill and experience is kind of create that impossible outcome like it, your outcome could be better than you might even be able to imagine.

Exactly. And I think that that's so encouraging for anybody listening right now who's in that divorce curious space. Because all you can see when you haven't taken action is the worst case scenario. I think. Absolutely. And that becomes your boogeyman, right? Yeah. Like that's a monster under your bed.

That's the thing that keeps you stuck or unhappy or assuming the worst. So to be able to know that A, mediation is a process that's available to you if you choose to have it and B, that it can have outcomes far superior than maybe what you even think it could is really, I mean, to me, that's new and very encouraging information.

Tess Worrell: Well, I think a lot of the time people will ask us, what is the most common cause of divorce? And I will say, you know, there's a whole variety of reasons you can give, but the most common cause of divorce is the trust has been broken. Yeah. In one way or another. Maybe it was an affair, maybe it was embezzling funds, some big huge thing, or maybe it was just day after day after day, words and actions didn't match.

The dry cleaning wasn't picked up, the milk wasn't received. Not doing what you said you were going to do. Not doing, not coming through for the other person, not having their back, not being their safe space. That just got chipped away by little. Patterns behaviors over time, regardless how it happened when the trust is broken and people feel like they can't get it back.

That's when they decide to divorce. And so a part of our process is not necessarily saying we want you to trust this other person. It's, we want you to trust the process. Yes. That this process can help get at. Your desires, your priorities, meet your concerns, and through the process for both of you, and if you have children, most importantly for the children, because that's what people still have in common.

That's what they still care about. Right. So that's their common ground. 

Lisa Mitchell: Yeah, and you, you actually specialize, right, in a process for families. With children. 

Tess Worrell: Yes, I will have to say in law. We can't say specialty unless you've taken a certain you got it. Okay But 

Lisa Mitchell: yes, we do have commonly help. We do 

Tess Worrell: Children in the process.

Yes, it's called child inclusive mediation And I will quickly say that doesn't mean child children are sitting in the mediation session. Thank you 

Lisa Mitchell: for clarifying 

Tess Worrell: important clarification But it is we team with this phenomenal woman, Marley Immenheiser. She has a social work background focused on child development.

She's worked with children of divorce in a whole variety of ways, and she teams with us. She's also a trained family mediator, so she understands the children's experience in divorce And she understands what we have to do in mediation, that framework. And she will first meet with parents to find out what is each parent's highest priority, concern, desire around developing this co parenting relationship, or at least this, we're parenting from two different homes.

Yes. And so sometimes it's a, I'm really concerned about other parent because of their alcohol use. 

Lisa Mitchell: Oh, there's a big long list of things you can be insecure about. There's a big long list. You know, 

Tess Worrell: their inability to understand daughter's anorexia. 

Lisa Mitchell: Who else is around your child and someone else is on.

Exactly. What routine they're on, what they're eating for dinner. Oh my god, the list is long. All of it. 

Tess Worrell: All of it. So she gleans that from each parent. But the magic sauce is she sits with the kids and she asks them, what are your hopes? What are your desires? What are your fears? What are your concerns? The two questions she will never ask are, what do you want the parenting plan to be?

Who do you want to live with? That's for the parents to decide. But she will glean from them what are they worried about or what do they want not to have happen. So, if someone says, I really don't want to go stay with parent A, she will follow up. What is your concern about that? Well, they always have the television on and they never have food in the fridge.

So, then she can go back to parent A and say, I know you really want to have this relationship with your children. You really want to have this kind of parenting time. Here are the reasons children are a little reluctant. What can I do to help you be ready to be the best parent you can be as you're rebuilding your relationship with these children?

I think that's, that's 

Lisa Mitchell: so important because I, I think for so many people that find, I know when I was in just like, The divorce curious space when I was trying to figure out what, you know, the guilt or the concern, well, the guilt and the concern, honestly, of what am I now making my child endure or what, what is this decision for me?

How is this going to impact my child, right? Or what risk might I be introducing her to that if I'm not in the house with her all the time, right? Like you just have that just thinking of the, the, the. child experience or the experience of the children alone, I think is probably what is holding a lot of people that are in that divorce curious space stuck.

Tess Worrell: It is. And what Marley then does with that information is like I say, she can come back to the parents individually. She'll do it jointly. If there aren't any major concerns, she will do it individually and beautifully. She can bring the toughest information to a person in the most affirming, we can figure this out way.

And we've had some really difficult situations. I 

Lisa Mitchell: would have to think some parents are super resistant to that for a number of reasons, but like. Probably fear again driving that how do you guys manage through that what if a parent is like no I don't want my child in that process or I don't well, it's optional.

Yeah, 

Tess Worrell: and they can choose it We again try and find out what are your concerns about that? Most often it's what we've already got them in therapy. So they don't need something else and this isn't a therapy, what we're doing is we're saying, Marley then brings all that information back. So when we're mediating the parenting plan, there is the voice of the child that's part of the conversation and the children feel heard.

Divorce stops being something that happens too. To the child and starts being something they're a part of, and that reduces the trauma of divorce for children. So that's the big message for parents. We also know that children, especially really well loved children, understand how hard divorce is for parents.

And so a lot of the time their coping mechanism is, I'm just not going to ask any questions. I'm not going to bring up any concerns because I don't want to make it harder. 

Lisa Mitchell: Yeah. Marley takes so much of that responsibility on their 

Tess Worrell: shoulders. Yeah. Do we just offer to parents? Marley can be that safe space.

She will never think she's the expert on your children. You are, but maybe she's that space where children can ask the questions they've been holding back or they can express the concerns they've been holding back. And then we can bring them into the process. So if parents are saying something like we want 50, 50 parenting, let's do week on week off.

And one child is like, I can't go a week without seeing a parent. We can say, okay, if you need to stay with week on week off for work or whatever, how do we have some, when you're not the on parent, how do we build in some time? Give you some presence there. For you to be there. Or, if it's, let's do the 2 2 3, and the children are like, I can't carry my cello that many times a week.

It's, okay. My daughter is always like, I have to pack one more bag. Bingo. So, we bring those perspectives in. And, Most parents really want this because most parents are holding back from divorce because they're afraid it's going to destroy their children. Yeah. So in our vein of let's do divorce without destruction.

How do we save your family? How do we bring in everybody's perspective? So everybody has the best shot at being part of this redefined healthy family. 

Lisa Mitchell: Well, and I think that's such an important. thing to even bring awareness around that that's an option because I'll tell you like when we were kind of in that Do we get divorced?

Do we stay together? phase, we had gone to a counselor at one point and she said the thing that all parents considering divorce hate to hear is like, Oh, well, are you sure you're okay? Oh, so you're telling me you're okay. Only having your kid half the time. Oh, gosh. Right. And it's like, stab me in the heart.

Like, of course, no, neither of us are okay with that. And there was no conversation around the process that you just experienced. Described or or the opportunity to have flexibility and to have collaboration around that, right? Because it was just posed as like, well, this is your punishment for getting divorced is you lose half your time with your child.

And I think again, I'm a fairly educated person. I, I have access to a lot of people with a lot of experience and I just believe that was my only option, right? And that again, got me stuck for another year. Oh, gosh, because I just that guilt alone was I just never felt like I had a good decision to make.

So I appreciate a that you just so beautifully articulated that there are options and there are ways to bring the children into the conversation and really honor their feelings and what's best for them and to collaborate on that and that be there's, there's a process for doing that. And it is something that then translates into being withheld through the courts.

Can you talk a little bit about kind of how mediation, like what that looks like, or is it The power that that has to kind of ultimately drive the solution and what things look like going forward. I'm sorry, I'm not sure I understand your question. Yeah, I think some people think like, oh, well, mediation doesn't like, it doesn't count or it's not final or it's still like, it could be overruled or like, it's not going to be listened to in court.

It's still very much 

Tess Worrell: a legal process. We have to tick all the legal boxes we create once, once people have made their decisions and we got, you know, we always say we help define the issues for people, educate them on all the issues they need to address because people are usually very aware of some, not at all aware of others.

So we make sure they understand everything they need to address. Options they have for addressing those issues, both the options under the statutes and guidelines but outside those as well. And we talk about the pros and cons of the options. Here's what this option playing out looks like. Here's what's beneficial about it.

Here's what's not so good about it. And then we guide the spouses through making decisions together about what combination of options. We'll work best for their family. They decide when they're seeing their children. They decide what happens with their money. They decide how to make the transitions. And then we put all those decisions in what's called a settlement agreement.

We file that settlement agreement with the court. It's enforceable by the court, but the couple never has to go to court. Everything's done in the privacy of our office. 

Lisa Mitchell: It's just so important. I'm, I'm so glad that you're on the show and you're sharing this information because I, I think back, you know, it was a long time ago, but it doesn't always feel like it was a long time.

Yeah, it hurts. It really is. And it's one of those things where it's like, now I'm kind of kicking myself. It's like, had I known. Had I known about options like mediation and that it could be more child focused and, and the child could participate more, you know, either initially or throughout the process, I think it would have saved a lot of the guilt that I think myself and like so many people that go through the divorce process really feel.

Tess Worrell: Well, and to that guilt, even when they don't have children for couples who have just made a commitment to be with each other forever, and now it's not working, they feel that guilt. And so we want to save couples who don't have children, but they don't want to be enemies or. Maybe they have a business together, they still want to be able to run that business together, or they have groups of friends that they share.

They don't want to lose half their friends because they lost their spouse. We want to be able to preserve as many of those It's points of contact that people want to preserve. And so to your point about the guilt, we want to, whoever comes in the office, walk away feeling like there has been healing and there's been good closure and maybe they aren't bosom buddies.

Maybe they're walking out and they never intend to speak to each other again, but at least they were able to be their best person in the process. 

Lisa Mitchell: Yeah, I love that. It's such a different perspective, I think, than what people assume or what people have, you know, seen modeled for them, either through people they know or kind of more broadly in the culture, but to be encouraged that there's actually a possibility to have divorce without destruction.

Yeah. It shouldn't be such a novel idea, but I'm going to tell you, like, it really kind of was. To me and, and I love, I love being more educated on this process. I know the audience listening that's divorce curious is going to have just a whole nother outlook than an avenue to get curious about and to discover and to do some research on to find mediators like yourself and your team.

And where can people find more information about you tests if they want to 

Tess Worrell: Well, they can come to our website, which is resolution mediation. I N. Fantastic. 

Lisa Mitchell: Any, any last words of advice? Any, any sage wisdom for somebody who's maybe sitting there not sure what the next best step is for them as they look at this path?

Tess Worrell: Well, I think especially for couples who do have children and they're saying, I don't know if we should go down this divorce path and what will it do to them? What will it do to our family? A question to ask yourself is, do you want your children to have the marriage you have? Children tend to become what they love, even worse, they tend to become the worst of what they love because they figure out anybody can be kind or considerate when things are going well, if people aren't being kind or considerate when things are going badly.

Children tend to underestimate the value of kindness or of compassion. They say, you've got to be angry and you've got to be demanding and you've got to be all the things that are happening. Or even, marriage is a place where people are just very distant and cold and polite to each other. If you don't want that for your children, then you really have a choice.

You've either got to change your marriage. Or you've got to find a way of redefining the family and each person creating the individual homes where the culture is what they want their children to become. That's wisdom Tess. 

Lisa Mitchell: I can't do anything except restate that question, right? Do you want your children to have the type of marriage that you have.

I think that's a challenge for any of us listening right now. Anyone in the divorce curious headspace of what do I do next and what's the best way to do it. I think guiding with that question of, is this a marriage you would want your children to be part of will help bring a lot of queer, a lot of clarity.

And now knowing, About services like tests and mediation and the way that family can be considered and factored into that is uh, Hopefully going to fill in a couple of data points on what might be the next best step for you So with that divorce curious friends I'm going to just ask you to like, share, comment on questions you have on this episode.

I'm sure I could probably get Tess to come back for a part two if I ask her really nice, because I know my brain's on fire. But, uh, share this with somebody else that might be in that space of, of how and what next for me. And until next time, Divorced Curious Friends, be good to each other.