🦚Before you give up on documentation - read this

Last week, I got this notification from Beehiiv, the platform that hosts my newsletter.

If someone had told me that I would write nearly one hundred thousand words this year and that they’d be seen over twenty thousand times, I would have laughed. I don’t have the time for that. And yet, I did it. But only because I never saw it as a big project where I had to sit down and write all these words. I didn’t even see each newsletter as an individual project I had to do.

All I did was spend the first hour, or half hour, or even just ten minutes (depending on how late I woke up) every weekday on my computer working on this newsletter before even checking my email. I’d throw in an extra hour here and there during the week or work to finish it on Thursday afternoons.

Recently, I wrote three of my newsletters from an orthopedic ward in Ireland, sitting at my mother’s bedside. She’d fallen down her stairs and broken her arm and a few ribs, so I made the trip from Canada to Ireland. There, I spent my days catching the bus from her house, where I was staying, into the city before walking every day to the hospital.

It’s an eye-opening experience spending hours and days and weeks in a ward with a bunch of 70-somethings and 80-somethings who’ve suffered fractures.

You really see what decades of strength training or lack of it can do to a body.

Not all of the patients had fallen as spectacularly as my mom did. One lady was at an appointment at that very same hospital when she tripped over her feet and fell, breaking her hip. Another one got caught in the heavy swing door in her apartment building.

For these people (there were also men with broken hips in there), the privilege of getting old has come with a cost. Their silver lining has a massive cloud. They get to live much longer than their parents thanks to modern medicine, but nobody impressed on them how important it was to keep their bones and muscles strong as they left their youth and middle age behind.

They didn’t have influencers constantly posting videos on how to get enough protein into their diets or a YouTube algorithm feeding them personal trainers demonstrating optimized strength workouts.

I was thinking about this as I did the dumbbell workout from one of these trainers, the same one I do three times a week. It’s become so routine now, that it’s downright boring. I’m looking forward to the excitement of going up half a pound in weight after Christmas.

Just like my newsletter writing habit, I know that my 3x/week dumbbell training routine (with front, side, and back leg lunges during the breaks between each set) isn’t giving me an immediate result.

But consistency and small, unspectacular workouts might keep me out of the orthopedic ward if I’m lucky enough to get to my 80s.

Now, this newsletter isn’t really about me.

It’s about you.

It’s not even about writing or weight training or avoiding osteoporosis (though, if you also want to take that message from it, go ahead).

I’m talking about what you’re doing in your situation, where you share children with an abusive ex. Small, consistent documenting actions that will generate a ton of evidence if you have to go to trial. The daily work of validating your kids' feelings that will create a bond so strong that the abusive parent can't break it. Every little boundary you set that will create a wall around you that your ex can't break through or climb over.

The resilience you’re building by facing this day after day doesn’t show up on a scan. But it’s there. Every time you don’t react to bait, you’re strengthening something. Every time you validate your kid’s confused feelings instead of trying to explain away their other parent's behavior, you’re building their emotional capacity.

That screenshot might seem meaningless on Tuesday.

But six months of Tuesdays? A year?

That takes them from scattered incidents to a pattern a judge would struggle to dismiss. Just like I can’t see my bone density changing from one workout to the next, you can't see your evidence becoming undeniable. Until suddenly it is.

I know this work feels endless, triggering, pointless, and boring. I know you often can’t see what you're building. I know there are days when you wonder if any of it makes a difference. When your ex violates another boundary, when the kids come home dysregulated again or you mess up with them and feel like you’re back to square one, when you feel like you're the only one doing this impossible work of protecting them while no-one sees the damage being done to them.

Those sweet, elderly patients in the orthopedic ward are paying now for the strength work they didn't do twenty years ago. You’re doing that work now.

You can’t see it yet. But you’re building something.

Don’t give up.

Want to know how I can help you?

If you're doing this exhausting work and wondering if it’s making any difference, let’s talk. The daily grind of documentation, boundary-setting, and validating your kids’ feelings can feel pointless when you can’t see what you’re building yet.

During your 30-minute consultation, free of charge, we’ll:

• look at the work you’re already doing and identify what you’re actually building with it

• get clear on where your energy should go and where you can stop wasting it

• explore how coaching can help you maintain consistency when you’re running on empty

Even if we decide not to work together, you’ll walk away with a clearer picture of what all those small, boring actions are creating. Sometimes you just need someone who can see the structure you’re building when all you can see is another brick to place.

Want to know more about what I do?

Resources

Want to give yourself a gift this holiday? Fresh Starts Registry offers a free platform for rebuilding your life from scratch after your divorce or life transition. You can create a personalized registry for essential household items—think kitchen basics, bedding, the practical stuff you need to start over. It connects you with trauma-informed professionals like therapists and lawyers, and gives you access to educational resources including podcasts, guides, and workshops.

The Expert Guide connects users to vetted professionals for emotional and logistical guidance during separation. Maybe I’m not quite the person for you, but there’s a chance you’ll find someone who is in there.

The founders of this registry, Olivia Dreizen Howell and her sister Jenny Dreizen, wrote Your Divorce Support Team and host the Divorce Happens podcast. What’s more, they’re launching the digital Divorce Guide Magazine on January 1, so sign up for it now.