43. Vivienne - 10 years old - Her Parents Did Divorce Well. She Called It a Happy Thing.

Vivienne was in 5th grade — about 10 years old — when her parents told her and her brother they were getting divorced. In this episode, we get something rarely told on In Between Them: a story of a divorce done well. Not frictionless. Not perfect. But handled, in every way that mattered, with the children at the center. What stands out immediately is how Vivienne frames the news itself. She describes the divorce as a "happy thing" — because her parents weren't happy — and even at 10, she wasn't surprised. Her parents had been intentional about how they told them, what words they used, and the frame they offered: this is a good thing, for everyone. The kids believed it. Then they watched that belief get validated in how the family actually moved forward. That alone — the care around the words at the beginning — set the shape of everything that followed. A few of the things that made Vivienne's experience so different: She went through it alongside her brother, and their family pet traveled back and forth with them. Both of those details, she says, mattered more than people realize. Her parents started with a 2-2-3 schedule, but it proved to be too much. When Mom and Dad later moved to new places, the schedule needed to change — and here is where the real difference showed up. There was no resentment. No fighting. No demanding. The parenting time evolved based on what made sense for the kids, not on what was fair between the adults. Flexibility, Vivienne says, is what kept the conflict and tension and animosity from ever taking root. She saw a divorce therapist as a kid, and she is grateful for that in a way that she wishes more adult children of divorce had access to. The therapist helped her navigate her dad's remarriage — one of the harder beats of any divorce for a child — without the alone-ness that so many kids carry through that transition. As a young adult, Vivienne gained the clarity so many of my guests have described. She was able to get answers to questions she'd carried, and even voice some resentment that had quietly accumulated. The conversations opened space for healing. And she arrived at an insight that is becoming a quiet refrain across my episodes: "my parents were doing this for the first time too." That reframe changed her expectations and softened the edges of a story that could easily have hardened. For Vivienne, divorce is simply something she expects to see in families. When she meets a friend whose parents have been together for decades, she finds it a little strange — a telling marker of how normalized this experience is for her generation. If you are a parent going through a divorce right now, this episode is worth sitting with. It's a real-world example of what's possible when parents keep their kids out of the middle, choose flexibility over rigidity, and start with words that give their children a frame of permission to be okay with what's happening. The words at the beginning matter. The flexibility along the way matters. And a child who is thriving on the other side of a divorce is possible. In Between Them is a podcast about what it really feels like to grow up between two homes — hosted by Shannon Darrow, divorce coach and mediator, featuring honest conversations with people about what their parents' divorce shaped, broke, and built in them. Have a question, a story to share, or interested in being a guest? Reach Shannon directly at mailto:sdarrow@onward-mc.com. Follow the show on Instagram @inbetweenthempod, and if this episode resonated, please rate and review In Between Them on Apple Podcasts or Spotify — it's the single most helpful thing you can do to help other adult children of divorce find the show.