Navigating Mental Health and Coparenting: Why I Started This Blog

Why read my blog and what motivates me to write on mental health with a special emphasis in addressing coparenting challenges.

Well... I became a licensed professional counselor in a round about way. I started as a special education teacher back in 1995 where I was for three years and then moved to first grade for the following 3 years. I was doing a side business at the time in direct sales and absolutely loved the associated environment of learning, personal growth and entrenpeuriship. The idea of becoming more has always intrigued me and have always been a person that loves to learn and grow personally. If you catch me reading it is always going to be some type of nonfiction self-help book.

I got out of teaching to be a stay-at-home mom to my two boys and work on myself, and build my direct sales business. I also love the physical body and how it can be stronger with strenght training as well and have been an avid fitness guru since I was 30 years old. Fitness has been a big part of my mental health journey as well.

Over the years I grew to love the human mind and its ability to become more just by changing how you think and view the world. This led to my interest in the counseling profession and I returned to college to pursue my counseling license which I attained in 2011.

I thought my life was set and on track when life hit me hard in 2009 and my father passed away from cancer and my marriage ended in early 2011. All of a sudden I am a divorced parent having to learn to navigate and be in the world as a divorcee starting a new career path. Later in 2011 I met my current husband who was also divorced and navigating a new career path for himself farming and ranching as well and coparenting with four children that lived over 4 hours from him.

We had a lot in common and were both coming out of near 20-year first marriages and suddenly finding ourselves both having to coparent. We married in 2012 with all six of our children present at our wedding. Both of our coparenting experiences were very different, yet both having an effect on our lives at the time with a lot of joy but a lot of stress. We navigated court procedings, mediations, trying to work with children with strong feelings, and a lot of tears and feelings of hopelessness.

I am not saying that everything we did was correct and there is a lot I can see we could have handled differently or better. There were a lot of things we did right as well that made big differences in how positive things currently are now.

Since having this experience I have gone through many specified trainings on high-conflit coparenting and have become trained and qualified as a parenting facilitator and parenting coordinator in the state of Texas. I also have attained the qualifications to be a mediator as well. Although working with high-conflict families can be stressful at times, I get a lot of satisfaction seeing families go from high-conflict to more civil with each other and less triggered and reactive.

I have a vision to work with coparents early on in the process so they can learn how to navigate the coparenting relationship correctly from the start an not learn and engage in bad habits that are very hard to break after they begin. When coparents work together in a way that is kid-focused everone wins. Children of divorce or in one-parent households are more likely to face depression, anxiety and other psychological problems both in childhoold and adulthood. The risk can be minimized when coparents learn how to navigate their new-found relationship keeping the focus on the kids needs and decreasing conflicts.

I am happy to say that now in 2025 we have a great relationship with all six kids and our 10 grandchildren. What is even better is how all six of our kids get along with each other like true siblings and our family gatherings are BIG but BEAUTIFUL!!!

My plan for the blog is two-fold. I will be alternating blog posts on general mental health tips, education and awareness along with blog posts addressing the challenges of coparenting. (I might occassionally throw in some fitness things too). I would love to hear feedback and stories of your wins out there and things that are exciting you that I write about. It is my goal and mission to hear more and more stories of empowerment and success in the areas of mental health awareness and coparenting relationships.