Divorce and Separation

The ending of a marriage or a long partnership is rarely a single event. It is a long stretch of time in which almost everything is in question at once: where you will live, what you can afford, what happens to the children, who you are now, and whether you are doing the right thing.

People come at every stage of that. Some are years past it and still carrying something. Some are in the middle of it. And some have not said the words out loud to anyone yet.

Wherever you are in it

I work with people before, during and after — and with people who come for one stage only, and then get on with it.

• Before, when you are turning it over and cannot tell whether you are giving up too early or staying too long
• During, when there is too much happening at once and no room to feel any of it
• After, when everyone assumes you have moved on and you are not sure you have
• Throughout, if that is what you need

There is no stage at which it is too early or too late to talk to someone.

Three kinds of support, and this is one of them

People going through a separation generally need three kinds of professional help: legal, financial, and emotional. They are different jobs, and they are rarely done well by the same person.

I do the third. I am not a lawyer and not a financial adviser, and nothing said in my room is legal or financial advice. What I can do is help you think clearly enough to use the other two well — and, where it is needed, work with you on the practical shape of what comes next, at your pace.

If you are wrestling with whether to leave

Some of the people I see are not deciding between two ordinary options. They are in relationships where control, pressure or fear has become normal, and where the question of leaving has been turned over privately for years.

If that is your situation, two things are worth knowing.

This affects people of every gender and every kind of household. It is more common than most people realise, and far more common than most people say.

You don't have to do anything yet

The part people don't expect

For those who do leave, the most significant work usually begins afterwards.

The first stretch is survival: the practicalities, the grief, the disentangling. What follows is a different kind of work altogether, and in my experience it is the part that changes a life. Finding out who you are outside the relationship. Building something that is genuinely yours. And looking honestly at the patterns that shaped what you chose and what you tolerated, so that the next chapter is not a quieter version of the last one.

That last piece matters more than any of it. Without it, people can find themselves recreating the relationship they left, in a different person.

The children

Seeing your children is an option rather than an assumption. Whether it would help, and who the right person to do it would be, is something we decide together — depending on their circumstances, their safety, and the kind of help they actually need. Age matters less here than it does elsewhere in my work, and where a younger child would be better served by a child therapist, play therapy for instance, I will say so and help you find the right person.

Something I ask parents to hold onto in this period: there is a real difference between privacy and secrecy. A child is entitled to a space of their own to think and speak freely, without every word being carried back. That is privacy, and it is what makes the work possible. Secrecy is something else — something hidden that puts a child at risk, or that a parent genuinely needs to know. Counselling protects the first and does not keep the second.

Between the two sits appropriate disclosure: deciding carefully, and with your child's knowledge, what is shared with you and when. Done well it keeps a parent properly informed without costing the child their trust. In a separation it matters more than usual, because children often carry things they are trying hard not to say to either parent.

Couples work

I do not do couples counselling. Where that is what is needed, I refer to someone who does. I work with individuals — though if you ask for it, and by agreement, I can see your partner or another family member as part of your own work. More on the FAQ page.

How I can help with this

This has been steady work for me for many years, with a great many people.

I have worked in a home where partners and children find safety from controlling and abusive relationships. In the clinics where I worked I saw, often enough, what staying in a destructive relationship does to a person over time. And a good deal of my private practice has been with people at one stage or another of this.

In the clinics and in my own practice I have also worked with young people carrying the lasting effects of a destructive partnership between the adults around them. Children take in a great deal more than they are given credit for, and it stays with them. I say that not to alarm anyone — almost every parent I meet is working hard to shield their children — but it is why what your children need has a place in this work from the start.

None of that tells me what you should do. It does mean that very little of what you bring will surprise me, and none of it will shock me.

Practical details

Sessions are fifty minutes, in person at my practice in Stellenbosch or online by Zoom, in English or Afrikaans. Fees and other practical questions are answered on the FAQ page.

Getting in touch

Send me a message by email, WhatsApp or the contact form. You do not need to have decided anything, or to be sure that your situation is serious enough.

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