I have been a therapist and relationship expert, providing therapy for relationship and family problems, for over twenty years. Throughout this time, I have always had a strong love and involvement with women's life experiences.  Our journeys of becoming our True Selves, of becoming wives and mothers, and of creating the families we do are amazing and inspiring.   As for many of us, this has been a natural extension of my own life journey as a woman, wife and mother. 

As the author of the forthcoming book, Cinderella Wisdom:  Five Secrets for Creating Your Dream Marriage in the Real World,  I am passionate about  assisting divorced women to complete the steps of divorce recovery, rebuild their life after divorce, and step off the Relationship Roller Coaster onto the  steady ground necessary to build strong, lasting, fulfilling marriages.

How I Became a Divorce and Remarriage Expert

Ideally, individual women or couples come to me in the early stages of relationship problems, before their problems become so serious that one or both of them chooses divorce.  In this case, I assist them to prevent divorce by helping women or couples resolve and heal the underlying reasons for their relationship problems.   

When this is not possible, I can help you rebuild your life after divorce.   

Among the many professional activities and groups of women I have assisted, women who are thinking about, going through, or have been divorced are the group that I have most heart for assisting.  My interest and love for helping divorced women began in the 80's, when I was in graduate school as a recently divorced young mother. 

I was searching for a thesis topic, and determined to complete an original research project about the divorce experience of women divorcing gay men.  I realized in that process how little was known and how little help was available for this "invisible" group, (it was non-existent, actually!) and their unique, little-understood experiences and needs. 

I was excited to share what I learned with other professionals who might assist women in this circumstance, and was grateful when the research I completed was the second published study in the country at the time about women married to gay men, and the first to study their divorce experience.  (Adjustment of Women Married to Homosexual Men: An Exploratory Study, The American Journal of Family Therapy, Vol. 18, No. 3, Fall 1990; pg. 273-284).  

Debra's Professional  Speaker Bio

As I was completing the research, I also created my first specialty therapy program for women.  Entitled When Your Husband Comes Out of the Closet, it was designed to help women divorcing gay men acknowledge, validate and heal their inner wounds and experiences. My thesis research unveiled these wounds in divorced women, and  my first women's specialty program opened the way for healing them.   

Voila!  Without a gray hair on my head, I became the Relationship Godmother.

Through the ensuing twenty years, I have continued to assist women to rebuild their lives after divorce.  I have led numerous divorce recovery groups and have  assisted hundreds of divorcing or divorced women through individual therapy.

This has naturally expanded into providing therapy for relationship and family problems for women, couples and families in the stage of remarriage and forming a step family.  Having led numerous remarriage and step family therapy groups, and assisted hundreds of women, couples and families in this stage of life through one-on-one therapy, couples therapy, or family therapy, I have found that applying what we know about marriage and family formation and therapy in general, for couples and families in this common, yet distinctive experience, doesn’t meet their needs very well.