QUESTIONS
Straight answers
The questions people actually ask, including the ones they apologise for asking first. Answered the way I would answer them on the phone.
Filters the questions below. Everything stays on this page.
Is this just paying someone to listen to me?
If that is all it turns out to be, you are paying too much. Coaching should produce things you can point at: a communication channel that has actually reduced the volume, a record in a form a professional can use, a decision you had been circling for months, a reply you did not send.
A reasonable test at the end of a first session is whether you are leaving with something specific to do differently this week. If you are not, that is worth saying out loud rather than booking more sessions.
Can you make my ex reasonable?
No. Nobody can, and anyone suggesting otherwise is selling you something.
What changes is the amount of your life the other person's behaviour reaches. Every framework here is built to function whether or not they co-operate, because a plan that depends on them becoming reasonable is a plan with a hole in it.
I have already sent messages I regret. Is it too late?
Almost never. A bad message inside a long thread of calm, brief replies reads as one bad night. The same message inside a thread of similar messages reads as a character.
So the work is rarely about the message you already sent. It is about what the next fifty look like.
What if I am the difficult one?
The fact that you are asking is itself informative. Willingness to look at your own part in a conflict is the capacity most strongly associated with not being the person who lacks it.
Divorce also makes almost everyone behave worse than they would like for a while, and that is not the same as a pattern. If something in your own conduct is making things harder, you will hear that here plainly, because the alternative is not useful to you.
Why pay for this when there is free advice everywhere?
A lot of the free advice is fine. The difficulty is that it is written for the average case and yours is not average, and the forums that feel most supportive at two in the morning tend to reward the most combative answer in the thread.
What you are paying for is judgement applied to your specific facts by someone who has read a great many of these files from the inside, and who has no stake in you staying angry.
Could this make things worse?
It can, if it is used as a weapon. Parents who take a framework designed to reduce contact and use it to build a case tend to escalate rather than settle.
That is a real risk and it gets named at the start rather than discovered later. The work here reduces conflict or it is not working.
My lawyer says I do not need this.
Your lawyer may be right, and a good one will tell you when the case is straightforward. Coaching earns its place when the difficulty is not legal: when the same argument keeps returning in a new form, when your own reactions are becoming part of the record, or when what you need is a way to get through the next eight months rather than a motion.
In practice it often reduces legal costs, because it keeps the hours your lawyer bills for on questions that genuinely need a lawyer.
Do I actually need a divorce coach?
Often no. If the divorce is broadly co-operative, your lawyer answers the phone and you are sleeping, you probably do not need one.
Coaching earns its place when the conflict is the problem rather than the paperwork. When the same argument keeps returning in a different costume. When every exchange needs a witness. When you are paying legal rates to process feelings. A short test: if you could not get through this week without someone reading a message before you sent it, that is the situation this is built for.
WHO DOES WHAT
Four people, four different jobs
The most common question in this field is not what a coach costs. It is how a coach differs from the other three professionals already in the room. Here is the short version, from someone who has held three of these four roles.
Lawyer
You alone
The order, and your position inside it
Yes
What the law can compel
Mediator
Both of you at once. Neutral by definition
An agreement you both sign
Yes, by Colorado statute
The gap between two positions
Therapist
You alone
Understanding, and what the loss means
Yes
Backwards, at what happened
Coach
You alone. Not neutral, and not pretending to be
The next move, and the fifty after it
No. This is the one to read twice
Forwards, at Friday's exchange and March's hearing
Two practical consequences. A mediator needs two people willing to move, and where that willingness is absent a neutral cannot manufacture it, so coaching prepares you for that room rather than replacing it. And therapy and coaching are not rivals: plenty of people need both, because one works on what happened and the other on what happens next. What a divorce coach actually does goes into the day to day of it.
THE HONEST PART
What coaching cannot do
Every service page tells you what it offers. Fewer tell you where the edges are. These are the edges.
CANNOT
Give legal advice
Natalie is not an attorney. Coaching works alongside your lawyer, never instead of one.
CANNOT
Provide therapy
She holds a counselling licence but does not provide clinical treatment here, and no therapeutic relationship is created.
CANNOT
Promise an outcome
Nobody can promise you a parenting time result. What is on offer is preparation, not prediction.
CANNOT
Coach you and investigate you
If Natalie is the court-appointed CFI in your matter she cannot also be your coach. The roles are incompatible and the line is not negotiable.
CANNOT
Carry legal privilege
Coaching is private but it is not privileged the way a lawyer or a therapist is. You are told this before you start, not after.
CANNOT
Fix the other parent
The work is on your side of the exchange, because that is the only side anyone has ever been able to change.
THE LOGISTICS
The practical questions
Credentials, format, cost, confidentiality. The things worth knowing before you pick up the phone.
What happens in the first conversation?
It costs nothing and it is not a sales call. Natalie listens: where you are, what you are actually dealing with, and what has already been tried. By the end you will know what level of support makes sense, or that none of it does.
The consultation is confidential and carries no obligation. If you do go ahead, the right engagement is agreed together, sessions are scheduled through Simple Practice, and the terms are set out in writing before any work begins.
What are Natalie's credentials?
Licensed Professional Counselor, Colorado licence #3250, and a court-appointed Child and Family Investigator. Twenty-six years inside high conflict divorce and custody, including expert witness testimony, mediation and supervised parenting time.
Do you work with one parent or both?
Usually one. That is the point of the approach: the frameworks are built to function without the other parent's co-operation.
Do we meet in person or online?
Both. In person in the Denver metro area, by video anywhere. Video tends to be easier to schedule around court dates.
Can a court order this work?
Yes. A court-referred engagement runs the same way as a private one, and documentation of participation is available where a court has ordered it.
Is coaching confidential?
It is treated as private, but it is not a clinical service and does not carry the legal privilege that attaches to therapy or to conversations with your attorney. That distinction is set out in the engagement agreement before any work begins.
Do you work with clients outside Colorado?
Yes for coaching. Court-appointed investigator work is Colorado only, and anything touching another state's procedure is a question for a lawyer licensed there.
What does it cost?
Every engagement is priced and published, with no consultation required to find out. The services overview lists them all, from a single session to six months of retained support.
Will you speak to my attorney?
Where it is useful and you have asked for it, yes. Attorneys generally prefer a client who arrives organised.
Ask the one that is not here
If your question was not worth putting on a page, it is still worth asking. The first conversation costs nothing.
CONTACT NATALIE