Rebuilding Life After Divorce with Mikelann Valterra

00:00
Some life shifts are loud and some are quieter, but no less permanent. In this conversation, Money Coach and tango dancer, Michael Ann Volterra shares the moment her world pivoted in the middle of a sushi restaurant and how from that quiet ending, she began the long,  messy and ultimately beautiful work of rebuilding her life from scratch. And  I found the courage to say the words.

00:25
And he found the courage to say, I think you're right. And  why on earth did I suggest a handshake? What a bizarre thing. But it just felt like almost a friendship business deal. Like we're not going back on this, are we? Like this is official. This is a moment. This is a moment  in our life. He shook his hand out and that's where we ended it. And that is where we ended it. It wasn't with the lawyers. It wasn't with all the stuff that, how long it takes to go through.

00:54
divorces. It was with that handshake that is the day our marriage ended.

01:17
Hello, my friends. Welcome to the Life Shift podcast. I am here with Michael Anne. Hello. Hello from Seattle. I am so jazzed to finally be here with you. Thank you for wanting to be a part of this show. think that this is the show that I never knew that I personally needed.  And I'm finding out that a lot of people need to hear these stories from people about resilience or inspiration or hope or that.

01:43
there is a path forward when we feel kind of stuck in our moments. So just thank you for wanting to be a part of this, what I'm calling my healing journey. Yeah, I'm so jazzed. Although I thought about it so much in the back of my mind today as I've been working with clients going, am I really going to like dive in and like  share my own personal story? And  am I ready to go there? I mean, it's interesting how it's played in the back of my mind all day.

02:11
I do a lot of podcasts and I generally don't spend so much time thinking about an upcoming podcast. So  that tells me time to dive into story. Story is just, it's like this beautiful way that we can connect with each other. We can connect with ourselves. We can heal ourselves.  it's,  I'm excited that you were thinking about it you wanted to like dive into your personal story because we were saying before recording how important

02:39
actual stories about each other are, because that's what we gravitate towards when we want to work with someone, when we want to involve them in our lives.  Boy, that's so true. So true. I think before we get started and we get into your story, it would be good to know who are you in 2025?  How do you identify in the world? Who am I? Who is Michael and Volterra?  Well, who I am in 2025.  I like to say that I am a money coach by day and I dance by night.

03:09
I have been a money coach and financial therapist, for  believe it or not, almost 30 years. And that's kind of  weird sounding given that I'm only in my mid-50s. Like that just makes me sound so old, right?  Holy crap.  I have been a financial coach for  decades and I  specialize in working with women in midlife, many of whom are divorced and  that links.

03:36
to my story, right? Why did I choose to specialize in that as opposed to so many other  young families, for example?  And just to help your listeners out so they don't get stuck on like, what the money coach?  Half of what I do is on the emotional side of money, which is  our mindset around money, our beliefs around money.  Why do we do what we do when it comes to spending and earning and things like that?  And then half of what I do is on the practical side.

04:05
How do you decide that you can afford to go to Hawaii? How do you know how much money you should be saving? How do you do that, oh, God forbid, budget? How do we work with cash flow, things like that, right? So back in the day, I debated, this isn't gonna sound crazy, but I debated either becoming a financial planner, which is all about money and investments, retirement, or I was gonna become a psychotherapist. And it's like, well,

04:35
kind of two different fields, Matt.  I had an undergrad in economics,  but I got a master's in psychology.  So I combined them  in this field that at the time no one had ever heard of and didn't hardly exist. And now it's 25 years later. I think more people have heard of money coaching, but I've really had to kind of chart my own path in my own way because earlier in my career, it truly was

05:04
just an unknown thing. had to tell everybody, you what is it you do again? know, emotions and practical and all that jazz.  Now there are more coaches in general, right?  And there are more financial coaches, which is  wonderful. So that's who I am now.  And the only reason I said, you know, work by day and dance by night is my  passion, which came about after my transition  is Argentine Tango. I am a crazy tango dancer and

05:33
that's what I do if I'm not working my day is I'm dancing and performing and competing and  doing just all sorts of wonderful crazy stuff in this  newer chapter of my life, right? Which,  you know, goes  all to these big transitions that we go through. So yeah,  that's who I am. That's who you are. You say crazy. So what makes it crazy?

05:59
What makes you crazy Argentine tango I guess maybe I've never met  anyone who would say I'm a completely normal average Argentine tango dancer.  think because that is an excellent question and no one has challenged me on the crazy word before. Because I think it's such a bloody hard dance  that you've got to be almost obsessive.

06:24
to really get into it and love it and master it. And it's hard to learn tango,  going to dance class a couple times a month. So when people fall in love with it, people love it or don't, there's no in between, right?  And when people discover it, if they fall in love with it, if they're one of those, then they just tend to get obsessed  and go a lot  and spend a lot of time. And so, yeah, I spend a  lot of time.

06:53
Sounds like a healthy obsession though. You know, it's better than cocaine, absolutely, 100%. Sometimes you might need it. Yeah, I mean, it is healthy. You're right. I mean, that's the joke you would think that all dancers would be like super, super healthy and skinny. And it's true. It's hard to dance with a martini in your hand. But you know, it's a lot of, it's amazing. I mean, it's amazing. Just the social connections, the brain connections, the physical.

07:22
of it, the beauty of it. I mean, it's dancing. It's just wonderful. Is it pretty precise? Yeah. Is it a pretty precise dance? Yeah. So it kind of aligns with that side of your brain too? does. You have this merge. You're totally right. You nailed me. Yeah, you're right. It's that left brain, right brain. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's like you did that with your career and you're doing it with your hobby too. Oh my God, you're so right. That is bingo. I'm one of those left brain, right brain.

07:52
half and half because here I am in psychology and finance, which is just sort of like the bifurcated brain to begin with.  But it shouldn't be. It shouldn't be. I completely agree with you. mean, ideally, it should be the holistic  brain. We need both.  And to me, tango feels like both. It's this beautiful, sensuous, amazing, beautiful dance. And it does take some precision or you trip and fall on the floor.

08:18
No, I love that.  generation, I'm in my mid 40s. My generation, felt like we were somewhere in between. We're very much the in between generations. Like,  I guess I'm the  old millennial. So we grew up without a lot of the technology, but then we got it. Like when we were like 13, 14 years old.  And we were conditioned that our jobs had to follow a certain line. Like we had to, you know, we had to fit the boxes and graduate and...

08:47
do all the things that society told us we had to do. But at the same time, we were also probably in our  20s when everyone was like, no, follow your passion, follow your dreams.  so we're in this weird place. So I love that, first of all, in just telling us who you are now, that your journey brought you through this uncharted path that you took for yourself. And you made that happen. Because  I could see a lot of people probably around you were like, what?

09:13
Were they like, what the heck are you doing? You should do this. It's true. I  am Generation X and I am Generation X like I'm poster child Generation X, know, with  all the good and the bad that is Generation X. That is me.  But yeah, I know I did have a lot of people  saying, what, what, now what are you doing again? You know, what you're doing something that no one has heard of that doesn't really exist. And you're going to go be self-employed and like, yeah, good luck with that, you know, and

09:42
And yet people are fascinated because people do love the idea of money story, speaking of the power of story, right? And everybody wants to share their money story. I love that part of my work, but it's been an intense path. I don't think I came into the world at the age of 25 after grad school and go, I know, I'd like to spend my whole entire life self-employed, right? But it was the only way that I could practice.

10:11
this field that I fell in love with was to do it in a self-employed, I had to create my own business.  It's an intense path to be self-employed your whole adult life  is  kind of its own thing. Yeah. Well, kudos to you for one, following your passion. think that's so big and such a great example to set for the people around you that like, look, I followed it. It was hard, but like,

10:39
It's fulfilling and look at the things that I'm doing. so good on No regrets.  Good. Well, I have a bunch of them. I'll list them for you. No, just kidding.  I'm ready.  I'd love for you to kind of paint the picture of your life leading up to the life shift moment that we're going to center today's conversation around, knowing full well that you've probably had many life shifts in your life. But let's center it around the major one that you've identified for today.  kind of tell us the before story.

11:07
So  the before story  is I am married and doing all, even though I just sounded fairly untraditional, I was actually living a pretty darn traditional life, right? I I met my  husband in grad school  and we got married and then the next thing you should do is have a kid and then you move to Seattle and you keep going on your career.

11:31
That was my life. I was super focused in my career. We had our son  in 1999.  And you're living this lovely, normal family  life  as we all do, trying to work on retirement. mean, all the traditional things, trying to look at  when can we buy a house.  Up to my life shift moment,  I had been in practice in my business for about 10 years.  And so I...

11:58
worked with, and  this is interesting,  many families  and many other young married couples.  People similar to me doing our best.  I've always thought  30s are really tough  for many reasons,  but part of why they're tough is we're all trying to both have a career and a family all in the same decade.  And so I was.

12:24
In my  30s, I was busy with the career, with the family,  with all of those very much  traditional trappings. And I'm not going to say now that I was unhappy. I think I was so busy  that I didn't have a lot of time for  a lot of self-reflection. There certainly wasn't any dancing or  art or any things that I found in  kind of  after the big  transition. I would call it lifequake.

12:51
I mean, in many ways to the outside living a fairly normal life and just trying  to keep up,  trying to keep up but very busy. We talked a lot about your career and how you kind of went against  maybe the norm in that sense of following your passion.  I talked to lot of people about this checklist life, like you were doing the things that maybe...

13:18
we assumed that society told us that these are the things you're supposed to do  and that equates to happiness. Did you absorb any of that? Like the next thing on the list that you had to accomplish that was gonna bring you happiness or were you happy the full time? You said you weren't upset, but did you think that like the next thing was gonna be that fulfilling factor?  I was happy until I wasn't happy. How's that for the deep non thought of the day, you know?

13:47
I was very happily married for many years. I was very happily married for many years. that's part of the  sadness of the  life quake, right? Is that I had in many ways what I did want with someone that I loved very much  and  was creating a family. I mean, our biggest sadness was we were not able to have a second child because the birth of our first child was...

14:14
very difficult, very, very, very, very, very difficult and caused a lot of,  we just had major, major medical complications that took many, many years to recover from.  And you're just living your life. You're living your life. And I assumed  that I would live with my beloved forever. I assumed that we would grow old together. I assumed we would definitely retire together. And I could see the,  husband and I are both kind of nerds.

14:43
And so, you know, I could see our bookshelves. You know, I remember having this vision of, when we're 60 and we've got like a 1 million hard copy, of course, books, you know, all around us. I assumed these things as we all do because you can't live your life without visualizing a future and you see your future however it is you see it, but you see a particular future. that's  just kind of  in my opinion, how we operate as humans. can't see  blankness.

15:11
And I very much saw him in the future, right? I absolutely 100 % saw the future continuing as it was in terms of, you know, continuing to build, eventually buy a home, you know, so on and so forth. And I would say that there was many parts that absolutely were very, very good. That's really interesting. And I know this isn't related to your story, but  the idea of picturing the future for me,  I think it was different for me.

15:40
and I don't know if it's because of having lost my mom at eight, she was 32. I couldn't picture anything past, like I thought I would die at 30 as well. So I didn't really have these visions and I was always chasing the next thing that I somehow assumed was going to bring me happiness. And so that's where that question comes from is because I was like always like, yeah, dad, I graduated high school top of my class.

16:08
didn't bring me the happiness, what next? Yeah, I went to college, graduated top of my class, didn't bring me any happiness.  Yeah, I got my MBA at 23.  And I just kept going and going and going and hoping that the next thing would bring me that. So that's where that question comes from of like,  I was sold a bag of goods that I never actually got.  Whereas it sounds like you, this  was what you expected of your life and you were moving through it in the way that felt.

16:37
I think you're right. mean, because I think part of it is my personality. I am very much a planner and a goal setter. And  who knows why we have these different, so many complications in our lives that make us who we are, right?  And things had always gone in many ways relatively according to plan.  And when I planned something, guess what? It happened because I planned it, I executed it. you know.

17:01
The world would not thwart Michael and Volterra's will, of course not.  So that's that.  could it? Because I planned it. Right. And I was up. You know, I mean, I was planning our financial life. mean, trust me, I had a plan. Everything was well planned.  So it's I think  why,  you know, I always think what's the difference between like a life quake and a disruption? Because there's so many things that don't go small things don't go according to plan.

17:31
or sometimes huge things that don't go according to plan, but does your life fundamentally change as a result  of  whatever happened? Like when your mom died, your whole life changed as a result of it. That's a life quake, right? I mean, your whole life changed as a result of that. And  when  I hit that age of 39 and my husband came to me and said,  I think I'd like to go into marriage counseling.

17:59
That was the beginning of the lifequake, right? I I wouldn't trace the lifequake to that moment. That was the crack. That was the fissure. That was the ground crackling underneath me, right? Not knowing exactly where that would lead. You know, because I've thought through as I've enjoyed your podcast, different things that have happened in my life that have been huge and different people that I've lost and different big events.

18:28
And the question is always, did my entire life change as a result of what happened? Because that's this massive life transition. That's what I would call a lifequake and what you're calling a life shift. A life shift, right? And when my marriage broke up and everything shifted and changed and my life shifted at 39, everything changed. Everything changed. Everything changed. I don't...

18:55
You and I know, Matt, it's not necessarily an  unusual story. It's just my story, right? In terms of  how common is divorce and yet how personal is the story?  It's such a personal story in terms of how it impacts people. And  for me, I like to say it's so interesting to have to sum up something that's so complicated that my husband started it and I ended it, right?

19:23
that when  we were going back and forth, what was the moment? I used to think that the moment when I think about my big life shift at 39 of what happened the year  after the divorce, which is a huge part of that messy thing. But really, the moment was sitting in a sushi restaurant where we would go.  The sadness for me was I was best friends with my husband.

19:51
We were very good friends. never divorced for lack of love. Relationships are  very, very complicated. And of course, we had been in marriage counseling, and few things are more painful, in my opinion, than marriage counseling. And it certainly sometimes works. I don't mean to say it doesn't work. people have happier lives as a result of it, right?  But obviously, it didn't work for us. And  when we went to  dinner that night,

20:18
I knew after X number of sessions  that  we were done, that he didn't want to stay married, that I couldn't stay with someone who didn't want to be married to me, right?  And so I ended it.  And I said,  babe, I'm going to name where we are. We're not going to stay married. Let's agree to separate and let's separate at the end of August. And if you agree, let's shake hands on it, which sounds

20:47
So simple, Matt, can you believe that I said that, right?  And he just looked at me and he got these huge tears in his eyes and he took a deep breath and he  stuck his hand out and we shook hands. And that's the day we ended our marriage in that sushi restaurant over a handshake. And did the unfolding of it take years after that? Yes, it did. We weren't actually legally divorced for two years because it was  very, very complex as these things are, right?

21:16
I could trace it to that. I could trace it to the moment of sitting our, you  know,  it's like a life quake has, it's like a real earthquake where you have all these mini quakes around it, right? There's the  earthquake and then there's, you know, the month later when you're sitting down and telling your  almost nine-year-old son who's scared to death when he hears this, what's going to happen to him? You know, I mean, I remember that moment so, so clear.  And then there's the outside.

21:45
There's what people see.  You we had  such a lovely marriage from the outside that when we announced we were gonna divorce,  it sent huge shockwaves into our community.  You know, it freaked  everybody out. If we couldn't make it, who could make it, right? We were the very first of our wave to... No pressure. No pressure, right? Yeah, exactly.  And I remember a friend saying at the time,

22:14
It sounds like your marriage is complete,  which was a lovely  way of thinking about it as opposed to failure, failure, failure, you know, because you think your whole life has just changed. I mean, this is the problem with divorce  is your entire future is gone, right? I mean, that's how it feels. Like every single thing,  where you're going to  live, how you're going to see yourself in the future, where you travel, all of your retirement plans.

22:43
everything changes. It feels like everything's gone. And it's not really that much of an exaggeration. All your guests that have shared their very personal divorce stories, it's like our lives are jigsaw puzzles. And it feels in this moment as if the puzzle is  shaken and thrown up into the air and  all the pieces come back down in the box, but they're not connected anymore. And you've got to put your life  back together.

23:12
And  for me,  I  lost everything. lost  on a financial front.  was partly because I was earning more.  Here I am at 40. I am a money coach.  So there's this  secret  shame in some ways. There's so many pieces to this.  I have nothing.  I have no house. We didn't have a house.

23:36
I lost all my retirement. I mean, nothing. I was taken down to zero at 40 and had to start over. And I took my son, who was nine, and I moved into my high school bedroom at my mom's. Now, I love my mom. I'm very close to my mom. But also, and however, nobody wants to turn 40 living back in their high school bedroom.

24:06
with shades of the Duran Duran posters,  right?  And  there's the Madonna poster, you know,  on the walls  because it's like this bizarre,  what is the word, Matt? It's not even reset, right? It's just this like surreal  time in your life where you're  back living with your mom in your high school bedroom with your nine-year-old son sleeping down the hallway, right?  And that's what I did.

24:33
Right?  And  I did that for a year while I rebuilt,  like up from the ashes, the Phoenix rises from the ashes, where I rebuilt everything. And  a year later, I went out and bought the house.  Right? I went out and bought,  trust me, the tiniest little fixer-upper you could imagine because it's all I could afford.  But proudest thing I ever did because it was  my huge up from the ashes  of that

25:02
year and  so much of my life and who I am and things that have evolved since then come from  this lifequake, this transition, this life shift where I basically rediscovered  me in this hugely messy, messy middle. I take your lifequake piece and I think it's very relevant in this case.  You even said it, like mine felt like it was sure there were little quakes after that. There were a lot of

25:31
A lot of them, but that moment from one second to the next for me,  I was different. Was there a part  of this journey, whether it's when your husband came and said, we need to have marriage counseling or  where you as an individual inside heart felt different? It sounds like maybe buying the house was a moment where you felt like a new person. Maybe when you moved back home, was there a part where you were like, I'm a different woman now?

25:59
It sounds so funny to say this out loud, but it really was the sushi restaurant.  It was the handshake.  What an  odd  moment to bring it down to. That moment was  as of this moment, I am alone. As of this moment, I am single. As of this moment,  I have to  build my own future.  I have to see forward in a way that I just hadn't  because I didn't let myself go there until you make that decision.

26:29
you don't go there. don't see like, oh, that would mean I have to do this and this and this, because you're still, you you don't know. It's like there's this massive pivot is not even the word, right? There's this massive pivot in your life that happens in whatever that, you know, for me, it really was that moment. The exploration in who I became and all the things I discovered happened after that. You know, I became a huge writer.

26:58
living that year with my mom. I that's when I discovered morning pages, a la Julia Cameron. like, you know, I've been writing every day since then. And that was 15 years ago. The dance came after too? Dance came after, oh, 100%. I never danced in my life before. Yeah, I never danced in my life before. was not, I mean, I was a little bit, you know, I wrote blog posts before then, but I became a daily, a daily writer. became, I mean, I became a huge writer after that. And, and I also just started tapping into this

27:28
I guess I would call it this well of creativity that I had never fully accessed. You always ask yourself,  why? I could have  accessed these creative parts of me while I was still married. Why  didn't I? I can't even give you a full answer.  Part of it could simply be moving into my  40s.  Part of it could be I let go of all of the ways that things should  be.

27:59
because they were gone. They were gone, right? mean, there was no perfect house in the suburbs with  the 2.3 kids.  once  once everything's gone and you've got a fairly clean slate and you start over at zero, it's it's easier to  to see possibility because I mean, you've got a clean field. you start  recreating that vision or planning the future or did you leave it a little bit more nebulous and open for you to take whatever avenue comes ahead?

28:29
Well, I think I started almost immediately recreating. mean, part of it is because I am a planner. My personality didn't change. I certainly never saw a divorce, but I am a planner. I would say in an, I don't know if you'd say this would be a twist, an ironic twist or whatever, but the process that I teach and taught people saved my own bacon, right? Because I I...

28:58
spent a lot of time teaching people how to do like a monthly spending plan, an annual spending plan. How do you create the life you want using the money that you currently have? It's not that I hadn't always done that for us as a family. I did. It was pretty easy, straightforward, and simple. But once I was divorced and it was just me, I had to get super creative with money. I had to get very creative with money. I was like, wow, I'm not making enough.

29:26
I needed to solve some earning issues, right? Wow, I have to change how I'm spending. I have to figure out how to buy my own house  and I don't even have a down payment. How do I save up for a down payment as quickly as possible, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. So  I used the process that up to that point I had been teaching for 10 years and it was like putting jet fuel into it because I used it to save myself.

29:54
I used it to recreate my own life. And I did. And I'm super, super proud of it that I had the skill set to be able to look at money, you know, I'm not going to say cleanly and clearly because you know, no one's clean and clear in divorce. You're, you know, you're still crying half the time. That would be a lie to say, to say otherwise. You're a human. I am human. And I'm here to tell you, you can do a budget and cry at the same time.

30:23
Most people do probably.  Well,  I get them to the point where they don't cry. They love it.  But yeah, during that year, it  was intense. It was very intense. Do you find now,  so many years removed and moving through this career  still, do you find that this story, this new story that you had to create serves your clients better, serves your business better?

30:52
serves in a way that you could never have expected? I do.  I do. I came to specialize in working with women in midlife, and my particular love is working with women post-divorce.  So you weren't doing that before? I wasn't, no. I really wasn't.  I kind of work with everyone on everything. mean, financial coaching,  everybody kind of needs it and will benefit to some degree. But going through that experience and seeing the power to

31:21
recreate my life in a way that was possible. Because so many people think on the other side of divorce that they'll never be able to catch up with, fill in the blank. They'll never be able to buy a house if they've lost one,  or they'll never be able to catch up with retirement, or they'll never be able to go to Hawaii. Again, they sound like very big dramatic things, but that's how you feel. That's how you feel. We're so afraid that we've lost a lifestyle that we had when we were married, and we're afraid that we'll never

31:51
we'll never get that back. And I learned that, no, you do get to rebuild your lifestyle and you do get to create a life that you absolutely love. You just have to know how to do it.  Because I worked so hard in rebuilding my life,  it gave me a lot of focus on working with that very particular demographic because I get it, I've lived it. I know how we're feeling about this. mean, again, everyone's story is unique, of course.

32:18
And it feels good to know I can do what you can too, right? There is that piece  of the work of working with someone who's been on that journey. Yeah, and not to diminish that hard, hard part of your life, but it almost gives you another layer of this empathy that you can hold for some of your clients that are going through certain moments that maybe feel this despair. And then  maybe you share a little bit of your story. Maybe you don't.

32:45
But if you did, I would imagine that people would be like, oh, you understand, which then naturally has them trust. And I feel like a lot of things can come, as we said before, the power of story can create so much more than just telling the story itself. and so many people in my generation, again, I'm Generation X, right? So many people, for example, feel that they're behind in retirement or behind in savings. And that's not necessarily unique to my generation, Millennials feel that too.

33:15
Exactly. Right? Yeah.  Exactly. You know, so there is a nice thing to say, listen,  I got reset to zero at 40 and I'm okay. And I am okay. And I will be okay. And you can be okay too. And I think that,  you know,  when you're talking with people that either people feel like, well, they always had money or they never went through any hard times or they never had to do it all themselves or whatever.

33:43
It's not that people couldn't potentially have very helpful book knowledge for sure,  and there's a lot of amazing financial training out there, but  working with people that have been there and been through it and know  in their gut that you can do it because they've been there, and it's  a very, very emotional subject. And it's not the only way that people have to rebuild their life, right? There's lots of  life transitions that...

34:10
that happen to people, you know, I mean, I've worked with people that their life transition is, again, someone has died, right?  Or they're empty nesting. I there's many, many, many big transitions that people go through.  But we feel very impacted around money  with big transitions because we are very impacted. I'm really curious about this handshake and I'm curious.

34:32
Was that spontaneous? Was that something you had been thinking about doing but couldn't do it yet? Was that something you were very definitive and that was part of your plan to move forward into  saying, okay, we've brought it this far.  It's not going anywhere.  It's time to check the box.  We go to the next part of this.  It was  bizarrely impromptu. And I say bizarrely because for me,

34:57
I'm a planner, right?  So I didn't set,  and it was our favorite restaurant and we enjoyed it. And was just kind of our, know, many couples have a place that they  love to go to. place. Yeah, yeah. And we had a lot of  happy dinners there.  But,  you know, there's so much under the surface  that's going on when you guys are deep in marriage counseling. And also, I think people know when they're not going to make it.

35:28
and but nobody wants to be the first to say we're not going to make it.  And  I divorced a very, very nice man, a very nice man.  I knew he would have a really hard time being the one to end it.  But I also felt like, you know, that's where we are. And yet I still didn't go to dinner that night saying, I know, I'm going to suggest that we call it quits and shake hands on it, right? You know, I mean, it was...

35:57
It's like this weird, all this  stuff is coalescing and coalescing and all the stuff that you're talking about and not talking about, talking about, not talking about. We were  at that point walking on eggshells because marriage counseling is  so, for us, was  so painful, was so hard.  At the end of  every marriage counseling session, he would  hand me a little

36:21
candy that the counselor had in the bowl is like this little peace offering. You kind of go in and hook up a lung and oh my God, it was so hard. So we, think both knew, but nobody wanted to be the one to say the final, are we there? Are we really going to end it? Are we really going to end it? And by the time I hit the, what do they call that fried ice cream at?

36:48
sushi restaurants that are just so yummy that there's like  dough and ice cream in the middle and they deep fry it really fast so that the ice cream still, you know, it was like my favorite dessert.  I just felt like this is the last time we're going to have this together and why are we pretending otherwise? And  I found the courage to say the words  and he found the courage to say, I think you're right. And  why on earth did I suggest a handshake? What a bizarre thing.

37:18
But it just felt like almost a  friendship business deal, like we're not going back on this, are we? Like this is official. This is a moment. This is a moment  in our life. He shook his hand out and that's where we ended it. And that is where we ended it. It wasn't with the lawyers. It wasn't with all the stuff that how long it takes to go through  divorces. It was with that handshake. That is the day our marriage ended.

37:48
Do you look back, this is gonna sound so terrible and I don't mean it in a terrible way, do you look back on that moment and that decision for yourself to put your hand out and say that? Do you look back on that moment with any kind of fondness or thankfulness or gratefulness to that? That's a good question. I have to think about how to answer that. I do have an interesting reaction to that ice cream dessert now, for sure, because I have a strong association with that.

38:17
with that moment. It's years later now, right? And I have recreated my life and I'm incredibly happy and I married my tango dance partner of all fun things on the planet. so I'm in a new life and I'm super happy. there is, so there is a piece of me that is like, I wouldn't have found this life if I had not let go of that first life. But.

38:44
That's on a wing and a prayer. You don't know what's coming. You don't know that you'll find your true life partner. You don't know  all these things. It's such a massive leap of faith  to  sail into completely uncharted waters of dark fog chaos that I've got a lot of mixed feelings about that moment. There is this openness around that moment in that it stands apart.

39:11
It's almost like hard to remember the weeks up to it and the weeks after it because it's such a clear moment for me.  the emotion around it is almost,  I know clarity is not  an emotion, but there is this clearness  to it that  we knew it was the right decision. So there was a  knowingness of rightness,  but at the very same time,  an intense  sadness.

39:41
So yeah, it's mixed.  Very, very, very, very there's no right answer.  I think if we take other people out of the equation and we reflect  on a version of ourself that made a pretty difficult decision, a very difficult decision in a moment, and then see where we've come from there, I think that's where that question comes from, of this fondness. I can  think back of...

40:10
decisions that I made that in the moment were very hard to make and some of them I don't have fondness for and some of them I do. I'm like, wow, Matt, as hard as that was, you made the right decision. You made the decision that you needed that was really hard to make, that you could have prolonged for another however long, right? But it was the right one. And so that's kind of where that comes from is like sometimes I reflect on these moments in my own life and I'm like, oh,

40:41
I'm glad you did that. Or why didn't you do that sooner?  You know, kind of moments. So that's where that comes from. and you know,  and time heals. I mean, how much and many times have we  heard that? You know, he went on to find his great love.  And I'm very, very happy for him for that. And we were wonderful co-parents. And we've got this  amazing son that we continued  to co-parent.  And it was...

41:10
Was it the craziest year of my life? Yeah,  it was. I mean, it was  completely uncharted, crazy, crazy, crazy territory where you've got to,  it feels like, suddenly rebuild your entire life. And you do, we do.  There's a lot of gifts  from  that lifequake, that life shift, right? That life ship.

41:32
created. In the following year, I just discovered many, many parts of myself because I think I had been very tamped down and down and depressed and many,  many things that lead up to  divorces are  not surprising. Most people aren't blurringly... If you're in marriage counseling and end up divorcing, chances are you're not tiptoeing through the tulips leading up to that moment. after that- get somewhere, maybe. Maybe somewhere. I was not in the tulips. I was definitely not in the tulips. But

42:01
afterwards,  even though there was this bizarre like,  you know, living with my mom in my high school bedroom and you know, few people can envision that  as they turn 40. Right.  But  I discovered dance.  I discovered art.  I discovered music. You know, I just gave myself permission  to explore, explore, explore, explore because when you have a huge life shift,

42:30
I don't think it's that uncommon that you do things that you haven't previously been doing because  you're almost like reordering who you are. What was your relationship with the word failure prior to your divorce?  I did not fail. about that? And the reason I ask that is because it feels like when something happens like that that you didn't expect or you didn't plan for.

42:57
It creates that space that you're describing right now to try things that you might not be good at. Yeah. And be okay with that. Is that what you found when you were trying dance? Or  what did you try that you totally hated or were terrible at?  I think  I'm lucky that my  dad was a huge model to me of trying things  out  and they don't have to stick. Trying things out.

43:25
I played the guitar every day for 15, 20 minutes for a year. And I'm like, you know what? Yeah, not for me. I'm really not a guitar player.  But I could chalk that up to a big fail  or I could say I tried it and it's not for me.  And I think that's just part of the parenting I was given that you do get to try things and they don't all have to stick. mean, after my divorce, I took...

43:53
I think it's actually prerequisite. Every woman that divorces has to go take a pottery class. And so  I took a pottery class and in the class there Very hard. Very hard. was  zero men and 11 other women post divorce.  In their divorce process, it was hilarious. And I made a lot of misshapen  odd things that were designed to be.

44:16
I know what I called them. I ended up making a lot of  cigarette holders, which is hilarious because I don't smoke nor does anyone I know.  But you get to try things.  Luckily, I had that going in. I think for me,  the more interesting question was  why was I not trying things?  I was so  locked up and tamped down and living the life I thought I was supposed to be living that I wasn't very creative.

44:47
I wasn't trying anything. was just sort of living and doing the career thing and the family thing and the mom thing  and,  you know, checking a lot of boxes.  And I was not that happy. And I would assume that with the women that you work with now, you probably hear similar stories in the sense of like what they were doing before versus the things that they might be trying now. Is that true? Yeah. Yeah. think I think  after, you know, part of it is just women in midlife were all kind of uncorked.

45:16
in a lovely, wonderful, crazy way, right? And so when you add  to that divorce and a huge  life shift, we just become very, very creative and try a lot of new things and become less of people pleasers.  I mean, there's just,  in some ways,  things fall away that don't serve you anymore. And I think a divorce process can hasten  the shift  in a great but incredibly painful, like you will.

45:45
change and grow personally or else in a very  condensed time. like being run over with the personal growth steamroller, right? You'll be like,  oh, you will grow personally. And  it's  hard. It's intense. Well, you said that when you bought your house, that was a super proud moment. there milestones like that in which you felt like you were, and maybe you

46:10
didn't lose yourself, but you were regaining a new version of yourself or something that like was like, yes,  I'm doing it. There were a lot. I mean, a lot of them were smaller. You know, I had stopped listening to music. My musical tastes were seemed to be arrested around 1987 when  I graduated high school.  apparently it was good when you moved back. Yeah, it was great when I moved back there. The posters, you know, but apparently music has continued to be recorded since 1987.

46:39
I got back into music and had so much fun and my friends would just tease me because I would tell them about all these amazing new groups and they're like, oh, not new, been out there for  10, 20 years.  That was new. Dancing, the fact that I would go off and take a tango class, it's like, oh my goodness. I mean, all sorts of  little  milestones and also finding my way.

47:06
to do things. It's like, you know, I was reborn as a single mother. And  so things were different, right? Things were different. I mean, yes, did I manage to  cook and get dinner on for my son? did. I had the same parenting plan with my son that you had before your mom died in that  I had him all the time except for it was exactly what you had Wednesday nights and every other weekend. He was with his dad. That's a weird thing.

47:34
I know when I heard you say that, like, it must just be like the thing the way they used to do it, right? That was like, it's almost old fashioned now because most people now have 50-50 plans.  But you know, I  had my son all the time like your mom had you, right? We found our way and I  made a lot of soup and a lot of really bad pork chops.  But I found that it's  okay. You know, I'm not going to ruin my child because I fry up the world's  not greatest pork chop.

48:02
And he still loves me. I'm very, close to my son. I think one of the gifts is  we're very, close.  And that is likely a gift  of single motherhood. you know, who knows? I'd like to think we would have been close regardless of a divorce, but it's different. You know, it's a different life.  Yeah. And you probably modeled some great behaviors as you were learning who this version of you  was through all of these different experiments and.

48:28
building this new version of your life. He saw every experiment. He's like, oh, so mom's going to do pottery now. Oh, so mom's going to take art classes now.  Oh, so mom's going  to take dance classes now. And he teased me about it sometimes. And I say, like, honey, you get to try things.  You get to try things, and they don't have to stick. You get to experiment and sample and try things. Does he? He does.  He does. He's an interesting combo, not surprisingly, of me and his dad.

48:57
But yeah, he definitely has his hobbies and goes, he was that intense Pokemon kid and then he was the intense Legos kid and then he was the, you know, I mean, we kind of went through all the different things. Now, because he is Generation Z, he probably has a tattoo for every single hobby he's ever had, but that's generational. He's got a lot of You mean you didn't do that when you got divorced? No.

49:25
I do not have a tattoo  of my  life's history on my body. My son does. And I keep telling him, like, honey, you're only in your mid-20s. Like, you got a lot of life left to live. Where are those going to go?  In this journey, as if being a single mother  trying to rebuild your life from the ashes, a business owner doing all that, and a dancer, you write books  too. So how did that play? Like, what was the impetus to put an actual book together?

49:55
Well, I wrote my first book on women and earning issues  and  helping women conquer under earning the pattern of underselling ourselves because it was something that I had to heal in the wake of  the divorce. mean, it's a subject that I'd always been curious about and working on. But boy, when you're suddenly the single mom, you really need to get your earning issues together. Right.  And I'd like to think that  I would anyways. But it just became a huge focus for me of helping women conquer under earning.

50:25
And then the book that came out in 2023 was all about rising above the money fog because I realized when someone said to me a few years ago, Michael, and what's your superpower was the question this person asked me. And I thought, well, that's an odd question. But then I thought, you know, it's about helping women get out of the money fog. Like, that's my superpower. It may sound bizarre and somewhat unique, but that's my superpower is helping.

50:51
women get out of the money fog and all the emotions around being vague around money.  And I'm starting my next book called Love Money and Tango, which is  just a fun book on  new life, right? How do you use money to follow your passion and  not feel like being in a fog keeps you from following whatever your desires are in life? There's all sorts of different thoughts around money, but there's this concept, it's basically the illusion.

51:20
of history in that we all think that we've reached our apex of who we are. Like I am the most Michael Ann-ness and I'm  not going to change a lot in the future.  We find that  we all tend to act as if we're not going to change as much in the future  as we have in the past. But if you think about how much you've changed over the past 10 years, why do you think crazy, interesting,  unforeseen things will happen in the next 10 years?

51:49
You know, mean,  if I look back 10 years ago, I started dancing tango seven years ago. Okay, well, so let's go back to my  life shift. If you would have said,  foresee you will become this crazy, rabid tango dancer that's out five days a week doing national competitions and blah, blah, blah, blah, you know. No one knows how I wouldn't have believed you. I just would have thought, well, that's crazy. You you just, can't see.

52:16
the future and yet we change as much in the future as we have in the past. But as humans, we have a hard time  embracing that. And I get that in a way that I didn't get it both practically and intuitively and in lived experience if I go back to my younger self. Yeah. If this version of you could go back to that night, you guys were walking into that sushi restaurant and you could like pull her aside real quick and whisper something in her ear. Is there anything you'd want to tell her? I would say it's going to be okay.

52:46
It's going to be okay. You will end up having a wonderful, happy life. It is going to be okay. That's what I would have wanted to most know and hear at that moment. I was convinced it would be doom and gloom for much, much longer than it actually was. And I was in such shock of the future in the way I kept saying it is the future's gone. The future's not gone. The future's different.

53:13
But because it was no longer going to be how I had always, always seen it,  I just suddenly felt blind. I felt absolutely blind. I was so used to envisioning a certain future and to have it definitely not there.  The disorienting isn't even the word. So many of us,  as we hit that moment, we're like, how is anything ever going to be okay? And we just need to know that it will. There's something.

53:39
so profound about hearing these stories of resilience that we didn't know the resilience that we had, which gives me hope. It gives me hope that as a human race, we're pretty resilient and we can overcome things that in the moment feel very insurmountable. So true. It's so, true.  Well, if people want to  find you, get in your circle, tell you their story, get your services, find your books, what's like the best way to get in your orbit?

54:08
The best way to get into my orbit is to go to the website and either a grab the opt-in, which is finding what your money personality is.  I just like, I absolutely love this quiz to help people figure out their psychology of money,  or they are free to book a discovery call if they want to chat with me for a few minutes. And I would just send them to Michael and Volterra.

54:33
which I'm sure you're probably having the show notes.  And I'm in Seattle, so sometimes people go to Seattle Money Coach. I've got clients all over the United States,  sometimes it's easier to remember Seattle Money Coach than it is  Michael and Volterra. It's kind of a mouthful. Well, we'll put both of them there. Okay, there we go. I encourage you, if you're interested, definitely check out those websites.

54:56
Are you on any socials if people want to find you or? Yep, everything's under Michael. Yeah, Michael and V,  know, Pinterest and Instagram and Facebook. I'm my space.  Not I'm not on my space. I'm not on my space.  But yeah, all the all the socials. Yeah,  I love that. And I encourage people and I hope you're OK with it if they have a story that like something about your story resonated with them and they just want to be like,

55:23
Hearing you say this validated something in my own experience. I hope you'd be okay for them reaching out to you. Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. People can email me 100%. Yeah, there's there's lots of ways that people can  can find find their way to me. And I'm delighted because I you know, like you said, you want your story to be helpful to other people. Yeah.  Well, thank you for coming on this journey, not knowing where we were going to go, really.

55:48
in the conversation. It's just been such a pleasure to hear your story and  hear your version of how you recreated yourself out of, you know, really, really hard earthquake type moment in your life or period in your life. Thank you for doing it. Thanks for having me.  If someone is out there and you're listening and something in this conversation sparked in you or you know someone in your life that might need to hear this conversation, we would love it if you would share this episode with them.

56:18
Thank you for just being listeners and I will be back next week with a brand new episode of LifeShift Podcast.

56:35
For more information, please visit  www.thelifeshiftpodcast.com