Farhana Hussain cannot rescue her clients. But as a divorce doula, she can do something better — teach them to save themselves.
The London resident, who started My Divorce Doula about two years ago, equips clients with practical tools to deal with a divorce or a separation. She works exclusively online with clients who are spread across several countries, including the UAE, through private and group sessions. “Most of my Middle Eastern clients have come from Dubai in the past,” she says via Google Meet, adding that her religious and cultural background helps her to connect and work with women from the region, as they navigate unique challenges related to guilt, forgiveness, identity, family and cultural expectations.
As the name suggests, divorce doulas are modelled on birth doulas who provide emotional and physical support to women during their pregnancy, child-birth and postpartum — but while the latter help clients celebrate the beginning of a new chapter in their lives, divorce doulas help them cope with the end of one.
Dr Tara Wyne, clinical psychologist and clinical director at The Lighthouse Arabia Centre for Wellbeing, where she hosts a ‘life after divorce’ support group every month, understands ‘divorce doulas’ as “companions who support individuals contemplating, experiencing or navigating a divorce, and help them deal with it emotionally and practically.”
She believes divorce doulas can, potentially, be a compassionate witness and help validate the person’s feelings while going through the upheaval and change. “They can help carry the enormous weight and support the person in building courage, taking necessary steps and navigating all the unknowns. They could also act as an integrity partner if they actually engage in brave conversations with the client — that is, not just support and mirroring, but also real constructive feedback.”
How divorce doulas work
Anne Jackson, a Dubai-based master therapeutic coach, founder of One Life Coaching ME and ‘divorce doula’ (a name, she says, that has been bestowed on her by her divorce clients), started her support group Leaves Dubai 15 years ago, which was also when she went through a divorce. When lawyers began to get in touch with her, she invited them to the support group’s meetings to give free legal information to women who were struggling with difficult divorces. Their interactions helped Jackson to understand the law of the land and she uses her experiences to help clients navigate the complex process. “For instance, when the two parties need to reach an amicable accord as to what to do, we mediate between them with common sense, like family mediators do in the UK,” she says, stressing she makes it clear to clients that she doesn’t give official legal advice and that they should consult a lawyer for that.
As someone trained in psychotherapy modalities, Jackson looks at the “practical, emotional, career and moving forward side of things” with clients — including past trauma, how it’s stopping them from moving on and how to tackle it. She also collaborates with moving companies that are trained to work in emotionally charged situations like dividing a home during a divorce. “They’re not coming in saying things like, ‘Can I speak to your husband’ or ‘Will your wife be dealing with this’,” she says.
Hussain, too, supports clients practically, prepping for lawyer meetings, court proceedings, communication strategies. “But most people jump straight into the practical stuff when they’re still emotionally all over the place. That’s when things get messy, confusing and expensive,” she points out. “The smartest thing anyone can do is to get grounded first and know what they want before they start negotiating for it.”
Divorce doulas are typically not trained therapists, so while they can help clients understand and manage their emotions in a tough situation — such as appearing in court — they may not delve into the past to explore how they got there. They are, perhaps, more similar to divorce coaches in what they do but as Hussain points out, coaches primarily focus on the mind, by setting goals and helping clients achieve them. Divorce doulas like her, however, work with both the mind and the body: they teach simple tools to help individuals regain their confidence and stay calm in high-conflict situations, like dealing with lawyers, breaking the news of their divorce to family or negotiating co-parenting responsibilities with an ex-partner. “Divorce ends up becoming such a confusing, stressful and often traumatic experience for so many people that the body becomes numb,” she adds. “So, I work with your breath to help you regulate your nervous system. We also work with sound and movement, which is really good to release tension and stress in the body.”
Saria Moran, who works in divorce and domestic abuse recovery, points out that “with a divorce coach, it’s perhaps a little bit more structured coaching.” She describes her services as a blend of those offered by a divorce coach and a divorce doula. “The way I work depends on the client,” she explains. “I may have clients who look for that structure and want to set goals for what they want to do with their life, post separation. I may also have clients who are quite traumatised by the whole process, are feeling a bit stuck and require a gentler approach. So, I think it’s really important to meet the client where they’re at because if you try to impose a method, it’s not going to work.”
Discussions around sensitive topics like co-parenting can get quite heated and combative, so Moran attempts to defuse the situation by advising clients to pause before responding to a fiery message or email. “I explain to them that we can’t go in with that fire or else they’ll be stuck in this cycle of conflict, which is never helpful, and that they don’t have to respond to it immediately. Be in a position where you’ve grounded yourself a little bit — if you’ve got the time, you might even want to sit and have a cup of tea before you do it. Be in a space that feels comforting, rather than just firing off the message or the email because you’re really going to regret it.”
Setting clear boundaries
Divorce doulas, as Dr Wyne points out, “require no clear qualifications or licensing for this role”. “Although they can provide help and support in complex or prolonged divorces, even a well-meaning divorce doula could stray into giving advice on legal decisions, play therapist and advise on co-parenting, try to contain and manage deep psychological pain or emerging mental health issues when they are unqualified to do so,” she points out. “This could lead to more harm than good.” And since it’s an unregulated field, she agrees that there are no clear rules on what a divorce doula might provide.
Most of them, however, do set clear boundaries. “I’m not the best friend, and I am not the crutch,” says Jackson. She is fine with clients texting her via WhatsApp any time and she will read them, but she informs them in advance that she’ll answer all messages together during their next session.
Most of the women have been in suffocating marriages with controlling ex-husbands deciding their every move, so if divorce doulas stepped in and took over completely, they wouldn’t learn to manage their lives on their own. “It’s like that saying: give a man a fish, and you feed him for a day; teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime,” says Jackson. “It’s my job to help them stand up for themselves, to be assertive and deal with confrontation.”
Hussain says that she is very clear about her work as a divorce doula, which is “mapped on the original role of a (birth) doula.” She doesn’t give out her phone number to clients but is fine with them emailing her any time. “And within 24 hours they can set up a one-to-one call with me, which is a 20-minute restricted call where they can ask me a very specific question. I give these calls to clients who show up and do the work, that’s when the real change happens.”
Moran, too, says boundaries can get a bit blurry if one is not careful. “I do offer additional support outside of the session because when you’re navigating the legal process, things will come up. So there might be a message from your ex which needs to be replied to immediately — it could be around finances or the children — and they would want to respond to it instead of having to wait for another one-hour session.” Moran tells her clients that they can message her during work hours from 8am to 5pm, Monday to Friday, unless they’re in a dangerous situation where the client needs emergency help and there is a safety concern.
“But I think you need to have some boundaries because you could end up spending your evenings checking all the messages, trying to reply on WhatsApp and it could really spiral out of control,” she continues. “And as a coach, you have to walk the talk as well. So, it’s no good saying, ‘Come on, we need to set healthy boundaries’, if you’re not doing it yourself.”
Interestingly, Moran says she now has to do less of all that, thanks to ChatGPT. “Clients can use AI prompts to draft a message or email that will elicit a response, which will not end up in conflict,” she adds. “Someone was saying to me the other day that I am missing out on client time and that I am reducing my services. But actually, no, it’s not fun to get caught in conflict back and forth. So if I can give my clients the tools to do it by themselves, why not use it?”
Divorce doulas don’t exclusively work with female clients, even if the name might suggest otherwise, and people seek them out at any stage of a divorce or separation — some are still stuck in unhappy marriages, while others, Moran notes, may have been divorced for over a decade yet struggle to move on, still checking an ex-partner’s Facebook profile. Perhaps, it’s a reminder that the hardest part of separation isn’t always the legal ending, but the emotional untangling that follows.
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