Welcome to At the Podium: Living Well in a Blended Family

0:00 Holidays are coming. Podcast number one on the blended family is going to address how you can get ahead of it. Be the type of co-parent that gets ahead of the game.

0:14 Hey folks, welcome to my first podcast. I am offering a place where I'm going to share, as a result of my 27 years of legal experience with divorce, custody, families and working in complex family units. I'm going to have a podcast to talk about something that I believe we could all benefit from, which is how to live, how to really live, with the blended family.

0:38 My hope for this podcast is that we can talk about solutions. Because when you go through a divorce or a custody battle, if you go through lawyers and you go through the process in court, something changes. Everyone changes. That narrative can stay with you or not. There's always an option at each moment. I want to talk about what I've seen work, what I've seen not work.

1:04 A blended family discussion is really about relationships. Because relationships are difficult and complex on their own, once you get blended, and you've got an ex-wife with him and an ex-husband with her, or maybe two exes, maybe children by different mothers or fathers before you even meet your partner, once you get out of the divorce, once you get out of court, you deserve to live joyfully with your eyes forward. There are lots of different ways to get there.

1:30 I'm Attorney Tara Galbo from Galbo Family Law, and I want to talk about this with you. This is going to be a podcast where we discuss solutions and how to stay living in a joyful place. Your blended family is never going to feel perfect. It's never going to be easy, but you can make it better in small ways and big ways by getting a community that you can talk with. And that's what I hope to be: a safe place where I can share my knowledge, questions can come in, and we will round table ways to live your joyful life even after divorce, court, all of it. Stay tuned.

2:20 And right now, with the holidays coming, I start with the most important thing you can do: always stay ahead of the game. You've got to talk about Christmas. You've got to talk about Thanksgiving. Email your ex, email your children's father or mother, your co-parent, so there's no headache, stress or drama, trauma, not just for your kids. You've already been through it. You've been through the divorce. You've been through the custody case. You've been to court. Stay out of it. Stay ahead of it.

2:43 And always check your motive at the door when you're dealing with people who you don't have an intimate relationship with anymore, but you've got history that's in the past. You have to be the person who starts with forgiveness, forgets about the last Christmas, forgets about everything in the past, and says, for my kids, I'm going to forgive and move forward. It's not easy, but it's essential.

3:08 If you want to live your best life in a blended situation, you look in the mirror, check yourself first, and make sure you narrate your whole family into a happy blended family. Don't hide talking about one family or the other. Be transparent and open, forgiving and grateful to the other side, no matter what has happened. And when I say other side, I say it lightly. Other side is hard, because the litigator in me is so used to saying other side, opposing counsel. But what I want you to know is it doesn't have to live in that contentious place.

3:44 You don't have to worry about changing the other parent anymore. You're not married to them. You're not in a relationship anymore. You have a blended family. So you have your current partner to focus on, and you two are co-parenting when you're in your house. So to be the best version of that person, you can't have any beef or leftover resentment with your child's other parent. The best parents are good co-parents.

4:12 If you want to be the best parent you can be in a blended family, parent with integrity. Be open, be authentic, and don't be resentful or upset about the past, because you're never going to be justified in a resentment that brings misery to your house. Because when we resent, we hurt. So let it go. Let it go.

4:33 What is a blended Thanksgiving? What is a blended holiday? It's a holiday or a dinner or a birthday celebration or a wedding or graduation party where one or both of the co-parents are evolved enough to be in the same space, and to exemplify for the children what forgiveness looks like. And a blended family is a gift, because you can be in the same space with your children's parent, your ex-spouse, and be respectful, and be the type of person who honors the love you had that made those children, and have your current relationships also be able to cross over. It is a family situation, because you're a village raising kids. If you can blend your family, your life will be better.

5:16 How do I do that? How do I reach out and invite my partner's ex-wife to my special day? How do I do it? Buck up. It's not easy. Nobody wants that. But let me tell you, the minute you experience the joy that the kids feel when a blended family is happy, and they narrate into a space that's truth, yep, we're all a family still. It's better. My ex-husband and I are brother and sister. I'd give him anything. I love him.

5:43 But the whole deal is, if you don't let go of what you felt in the past, you can never get to a place to be friends, to be good co-parents, to be open and honest, to be able to rely on them, really rely on them. Because if you lose trust in your co-parenting relationship, and almost every divorce or custody dispute has an element of lost trust, how do you build that trust back, if you're going to have it at all, for your kids' sake? Giving the guy, giving the girl, giving it another chance. Being open and honest that it's not perfect, that you don't maybe want to sit at that first dinner. But by the third dinner, everybody's like, wow, this feels really healthy. And then nobody's fighting. And when somebody has a medical episode, everybody's okay, we've got it. It makes your life so much better.

6:43 So I am tired, actually quite sick, of people saying, how do you do the job? Oh, you work in divorce, you work in custody, everybody's at their worst. I want to say, well, how do you do your job? It's a service industry. I've got to pay my bills. I do my job. But really, this job that I do, helping people navigate through the hardest thing ever, takes heart. Nobody wants it. But it is so amazing when you can do good work. I want to do something more. And so this podcast, At the Podium with Galbo, has been born.

7:17 And because I live in a blended family, and I have blended families all around me, I have quite a bit to share. Because in 2026, there's not a person I know that can't use a little help. We're going to bring you an amazing podcast. If you want more information, just go to my website, galbofamilylaw.com/podcast.

7:40 Next episode, episode two, we're going to bring in the male perspective. Don't miss it. See you next time on At the Podium with Galbo.