Beyond Sorry: The Real Work of Divorce Healing with Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg
Ancient Wisdom Meets Modern Divorce: A Guide to Repair and Healing
Seth Nelson, a Tampa divorce attorney, and Pete Wright explore the complex journey of repentance and repair during divorce with special guest Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg, author of "On Repentance and Repair: Making Amends in an Unapologetic World." Rabbi Ruttenberg brings ancient Jewish wisdom to modern relationship challenges, offering insights into healing and growth when marriages end.
The conversation dives deep into what true repair means in divorce, exploring the difference between reconciliation and healing. Seth and Pete discuss with Rabbi Ruttenberg her five-step framework for meaningful repentance, examining how these principles apply specifically to divorce situations. The discussion illuminates how personal accountability and genuine healing can occur even when one party refuses to participate in the repair process, and explores the impact of this work on co-parenting relationships.
Questions we answer in this episode:
Can you heal from divorce without receiving an apology from your ex?
How do you move forward when the other person won't take accountability?
What role does personal accountability play in divorce healing?
Key Takeaways:
True healing requires owning your part, regardless of the other person's actions
The five steps of repentance provide a practical framework for divorce healing
Modeling accountability and repair helps children navigate divorce impacts better
This episode offers invaluable insights for anyone navigating divorce or its aftermath. Rabbi Ruttenberg's framework, combined with Seth's legal expertise and Pete's facilitation, creates a powerful roadmap for personal growth and healing during one of life's most challenging transitions.
Links & Notes
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Pete Wright:
Welcome to How To Split A Toaster, a divorce podcast about saving your relationships, from TruStory FM. And today, we're asking the question of generations. What repentance is owed your toaster?
Seth Nelson:
Welcome to the show, everybody. I'm Seth Nelson, and as always, I'm here with my good friend, the witty Pete Wright. Today, we're diving into the complicated but critical work of repentance and repair during and after divorce. We'll examine what it means to take accountability, seek healing, and build a foundation for growth when a marriage ends.
We're joined by Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg, who's acclaimed book, On Repentance and Repair: Making Amends in an Unapologetic World, brings ancient wisdom to the very modern realities of divorce, co-parenting, and moving forward. Rabbi, welcome to the Toaster.
Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg:
Thank you so much for having me.
Pete Wright:
Oh, we're thrilled to have you. And I got to start, I mean, we'll talk about the book. I've been digging into the book, it's fascinating. And I just need to know how you got into the repentance business. When did you decide, I think that I need to throw my hat into the ring on this subject?
Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg:
On the repentance game.
Pete Wright:
Yeah, the repent-
Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg:
So, listen, I have always liked our stuff, and the Jews, my traditions stuff.
Pete Wright:
You've got good material. You do have some good material.
Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg:
Yeah, we got good stuff. So listen, once a year, there's a season in the Jewish calendar, where around the beginning of the new year, it's a time of deep introspection for us. And we say, "Okay, how have I done this year? Am I the kind of person I want to be? Is it time for me to do a little work on fixing some of the messes that I made? And what do I need to do to go back to integrity, and to try a little bit better to be the person I'm supposed to be this year?" And this is this season called, it's got a lot of names, but the Days of Repentance is one of them, [foreign language 00:02:28], and it's Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, and it's a whole thing. So, there's a lot of literature on this work. I've always thought we do a good job. What can I say? And when Me Too hit, suddenly there was a very big public conversation in our culture about, what happens when somebody causes profound harm? And let's say they haven't necessarily given the best apology, right?
Seth Nelson:
Or there's the non-apology apology, which happens to be my favorite when opposing parties give the non-apology apology.
Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg:
Oh, dude, I mean-
Seth Nelson:
Oh, I'm really sorry you feel that way.
Pete Wright:
It does, it surges bile a little bit. [inaudible 00:03:17].
Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg:
Yeah, yeah. And suddenly around Me Too, everybody was talking, I was having these conversations about like, "Well, what happens when somebody hurts? What are the rules?" And I realized that I was sitting on a treasure trove of wisdom that wasn't part of the big conversation. And as I was engaging with people in social media about this, I realized that there's this hole in the conversation, so.
Pete Wright:
And here we are.
Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg:
And here we are.
Pete Wright:
All right. Okay, so we're turning our attention to the context of divorce. In your eye, what does repair actually mean in the context of divorce? Here we are, we have a couple going into something that is by definition, irrevocably breaking this contract they have with one another, this covenant. And here you, you're thrown around this word, repair.
Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg:
Right. So listen, people hurt each other in relationships. That's a fact, right? Whether it's parent-child, whether it's a romantic relationship, spouses, it's any kind of working, any kind of intimate relationship, people hurt each other. Whether or not that relationship is meant to continue, like in a situation of divorce, you can still do the work to heal what you hurt. The answer isn't always reconciliation, right? Repair and reconciliation aren't the same thing. It's a difference about walking away broken or walking away healed, if you do the work correctly, and it's possible.
Seth Nelson:
How much of that though, does it take for the work that you do? If you have someone on the other side that's just not going to apologize?
Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg:
Well, so listen, here's the thing. If you have been hurt, and in many, many, many situations, not only when a relationship's ending, but almost certainly then, you are often in a case where people hurt each other, right? It's not just a one-sided. And listen, sometimes in relationships, there's a significant power imbalance. It's not that abuse never happens, for example, and I want to name that clearly, but there are also cases where people hurt each other. If you have been harmed and it seems that the other person is never going to own the harm they caused you, even if you speak to them, even if you ask for it, even if someone else speaks to them and tries to engage them around accountability, you got to do your healing work on your own. If you wait around for other people to say sorry before you're willing to heal, that's bad for you, that's toxic for you.
Seth Nelson:
That's why I work on that every week from show to show with Pete.
Pete Wright:
So, that's what you... this is an intervention. Danya, you didn't know this, but Seth has a lot of work to do vis-a-vis me.
Seth Nelson:
Oh, I thought it was the other way around.
Pete Wright:
No, I know I got it in first.
Seth Nelson:
Well, no, I said that's what I do every week. I think I was trying to get it in. I was just being more subtle.
Pete Wright:
Subtlety is for chumps.
Seth Nelson:
Now we're going to argue over who got it in first and we'll have to apologize later.
Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg:
Okay, well, children, so here's the thing, is that if we're in a situation where it's not one of, I'm not talking about abuse or where there's a significant power disparity, right?
Seth Nelson:
Yeah. Well, let's just blanket that. We're not talking about abuse. We're talking about good old-fashioned couple got married, they were in love, they grew apart by a thousand cuts, no one did anything horrible, but lack of communication. They weren't listening, they weren't taking the time for each other, there's a lot of pain, whatever that is.
Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg:
Right. Everybody's got a lot of hurt and everybody kind of knows that they both have hurt and been hurt. Right? And all of us in the world in the universe have caused harm, been harmed, and been bystanders to harm. It's not like any of us are never in any of these roles. Right? So if you are walking around going, "I know I hurt this person and also I want an apology," what's the mature thing to do? Is you start doing your work, right? Clean up your side of the street. You say, "I know I did these things to this person, so I'm going to be the grown up here." And whether or not they ever do the thing, I know that to be in integrity with myself, I need to own what I did, offer amends, and the basic levels of human care, whether or not we're ever going to be in each other's lives in the future. Right?
Seth Nelson:
So Rabbi, on that point, I've worked with a lot of people going through the divorce process, and there are a solid number of them that said, "I'm just doing my own healing." They're never going to apologize, or the other side is always going to be the way they're going to be. It is what it is, however you want to describe it. And I've seen people really take accountability of their own actions. I don't think, at least not that's been shared with me that I recall, any one of my clients that has said, "And I apologize to the other side, who's still such a schmuck." They might've done their own work, but I don't know if that work included an apology. What do you think about that? Can someone fully be healed? Let me ask it this way. Can someone fully be healed without apologizing?
Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg:
Then, no. Then you have to own your stuff, dude. You can't walk around knowing you've hurt people and have that part of the thing hanging open and be like, well, I'm healed, because then here's what's going to happen, is that you're going to get into your next relationship and you're going to cause the exact same harm again and again and again, until you deal with your patterns and the stuff that you do to other people until you face it and you say, "Oh, that is not pretty. I wonder what happened to make me... What thing in my childhood or patterns, or where in my life did I or what ignorance or whatever." Look at it, face it, deal with it, and part of that is the taking accountability.
And when you finally face it head on like a grownup with all of the icky hard stuff, then you move and are transformed into the kind of person who does not do that thing anymore. And naturally and organically on the other side of, and I'll walk you through the steps of repentance that I talk about in my book if you want, but on the other side, you're no longer the person that does the thing. And that's really good, if you ever, I mean both for your own personal healing and for any future you might ever want to have in relationships, for example.
Pete Wright:
Well, because it seems like there are sort of two areas of expectation that overlap. One is, I can move through amends, I can offer amends for things that I have done, and I can do that absent expectation of my recalcitrant ex doing the same. So I can try to move on in peace. To what extent do you find couples, and I'm going to intentionally use couples even in their former couple state, are not able to move on unless both of them, and we'll say in the context of things like co-parenting, unless both of them face this, the music together?
Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg:
I mean, it's a lot harder, right? There's a lot more healing that has to happen if both sides aren't willing to move.
Pete Wright:
The effort to go of the weight of expectation.
Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg:
Right.
Pete Wright:
I did this work, why can't they?
Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg:
But this is the thing, I'm sorry to tell you guys, but you're not really doing the work if the only reason you're doing it is for transactional reasons. If I'm only trying to push these buttons so that you will then go attend to my needs, I am still not seeing you in your humanity and actually understanding what I did to hurt you and attend to you as a human being that I hurt and to understand that you in your fullness, matter. Right? I failed that because I'm just, it's that thing where you're waiting for the other person to stop talking so you can open your mouth, which is not listening, Right?
Pete Wright:
Right, and I'm understanding more as you speak about why Seth and I need help. So anyway, we're going on.
Seth Nelson:
It's going to be a long show.
Pete Wright:
So, let's walk through briefly. I don't want to get too terribly sidetracked by the steps of repentance, but I do think it's important and grounding for us to talk through the work that you put in the book at a high level. And then I want to tie it back to legal process, because I think that's really important. Where does our ability to make amends, to take accountability, get in the way of a healthy divorce, a healthy separation?
Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg:
Okay, so should I go through the steps?
Pete Wright:
Step one, let's do it.
Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg:
Step one, confession, AKA, owning what you did fully and completely. This is not the apology, this is... So one of my favorites is Dan Harmon during the, he's one of the only guys who during the Me Too era really did a good job. But it was like, and he didn't go into the details of what happened when he sexually harassed an employee, but he said, "I knew my advances weren't welcome. I persisted anyway. I did not treat this employee the way I treated other employees, even though I told myself and them that I did. I said, 'Oh, if you can't take it like the boys are,' I was angry. So I retaliated. I would not have done this if I respected women, even though I call myself a feminist." Right?
We're not finding out what exactly happened in what time, we're finding out that this is somebody who has done some really deep thinking about the story they told themselves at the time, and where the lie is and how that affected the human being who was impacted. And you're seeing the light bulb, that's confession. And that's to at least to as many people who know that the thing happened, right?
Pete Wright:
Right. And all I can think about is the number of people that I have run into and probably do myself to some extent, who can gaslight myself and start believing the stories that I paint in my head, rather effortlessly.
Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg:
It's so easy. So, you got to deal with it.
Seth Nelson:
So what's step two then?
Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg:
So then two, start to change. What do you need to do to not do that? Is it therapy? Is it addiction treatment? Is it education on a place of ignorance? Is it spiritual guidance? What do you need so that you're no longer going to be doing that thing? Because if you're at the end of this process and you keep doing the thing to other people, we don't win.
Pete Wright:
We've gone nowhere, right?
Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg:
Right, and if you engage with the person you harmed while you're still kind of doing the thing, you're not safe. So step three is amends, and this is why we start work on changing before we show up and say, and this is assuming the other person wants to hear from you, because we center their needs. If they're not going to want to hear from you, you respect that. But amends is, what's reasonable? And is it money? Is it time? Is it connections? Is it, I don't know, what would make this gap in the universe more whole? What can we sew up? And then, apology.
Pete Wright:
That's number four.
Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg:
And that's four, and that's after. Because if you say, "Great, I'm going to pay your medical bills because I stepped on your foot because I wasn't paying attention." They might say, "I got great medical care, but I missed my trip, so you need to pay for my plane ticket," or they might say, "Actually, what bothered me about that is that you weren't giving me attention and you weren't paying attention. You need to take me out and give me your full attention." The light bulb goes on. Oh, we are having a totally different conversation than the one I thought we were having.
Seth Nelson:
Well, that's very similar to in organizations that you incentivize people by things that they are incentivized by.
Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg:
Yeah, but you-
Seth Nelson:
But you don't know that unless you talk about it.
Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg:
Right. And so you, the harm doer, even through the amend stage are learning some things, right? Potentially, potentially, by asking the harmed party what they need, what they want. Right? And so then when you get to apology, think about how many things have happened since you did the thing, right? You're already changed. The light bulb has gone on so many times, and so this is your open heart is like, oh, I did this thing to you and you're a person and you matter. And it's a different thing than if you had been like, "Oh, so really stepping on your foot, you're whining again." Right?
Pete Wright:
We talked a lot about this idea of readiness for change. Right? It takes a long time. You may cognitively think, oh, I should change, but you never change because there's something that hasn't pushed you to that point. And I look at this as sort of a parallel track, that here we are by the time we get to step four, steps one, two, and three actually are the guideposts on the journey toward readiness to accept change in my life. I've already accepted that I can own it to the point where it doesn't matter what kind of response I get, I'm doing my part.
Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg:
Right.
Pete Wright:
Fair?
Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg:
Uh-huh, absolutely.
Pete Wright:
Step five.
Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg:
And then step five, when you come to an analogous situation, the time when you would probably do the thing again, you're going to make a different choice. Naturally, and I think naturally and organically, if you've done the work, you'll already be different. And so you've figured out how to deal with your anger issues, so you're not going to start screaming. Or you have dealt with your whatever that made you step on the person's foot, right? Whatever it is, you move the chair.
Pete Wright:
Yeah, sure. Okay. Let's hash out some of the legal stuff. And Seth, I want to turn to you because I feel like the number of cases you've seen. As you process the five steps, where is it that you estimate people get stuck in their own process?
Seth Nelson:
Number one.
Pete Wright:
Oh, okay. Good. Well, that was easy.
Seth Nelson:
[inaudible 00:19:33]. Yeah.
Pete Wright:
Thanks, everybody. It's been a great show.
Seth Nelson:
So look, when people call me, and this is very common, on the first initial call, they will start telling me about their spouse and everything they're doing. That's like, they're horrible, they're this, they do that, they don't do this for the kids. They're hiding the money. It's all about that, the other side. And it takes clients work to talk to me about what their needs are, what their goals are, what are they afraid of, what are they are trying to get out of the conversation? What's their goals out of when you end the divorce? How do you want to be financially and what will the parenting plan be? It's really hard at first. They got on the phone with a lawyer, they think, man, if I can just talk about the other side, everything's going to be great.
So owning what you did isn't necessarily a conversation I'm having, but I do have them fill out paperwork about, for example, parenting. And I say, "Write out the best three things you do as a parent on each of these topics and tell me where you can improve. And if there's no room for improvement, I'm giving you the paper back again, you fail." We all have room for improvement. And I have them also put down the positives and room for improvement of their spouse, because I need to know both sides of this transaction, both sides of the coin when I'm going to court. So we all know the worst stuff, but there's all sorts of other stuff out there. So that's kind of the first hurdle, in a big way.
Pete Wright:
My assumption, I think we're in alignment, that when someone comes to you in a contentious divorce, like we're talking about repair and accountability and amends and all of those kinds of action-oriented ownership moods. And yet, the first thing I imagine going into a conversation with my lawyer is, I'm probably stuck in blame.
Seth Nelson:
100%.
Pete Wright:
How does blame relate to this process? Is it a step 0.5, get over yourself and stop blaming the other?
Seth Nelson:
That's an interesting point. From a legal perspective is I get away from the blame game. I get away in court from the identification or classification of behaviors. I'll never say in court, "The other side's a narcissist. Judge, it's all about the money." I don't do these shorthand social media phrases in court because they're not persuasive, the judge hears them all the time, and they don't really know what they mean. You have to give specific examples. So instead of being all about the money, "Your honor, the father in this case went on three international trips in the last 18 months and refuses to pay for his child's extracurricular activities. Who is that parent prioritizing?" Right? So, that's kind of how you work that in the quote "blame game," as opposed to, it's your dad's fault that you're not in baseball because I can't afford it, and he can, and it's his fault he's not paying. That's the obvious result in court.
Pete Wright:
It's such the knee-jerk emotional response though, when you're emotionally compromised.
Seth Nelson:
That's right, that's right, which is where people come to me.
Pete Wright:
Yeah.
Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg:
The thing that happens before confession in this framework anyway, is what we call [foreign language 00:23:37] the accounting of the soul. It's the inner work, right? It's the part where you kind of go, what about me? And listen, sometimes it happens because somebody has come to you and said, "Listen, that thing you did that time, that was not good," or, "That thing that you did, I heard from so-and-so that they really hurt," or, "I saw what happened and that was not a good look for you or whatever." Right? Sometimes you get told, but sometimes you just have that feeling inside that you knew that was not your best moment or you've been feeling a little like maybe that wasn't it. And when we trust that tiny feeling of discomfort, when we actually are willing to listen to it, that's the voice that can help us find our way back to being in integrity. It's usually what we need, it's very readily what we want, but it usually has something important to tell us anyway, despite the discomfort.
Seth Nelson:
I think where people start to change the most is when we help them learn better ways to communicate. Because we read thousands of our Family Wizard messages where parents are talking back and forth on an app, and I'm just like, oh, don't say that. Your intentions are good, but the delivery is just awful. Right? So part of teaching them, and we've talked about the book, Biff Pete on the show before, but it really gives people power over themselves. That's what I think is so wonderful about that book, because it's all about how you are going to communicate.
Now, literally in the last three months, we are seeing communication through parents or to parents to and from parents, that is obviously written by an AI bot. And we are seeing right now, lawyers and even definitely pro se litigants, using AI on some of their own correspondence. And it's just obvious to me because I know how people write, but I think that in one way does not necessarily help the situation, because the party reading it knows you just plugged it into AI, because they know. And it gives a negative connotation, even though it's written nicer.
Pete Wright:
Right.
Seth Nelson:
So, it's a-
Pete Wright:
And that's what I'm saying, the spectrum is really interesting. If I write a, oh my God, fuck you letter, and I recognize my attorney, you tell me you can't send that letter. And I say, "Okay, AI, here's my fuck you letter, please make this sound okay." And then I send it, it's sending a signal that the other party probably knows was originally a fuck you letter, and that my heart has not done the work. AI has done the work.
Seth Nelson:
Right, or maybe it wasn't even a fuck you letter, but this was written by AI, which means you put in a prompt and someone else did it. And so it has a negative connotation, even if the words are very nice. It's very interesting, but that's where I see the start to changes, how people can think about their communication. And to their credit, the ones that are at least using the AI to write it nicer, they know, I shouldn't write it mean. So, they just need help.
Pete Wright:
That feels like a lesson learned, like a small one.
Seth Nelson:
There's better ways to do that, right.
Pete Wright:
Did you see Danya role her eyes just now, Seth? When we [inaudible 00:27:40].
Seth Nelson:
Oh, about AI?
Pete Wright:
I feel like she's holding her breath right now.
Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg:
I'm not a huge fan of AI, is all I got for you.
Pete Wright:
Okay, fair. That's fair.
Seth Nelson:
It's coming, though.
Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg:
I know, I know. There's not a lot we can do about it.
Pete Wright:
I want to transition to kids, because that's something that you talk about. It's something that we need to address because I think modeling repair for kids is important. And the other side, what do kids learn from our ability and inability to repair, accept accountability? Where do those channels break down? What's your experience?
Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg:
Number one, the fact is that children learn from watching us, right? And if we can't be the kinds of people who take accountability for our own actions, then we cannot teach our children to do that at all. I personally am not interested in raising unrepentant, fill in your favorite noun, but so I screw up with my kids all the time. I'm a parent of three and they did not come with instruction manuals, unfortunately.
Seth Nelson:
Not even the third one?
Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg:
No.
Pete Wright:
You think by then AI would've written it.
Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg:
Yeah, they're raising themselves, it's fine, but I screw up all the time. And so I apologize all the time because when I screw up, I say, "Great, okay, what do you need? What do you need right now? Because, here's how I'm going to try to figure out how to at least address this and have that not be the thing I'm going to be doing again," because their needs matter.
You notice that mostly when kids whap on each other or hurt each other, they get trained to say, "I'm sorry" right away, and that's it. Right? When you say these magic words, everything's fine, you get to wander away and ignore the situation. My kids are kids, they hurt each other, there are three of them so it's been chaos from the start. I trained my kids early on. Step one is, are you okay? You check in on the kid that's crying, not you're throwing words at them. They're hurt, check on them. Step two is, what do you need? Step three is, what do you want? Right? We're still centering that other person. And then when everybody's calm, including the person who was maybe a little in the red zone as they say, and got a little overexcited, when everybody's calmer and able to hear and listen to one another, then we do the, I'm sorry for, insert naming specific thing here, and here's how I figured out I'm going to do it differently next time and blah, blah, blah. Here's what I'm working on.
Pete Wright:
I look at this relationship between kids and slights that kids witness in the divorce process. And it seems to me that part of the problem is parents are focused inwardly and only arrive at the relationship with the kids after a lot of the messiness is behind them, after they've taken care of themselves. And I don't know if that's a fair assumption, but it's certainly what I feel like I've seen from my rigorous empirical research of the families that I know who have gone through a divorce. When do the kids become most important typically, and when should they? And I guess that starts with Seth, right? What have you seen in the divorce process?
Seth Nelson:
Yeah, when you were saying that, I was really thinking, look, every parent is going to come in here and tell me it's about the kids, but your behavior tells me whether or not it's about the kids. And then sometimes, and I do a lot of this because we've talked about there's the attorney, which is the legal stuff I do, then the counselor-at-law.
I'll have someone call me up and say, "Well, my ex isn't doing this and isn't doing that. And we have a parenting plan and they fought me for 50/50 and now they're not taking the kids." And I'll be like, well, and they're so upset about it. And I said, "Wait a minute. You were fighting for them not to get 50/50, and now you've gotten what you wanted, not through the legal process because they're just giving it to you. They're not doing what you always told me they were not going to do, which was spend time with the kids. They just wanted to put you through the wringer. They put you through the wringer. The judge said 50/50 and whatever, six months later, a year or two years later, they're not interested in spending time with the kids and giving to you. Why are you calling complaining?"
Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg:
Because it's about power.
Seth Nelson:
You've gotten what you wanted though, but you've actually gotten what you wanted, which was more time with the kids. And so, sometimes reframing what's going gives people a different way to look at it.
Pete Wright:
I love that observation, and I also think if it really is about power in the dynamic, then you know that right away when they're not satisfied when they got what they want.
Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg:
Uh-huh.
Pete Wright:
As soon as you're not satisfied with the resolution that you said you wanted, then clearly, this is about holding something over someone else, the other party. Isn't it?
Seth Nelson:
Or you just can't let go of the anger that you have. Maybe it's not holding anything over them, but it's the anger.
Pete Wright:
But this is the influence that you're able to exert, that's all you got.
Seth Nelson:
That's right.
Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg:
But whatever it is, there is you. This is not healed, and those children do not exist as complete human beings unto themselves right now. They are serving some sort of purpose that is not themselves, and that's something to check in on.
And listen, there are practical issues that people have, right? Single parenting is hard, that is real. And one's needs and one's ideas about one's needs pre-divorce and post-divorce might change. That's real. But this is where this idea of the accounting of the soul comes in. This is a good time to check yourself. Right? This is what I said I wanted, I'm getting what I said I wanted. Hey, self, what's going on here? Can I be honest? Even if I'm feeling like I'm not ready to be honest with, say my ex about this right now, am I able to be honest with myself?
Seth Nelson:
Yeah, that's the key, that's the key, and it's hard. We're not saying any of this is easy, but it is hard work that's worth doing.
Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg:
Yeah.
Pete Wright:
We can wrap it up, because I think we could go on for another three hours, but I think one of the things that I learned from the conversation, but also from the book, which I deeply regret I wasn't able to finish in time. But the whole, in terms of a vibe check, it's actually profoundly optimistic. Right? It's this idea that we are all capable of these things, of repair and growth, and that the relevance of our ancient wisdom today is one of the things that I find such an interesting sort of transparency to lay on top of the divorce process, that the legal process resolves disputes. Not always in the most satisfactory way, but they resolve disputes.
Seth Nelson:
Not at all.
Pete Wright:
Not at all, ever, okay, let's be honest. But where real healing occurs is deeply personal and ongoing, and that's the part that's profoundly human, and I really appreciate that bit of wisdom. Rabbi, thank you.
Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg:
Thank you. Yeah, as it turns out, there's a lot of really great wisdom that stood the test of time. And it's not that everything that every dead guy wrote in a book is something that we need to keep for now. My [foreign language 00:36:01] is the guy behind most of this stuff, and have our disagreements, do not get me wrong, but there's also some good stuff.
Pete Wright:
That's good. That's cognitive flexibility, cognitive fluidity.
Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg:
Yeah, there you go.
Pete Wright:
Look at us.
Seth Nelson:
Wow. Drop the mic moment at the end of the show, Mr. Wright.
Pete Wright:
God, if it weren't on a stand, I would drop it. It just stays there.
Seth Nelson:
I know.
Pete Wright:
It stays there. Hey, this has been fantastic. We're going to put a link to the book in the episode notes, of course. Anything else you want to plug? Where do you want to send people to learn more about your work?
Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg:
So right now, I am writing regularly at Lifeisasacredtext.com, and you can subscribe and get my little, big, and medium-sized chunky commentaries, nourishment-
Pete Wright:
So much chunky commentary.
Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg:
Chunky commentaries, nourishment for your heart, soul, and noggin. Everybody celebratory liberation forward stuff, and you can subscribe for free or more Lifeisasacredtext.com.
Pete Wright:
Outstanding. This has been great. Thank you, everybody. Don't forget Howtosplitatoaster.com, send us those questions, whatever you got. You want to talk about the divorce process? You want to talk about the law? Send us those questions, gearing up for another fantastic listener question episode, and we are in collection mode. So, Howtosplitatoaster.com, just push the button that says, "I want to send a question," and you'll send it. It'll come to Seth and we'll talk about it. It's going to be great. You get it, this is how things work.
On behalf of the good Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg and Seth Nelson, America's favorite divorce attorney, I'm Pete Wright, and we will see you next time right here on How To Split A Toaster, a divorce podcast about saving your relationships.
Outro:
How To Split A Toaster is part of the TruStory FM Podcast Network, produced by Andy Nelson. Music by T. Bless and the Professionals and DB Studios. Seth Nelson is an attorney with NLG Divorce and Family Law with offices in Tampa, Florida.
While we may be discussing family law topics, How To Split A Toaster is not intended to, nor is it providing legal advice. Every situation is different, if you have specific questions regarding your situation, please seek your own legal counsel with an attorney licensed to practice law in your jurisdiction. Pete Wright is not an attorney or employee of NLG Divorce and Family Law. Seth Nelson is licensed to practice law in Florida.
