Hello everyone and welcome to the Sex, Love & SuperPowers podcast show. I am your host, Tatiana Berindei. I am very excited for this conversation we’re going to have today with Mari Frank. Let me tell you a little bit about her before we get started, but we are going to be talking about fully conscious divorce. I know there’s going to be some really good stuff that comes out of this. Let me share with you why I believe that so strongly to be true. So, Mari is an attorney, mediator and author of five books, a professional speaker, professor and radio host of two shows since 2005 airing on KUCI 88.9 FM in Irvine, California.
For three decades, she’s been expertly using her unique solutionary tools to resolve conflicts and transform adversity into opportunity for her clients and audiences. Unlike a shark, her dolphin approach, gentle yet powerful, transforms disputes between people so they may collaborate and create dynamic relationships. She’s mediated and resolved all types of fights including business lawsuits, end of worse. The healer of conflict, Mari empowers audiences with strategies so they may communicate without turning disagreements into hostility. She’s been a guest on over 300 radio shows, appeared on dozens of television shows, and hosted her own PBS TV Special.
As a professional speaker, she’s motivated such companies as American Express, General Electric, Experian, etc. With humorous stories, Mari articulates how to turn adversity into opportunity to create positive relationships. She’ll inspire us with the six A’s to keep a romantic relationship and the five steps to gain power in any negotiation. Welcome to the show Mari.
I have the power to empower my clients to come up with solutions that will fit their needs.
Thank you, Tatiana. I’m really thrilled to talk with you this morning.
Likewise. So, before we dive in here, will you please tell our audience what your super powers are?
Well I think my superpower is the ability to heal conflict. And you don’t think of an attorney as a healer of conflict, you think of an attorney as a shark that’s going to go fight and argue. People love it when an attorney is representing you, but when they’re on the other side, you hate them. So as an attorney mediator, I have the wonderful opportunity to empower my clients. I have the power to empower my clients to come up with solutions that will fit their needs. Whether it’s divorce or a business dispute, that they can heal the conflict. And that’s a much better way that I want to leave as my legacy in this world. I think we see too much hate, too much fighting, too much acrimony and too much love lost. So, my super power is bringing back love to relationships even if they need to end.
I love it so much and this is why I really wanted to talk to you, because actually when you first came through, Tonya had told me that you’ve met at the New Media Summit and had told me about you. I just didn’t put two and two together when the request came. I was like, well, why would I interview an attorney? And then I was like, wait a minute, no, this is perfect. This is actually so perfect, because I have that initial reaction and response.
I think that I actually know some really lovely attorneys who I would agree are almost in the healing arts profession in their own way, in a very different way than what we tend to think about it. I think especially in the more who who communities, we have these constructs and ideas of what all of these different boxes are supposed to look like. And I love so much that you are really coming from that space of healing and love and yet you’re wearing this attorney hat. Those kinds of things thrill me more than anything else.
That warms my heart. I consider myself a holistic attorney, and I used to belong to a group. We had a group that was called the Alliance of Holistic Lawyers. And people would laugh and say, isn’t that an oxymoron? A holistic lawyer? But you have holistic doctors and there are holistic lawyers that want to really bring peace. Chief Justice Burger in the 80s, said that attorneys should be healers of conflict. That’s really what we’re supposed to be doing. Abraham Lincoln said, “Don’t I make my enemy, my friend? I mean, don’t I heal conflict when I make my enemy, my friend.” And so, there were attorneys for many, many years that believe that we should be peacemakers instead of battling and war makers.
So, you’ve got these different approaches to how to resolve conflict. When you go to court and you get a decree from the judge, that is not healing the conflict. It may end it, it may not. It ends the case. It ends the marriage. It ends whatever it is, but it doesn’t necessarily heal the conflict. There can be hate and anger that makes people sick for the rest of their lives. And that’s not what I want to be doing, ever.
Yeah. So, let’s talk about this. And again, I just want to say thank you for showing up to your work in that way. I’m like, let’s see some sort of directory of holistic attorneys that people can turn to who are operating in that same space. Because I think the more of that, the better and that’s really what we need in this world, and especially here in the US in our completely litigious society.
Yes.
So, let’s talk about divorce, right? We talk a lot about relationships on this show and how to have great communication, and sometimes there is a time to end the marriage. I’d be so curious to hear from your perspective, what you see as sort of the classic causes of divorce.
Right. Yes. Blame criticism, disrespect, cheating, those are the biggies that come across. And I think the overall umbrella for that is disrespect. If you don’t treat your loving partner with respect, that breeds animosity. So respect means not cheating. Respect means treating the other person with love and kindness. Respect means having an intimate relationship where both parties are satisfied, if you’re talking about hugging and sex and all those things. All of that really is under the umbrella of respect and love. And when you are criticizing someone constantly or berating them, all that love that you started out with is destroyed by how you treat one another. So I see it … It’s amazing because I’m with both the husband and the wife in that session, and I can see the patterns of disrespect or control where one controls and the other acquiesces and then gets angry and acts passive aggressively.
And when they divorced, all of a sudden, they just emerged as a very strong, happy, brilliant person. So, divorce can be a gift in disguise.
So, it comes out so strongly in a mediation, I can see all those issues. I’ll tell you, Tatiana, what warms my heart also is that in the over 30 years, it’s 33 years this year that I’ve been doing this. I’ve had 21 couples get back together when they came to me for divorce. And that’s because underlying there was still that love, but they didn’t have the tools to really be respectful. They didn’t have the tools to be grateful. They didn’t have the tools to be loving and kind. A lot of our childhood obviously causes these problems. I have a master’s in psychology and so it does help me a little bit. I’m not practicing psychology or psychoanalysis, but I don’t think you need to even be a psychologist or a psychiatrist to see these things. They just jump out at you.
A lot of this stuff really does come from, if you have fears of abandonment, you’re going to marry somebody who’s going to cheat on you. And so we kind of attract these things to us. So when you were talking a couple minutes ago about, you talk about relationships, how to have loving relationships, sometimes we come together in a relationship for as long as it we can to learn what we can from each other. And when we can no longer learn from each other, then it is a time to leave. When we can no longer support each other, then it’s time to leave. So, there are times that it is really important to dissolve the marriage so that you can blossom and emerge like the phoenix rising out of the ashes.
I’ve had so many clients who were repressed in there, men and women, that were repressed in their marriage, for whatever patterns they set up. And when they divorced, all of a sudden, they just emerged as a very strong, happy, brilliant person. So, divorce can be a gift in disguise.
And I’ve seen that. I’ve had a lot of friends who have gotten divorced and I’ve seen that for them too. Okay, so there’s a lot more to talk about. We do have to take a quick break. Before we go to break, will you tell our listeners where they can go to find out more about you and your work?
Sure, they can go to conflicthealing.com and there they can even listen to my archived interviews for radio and they can contact me. I am going to be giving a free seminar or webinar, rather, on December 6th at noon California time, Pacific Time. So, if they write to me from either conflicthealing.com or marifrank.com, they can sign up for this free one-hour webinar and learn how to resolve conflict in a loving and positive way to be successful in negotiations.
Beautiful. Thank you so much for that. We’re talking with Mari Frank about fully conscious divorce. When we get back, this is going to be really good. So, you’re going to want to make sure you stay tuned. We’ll be right back.
To listen to the entire show click on the player above or go to the SuperPower Up! podcast on iTunes.
Music Credit: All instruments played by Amanda Turk. Engineered and produced by Tatiana Berindei and Daniel Plane reelcello.com
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