You have been holding it together. Showing up to work. Showing up to pickups. Performing fine for everyone who asks how you are doing.

But what is actually happening underneath?

In Episode 6 of The Transcendent Parent, host Richard Canty goes directly into the emotional interior of separation — the part most co-parenting conversations are afraid to touch. Not the logistics. Not the legal steps. The grief, the anger, the loss of identity, and what it actually takes to start healing in a way that serves both you and your children.

Joining him is Courtney Irby, a Licensed Clinical Social Worker with Flourish Family Services, LLC, who brings more than a decade of trauma-informed clinical experience working with children and families through CPS, foster care, adoption, and post-separation transitions.

In this episode you will hear why separation is not one loss but a cluster of losses happening simultaneously, each of which deserves to be grieved on its own terms. You will learn why the grief of separation is uniquely non-linear — because the source of the pain keeps showing up in your custody schedule. You will understand the difference between processing your emotions and passing them to your children, and what your children actually need to see from you during this period.

You will also hear Courtney speak clinically and directly about what anger is really protecting, what trauma looks like inside a co-parenting dynamic, and what healing actually looks like on an ordinary Tuesday morning — not the aspirational version, the real one.

And you will hear the story of Darius — a father who performed fine so thoroughly that nobody noticed, including himself, until his six-year-old asked him one question that changed everything.

This week's Parenting Power Move asks you to look honestly at the version of fine you have been performing. And to consider what it might be costing you.