There's a difference between knowing the steps and understanding what it feels like when the ground is still moving. I've lived both.
Colleen O'Neil
Divorce Mediation · Connecticut
Most divorce mediators are attorneys who added mediation to their practice. I came at this differently.
I came from clinical practice and education — a Master of Social Work from Columbia University and a Master of Education from the University of Bridgeport. Nearly a decade as a therapist taught me how people and families actually move through change. Nearly a decade in the classroom before that taught me to see the whole family system, children included, not just the two adults at the table. That combination means I understand this work from more than one angle.
I trained in divorce mediation through Quinnipiac University School of Law's Center on Dispute Resolution, with additional training through Mediation Matters in Maryland. The legal framework is the floor of this work, not the ceiling. Agreements succeed or fail in what happens between two people in the room, and that's the territory I've spent my career learning to work in.
Inside a meeting, that background shows up in ways that matter. When a conversation about finances becomes something heavier, or a parenting discussion surfaces grief neither person expected, I know how to hold that moment without losing the thread, bringing focus to what feels impossible and keeping both people moving toward an outcome they actually chose.
The legal framework is the floor of this work, not the ceiling. Agreements succeed or fail in what happens between two people in the room.
A path that shaped a different kind of mediator.
I went through divorce myself, before any of the training, before the credentials. I know what it feels like from the inside: the ground moving, the decisions that won't wait for you to be ready for them. That experience isn't a story I tell clients. It's a baseline I bring into every meeting. It changes what I notice, what I take seriously, and how I sit with people through the parts that are genuinely hard.
It also changed what I saw in my work. As an educator, I watched divorce arrive in the classroom — the kids whose focus slipped, whose behavior shifted, who were carrying two households' worth of tension into a school day. Later, through my clinical work as a therapist, I saw the adult side of the same picture, working with individuals and families navigating change.
Across all of it, the same pattern kept appearing. What families struggled with most wasn't psychological. It was structural. The marriages had ended. The systems around them had never been rebuilt. People and their children were trying to operate inside frameworks that no longer fit their lives.
Mediation was the answer to the problem I'd spent two decades seeing from every side. I trained formally as a mediator, served on the board of the Shared Parenting Council of Connecticut, and began working alongside other professionals to improve how Connecticut courts handle divorcing families.
The parent in me knows how this feels. The educator knows what's at stake for the kids. The former therapist reads the emotional weather in the room. The mediator builds the agreement. And the advocacy work outside my practice comes from the same conviction: families deserve a process that doesn't make an already hard situation worse.
"You co-parent whether you are married or divorced. The question is only whether you do it well."
Divorce doesn't end a family. It changes its structure. If you have children, you'll still be parenting together for decades, through school years, graduations, weddings, grandchildren. The legal document gets signed in one season. The relationship continues for the rest of your lives.
That reality shapes how I work. I'm not here to help you finish a divorce as quickly as possible. I'm here to help you finish it well, with agreements you can live with, and the communication patterns that will carry you through the long arc ahead.
And if children aren't part of your divorce, the same principle holds: the goal isn't just reaching an agreement. It's reaching one you can still stand behind years from now.
Speed matters. But durability matters more.
You'll leave with an agreement built to last.
If you work with me, you're going to get one built carefully enough that you don't end up back in my office, or in court, five years from now trying to fix what nobody thought through the first time.
You'll also get a mediator who knows that the agreement is only half the work. The other half is the life you'll need to maintain on the other side of it, whether that means co-parenting well, dividing a shared financial history cleanly, or simply closing a chapter with your dignity intact.
That's the work I do. That's the practice I built. And that's what Mediation and Beyond is: the recognition that the legal piece is just the beginning of a much longer conversation about how a life gets rebuilt after it changes shape.
That's the "Beyond" in Mediation and Beyond.
When you're ready, I'm here.
The first conversation is free. Twenty minutes. No pressure, no commitment — just a chance to talk through what's happening and see whether this is the right path for your situation. You don't have to know what you want yet. That's what the conversation is for.
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