What The Four Seasons Taught Me About Divorce, Childhood, and Healing
The Four Seasons, co-created by Tina Fey and now streaming on Netflix, offers a sympathetic perspective on divorce—not as a destructive force, but as a catalyst for growth, rebirth, and healthier relationships.
The series follows three long-term couples who share a tradition of taking seasonal trips together. That custom is abruptly disrupted when Nick and Anne decide to end their 25-year marriage. Their separation doesn’t just affect them—it ripples through their tight-knit circle of friends, forcing everyone to confront shifting dynamics and the challenge of preserving relationships amid major life transitions.
As a child of divorce, I was especially struck by how deeply I connected with Lila, Nick and Anne’s daughter—especially during her school play in Episode 4. Her performance boldly revealed the lingering emotional effects of her parents’ divorce, even in young adulthood. It was clearly a pointed message, aimed at her father’s new, and noticeably younger, girlfriend. Her mother watched with quiet pride, while her father couldn’t see past the surface. His first reaction? “But I will say that I think you owe Ginny an apology.” Lila didn’t miss a beat: “How could you invite your girlfriend to Parent’s Weekend?”
What hit me hardest came moments later, when her mother—his ex-wife—stepped in and said:
“This was Lila’s night. She is expressing her pain. Stop thinking about yourself for once. Stop correcting how she said it and try to hear what she’s saying.”
In that moment, I found myself now at 24 years old wishing—aching, really—that someone had said those words for me. That just once, one of my parents would’ve paused the arguing, the defensiveness, the scrambling to prove a point, and simply looked at things through my eyes. I didn’t want sides. I wanted to be seen. I wanted someone to notice how hard I was trying to be okay, to keep the peace, to carry the weight of their choices without letting it show. Watching Lila finally have her pain acknowledged hit something in me I didn’t even know was still tender. I cried—not just for her, but for the version of myself that never got that kind of validation. It made me realize how deeply I had craved for one of them to just stop, listen, and understand that I wasn’t okay, even if I acted like I was.
That moment transported me back to when my own parents divorced. I was 13, the oldest daughter—and I carried the weight of trying to hold everyone together. I heard things I shouldn’t have heard at that age. I started to question everything I thought I knew about their relationship. Lila’s line in the play— “We are born alone, we die alone and in between, we lie to each other”—echoed something I had always felt but never found the words to say.
Divorce leaves marks on children—deep ones. For a long time, I didn’t even realize how much it had shaped the way I approached relationships, trust, and even my sense of identity.
It wasn’t until I read The Cure for Divorce Culture by Attorney Ashley-Nicole Russell that I began to untangle the long-term emotional effects of my childhood experience. That book gave me language and perspective I didn’t know I needed.
At their core, most children hope their parents will stay together. That hope stems from a simple truth: they were born from that love. When divorce enters the picture, it shakes the foundation of a child’s world. The security they once felt is replaced by confusion, uncertainty, and emotional whiplash. Without fully understanding the reasons behind the separation, many children assign blame—often to one parent over the other. And when they’re pulled into the conflict or used as leverage, the wounds run even deeper.
Attorney Ashley-Nicole Russell’s book explores how these early experiences follow children into adulthood, how they shape our relationships, self-worth, and ability to trust. But her message is far from hopeless. The book offers real, practical solutions. As a family law attorney and a national advocate for collaborative divorce, Ashley-Nicole has made it her life’s work to shift the culture—to move families away from courtroom battles and toward thoughtful, compassionate resolutions.
I saw my story again in The Four Seasons when Lila’s father brought a new partner into her life too quickly, expecting her to accept it without question. I’ve lived that. I remember when a new partner was suddenly introduced in my own life. I was expected to smile, be kind, and go with the flow. But inside, I was still grieving the family I once knew. The show captured that tension perfectly, the discomfort, resentment, the ache of not being seen.
Looking back, I don’t believe anyone meant to hurt me. They just didn’t have the tools to do it differently. That’s why The Cure for Divorce Culture meant so much to me—it talks about the emotional toll of rushed transitions and the importance of viewing divorce not as a severance, but as a transformation.
Shows like The Four Seasons matter because they give a voice to experiences we often bury. They reflect the invisible emotional reality that many of us carry from childhood to adulthood. And books like The Cure for Divorce Culture remind us that healing is possible. We just have to be willing to listen, to grow, and to choose a better path forward.
AN|R Law aims to reinterpret the divorce process such that it is less about winning or losing and more about moving on with stability and dignity. Families are getting closer and stronger every day, proving that this tactic is useful in real life. AN|R Law is dedicated to altering the divorce culture for the better, so that divorce no longer signifies conflict and turmoil, but rather development and rebirth.
“But I move closer to wholeness every day when I see families who choose a different path—a means of divorce that puts the children’s interests first, protects the dignity of all involved, and refuses to devolve into backbiting and enduring anger. Divorce is a reality in our nation, but through Collaborative Divorce we have the chance to rewrite the story of its aftermath and of divorce culture. It is my fervent hope that I can live to see angry, combative divorce relegated to history, with Collaborative Divorce negotiations becoming the new normal.” — Attorney Ashley-Nicole Russell, The Cure for Divorce Culture (Page. 90)
At AN|R Law, we are motivated by the vision of a future in which divorce is not a conflict zone, but rather a steppingstone to healthier lives and stronger families. Together, we can alter the narrative.
Sources:
Russell, A.-N. (2018). The cure for divorce culture: Repairing the damage within a lost class of people. Ashley-Nicole Russell.