SOMATIC GATEWAY · PARALLEL PARENTING
You're not co-parenting.
You're managing a threat — while raising children.
Practical, somatic-informed support for survivors of coercive control who are still sharing children with the person who caused the harm.
THIS ISN'T CO-PARENTING
Let's name what this actually is.
Co-parenting requires two willing, accountable parents — two people who can communicate in good faith, prioritise their children over their own needs, and work together toward shared decisions.
That is not what most survivors of narcissistic abuse and coercive control are navigating. What you are navigating is something different: a person who uses the children as leverage, who weaponises the parenting relationship to maintain control, who is charming in mediation and coercive at home. A person for whom every communication is an opportunity and every decision point is a battlefield.
Calling that co-parenting doesn't just mislabel it. It sets you up to fail — because it asks you to apply collaborative tools to a dynamic that was never collaborative and never will be.
Parallel parenting is the framework built for this reality. Minimal contact. Maximum structure. Decisions made independently wherever possible, and through documented channels when they aren't. The goal is not a functional relationship with them. The goal is a safe and regulated life for your children — and for you.
That is what everything on this page is built around.
WHY THIS IS HARD IN A SPECIFIC WAY
Healing from coercive control is hard enough.
Healing while still sharing space with it is its own terrain entirely.
Your nervous system is trying to regulate — and it is being repeatedly dysregulated by custody exchanges, unexpected texts, legal correspondence, and the slow grind of a dynamic that didn't end when the relationship did.
Your children are living between two very different homes. They are picking up on things you haven't said. They are bringing back things you didn't expect. They are navigating, in their small bodies, the same coercive dynamics you are still navigating in yours.
And you are trying to be the regulated parent — the safe one, the consistent one, the one whose home is the ground they can stand on — while running on a nervous system that is still in survival mode.
This is the specific, predictable, well-documented reality of raising children in the aftermath of coercive control. And it deserves specific, well-developed support.
Built by someone who knows this terrain from the inside.
THE PARALLEL PARENTING SUITE
Three offerings — one for the legal and practical, one for the lived experience, one to start with right now.
START HERE — FREE
Raising Regulated Kids in a Dysregulated Home
Free resource · Available now
Your children's nervous systems are affected by what is happening in the other home — even when you can't control it, and even when they can't articulate it. This guide gives you practical, somatic-informed tools for supporting your children's regulation when the broader situation is beyond your control.
Because your children deserve a regulated parent. And you deserve support in becoming one — even on the hardest days, even when you are running on empty, even when the other home is doing what it does.
For: Any parent navigating a high-conflict situation with children who wants tools to support their children's nervous systems right now.
BUILD YOUR LEGAL FOUNDATION
Parenting Plan Portal
Self-paced · Available now · $37
A detailed, high-conflict parenting plan is one of the most powerful nervous system tools available to a parallel parenting survivor — because every decision point it eliminates is a nervous system event you don't have to recover from. Specificity is protection. Structure is safety.
The Parenting Plan Portal walks you through building a thorough, legally informed, trauma-aware parenting plan designed specifically for high-conflict situations. Step by step, at your own pace, with guidance at every stage.
For: Survivors entering or navigating legal proceedings who need a comprehensive parenting plan built around the specific dynamics of coercive control — not a generic template.
THE LIVE COURSE — COMING JULY 2026
SHIELD
Live 2–3 session course · Founding cohort July 2026
Everything you need to navigate the ongoing reality of parallel parenting — in your body, with your children, across every hard moment this situation creates.
Shield is two to three live sessions with Jess, built around the specific terrain of parenting after coercive control. What your children are experiencing — in their nervous systems, in their behaviour, in the things they say and the things they can't say. How to talk to them about what's happening in age-appropriate, protective, regulated ways. How to handle custody exchanges, unexpected contact, and the moments when they come home dysregulated from the other home. How to protect yourself from using your children — however unintentionally — as a nervous system resource. And how to be the safe, regulated, present parent your children need, when your own system is still healing.
Shield is built for the parent who is doing everything right — and still finding this the hardest thing they have ever done.
Founding cohort: July 2026. All sessions recorded. Available as a self-paced course afterward.
For: Survivors who are actively parallel parenting and want practical, embodied, expert support for navigating this with their children — and themselves.
WHAT MAKES THIS DIFFERENT
This is not generic parenting advice.
Most parenting resources — even good ones — are built around the assumption of two functional parents. The communication frameworks, the conflict resolution tools, the co-parenting apps — all of it assumes two people who are capable of good faith.
Everything in the Parallel Parenting Suite is built on a different assumption: that one parent is a survivor navigating ongoing coercive dynamics, and that the children are living inside that reality whether anyone has named it or not.
The legal frameworks here are built around minimizing contact and maximizing structure — not improving communication. The nervous system tools are built around your regulation and your children's regulation — not the relationship. The parenting support here is built around protection — not collaboration.
Because collaboration was never an option. And you deserve support that is honest about that.
ABOUT JESS
This terrain is personal.
I'm still navigated post-separation abuse as the parent of five children. I know what it is to be in a custody exchange and feel your nervous system light up like a threat board. To read a text from the other parent and lose the next two hours to dysregulation. To watch your children come home from the other house and not know what they've been exposed to, what they've been told, what they're carrying that they can't yet name.
I also know what it is to build the framework that makes it survivable — the legal structure, the communication protocols, the nervous system tools, the regulated presence your children need you to be.
I'm Jess — licensed counselor, somatic practitioner, breathwork facilitator, and narcissistic abuse recovery specialist. I built the Parallel Parenting Suite because this specific terrain deserves specific, expert, trauma-informed support. Not a generic co-parenting workbook. Not a mediator who doesn't understand coercive control. Something built by someone who has lived this — and who has spent years developing the tools to navigate it.
Everything here is what I needed and couldn't find. It exists because your children deserve a parent who has the right support — and because you deserve to be that parent.
WHERE THIS FITS IN THE FULL JOURNEY
This is not generic parenting advice.
The Parallel Parenting Suite sits alongside the full Somatic Gateway healing ecosystem. Your own healing and your children's protection are not separate tracks — they feed each other. As your nervous system regulates, your capacity to parent from safety grows. As the legal and practical structure solidifies, your nervous system has less to manage.
Everything leads forward.
Clarity Coaching · Anchored · RISE: A Somatic Return · Parallel Parenting Suite
Not sure where to start? A single Clarity Coaching session is the clearest way to find out.
FROM CLIENTS
From the survivors who have done this work:
"I stood in a parking lot after a custody exchange once — completely dysregulated, hands shaking, trying to be present for my children who were watching me from the back seat.
Shield gave me the tools that changed everything about how I navigate this."
— Jayne, Shield Cohort
"There was a moment — I remember exactly where I was — when I realized that I could actually live my own life again. That the harm didn't have to keep reaching me. That with the right structure, the right boundaries, and the right legal framework, I could reduce his access to my nervous system to almost nothing. That realization changed everything. It is what the Parallel Parenting Suite is built to give you."
-Jess
"I thought we could do it like other divorced couples I'd seen. I believed in good faith. I invited him to our child's birthday party — because that's what you do, right? He spent the last ten minutes before he left verbally peppering me. I stood there absorbing it, holding myself together, and I remember thinking: I will never put myself in that position again. That was the day I understood what parallel parenting actually means — and why it isn't a last resort. It's the only framework that was ever going to work."
— John, Shield Cohort
Your children need you regulated.
That starts with you having the right support.
You cannot pour from an empty nervous system. You cannot protect your children from a dysregulated place. And you cannot build the framework this situation requires without someone who understands exactly what you are navigating.
The Parallel Parenting Suite exists because this is survivable — with the right tools, the right structure, and the right support. Start wherever you are. Everything here is built to meet you there.
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