How Kathleen Burgler Turned Her Own Divorce Into a Calling

February 24, 2026 - Everett, WA

Kathleen Burgler

When Kathleen Burgler's marriage ended, it didn't happen in isolation. It arrived all at once: empty nesting, global pandemic, menopause, divorce, and a move - a perfect storm that would have brought most people to their knees. In a sense, it did. "The divorce was so textbook, it's crazy," she says with characteristic candor. Her husband had an affair with a woman working at the company they co-owned together. "Dude, really? Come on." Despite the dark humor she brings to it now, she describes the experience as devastating.

On the outside, Kathleen held it together. Her emails and texts were full of bullet points, outlines, and plans. But in her private journal, she was falling apart.

What saved her, she'll tell you today, was a combination of things: a close and sustaining friend group, and the tools she had spent years building, including mindfulness, meditation, gratitude practices, mantras, and especially movement. Kathleen had already trained extensively in yoga to support clients with anxiety, depression, Parkinson's disease, spinal cord injuries, and multiple sclerosis. Now, those same skills became her lifeline.

Kathleen Burgler

One moment from her divorce has stayed with her and become central to her work with clients. Sitting across from her attorney, she stopped the conversation mid-sentence. "I'm going to guess that you have done hundreds or maybe thousands of these," she told her, "but this is my first divorce. I don't know the language, I don't know the terrain ... so what am I not asking, because I don't know to ask it?"

That question, she says, is something most people going through divorce never think to ask because they're in survival mode. They're on unequal footing with divorce professionals who speak a language they've never had to learn. Helping clients understand that imbalance, and giving them tools to navigate it, is now at the heart of what she does.

Empowerment Over Neutrality

Three years ago, Kathleen left healthcare and became a certified divorce coach. She's involved in the collaborative divorce community, though not without reservations. She's seen how the process can become disempowering when a power imbalance already exists between partners.

She's also clear about what she is not: a licensed mental health therapist. She has enormous respect for therapists and the depth of their work, but her role is different. "While their job is to peel the layers of the onion," she says, "my job is to say, 'well, we have an onion, what are we gonna do with it?'" And while neutrality is a core principal for much of her work, in her role as a divorce coach, she wants to be in the corner of the person who feels like divorce is something happening to them, not something they have any agency over.

That framing matters especially for women, she says. Kathleen has a deep compassion for the ways women are conditioned to accept diminished roles in relationships, not yet ready to name what isn't working. "For a lot of women, they wake up one day and realize they're just a guest in their own life." What follows - sorrow, rage, the fear it will never end - is real and valid. But it's also an opportunity to build something new, rather than remaining stuck in bitterness.

Life After Divorce

Kathleen is equally direct when it comes to life after divorce, particularly for those re-entering dating in midlife. She encourages people to ask a potential partner a pointed question: "What are you bringing to my table?" She wants people to think clearly about shared values rather than fall in love with someone's potential. She's seen friends and former partners build genuinely happy marriages using that healthy approach.

She asks her clients a version of that same question about themselves: not just what your core values are, but how they show up in your daily life. "How are you living them? How are you showing up in the spaces you're a part of?" The question tends to produce a lot of blank stares. But it's one worth sitting with.

At Home In Everett

Kathleen lived at Lake Goodwin for about 23 years before moving to Everett in 2020, and this community is where she now does much of her work. She hosts a monthly in-person gathering, the Everett Women's End of Marriage Discussion Group, which meets regularly and is open to women navigating divorce or the end of a long-term relationship.

She also wrote and published Forge Your Path, a 160-page workbook drawn from the tools that helped her through her own divorce. Filled with prompts, activities, information, and resources, it's designed to help readers "muster up resolve, cultivate self-efficacy, and gain the clarity needed to move yourself forward."

And in keeping with her commitment to accessibility, Kathleen is enrolled in mediator practicum at Volunteers of America's Dispute Resolution Center, with the intention of becoming a certified mediator.

She approaches her work, her relationships, and her own continuing story with a philosophy she's earned the hard way: be vulnerable, be authentic, and when fear shows up, ask yourself, "What's the worst that could happen?" It turns out, every time, the world keeps turning.

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