When a family comes apart, the instinct is to hold everything else perfectly still. Keep the schedule the same, keep the holidays the same, shield the kids from every tremor. Lindsie Chrisley understands that instinct. She also knows now that it misses the point.
“Looking back, I think I understand that stability isn’t about making sure a child’s world never changes,” she tells Momé. “Divorce changes a lot, and I wish I’d understood sooner that I couldn’t protect my son from every difficult feeling or every disruption.”
What she could protect was something steadier than any routine: “his sense of being deeply loved, safe, and never responsible for what was happening between the adults.” Routines mattered, she says, but what mattered more was being “the steady place he could always come back to,” a place where he knew both parents loved him, that he didn’t have to choose sides, and that he was allowed to simply be a kid.
“Children don’t necessarily need a perfect or unchanging life to feel secure,” she says. “They need consistency in the things that matter most: love, reassurance, honesty, and the freedom to know that none of it is their fault.”
Children don’t necessarily need a perfect or unchanging life to feel secure.
Letting go of the picture
In practice, creating that security meant releasing an image she’d carried for a long time. “In my home, creating stability has meant learning to let go of perfection and, honestly, letting go of the idea that a family has to look a certain way to be whole,” she says. “I had to accept that having both parents under the same roof wasn’t what defined our family. We are still a family; we just look different than I once imagined we would.”
Day to day, that looks like routines, showing up, communicating, and keeping a home that feels safe and peaceful. The hardest part was dropping the pressure to make everything look “normal.” What replaced it was lighter. “There is so much freedom in realizing that a family doesn’t have to look perfect to be strong.”
Adult conversations, kid-sized world
Co-parenting asks two people to keep working as a team after the relationship has ended, and Chrisley doesn’t pretend it’s always smooth. The rule she and her co-parent return to is simple: some conversations belong to adults, and some belong in a child’s world.
“When emotions are running high, we keep those adult conversations at bay until our son isn’t around to overhear things that aren’t his to carry,” she says. “That doesn’t mean we always get everything right or that the emotions aren’t real. They are. But he shouldn’t have to carry the weight of them. We’ve had to learn to separate our feelings about each other from our responsibility to him.”
Blending without forcing
She’s candid that blended family life hasn’t followed a neat arc. “There have been relationships that didn’t work out, and I’d be lying if I said those experiences didn’t leave me feeling guilty or like I had somehow failed my son,” she says. She’s talked about it openly on her podcasts, precisely because the pressure to make a blended family look seamless can hide how complicated it really is.
One thing she’s proud of getting right: the traditions stayed. Holidays, especially, have remained much as they were before the divorce. “There’s something really comforting about giving a child pieces of their world that don’t have to change.”
Beyond that, she’s learned to stop pushing. “Trust takes time, and relationships within a blended family have to be allowed to develop naturally,” she says. “Blending a family isn’t about creating a perfect picture. It’s about creating an environment where everyone can be honest, relationships can grow at their own pace, and most importantly, where my son doesn’t feel responsible for making any of it work.”
There is so much freedom in realizing that a family doesn’t have to look perfect to be strong.
Whose boundary is it?
Chrisley talks often about healthy boundaries, and she’s honest that they aren’t always as selfless as they look. Some are clearly about her son: keeping adult conversations away from him, protecting his emotional space. Others require a harder question.
“Am I setting this boundary because it’s what’s best for my child, or because it makes me more comfortable?” she asks herself. “Sometimes my discomfort is mine to work through. My job is to make sure he feels safe and secure while allowing him to have his own relationships, experiences, and feelings.”
Holding those boundaries has been its own lesson. “I hate saying no,” she admits. After the divorce, the pull to make up for what her son had been through by saying yes grew even stronger. “But I’ve had to learn that always saying yes isn’t actually kindness. If I never tell my son no, I’m teaching him that the world will always say yes to him, and that simply isn’t realistic.”
What she’s found is that she can let him be disappointed without rushing to fix it. “Sometimes loving your child means letting them be unhappy with your decision while still knowing you made the right one.”
Room to breathe
Her own mental health has, in some ways, become easier to tend since the divorce, simply because she has more time that’s truly hers, something she’s careful not to take for granted. The last few years brought “some pretty troubling waters,” particularly around relationships, and at one point she stepped away from everything not directly connected to parenting. “I needed some time to get quiet, figure out what I needed, and rebuild a sense of myself outside of being a mom.”
That space made her a better parent, she says. But she knows not every mother can step away, so the lesson she holds onto is a smaller one: find whatever pockets of space exist, and don’t feel guilty for needing them. “Sometimes it’s a big reset, and sometimes it’s just giving yourself permission to have a quiet moment and remember that you’re a person, too.”
She’s raising her son with the same understanding. In their home, mental health is treated as just as important as physical health, and she’s a big advocate for mental health days when a child genuinely needs one. Not every hard feeling has to be fixed right away. “Kids are watching how we handle stress, disappointment, and overwhelm,” she says. “If I want him to know it’s okay to take a step back and care for himself, I have to be willing to do the same. Sometimes the healthiest thing you can say is, ‘I need a minute. I need to reset.’ There’s no shame in that.”
The strength that shows up later
Asked about a low point, she doesn’t hesitate: the divorce, made heavier by the fact that so much of it unfolded publicly. “There were very personal and painful moments that became public,” she says, “and there is a different kind of pressure that comes with trying to hold your family together while knowing people are watching, judging, and forming opinions about something they only see a small piece of.”
She didn’t feel strong at the time. “I was just trying to get through the next day, make sure my son was okay, and keep putting one foot in front of the other.” Looking back, that’s exactly what she’s proud of. “Resilience doesn’t always look like having everything figured out. Sometimes it looks like getting out of bed when you’re exhausted, protecting your child when you’re hurting, making the next right decision, and continuing to move forward even when you have no idea what the next chapter looks like. Maybe that’s what motherhood does: it gives you a strength you don’t necessarily know you have until life asks you to use it.”
Sometimes loving your child means letting them be unhappy with your decision while still knowing you made the right one.
Good enough isn’t settling
She still wrestles with perfectionism, and public criticism of her parenting hasn’t made it easier. But it has given her thicker skin and a clearer sense of what’s true. “I know who I am as a mother. I know how much I love my son, how hard I work to be present for him, and how much thought goes into the decisions I make as a parent. At the end of the day, that has to be enough.”
When the pressure creeps back, she reminds herself what her son actually needs: “a mother who loves him, shows up, listens, sets boundaries, makes mistakes, and keeps learning.” That same grace extends to the weeks when something has to give. She’s recently taken intentional time away from work and felt real guilt about it. Her son gets the best of her energy, always; the rest she’s learning to spend more deliberately. “I don’t have to give 100 percent to every area of my life every single week,” she says. “Sometimes something has to give, and that doesn’t mean I’m doing something wrong. It just means I’m human.”
For her, “good enough” isn’t settling. “It’s trusting that I can be a good mother without having to prove it to everyone else.”
What she hopes he remembers
Years from now, when her son looks back on these transitional years, Chrisley hopes he remembers a mother who loved him unconditionally, who listened to understand rather than to respond, and who gave him room for his own feelings while still guiding him through the world. Part parent, part friend, and always, even through the decisions he didn’t like, on his side.
“If years from now he can look back and say, ‘My mom always had my back. She listened to me. She supported me. I always knew I was loved,’” she says, “then I’ll feel like I got the most important part right.”
For the parent in the middle of it
If you’re raising a child through a divorce, a blended family, or any season where the ground keeps shifting, take this from someone who’s been there: you don’t have to hold everything still. You just have to be the steady place.
Start small this week. Protect one tradition your child loves. Keep one adult conversation out of their earshot. Say one loving no, and let the disappointment be okay. And when it all feels like too much, give yourself the same permission you’d give them: I need a minute. I need to reset.
Your family doesn’t have to look perfect to be strong. It just has to feel safe.
Follow Lindsie Chrisley on Instagram at @lindsiechrisley, and listen to her podcast, The Southern Tea.
Frequently asked questions
What does Lindsie Chrisley say children need after a divorce?
Not a world that never changes. “Children don’t necessarily need a perfect or unchanging life to feel secure,” she says. “They need consistency in the things that matter most: love, reassurance, honesty, and the freedom to know that none of it is their fault.”
How does she handle conflict with her co-parent?
Some conversations belong to adults, and some belong in a child’s world. When emotions run high, she and her co-parent keep the adult conversations at bay until their son isn’t around to overhear things that aren’t his to carry.
How does she approach blending a family?
Without forcing it. She kept the holiday traditions much as they were before the divorce, and lets relationships develop at their own pace. “Blending a family isn’t about creating a perfect picture,” she says. It’s about an environment where her son “doesn’t feel responsible for making any of it work.”
