On divorce, resilience, and the kind of strength you don’t see coming.
I walked into my conversation with Mara Bernstein expecting to talk about divorce.
What I didn’t expect was to walk away feeling quietly rearranged.
Mara is a Boca Raton divorce attorney, but that title barely scratches the surface of who she is or how she practices. She talks about divorcing differently. About adults divorcing like adults. About dignity, restraint, and compassion in a process that so often brings out the worst in people.
But what stayed with me wasn’t just her philosophy on divorce. It was her resilience.
Mara lost her daughter as a baby. Then she lost her husband, the love of her life. During that same season, she lost everything financially. Most people would have been flattened by that kind of grief layered on grief layered on loss.
Instead, Mara took the Florida Bar.
She rebuilt her life from the ground up after trauma most people will never fully understand. Not with bitterness. Not with bravado. But with gratitude. With compassion. With a deep respect for what people are carrying when they sit across from her in one of the hardest moments of their lives.
That’s what makes her different.
She doesn’t lead with aggression or ego. She leads with humanity. She understands that divorce doesn’t have to destroy people, especially when children are involved. That it’s possible to hold boundaries without burning everything down. That you can be strong and kind at the same time.
By the end of our conversation, I realized I wasn’t just interviewing a divorce attorney. I was sitting with a woman who has lived through profound loss and still chose to help others navigate theirs with grace.
We talked about helping. About female friendships. About the kind of resilience that isn’t loud or performative, but steady and earned. The kind that comes from surviving something you never should have had to survive.
Mara is a powerhouse. Not because she’s hard. But because she’s soft in the right places and unbreakable where it matters.
I left that interview different. And those are the conversations that stay with me.
If you’re navigating divorce, supporting someone who is, or just trying to understand what resilience really looks like, this is one worth listening to.
To learn more, contact The Law Offices of Mara Bernstein, P.A.
561-910-1870 or Cathy@mbdivorce.com