Court-Ordered and Mentally Disordered: Haylie Gillespie As a Child of Divorce

Haylie walked into a family law office at seventeen, a self-described divorce court ordered and mentally disordered child of the system she would spend the next few years watching up close. Now twenty, she sits down with her boss — a family law attorney — to look back at what it actually felt like to be a kid shuttled between households, living out of a duffel bag, bounced around like a pinball before she had words for any of it. This is not a damage narrative. It is a portrait of someone who learned early, paid forward, and is only now starting to give herself credit for it. The conversation moves from custody schedules and courtroom logic to depression diagnoses in middle school, from the two completely different households that built two completely different versions of Haylie, to what she would tell a judge making a joint custody call today. She is funny, self-aware, and occasionally undone. Which is exactly the point.