Divorce Happens

There's a particular kind of injustice that so many survivors know intimately: you're the one who finally said enough, and somehow you've become the villain of the story. In this week's Hey Olivia letter episode of Divorce Happens, host Olivia Howell answers a listener who is pushing for her own divorce after enduring abuse for years — abuse that is still ongoing, even now, in the middle of the process — while her husband performs the role of the blindsided, devastated spouse to his family and to anyone who will listen. She's holding a boundary, refusing to explain or justify herself to people who've only ever heard his side, and she wrote in asking a question so many divorcing survivors carry silently: how do you breathe through being cast as the bad guy for finally protecting yourself?Olivia meets this letter with a clarity that cuts straight through the noise. She names, plainly, one of the most disorienting dynamics in high-conflict and abusive divorces: the person who names the problem out loud almost always looks like the problem to people standing outside the relationship, because outsiders only ever get the version of the story someone motivated to tell it favorably chooses to give them. She calls the “I never saw this coming” performance exactly what it often is — a self-protective narrative for behavior that wouldn't hold up under real scrutiny — and she's unflinching about the deeper truth underneath it: his performance doesn't get to overwrite what the listener already knows happened to her. This episode speaks directly to anyone questioning their own reality after leaving an abusive marriage, and to anyone wondering whether they owe the people around them a full explanation before they're allowed to go.Where this episode offers real, usable relief is in the boundary tools Olivia hands listeners for surviving outside judgment during divorce. She gives an exact script for holding a line with family and friends who push for details survivors don't owe anyone, encourages finding real, dedicated support from a therapist experienced specifically in abuse and coercive control, and reframes survival itself: getting through to a final divorce was never about convincing everyone else of your reality, it's about protecting your own nervous system one day at a time. Listeners walk away with both a permission slip to stop explaining themselves and a concrete plan — including where to find real support — for surviving judgment while healing from an abusive marriage.🔗 Check out Fresh Starts Registry:The first & only divorce registry + support platform ➡ https://www.freshstartsregistry.com/📱 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/freshstartsregistry/📘 Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/FreshStartsRegistry🎙 Podcast IG: https://www.instagram.com/divorcehappenspod/📬 Magazine: https://divorceguidemagazine.com/💛 The Divorce Happens Community: https://divorcehappens.substack.com/

Mediation is hard enough when both people are negotiating in good faith. It's a different animal entirely when you're walking into the room across from someone who seems to oppose almost everything on principle. In this week's Hey Olivia letter episode of Divorce Happens, host Olivia Howell answers a listener with mediation just weeks away — a mother who has held down the marital home with her kids under temporary orders for over a year, now facing an ex pushing to sell the house their children have called home since kindergarten. It's the kind of letter that will feel instantly familiar to anyone who has sat across a mediation table from someone who fights you more out of principle than out of any specific, negotiable position.Olivia's central reframe is the heart of this episode, and it's one that changes the entire way you walk into a high-conflict mediation: you're not there to persuade your ex of anything. You're there to build a proposal that looks obviously reasonable to a mediator, whether or not he ever agrees to it out loud. From there, she gets specific — teaching listeners to separate a person's stated position from the actual interest underneath it, whether that's money, control, or the fear of feeling like he “lost.” She also offers concrete mechanisms for the marital-home fight so many divorcing parents face, like a buyout tied to a refinance or a deferred sale linked to a school milestone, so a flat “I want to stay” becomes something a mediator can actually work with.What makes this episode land is how honestly Olivia prepares listeners for the emotional terrain of mediating with a provoking, oppositional ex — and gives them a way through it that doesn't require winning the argument in the room. She walks through knowing your floor before you ever sit down, looping your attorney into strategy (not just outcomes) so you understand your real leverage if mediation doesn't resolve things, and protecting your own nervous system with something as simple as permission to ask for five minutes when things get heated. It's an episode about divorce mediation preparation that's equal parts strategy and steadiness — and it leaves listeners with a genuinely usable plan for walking into a hard room and walking out with real terms.🔗 Check out Fresh Starts Registry:The first & only divorce registry + support platform ➡ https://www.freshstartsregistry.com/📱 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/freshstartsregistry/📘 Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/FreshStartsRegistry🎙 Podcast IG: https://www.instagram.com/divorcehappenspod/📬 Magazine: https://divorceguidemagazine.com/💛 The Divorce Happens Community: https://divorcehappens.substack.com/

There's a specific kind of heartbreak that doesn't have a name yet — the one where you're still doing his laundry in the same house while he giggles at his phone on the couch. In this week's Hey Olivia letter episode of Divorce Happens, host Olivia Howell reads a note from a listener who is separated from her husband but cohabiting with him for the summer while he searches for a new place — and who has just realized, with a gut-punch kind of clarity, that he's back on the dating apps. She's watching someone she built a life with light up for a stranger, from the next room. This episode is for anyone who has discovered that a legal or emotional decision to separate doesn't automatically shut off the nervous system's attachment to the person you're separating from — especially when you're still sharing a kitchen sink.Olivia doesn't just validate the listener's confusion — she names it precisely, calling it a breakup with no exit door. Unlike a typical split, cohabiting during a separation strips away the physical distance that usually gives a grieving nervous system room to catch up with a decision the mind has already made. Olivia walks through the biology of it: years of loving someone teaches your body to read their moods, their footsteps, the sound of their phone buzzing on the counter, so when that same person turns giddy over someone new, the jealousy that surfaces isn't weakness or regression — it's a nervous system still doing its old job, even after the heart has moved on. It's a reframe that listeners navigating in-house separation or divorce cohabitation rarely hear articulated this clearly, and it changes how the whole experience feels to sit inside.Where this episode really earns its keep is in the practical toolkit Olivia hands listeners by the end. She offers a script for setting boundaries with a cohabiting soon-to-be-ex around dating apps and phone calls in shared spaces, a pre-planned “exit move” for when the couch-giggling starts, and a short list of personal anchors — one person, one private ritual, one small rule — to hold onto when everything else feels blurry. It's an episode about dating after separation from the other side of the equation, about grief without closure, and about giving yourself permission to feel relief and heartbreak in the very same breath. Listeners walk away with both a concrete plan for surviving a shared roof and a gentler, more compassionate understanding of why this particular kind of hard is so disorienting — and so valid.🔗 Check out Fresh Starts Registry:The first & only divorce registry + support platform ➡ https://www.freshstartsregistry.com/📱 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/freshstartsregistry/📘 Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/FreshStartsRegistry🎙 Podcast IG: https://www.instagram.com/divorcehappenspod/📬 Magazine: https://divorceguidemagazine.com/💛 The Divorce Happens Community: https://divorcehappens.substack.com/

You don’t walk out of a mediation session into a blank space — and yet almost nobody talks about what actually comes next. That’s the gap this episode of the divorce mediation series closes, as host Olivia Howell wraps up her four-part mediation series with Allison McFadden, a Washington D.C.-Baltimore-area family law attorney, Certified Divorce Coach®, and court-appointed mediator who founded Divorce by Allison after more than a decade practicing family law. After walking listeners through what mediation is, how to prepare for it, and what it actually feels like to be in the room, Allison closes the series by answering the question that lingers once the session ends: now what?Allison starts with the scenario people fear most — not reaching an agreement — and immediately reframes it with real hope: mediation and litigation aren’t mutually exclusive, and stalling out in one session doesn’t mean the process failed. She lays out concrete next steps, from bringing in a divorce coach to strategize before the next session, to consulting an attorney about what’s realistic, to simply scheduling another round. But for the vast majority of people who do reach an agreement, Allison is clear that the hardest part is now behind them — though the paperwork isn’t finished. She walks through how a mediator typically drafts a memorandum of understanding, parenting plan, or settlement agreement, and why certain documents, like deeds or retirement orders, may still require an attorney’s involvement depending on the state.What makes this finale so valuable is the practical homework Allison hands listeners: don’t let your agreement collect dust in a drawer. She urges people to build a checklist and calendar every deadline — account closures, transfer dates, the annual date to pick summer parenting weeks — so the agreement actually gets lived out, not just signed. She also delivers a detail that surprises many listeners: reaching an agreement in mediation doesn’t finalize your divorce. You still have to file paperwork with the court, and Allison shares practical, money-saving options like self-help courthouse programs for anyone who wants to file without paying for a full attorney retainer. She closes the series with genuine reassurance — the vast majority of divorces are resolved by agreement, and no one goes through mediation alone. For anyone who has followed this series from the beginning, this episode is the reassuring, practical send-off that ties the whole journey together.🔗 Check out Fresh Starts Registry:The first & only divorce registry + support platform ➡ https://www.freshstartsregistry.com/📱 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/freshstartsregistry/📘 Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/FreshStartsRegistry🎙 Podcast IG: https://www.instagram.com/divorcehappenspod/📬 Magazine: https://divorceguidemagazine.com/💛 The Divorce Happens Community: https://divorcehappens.substack.com/

For most people, the inside of a mediation session is a total mystery — a closed door they’re about to walk through with no idea what’s on the other side. That’s exactly the gap this episode of Divorce Happens closes, as host Olivia Howell continues part three of her four-part series with Allison McFadden, a Washington D.C.-Baltimore-area family law attorney, Certified Divorce Coach®, and court-appointed mediator who founded Divorce by Allison after more than a decade practicing family law. Having already covered what divorce mediation is and how to prepare for it, this episode finally opens the door: what does it actually look and feel like to sit down and be in a mediation session, from the first minute to the last?Allison walks listeners through the anatomy of a real session with a level of detail that’s genuinely reassuring. It starts with the mediator setting the agenda — running through a checklist of common divorce and co-parenting topics to figure out what actually applies to this family, from the house to the parenting plan to retirement accounts. Nothing gets decided in stone that day; agreements reached in the room are tentative, notes are taken, and open items (like needing to pull retirement account statements) get flagged for next time. Allison also demystifies the physical logistics that surprise most first-timers: sessions can happen on Zoom or in person, and while she generally keeps both people in the same room — believing it builds the communication skills co-parents will keep needing — breakout rooms are always an option when things get heated or when someone wants to consult privately with an attorney or support person.What makes this episode land is its warmth and its permission-giving honesty. Allison answers one of the questions she says she gets constantly — what do I even wear to this? — with refreshing simplicity: be comfortable, there’s no dress code, and the mediator isn’t judging you for showing up in your work uniform after a long shift. She reassures listeners that most people show up on their best behavior, that agreements are never signed the same day so there’s time to review with an attorney, and that mediation sessions can even include moments of real levity — laughter, collaboration, and for some couples, a genuinely amicable way to close one chapter and start figuring out the next one, together. For anyone dreading the unknown of mediation, this episode replaces fear with a clear, human picture of what’s actually ahead.🔗 Check out Fresh Starts Registry:The first & only divorce registry + support platform ➡ https://www.freshstartsregistry.com/📱 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/freshstartsregistry/📘 Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/FreshStartsRegistry🎙 Podcast IG: https://www.instagram.com/divorcehappenspod/📬 Magazine: https://divorceguidemagazine.com/💛 The Divorce Happens Community: https://divorcehappens.substack.com/

A mediator is not a magician. That single line, dropped early in this episode of Divorce Happens, sets the tone for one of the most genuinely useful conversations in the show’s mediation series so far. Host Olivia Howell continues part two of her four-part collaboration with Allison McFadden, a Washington D.C.-Baltimore-area family law attorney, Certified Divorce Coach®, and court-appointed mediator who founded Divorce by Allison after more than a decade practicing family law.If the first episode in this series answered the question of what divorce mediation actually is, this one answers the question almost nobody thinks to ask beforehand: how do you actually prepare to walk into the room? Because as Allison makes clear, preparation isn’t a formality — it’s one of the biggest predictors of whether mediation succeeds.Allison walks listeners through exactly what real preparation looks like, and it’s far more concrete and reassuring than most people expect. She encourages listeners to interview their mediator ahead of time — asking about their style (facilitative versus evaluative), how long sessions run, what topics will be covered, and how they handle high emotion in the room. She also normalizes a fear many listeners carry quietly: the worry of being talked over or steamrolled by a spouse during mediation.Allison’s answer is refreshingly practical — you’re allowed to bring support. A pre-mediation divorce coach, a consulting attorney, even a financial advisor can join the process, and she breaks down exactly how that works logistically, from private side-conversations in a Zoom breakout room to sitting at the table together. Olivia adds her own lived experience here, sharing that her mediation began over Zoom and evolved into each side bringing in their own attorney to help finalize things — without ever coming close to court.What makes this episode so actionable is how far it goes beyond generic advice. Allison gets specific about the documents that actually matter (account and mortgage statements and a school calendar, not birth or marriage certificates), the importance of walking in with a clear intention or “North Star” for why you’re there, and the value of preparing flexible proposals rather than a single non-negotiable demand.She closes with something rarely discussed in divorce circles: how to prepare mentally, naming that mediation can surface real emotional triggers and encouraging listeners to build a plan — through therapy, coaching, or somatic techniques — before those moments catch them off guard. Listeners walk away with a genuine sense of agency: mediation isn’t something that happens to you, it’s a process you can walk into prepared, supported, and clear-eyed.🔗 Check out Fresh Starts Registry:The first & only divorce registry + support platform ➡ https://www.freshstartsregistry.com/📱 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/freshstartsregistry/📘 Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/FreshStartsRegistry🎙 Podcast IG: https://www.instagram.com/divorcehappenspod/📬 Magazine: https://divorceguidemagazine.com/💛 The Divorce Happens Community: https://divorcehappens.substack.com/

Most people going through a divorce have heard the word “mediation” — and almost none of them know what it actually means. That gap is exactly where this episode of Divorce Happens begins, with host Olivia Howell kicking off a brand-new four-part series on divorce mediation alongside Allison McFadden, a Washington D.C.-Baltimore-area family law attorney, Certified Divorce Coach®, and court-appointed mediator who has spent more than a decade helping families untangle divorce and co-parenting without setting foot in a courtroom. After years as a litigation attorney, Allison made a deliberate pivot: she founded Divorce by Allison to give people a private, collaborative, and far less combative path through one of life’s hardest transitions, and in this conversation she pulls back the curtain on a process that is often misunderstood, underexplained, and quietly one of the most empowering options available to divorcing couples.What makes this episode so valuable is how thoroughly Allison reframes what divorce mediation actually offers. She explains that mediation is a confidential, voluntary process guided by a neutral third party — not a judge, not a decision-maker, but a facilitator whose entire job is to help you and your co-parent or spouse reach an agreement that fits your family. That distinction matters enormously, because it means you retain control over nearly everything: who your mediator is, how quickly or slowly things move, and how creatively you solve the issues in front of you, from custody and parenting plans to the house, the finances, and everything in between. Allison contrasts this directly with divorce court, where a judge who has spent only a few hours with your case ultimately makes decisions for your family within the narrow limits of state law. She also gently dismantles one of the biggest myths clients bring into mediation: the fear that a mediator will simply tell them what to do. “The mediator is not there to make the decisions,” she reminds listeners — the mediator is there to help you and your co-parent find your own answer.Listeners walk away from this episode with real clarity and real hope, especially anyone who assumed mediation wasn’t an option because things with their spouse or co-parent feel too difficult. Allison walks through exactly what the process looks like in practice, from a free 20-minute consultation call to a prep checklist to a roughly two-hour mediation session that ends in a written agreement, and she makes the case that even high-conflict or emotionally complicated situations can still be strong candidates for mediation, because the process is built to be tailored to your family rather than forced into a courtroom template. This episode is the first in a four-part Divorce Happens series on mediation, so if you’re newly considering divorce, trying to avoid a costly and public court battle, or simply want to understand your options before you decide anything, this conversation is the essential, judgment-free place to start.🔗 Check out Fresh Starts Registry:The first & only divorce registry + support platform ➡ https://www.freshstartsregistry.com/📱 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/freshstartsregistry/📘 Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/FreshStartsRegistry🎙 Podcast IG: https://www.instagram.com/divorcehappenspod/📬 Magazine: https://divorceguidemagazine.com/💛 The Divorce Happens Community: https://divorcehappens.substack.com/

She planned it for months — saved up, found an apartment, rehearsed the speech. She was sure. And three weeks after filing, she’s crying in a Target parking lot, smelling her almost-ex-husband’s hoodie before she donates it, waking up sobbing from a dream where they were still together. In this Divorce Happens “Hey Olivia” episode, host Olivia Howell reads a listener letter word for word and answers the question underneath it: if leaving was the right call, why does it still hurt this much? It’s one of the most tender, disorienting parts of divorce recovery — the grief that shows up even when you were the one who filed — and Olivia meets it head-on with clarity, warmth, and zero judgment.Olivia’s core teaching reframes the entire experience: grief after a decision you made on purpose still counts as grief, full stop — it is not a scoreboard telling you whether you got it right or wrong. She walks through why the nervous system doesn’t distinguish between a sad ending and a wrong one; when a marriage ends, you’re not just losing a person, you’re losing an imagined future — the routines, the holidays, the version of “us” you’d built in your head. That’s why a dream of getting back together isn’t a gut-check reversing the divorce, and why missing the smell of a hoodie isn’t longing for him back — it’s a body flagging something familiar that’s disappearing. Olivia names this for what it actually is: withdrawal, not regret.The episode lands on two mindset shifts listeners can use immediately. First, a diagnostic question for the 3 a.m. spiral: do I miss him, or do I miss not being alone with all of this? One is about a person; the other is about fear — and you’re allowed to sit with both without acting on either today. Second, a somatic tool: hand on chest, out loud, “this is grief, not a mistake.” Olivia is clear that clarity isn’t the goal right now — care is, alongside a real runway of weeks or months before trusting any conclusion grief hands you in its loudest moments. It’s a compassionate, validating listen for anyone in the disorienting early weeks after filing, wondering if missing someone means they made the wrong call. They didn’t. Their body is just catching up.🔗 Check out Fresh Starts Registry:The first & only divorce registry + support platform ➡ https://www.freshstartsregistry.com/📱 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/freshstartsregistry/📘 Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/FreshStartsRegistry🎙 Podcast IG: https://www.instagram.com/divorcehappenspod/📬 Magazine: https://divorceguidemagazine.com/💛 The Divorce Happens Community: https://divorcehappens.substack.com/

There’s a question sitting in almost every divorced person’s notes app at 1 a.m.: is it okay to post about this? For the listener who wrote in this week, the pull to share is especially strong — her marriage is ending amid infidelity and, in her words, “genuinely strange, shady stuff,” and she’s parenting three kids under ten who have no idea their world is about to be searchable. In this Divorce Happens “Hey Olivia” episode, Olivia reads the listener’s letter in full and answers the question so many divorced parents are quietly Googling: what’s actually safe to share on social media during a divorce, and what could come back to haunt you in mediation, in court, or in your kids’ search results a decade from now.Olivia’s central teaching is a distinction she says has saved a lot of women real regret: the difference between processing and broadcasting. Processing — venting to a therapist, a trusted friend, a private community — is how a nervous system makes sense of chaos, and there’s nothing wrong with needing it. Broadcasting is public, permanent, and, once posted, entirely out of your hands. Olivia lays out a simple rule of thumb for anyone mid-divorce: assume anything posted publicly could end up printed out on a table in mediation or read aloud in a courtroom. She’s careful to note this isn’t legal advice — laws vary by state, and it’s worth a real conversation with a divorce attorney — but she’s equally clear that social media posts have been used as evidence in custody and divorce proceedings, and that the risk isn’t worth learning about the hard way.The episode closes with permission and with practical clarity, not just caution. Olivia distinguishes between sharing your own feelings and growth — generally safer territory — and posting specific incidents, identifying details, or anything written from the angriest, hottest part of you, which tends to resurface in ways you don’t want later. She reminds listeners that their kids will someday search their own names, their dad’s name, this exact chapter — and that today’s choices shape what’s waiting for them. For the full, unfiltered version of the story, Olivia points listeners toward the right room for it: a therapist, trusted friends, or a private community like Fresh Starts, where you can be completely honest without it becoming a permanent public record. It’s a compassionate, clarifying episode for anyone standing at the edge of hitting “post” mid-divorce — a reminder that you’re allowed to be fully heard without putting your case, or your kids, at risk.🔗 Check out Fresh Starts Registry:The first & only divorce registry + support platform ➡ https://www.freshstartsregistry.com/📱 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/freshstartsregistry/📘 Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/FreshStartsRegistry🎙 Podcast IG: https://www.instagram.com/divorcehappenspod/📬 Magazine: https://divorceguidemagazine.com/💛 The Divorce Happens Community: https://divorcehappens.substack.com/

There's a particular kind of exhaustion that comes from fighting a legal system that was never built to protect you — and North Carolina State Senator Woodson Bradley knows that exhaustion intimately. Long before she was sworn into the state legislature, Bradley was a young mother in Mecklenburg County watching her marriage, her savings, and her sense of safety unravel inside a divorce process she didn't realize was stacked against her. In this raw, eye-opening episode of Divorce Happens, Olivia sits down with Senator Bradley — a domestic violence and assault survivor turned divorce real estate specialist turned freshman state senator — to unpack what actually happens when a state's divorce laws fail the women trying to leave. Bradley ran her 2024 campaign on family law reform and domestic violence protections, and in this conversation she explains exactly why that fight became personal.Bradley walks Olivia through the maze of North Carolina divorce law that most people never hear about until they're living it: a mandatory year-long separation before you can even file, a rule that resets the clock if you spend a single night under the same roof, and a system where post-separation abuse — financial, digital, emotional — often goes unrecognized by the judges and magistrates hearing these cases. She shares how she believed her joint accounts, retirement savings, and her children's college funds were legally frozen the moment she filed for separation, only to learn the hard way that they weren't, as her ex-husband drained them completely. She talks candidly about stepping away from her real estate career for a season because it wasn't safe, about rebuilding from a double-wide trailer in the country with her two young children, and about the moment the tide turned: when she stopped defending herself and started documenting everything.What makes this episode so powerful is where Bradley lands: not in bitterness, but in fierce, hard-won hope. She reminds listeners that divorce isn't the dirty word she was raised to believe it was — it can be the doorway to a freedom you didn't know was possible. Her advice for anyone in the thick of a divorce is refreshingly concrete: start a notebook and document everything, seek out legal aid and community resources built specifically for women navigating divorce, and find your "grizzly bear" — someone who will show up in the room and advocate for you when you can't advocate for yourself. Whether you're facing a contentious divorce, worried about financial abuse, or simply trying to understand your rights before you file, this conversation offers both a warning and a roadmap for divorce recovery and starting over after divorce, stronger than before.🔗 Check out Fresh Starts Registry:The first & only divorce registry + support platform ➡ https://www.freshstartsregistry.com/📱 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/freshstartsregistry/📘 Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/FreshStartsRegistry🎙 Podcast IG: https://www.instagram.com/divorcehappenspod/📬 Magazine: https://divorceguidemagazine.com/💛 The Divorce Happens Community: https://divorcehappens.substack.com/

Divorce doesn't arrive with a checklist — it arrives like an avalanche. Your finances, your custody schedule, your identity, your future, all crashing down at once, and somehow you're still expected to answer emails before dinner. In this episode of Divorce Happens, Olivia sits down with Kristina St. Cyr, a CDC® Certified Divorce Coach and Moving On Method® Certified Coach based in Massachusetts, who spent nearly a decade and a half leading teams through high-stakes public health crises before discovering that no amount of professional composure could prepare her for the emotional and logistical chaos of her own divorce. That experience became her calling. Today, Kristina works with career-driven, professional women navigating divorce, helping them do the one thing that sounds simple but rarely is: keep moving forward, one manageable step at a time.What makes this conversation so useful is how practical it gets, without ever losing sight of the emotional reality underneath. Kristina walks Olivia through five field-tested strategies for staying grounded when divorce feels like too much at once — starting with the idea that emotional processing and logistical tasks are two entirely different kinds of work, and trying to do them in the same breath is often what makes divorce feel paralyzing. She talks about the power of asking a smaller question — not “how will I get through this entire divorce,” but “what are the next three steps I can take this week” — and introduces the concept of a weekly “divorce CEO hour,” one contained block of time to handle correspondence, paperwork, and decisions so the rest of the week doesn't have to be spent in reactive mode. She also makes the case for gathering information before making big, permanent-feeling decisions, and for regulating your nervous system before you even open that email from your attorney. As Kristina puts it, divorce isn't just about leaving something behind — it's about learning how to move toward something else.For anyone in the thick of a divorce right now, wondering how they're supposed to hold down a job, parent their kids, and manage an attorney relationship without falling apart, this episode offers something rare: a clear, doable framework instead of vague reassurance. Kristina's background gives her a unique lens on this — someone who has led teams through crisis for a living, and who also knows what it feels like to be the one who needs steadying. Listeners will walk away with two immediate, actionable shifts: separate your emotional processing time from your logistical tasks, and stop trying to solve the whole divorce today — just find your next three steps. It's a conversation about permission as much as strategy: permission to slow down, to take this one piece at a time, and to trust that steady, small steps are still forward motion.🔗 Check out Fresh Starts Registry:The first & only divorce registry + support platform ➡ https://www.freshstartsregistry.com/📱 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/freshstartsregistry/📘 Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/FreshStartsRegistry🎙 Podcast IG: https://www.instagram.com/divorcehappenspod/📬 Magazine: https://divorceguidemagazine.com/💛 The Divorce Happens Community: https://divorcehappens.substack.com/

You did the hardest thing you've ever done — you left. And somehow, that's not where the guilt ends; for so many divorced moms, it's where a whole new kind of guilt begins. If you've ever lain awake wondering how you can call yourself a good mother when your kids are still living, at least part-time, inside the very dynamic you found the strength to walk away from, this episode of Divorce Happens is for you. Olivia sits down with Lyerly Spongberg, a Certified ADR Divorce Coach, Pre-Mediation Coach, and Co-Parenting Specialist and founder of Step Up With Lyerly, for an honest, nuanced conversation about one of the most under-discussed emotional realities of co-parenting after divorce: the guilt of getting out when your children didn't.Spongberg brings more than professional training to this conversation — she brings twenty-plus years of lived experience, having divorced in her thirties and later rebuilt a blended family of six children as a stepmother to four. That dual perspective, expert and survivor, shapes everything she offers here, starting with a distinction she says changes the way divorced parents talk to themselves: guilt is “I did something bad,” while shame is “I am bad.” Divorce guilt and co-parenting shame, she explains, are not the same weight to carry, and untangling them is often the first real step toward healing. From there, the conversation moves into concrete territory — how to steady yourself and your children during the disorienting transition between homes, why building a small ritual (even something as simple as always baking cookies when the kids come home) can anchor a child through change, and why resisting the urge to defend yourself against a co-parent's bad-mouthing is, paradoxically, one of the most powerful things you can do for your credibility in your children's eyes.What makes this episode so reassuring is its honesty about time. Olivia shares her own story — her children were three and five when she divorced, and it wasn't until they were thirteen and ten that she noticed she'd stopped bracing every time her ex reached out. Spongberg echoes that truth for listeners in the thick of it now: the triggering feeling does soften, high-conflict co-parenting doesn't stay high-conflict forever, and children are far more resilient — and far more attuned to who you really are — than guilt convinces you they are. Listeners walk away with two grounding takeaways: give yourself permission to protect your own peace during your parenting time off, because a regulated parent is a safer parent to come home to; and remember, in Spongberg's own closing words, that grief is not the same thing as failure. If you're carrying guilt about a decision you know, deep down, was the right one, this conversation offers both the clinical language and the human permission to finally put some of that guilt down.🔗 Check out Fresh Starts Registry:The first & only divorce registry + support platform ➡ https://www.freshstartsregistry.com/📱 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/freshstartsregistry/📘 Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/FreshStartsRegistry🎙 Podcast IG: https://www.instagram.com/divorcehappenspod/📬 Magazine: https://divorceguidemagazine.com/💛 The Divorce Happens Community: https://divorcehappens.substack.com/

A listener wrote to me this week with a confession she was mortified to even type out: her marriage is over, she's made her decision, she doesn't even like the man her husband has become — and she keeps having sex dreams about him that leave her waking up ashamed. In this solo episode of Divorce Happens, I tell her, and every one of you sitting with the same quiet secret, exactly what I wish someone had told me: nothing is wrong with you. Attraction and respect run on two completely different systems, and being finished with a marriage doesn't mean your body got the memo on the same timeline as your mind.What follows is a close, compassionate look at why the nervous system doesn't operate on decisions — it operates on repetition. Years of a specific voice, a specific smell, the rhythm of someone next to you at night get wired in far below the part of the brain that files paperwork and calls it done. I share my own experience of feeling disgusted with myself for a night my body “missed” my ex, and how I eventually understood I wasn't grieving him, I was grieving familiarity — a distinction that changes everything about how you treat yourself during divorce recovery. This episode reframes a common but rarely discussed part of starting over after divorce: wanting a body you don't want a life with, and realizing that contradiction is human, not broken.This episode is ultimately about self-compassion and timeline. I offer two concrete tools: naming the feeling out loud as fact rather than confession (“my body remembers him, that doesn't mean I want him back”), and choosing real distance over white-knuckled discipline, since distance gives the nervous system room to actually recalibrate. For anyone deep in divorce recovery who feels ashamed of grieving someone they're relieved to be leaving, this episode offers both scientific clarity and real permission — and a reminder that healing after divorce was never going to move in a straight line.🔗 Check out Fresh Starts Registry:The first & only divorce registry + support platform ➡ https://www.freshstartsregistry.com/📱 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/freshstartsregistry/📘 Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/FreshStartsRegistry🎙 Podcast IG: https://www.instagram.com/divorcehappenspod/📬 Magazine: https://divorceguidemagazine.com/💛 The Divorce Happens Community: https://divorcehappens.substack.com/

You know the feeling before you’ve even read the words. The phone buzzes, you see who it’s from, and your whole body braces — shoulders up, stomach tight, heart already pounding. A text from your co-parent. An email from your attorney dropped into the middle of an ordinary Tuesday. And just like that, the day you were having is gone. In this episode of Divorce Happens, Olivia sits down with Fresh Starts expert Laura Lorber, J.D. — a family mediator and parenting coordinator who has built her entire practice around these exact moments. Laura mediates parenting plans for the Los Angeles courts, is trained in mindfulness and conflict resolution, and is the rare professional who is genuinely comfortable working at the edges of the hardest cases: high-conflict co-parenting, substance use, and past domestic violence. As Olivia puts it, divorce is “ninety-nine percent triggering conversations” — and this is the episode about how to actually survive them.What makes the conversation so disarming is that it is both deeply practical and rooted in real neuroscience. Laura walks through her “seventy-two-hour rule”: a single triggering message floods your system with cortisol, and it can take up to three days before your thinking brain comes fully back online. So why, she asks, would you fire off a reply when the logical part of your brain has literally left the building? Her permission-giving reframe lands like a key turning in a lock — you can respond, “I received your communication and will get back to you by this day, at this time,” fulfill the court order, and set the message down. From there she teaches the tools she gives her own clients for emotional regulation after divorce: siloing every divorce communication into one dedicated email or co-parenting app with notifications off, belly breathing you can practice at a red light, and the “name it to tame it” exercise that moves you from raw feeling (“I’m angry”) to real clarity (“I feel disempowered — so what do I actually need?”). She even shares Dan Siegel’s hand model of the brain, the unforgettable image of “flipping your lid” the moment conflict hijacks you.Underneath every tip is one quiet, powerful mindset shift: you are the one who chooses when to engage — it is not the other way around. That single reframe is what turns a triggering text from an ambush into something you can hold, name, and answer on your own terms. And the beauty of these tools is that they travel: they work with a high-conflict ex, a combative attorney, a difficult boss, anyone who knows how to push your buttons. For the days when the conflict feels too tangled to untangle alone, Laura also pulls back the curtain on what mediators and parenting coordinators actually do — how they step in when communication breaks down, when a parenting plan stops working, or when a case has simply become too high-conflict to move forward. Whether you are newly separated or years into co-parenting, this episode is a hug and a toolkit at once: real, grounded support for anyone learning to communicate calmly, protect their peace, and reclaim their power in life after divorce.🔗 Check out Fresh Starts Registry:The first & only divorce registry + support platform ➡ https://www.freshstartsregistry.com/📱 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/freshstartsregistry/📘 Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/FreshStartsRegistry🎙 Podcast IG: https://www.instagram.com/divorcehappenspod/📬 Magazine: https://divorceguidemagazine.com/💛 The Divorce Happens Community: https://divorcehappens.substack.com/

Most people think divorce begins with paperwork. Leslie Mathews will tell you it actually begins in your nervous system. In this candid, deeply practical episode of Divorce Happens, Olivia sits down with Leslie Mathews, JD, MSW, a former attorney turned therapist, mindfulness coach, and founder of The LooM Life and LooM Life Therapy.Leslie brings a rare combination of expertise to the conversation: a law degree, a master's in social work, and her own lived experience of divorce, which she says taught her exactly what was missing from her process, and exactly what she now builds into every program she offers women navigating separation and starting over after divorce.At the heart of Leslie's work is a truth most divorcing people never hear until it's too late: high-stakes conversations about money, custody, and separation can trigger the nervous system into freeze, and freeze can mean walking out of a meeting with no memory of what you just agreed to. Leslie has watched clients make life-altering decisions in a room full of people and retain nothing about it, and she now teaches nervous system regulation and dissociation awareness as the foundation of divorce preparation, before a single conversation about alimony or custody even happens.From there, the work moves into attachment styles and trauma bonds, naming the disorienting experience of craving a spouse you can't stand, and into grief work for the parts of life divorce quietly takes with it: the extended family, the favorite restaurants, the whole ecosystem you didn't realize you'd lose. She even makes space for reclaiming pleasure and libido post-divorce, treating self-connection as both healing and protective against reconnecting with an ex out of loneliness.What makes this episode so hopeful is Leslie's own hard-won clarity: divorce may be one of the worst things you go through, but she promises that life on the other side gets shockingly good, and that the self-awareness built during the process isn't wasted, it's the foundation for everything that comes next. Listeners walk away with two concrete takeaways: first, that preparing your nervous system before high-conflict meetings is just as important as preparing your case, and second, that noticing your reactions with curiosity, rather than shame, is what actually changes the outcome.Whether you're weighing whether to leave, mid-process, or newly divorced and trying to figure out who you are now, this conversation offers real tools for healing after divorce and rebuilding identity on the other side.🔗 Check out Fresh Starts Registry:The first & only divorce registry + support platform ➡ https://www.freshstartsregistry.com/📱 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/freshstartsregistry/📘 Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/FreshStartsRegistry🎙 Podcast IG: https://www.instagram.com/divorcehappenspod/📬 Magazine: https://divorceguidemagazine.com/💛 The Divorce Happens Community: https://divorcehappens.substack.com/

In this solo episode of Divorce Happens, Olivia reads a piece from her personal writing Substack, The Happenstance, called "The Hidden Cost of Having a Husband." It's a reflection on domestic inequity — the invisible labor that piles up in a marriage even when a task only needs one person to do it.Olivia shares her own story, including the time she broke her foot and still had to keep the household running. It's honest, a little funny, and gets at something a lot of women feel but rarely say out loud.This piece originally ran on The Happenstance. Follow along at oliviahowell.substack.com for more essays like this one.

What if the single biggest predictor of how your kids come through your divorce has almost nothing to do with the divorce itself? That's the question at the heart of this episode of Divorce Happens, where Olivia sits down with Maria Natapov, a BeH2O® Certified Co-Parenting Coach, Rapid Resolution Therapy® Facilitator, and founder of Synergistic Stepparenting. Maria has spent years helping divorcing and divorced parents move from reacting to responding, and she brings something rare to this conversation: the lived experience of a child of divorce and a stepparent, paired with the clinical grounding of a family systems coach who has watched, up close, what actually determines whether kids come out of co-parenting resilient or overwhelmed.Maria's central insight reframes everything: it isn't separation itself that shapes a child's long-term wellbeing, it's their ongoing exposure to parental conflict — the frequency, duration, and intensity of it. Through her signature BeH2O® framework, Maria helps parents build an internal operating system for co-parenting after divorce, likening the process to building muscle at the gym rather than waiting for a court date or a milestone to magically deliver peace. She's also candid about the limits of simply "being nice." Many of the parents she works with are seasoned over-functioners running on an internal pressure cooker — anticipating everyone's needs, absorbing everyone's emotions, and quietly burning out, until the pressure finds its way out anyway, often at the expense of the very kids they're trying to protect.Where this episode offers real hope is in what Maria says comes next: parents who commit to the work report they stop replaying conversations late at night, stop feeling responsible for managing everyone else's emotions, and start setting boundaries without guilt — changes that ripple directly into how safe and steady their kids feel. Listeners walk away with two clear, actionable shifts: first, that co-parenting peace is built through consistent, repeatable patterns rather than a single finish line, and second, Maria's simple reframe for high-conflict moments — what kind of parent do you want your child to remember, and what would it take to be that person today? For anyone navigating co-parenting after divorce, blended family stress, or single parenting on the other side of separation, this conversation offers a genuinely usable place to start.🔗 Check out Fresh Starts Registry:The first & only divorce registry + support platform ➡ https://www.freshstartsregistry.com/📱 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/freshstartsregistry/📘 Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/FreshStartsRegistry🎙 Podcast IG: https://www.instagram.com/divorcehappenspod/📬 Magazine: https://divorceguidemagazine.com/💛 The Divorce Happens Community: https://divorcehappens.substack.com/

You survived the divorce. Then your kid turns thirteen, and a new bill you never quite planned for starts looming on the horizon: college. In this practical, reassuring episode of Divorce Happens, Olivia sits down with Vicki Vollweiler, MBA, CDC, the founder and CEO of College Financial Prep and author of College Planning for Divorced and Widowed Parents. Vicki built her practice specifically around separated, divorced, remarried, and widowed families after years of working as a certified divorce coach, when clients kept asking her the same question: how am I possibly going to afford college as a divorced parent? As a divorced mom herself, currently guiding her own daughter through the college search, Vicki brings both firsthand experience and deep technical expertise to a topic most divorced families don't realize they need to plan for years in advance.The heart of this episode is a financial aid distinction most parents have never heard of, and one that can cost or save a family tens of thousands of dollars: the difference between the FAFSA, which typically considers one household's finances, and the CSS Profile, used by many selective schools, which often wants information from both biological parents and their new spouses, meaning a blended family could suddenly be reporting four incomes instead of one. Vicki walks through the hidden costs that catch divorced families off guard, from test fees and application fees to campus visits and tutoring, and the fee waivers available to offset them. She's equally candid about the emotional layer underneath the spreadsheets: co-parents often carry different values and different definitions of "the best school for my child," and neither is wrong, but those differences need to be named and discussed long before decision letters arrive.What makes this episode so hopeful is Vicki's reminder that this process doesn't have to be adversarial or lonely. Listeners walk away with two clear, actionable takeaways: first, to check whether college is even addressed in their divorce agreement, and if it isn't, to start that conversation with their co-parent now, ideally years before senior year, since tax returns from tenth and eleventh grade can shape a family's first financial aid award; and second, to loop in the wider support system, whether that's grandparents, aunts, uncles, or family friends, to help make campus visits and the college search feel like a gift instead of a burden. For any divorced or divorcing parent staring down the cost of college, this conversation offers real clarity, real savings strategies, and genuine reassurance that this milestone can still be joyful.🔗 Check out Fresh Starts Registry:The first & only divorce registry + support platform ➡ https://www.freshstartsregistry.com/📱 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/freshstartsregistry/📘 Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/FreshStartsRegistry🎙 Podcast IG: https://www.instagram.com/divorcehappenspod/📬 Magazine: https://divorceguidemagazine.com/💛 The Divorce Happens Community: https://divorcehappens.substack.com/

What if the way back to yourself started with getting your head under water? That's the question at the heart of this episode of Divorce Happens, where Olivia talks with Kate Washington — a Sacramento-based writer, former dining critic, and author of two deeply personal memoirs: Already Toast: Caregiving and Burnout in America, and her brand-new release, Midstream: A Life Remade in 50 Swims. Kate's byline has appeared in the New York Times, Time, and HuffPost, but this conversation isn't about her résumé. It's about the year she turned a personal challenge — swim in fifty different bodies of water before her fiftieth birthday — into the roadmap for finally leaving a twenty-three-year marriage that had quietly hollowed her out.Kate's story complicates the narrative around divorce and caregiving in exactly the way this show exists to do. For years, she was the primary caregiver not only for her two daughters but for her then-husband through a severe cancer diagnosis — carrying, as she puts it, the vast bulk of the mental load in a marriage that was quietly draining her. The 50 Dunks Project started as something playful, a way to reclaim the joy and childhood wonder she'd lost somewhere along the way. But immersing herself, literally, in rivers, hot springs, and the waters of southern France became something more: a practice of embodiment, presence, and boundary-setting in a life that had none. Kate shares the test that ultimately helped her decide to separate — asking herself whether she'd tell her own daughter to stay in a marriage like hers — and speaks candidly about the guilt of choosing divorce while her ex-husband was still chronically ill, and the very real grief her daughters carried alongside her.The episode closes on the note this show always returns to: divorce is not the crisis it's made out to be — it's often the exit from one. Kate's final swim, on her fiftieth birthday, with both daughters at her favorite spot on the South Yuba River, becomes a quiet, hard-won reconciliation after years of pain neither of them chose. Her message to anyone circling the decision to leave an unhappy marriage is direct: the freedom on the other side comes sooner than you'd think, and it is worth it. Listeners will walk away with two practical takeaways for starting over after divorce — a simple gut-check question for evaluating whether a marriage is serving you, and a reminder that reclaiming joy, in almost any small form, is never a frivolous first step toward midlife reinvention.🔗 Check out Fresh Starts Registry:The first & only divorce registry + support platform ➡ https://www.freshstartsregistry.com/📱 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/freshstartsregistry/📘 Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/FreshStartsRegistry🎙 Podcast IG: https://www.instagram.com/divorcehappenspod/📬 Magazine: https://divorceguidemagazine.com/💛 The Divorce Happens Community: https://divorcehappens.substack.com/

Somewhere in your divorce, a well-meaning friend has probably told you to "hire a shark." Lisa Lisser wants you to pause before you do. In this grounding, clarifying episode of Divorce Happens, Olivia welcomes back one of the show's most beloved recurring experts: Lisa Lisser, a Certified Divorce Coach®, BeH2O® Child-Centered Co-Parenting Coach, and founder of LZL Coaching.A retired attorney who built a career in litigation before becoming a divorce coach, Lisa brings a rare blend of legal fluency, lived experience of her own divorce, and spiritual grounding to a conversation about something most divorcing people never slow down long enough to find: clarity.Lisa's signature framework, divorce clarity, starts from a simple but radical idea: before you can make good decisions during divorce, you have to get honest about your values, and that requires pausing instead of reacting. She walks through what she calls "the pause for clarity," a moment to ask where am I right now, what am I feeling, and what's the fear underneath the fear, before the nervous system's fight, flight, freeze, or fawn response takes the wheel. From there, she introduces "strategic curiosity": the practice of asking the questions divorcing people are often too afraid or too overwhelmed to ask, whether that's what does hiring a shark attorney actually mean for my case, or who can answer my questions about qualifying for a mortgage on my own. Lisa is candid that she didn't ask enough questions during her own divorce, and that she now builds her entire coaching practice around helping clients avoid that same regret.What makes this episode so reassuring is Lisa's insistence that clarity is buildable, even for someone in the most heartbroken, spiraling phase of divorce, one pause, one breath, one question at a time. Listeners walk away with two clear, actionable tools: first, the pause for clarity itself, a simple nervous-system reset to use before any high-stakes conversation or decision; and second, a challenge to name their own top three to five values as a compass for who they want to be, both during the divorce process and in the life that comes after it. For anyone navigating divorce fog, decision paralysis, or the pressure to react fast instead of think clearly, this conversation offers a genuinely calming, practical place to start.🔗 Check out Fresh Starts Registry:The first & only divorce registry + support platform ➡ https://www.freshstartsregistry.com/📱 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/freshstartsregistry/📘 Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/FreshStartsRegistry🎙 Podcast IG: https://www.instagram.com/divorcehappenspod/📬 Magazine: https://divorceguidemagazine.com/💛 The Divorce Happens Community: https://divorcehappens.substack.com/

Everybody talks about how to say the words. Almost nobody talks about the bathroom-floor hours right after. In the final episode of this Divorce Happens series, host Olivia Howell goes straight to the moment listeners rarely hear addressed anywhere else: you've just told your spouse you want a divorce, the words are out and can't be taken back, and instead of feeling free, you feel shaky, numb, and quietly confused about why relief hasn't arrived. Olivia meets that exact feeling head-on, with a single, steadying message — you did the hard thing, and you just moved through one of the biggest moments of your entire life.What makes this closing episode so validating is the plain, physiological explanation Olivia offers for that floaty, unrelieved feeling. Even a conversation that goes “well” floods the nervous system, she explains, because the body doesn't distinguish between brave and dangerous — it just registers overwhelm. From there, she hands listeners real permission: no rule says logistics have to start today, no lawyer has to be called tonight, and tending to the body first — a walk, slower breathing, a phone call to the right friend — isn't a detour from being productive, it's what actually makes every next decision clearer. She also offers grounded scripts for a spouse who keeps circling back to relitigate the conversation, along with permission to withhold details on logistics until they've had time to think.As the finale of the full series, this episode closes with something larger than a single conversation: the reminder that the goal was never to do any of this perfectly or fearlessly, only honestly — and that listeners already did that. The actionable takeaway is small and deliberately doable: text one trusted person three words, do one thing that grounds you, and let yourself rest, because the logistics will still be there tomorrow. For anyone at the start of divorce recovery, this episode offers the exhale the rest of the series was building toward, along with a clear invitation to let other people, including a therapist or coach, help carry what comes next.🔗 Check out Fresh Starts Registry:The first & only divorce registry + support platform ➡ https://www.freshstartsregistry.com/📱 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/freshstartsregistry/📘 Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/FreshStartsRegistry🎙 Podcast IG: https://www.instagram.com/divorcehappenspod/📬 Magazine: https://divorceguidemagazine.com/💛 The Divorce Happens Community: https://divorcehappens.substack.com/

For so many people preparing to leave a marriage, saying the words was never the scariest part — it's everything that might happen the second after. In part three of this Divorce Happens series, host Olivia Howell goes straight at that fear: what if they rage? What if they cry and beg and I cave? What if they twist this until somehow I'm the villain? Olivia hands listeners the single reframe she wants them to carry into that room — a spouse's reaction reveals how they feel, not what the listener is obligated to do. Those two things get blurred together after years of marriage, and pulling them apart is the real work of this episode.What makes this episode so grounding is how specifically Olivia names the nervous system response underneath the fear. That overwhelming urge to explain yourself for hours isn't weakness, she explains — it's a body that has spent years learning to manage a partner's feelings to keep the peace, and naming that pattern out loud is what lets someone feel the pull without obeying it. From there, she offers real, calm scripts for the specific reactions listeners dread most: anger, accusations of selfishness, begging and tears, and attempts to reopen the decision as a debate — each one paired with a steady sentence designed to hold a boundary without escalating the moment.The episode closes with its most serious and most important note: if a spouse's reaction moves into threats, intimidation, or manipulation, listeners are allowed to end the conversation completely, without guilt or further explanation, and lean on support rather than try to tough it out alone. Olivia repeats the National Domestic Violence Hotline as a resource to keep close, free and confidential, for anyone who feels unsafe in that moment. For anyone deep in the fear of the reaction stage of divorce, this episode offers real language, real permission, and the reminder that they are stronger than this one conversation — with the next episode addressing the quiet, disorienting after.🔗 Check out Fresh Starts Registry:The first & only divorce registry + support platform ➡ https://www.freshstartsregistry.com/📱 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/freshstartsregistry/📘 Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/FreshStartsRegistry🎙 Podcast IG: https://www.instagram.com/divorcehappenspod/📬 Magazine: https://divorceguidemagazine.com/💛 The Divorce Happens Community: https://divorcehappens.substack.com/

There's a particular kind of freeze that happens after someone finally decides to end their marriage — not doubt, just a total blank when they try to imagine the actual words. In part two of this Divorce Happens series, host Olivia Howell meets listeners exactly there, at the moment between the decision and the sentence. She opens with something disarmingly honest: there is no perfect sentence that makes this stop hurting. What listeners are actually looking for isn't flawless, it's true — something they can get through without falling apart. From there, she hands over real, usable scripts for finally telling a spouse you want a divorce.What makes this episode so useful is the range of real situations Olivia scripts for, not just one generic template. She offers a clear, no-blame opener for the conversation itself, a version for when love and the decision to leave coexist in the same breath, a co-parent-centered script that keeps kids steady without weaponizing them, and a firmer close-the-door version for anyone whose spouse has historically talked them out of their own decisions. Underneath every script is the same quiet architecture: name the decision, stay out of blame, and resist the urge to over-explain — because long justifications don't create understanding, she reminds listeners, they create arguments.The episode closes with the instruction Olivia says matters most: practice out loud. Reading a script silently isn't the same as hearing it in your own voice, and rehearsing to a mirror, a trusted friend, or a steering wheel in the driveway lets the shake happen in private, so the real moment can be steadier. For anyone deep in the emotional work of starting over after divorce, this episode offers something rare — permission to prepare, and real words to borrow until they sound like your own, with the next episode promising support for what happens after the words are said.🔗 Check out Fresh Starts Registry:The first & only divorce registry + support platform ➡ https://www.freshstartsregistry.com/📱 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/freshstartsregistry/📘 Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/FreshStartsRegistry🎙 Podcast IG: https://www.instagram.com/divorcehappenspod/📬 Magazine: https://divorceguidemagazine.com/💛 The Divorce Happens Community: https://divorcehappens.substack.com/

There is one conversation that so many people preparing to leave a marriage dread more than the lawyers, more than the logistics, more than dividing up a house: actually telling their spouse they want a divorce. In this episode of Divorce Happens, the first in a new four-part series, host Olivia Howell opens with a single reframe that changes the entire shape of that conversation — you are not asking for permission. If you've arrived at the decision to end your marriage, you get to name it as a decision, not a request you're hoping will be granted. This episode is Olivia's guide to the quiet, private work that has to happen before a single word is spoken out loud.What makes this episode essential listening is how directly it treats this moment as both emotional and safety-sensitive. Olivia walks through getting clear with yourself first — not your spouse — by sitting with honest questions about certainty and hoped-for outcomes. Then she turns, without flinching, to something most divorce content skips entirely: the possibility that this conversation isn't safe for everyone. She names the specific warning signs worth taking seriously — a history of rage, control, monitoring, or fear around money — and offers the National Domestic Violence Hotline as a resource to keep close no matter where a listener is on this road, making clear that no one needs to feel certain they “qualify” for support before reaching out.The episode closes with real permission and one small, doable step. Olivia reminds listeners that timing matters, that they don't owe their spouse a full map of every detail, and that “I'm still figuring that out” is a complete and honest sentence. The actionable takeaway is simple: write down, in your own words, the one sentence at the center of this decision — “I've made the decision to end our marriage” — and notice what your body does when you read it back. For anyone in the early, terrifying stage of deciding to divorce, this episode offers both a script for self-clarity and a steady hand, with the next episode promising the actual words for opening the conversation itself.🔗 Check out Fresh Starts Registry:The first & only divorce registry + support platform ➡ https://www.freshstartsregistry.com/📱 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/freshstartsregistry/📘 Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/FreshStartsRegistry🎙 Podcast IG: https://www.instagram.com/divorcehappenspod/📬 Magazine: https://divorceguidemagazine.com/💛 The Divorce Happens Community: https://divorcehappens.substack.com/

There's a sentence I hear from listeners more than almost any other, and it usually starts the same way: “I don't know if this even counts as a big deal.” In this solo episode of Divorce Happens, I read one of those letters on air — from a listener whose ex spent years making jokes about her weight, her job, the way she loaded the dishwasher, then dismissed every objection with the same four words: “I'm just kidding, why are you so sensitive?” If you've heard that line aimed at you, or caught yourself saying it to someone else, this episode is for you.What follows is a close look at contempt — the eye-rolling, mocking, condescending pattern that relationship researchers consistently identify as one of the strongest predictors of divorce, stronger than how often a couple argues or even what they argue about. I walk through what separates ordinary marital friction from a genuine pattern of emotional abuse hiding behind humor, why “just kidding” so often functions as a way to make you responsible for someone else's cruelty, and why the slow accumulation of these moments can quietly erode a person's trust in their own perception long before it ends a marriage.This episode is ultimately about permission — permission to trust that what hurt actually hurt, without building a legal case or winning an argument about whether it “counts.” For anyone in the middle of divorce recovery or just starting over after divorce, I offer a concrete mindset shift: the absence of contempt is something you'll feel in your body before you can name it, and that quiet, punchline-free peace is not nothing — it's what respect actually feels like. I also share one simple thing to watch for while dating again: how someone talks about people who aren't in the room.🔗 Check out Fresh Starts Registry:The first & only divorce registry + support platform ➡ https://www.freshstartsregistry.com/📱 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/freshstartsregistry/📘 Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/FreshStartsRegistry🎙 Podcast IG: https://www.instagram.com/divorcehappenspod/📬 Magazine: https://divorceguidemagazine.com/💛The Divorce Happens Community: https://divorcehappens.substack.com/

There's a version of divorce we talk about a lot — the heartbreak, the grief, the legal logistics — and then there's the version almost nobody prepares you for: the sheer, relentless awkwardness of it. In this solo episode of Divorce Happens, host Olivia Howell turns her attention to the strange, small, almost comedic moments that fill the space between the big milestones of divorce. The Target run-in with someone who knew you as a wife. The invitation addressed to both of you by accident. The insurance card that still has his name on it. Olivia makes the case that naming how genuinely weird this process is — not just how painful — is its own form of relief for anyone living through it.Olivia walks listeners through the specific textures of post-divorce awkwardness: the exhausting social corrections of learning to say "my ex" like a new language, the administrative unwinding of a life built around an "us" that no longer exists, and the quiet strangeness of moving through your own home like an archaeologist of a life you used to have. She also names something rarely talked about in divorce recovery spaces — the awkwardness of joy. The guilt that can show up when you catch yourself laughing too loudly, sleeping diagonally across the bed, or feeling a flash of peace you're not sure you're allowed to keep. Olivia's insight here is a powerful one: freedom can arrive wearing the same shoes as grief, and relief and sadness are allowed to live in the same body on the same day.What makes this episode so validating is its permission to laugh, wince, and exhale all at once. Olivia's core takeaway is that divorce isn't one big dramatic ending — it's hundreds of tiny, weird, unglamorous endings, and starting over after divorce happens quietly, in ordinary places, not in a single cinematic moment. For anyone navigating the social awkwardness of divorce, the identity shifts, or the surprising guilt of feeling okay again, this episode offers real comfort: you're not doing it wrong, and the strangeness you're feeling is simply part of how a new life begins.🔗 Check out Fresh Starts Registry:The first & only divorce registry + support platform ➡ https://www.freshstartsregistry.com/📱 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/freshstartsregistry/📘 Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/FreshStartsRegistry🎙 Podcast IG: https://www.instagram.com/divorcehappenspod/📬 Magazine: https://divorceguidemagazine.com/💛 The Divorce Happens Community: https://divorcehappens.substack.com/

There's a specific kind of relief that comes from finally having a name for something you've lived inside for years without being able to explain it. In this solo episode of Divorce Happens, host Olivia Howell gives that name to a dynamic so many listeners will recognize instantly: weaponized incompetence. Not a partner who's simply bad at laundry or forgetful about pediatrician appointments — but a pattern of consistent, strategic underperformance that trains the other partner to just take over, permanently, while the underperforming partner maintains complete deniability. Olivia makes the case that this isn't incompetence at all. It's a strategy for opting out of the labor of a shared life, and it deserves to be named as clearly as any other form of control.Olivia walks through exactly how this dynamic feels to live inside — the exhaustion of being the only functioning adult in a two-adult household, the resentment that builds so slowly it goes unnoticed until it's overwhelming, and the particularly insidious self-doubt that creeps in when "you're just the capable one" starts to feel like a compliment instead of the trap it actually is. She's direct about why this qualifies as control even though it never looks aggressive or dramatic: when one partner successfully opts out of shared labor, they gain time, freedom, and rest — and the other partner loses exactly those things. That transfer isn't accidental, and it isn't neutral, even when it's dressed up as "that's just how he is."What makes this episode land is the permission Olivia gives listeners to stop doubting what they lived through. Her core message: the exhaustion was real, the resentment was earned, and the inability to point to one dramatic incident doesn't mean the pattern wasn't happening. Her actionable takeaway is a reframe — from "I'm just the capable one" to "I was maneuvered into carrying everything" — and an invitation to release a role that was never a fixed truth about who you are. Whether you're untangling this dynamic from a past marriage or recognizing it in real time, this episode offers language, validation, and a clear-eyed path toward relationships where the labor is actually shared.🔗 Check out Fresh Starts Registry:The first & only divorce registry + support platform ➡ https://www.freshstartsregistry.com/📱 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/freshstartsregistry/📘 Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/FreshStartsRegistry🎙 Podcast IG: https://www.instagram.com/divorcehappenspod/📬 Magazine: https://divorceguidemagazine.com/💛 The Divorce Happens Community: https://divorcehappens.substack.com/

There's a particular kind of exhaustion that comes from living inside a marriage you've stopped questioning — not because it's fine, but because you've explained it to yourself so many times that the explanations have started to feel like truth. In this solo episode of Divorce Happens, Olivia Howell turns her attention to one of the quietest forces behind unhappy marriages and delayed divorces: normalization. Not the big, dramatic ruptures that make for tidy divorce stories, but the slow, invisible erosion of patterns so many people live inside for years without ever calling them what they are.Olivia walks through five of the most common things we normalize in marriage — and why each one matters more than we tend to admit. She starts with contempt disguised as humor, the mockery and dismissiveness wrapped in "I'm just kidding," and points to relationship research showing contempt, not conflict, as one of the strongest predictors of divorce. From there she names the invisible mental load carried by one partner, the way emotional unavailability gets excused as a personality trait, and the particularly insidious pattern of being made to feel like the problem every time you raise a concern. She closes with the ache of loneliness inside a marriage — the experience, more common than most people realize, of feeling completely alone while technically not being alone at all.What makes this episode land isn't just the naming of these patterns — it's the permission Olivia gives listeners to see their own marriage clearly, without guilt and without building a case against anyone. Her core takeaway: normalizing something doesn't make it okay, it just makes it invisible, and understanding your own experience fully is what allows you to make different choices going forward. Whether you're contemplating divorce, in the middle of one, or years into rebuilding, this episode offers the kind of clarity that turns hindsight into self-trust — and a reminder that you deserved better then, and you deserve better now.🔗 Check out Fresh Starts Registry:The first & only divorce registry + support platform ➡ https://www.freshstartsregistry.com/📱 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/freshstartsregistry/📘 Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/FreshStartsRegistry🎙 Podcast IG: https://www.instagram.com/divorcehappenspod/📬 Magazine: https://divorceguidemagazine.com/

Most women don’t wake up one morning and announce a divorce. They spend months — often years — in the quiet space of knowing, where a gut feeling won’t go away but guilt over the kids and fear about money keep the words stuck in their throat. In this candid, galvanizing episode of Divorce Happens, Olivia Howell sits down with divorce coach and award-winning journalist Amy Polacko to talk about what to do in exactly that space: the quiet divorce plan every woman needs before she says a single word. Through the lens of Belle Burden’s viral memoir Strangers — the stay-at-home mom whose hedge-fund husband pulled the rug out from under her idyllic life — Amy and Olivia name a hard truth women are rarely warned about: the financial vulnerability that comes with building your life around someone else’s career.What makes Amy’s guidance land is that it is strategic without being cynical. Her north star for clients is simple and steadying: plan for the worst and work toward the best. You are not manipulative or evil for protecting yourself, she insists — you are being the CEO of your own divorce. The actionable heart of the episode is preparation you can begin quietly and safely: build your team before you announce anything, and start gathering your financial documents — tax returns, bank statements, retirement accounts, insurance policies, credit card statements, business records. Amy’s reporter instincts shine here. Even women experiencing financial abuse, who don’t control the accounts, know more than they think they know; jotting disparate details in a notebook (the old Fidelity account, the inheritance, the bank that “disappeared”) becomes powerful ammunition your attorney can pursue in discovery. And anything that touches moving money or assets, she’s clear, belongs in a conversation with your attorney and a certified divorce financial analyst first.The conversation never loses its humanity. Amy and Olivia talk about the trap of the “nice girl” who so badly wants an amicable divorce that she forgets to protect herself, the way a once-generous partner can change the moment it becomes “his” money, and the quiet courage it takes to put even one toe out the door. For anyone not yet ready, Amy offers a gentle on-ramp — a single hour with a coach focused on your biggest crisis right now — and a tender emotional practice anyone can start today: journaling. Putting your experience on paper validates feelings that gaslighting tried to erase, and one day you’ll read it back and see how far you’ve come. This episode is a strategy session and a permission slip at once: you are allowed to prepare, you are allowed to protect yourself, and you don’t have to do any of it alone.🔗 Check out Fresh Starts Registry:The first & only divorce registry + support platform ➡ https://www.freshstartsregistry.com/📱 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/freshstartsregistry/📘 Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/FreshStartsRegistry🎙 Podcast IG: https://www.instagram.com/divorcehappenspod/📬 Magazine: https://divorceguidemagazine.com/

Nobody hands you a map for the in-between. You have decided to divorce — or you are circling the decision — and yet you are still sharing a kitchen, a hallway, maybe even a bedroom with the person you are in the biggest conflict of your life with. It is one of the most common and least talked-about chapters of the divorce journey, and in this grounding episode of Divorce Happens, host Olivia Howell sits down with divorce coach Lisa Lisser to name it out loud. Lisa is a retired attorney who practiced litigation in New York City, a CDC Certified Divorce Coach and child-centered co-parenting coach, a Jewish educator, a spiritual counselor, and the founder of LZL Coaching — and she is also a divorced mom of three who lived this exact season herself. She calls it the in-between: the narrow, uncertain space between being a married couple and being two separate people. “It is wanting certainty while living in uncertainty,” she says — and if you are cohabitating during divorce right now, you already know exactly how tight that jacket feels.What makes this conversation so useful is that Lisa does not leave you in the discomfort — she hands you a structure. She walks Olivia through four boundaries that help everyone in the household breathe: physical, parenting, financial, and emotional. The physical boundary is permission to claim your own space, whether that is a bedroom, a family room, or a corner of the basement, and her reframe lands hard: creating that space is not punishment, it is agency. You do not need anyone’s permission to exhale, to cry, to research, to simply close a door. The parenting boundary is a clear, child-readable schedule — who drives, who packs lunch, who handles pickup — because kids feel the weight of a changing house even when no one is fighting in front of them, and predictability is how they stay anchored. Threaded through it all is one of Lisa’s most tender insights, shared from her own honest hindsight: your children have the right to love both of you, and protecting them from the details is its own act of love.The financial boundary is about building a blueprint before anyone gets blindsided — agreeing on who pays what, who funds the account, and how the household runs while you are still under one roof — because, as Lisa puts it, divorce creates uncertainty, uncertainty creates anxiety, and money magnifies both. And the emotional boundary may be the one that ties it all together: when the person who used to be your support system is now the source of the stress, you have to build a new team. A coach, a therapist, a support group, the friends who can hold your story without a stake in it. Olivia and Lisa land on the throughline of the whole show — that the strongest, bravest thing you can do is ask for help, and that divorce was never meant to be carried alone. If you are surviving the in-between right now, this episode is a deep exhale and a real plan: gentle, pragmatic, and full of permission to get outside the box you have been living in.🔗 Check out Fresh Starts Registry:The first & only divorce registry + support platform ➡ https://www.freshstartsregistry.com/📱 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/freshstartsregistry/📘 Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/FreshStartsRegistry🎙 Podcast IG: https://www.instagram.com/divorcehappenspod/📬 Magazine: https://divorceguidemagazine.com/

You look up one day and realize you have no idea who you are anymore. Not because of one dramatic event. Not because of obvious abuse or a single catastrophic betrayal. Just because of time — accumulated compromise, the slow drift of putting someone else's needs, preferences, and comfort at the center of your life for so long that your own self quietly went missing. In this solo episode of Divorce Happens, Olivia Howell names something that gets almost no airtime in the divorce conversation: the slow erosion of self that can happen inside a long-term marriage. If you've ever stood in front of the mirror and not recognized the person looking back, this episode is for you.Here's the part that makes this kind of self-loss so hard to catch: it doesn't start as erosion — it starts as love. You meet someone, you build a life, you compromise, because that's what people in relationships do. You shape yourself around their schedule, their moods, their preferences. Maybe you move for their career and scale back your own. Maybe you stop seeing certain friends, start ordering what they like, watching what they want, going where they choose. Slowly, in ways so small they're almost invisible, you begin to disappear — and it rarely feels like loss while it's happening. It feels like being a good partner. Like flexibility. Like keeping the peace. Like love, because so many of us were taught that love means putting someone else first and that wanting things for yourself is selfish. So you keep going, and the longer the marriage, the deeper the erosion can go. By the time many people reach divorce after a long marriage, they don't just feel sad or angry or relieved — they feel disoriented. They can't answer basic questions about themselves anymore: What do I like? What do I want? What music do I actually enjoy when no one else is in the car? Those questions feel trivial. They are not. Olivia reframes them as the beginning of coming back to yourself.The most important truth in this episode is also the most freeing: losing yourself in a marriage does not mean you were weak or foolish. It means you were human, you loved someone, and you adapted — the way people do in long-term relationships. The real problem isn't that you compromised; it's when the compromising only ever went one direction, when you were the one who kept shrinking and accommodating while the relationship never asked the same in return. Naming that isn't about blame — it's about understanding what actually happened so you can consciously choose differently. And coming back to yourself starts genuinely small: noticing your own preferences again and taking them seriously, making one decision a day based purely on what you want, reconnecting with a hobby or friendship or part of your personality that went quiet. Sometimes it starts with grief and even anger over the years spent making yourself smaller — and that's not bitterness, it's reclamation. If you're navigating a long-term or gray divorce and wondering how to find yourself again, hold on to this: you were always in there. You just got buried for a while — and the fact that you're asking these questions means you're already on your way back.🔗 Check out Fresh Starts Registry:The first & only divorce registry + support platform ➡ https://www.freshstartsregistry.com/📱 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/freshstartsregistry/📘 Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/FreshStartsRegistry🎙 Podcast IG: https://www.instagram.com/divorcehappenspod/📬 Magazine: https://divorceguidemagazine.com/

Someone you love is going through a divorce, and you want to show up for them — you just have no idea how. This episode of Divorce Happens is for you: the friends, the sisters, the coworkers, and the neighbors who found out and froze, terrified of saying the wrong thing. Olivia Howell flips the usual script and talks not to the person in the divorce, but to the people who love them — and she opens with a relief so many supporters need to hear: the fact that you're even asking how to help already puts you ahead. The people who do the most damage aren't the ones who fumble their words; they're the ones who say nothing at all, who disappear because they're uncomfortable. If you're here trying to figure out how to support a friend going through divorce, you're already doing something right.The heart of this episode is a single freeing truth: you do not need the perfect words. When someone we love is in pain, we want to say the thing that fixes it — but divorce grief isn't fixable with words, and your friend doesn't need a solution. They need to feel less alone, and that's something you can give without having a single right answer. Olivia shares the simplest, most underused, most powerful sentence there is: “I don't know what to say, but I'm not going anywhere.” For someone whose deepest fear right now is being abandoned — by their partner, their social circle, the whole life they built — knowing you are not one of the people leaving is worth more than any advice. She's equally clear about what not to say: skip “I never liked them anyway” (it complicates their pain instead of validating it), skip “everything happens for a reason” and “you'll be so much better off” (true or not, it rushes them past grief they haven't finished feeling), and please don't make it about you — this is their moment to be held, not yours to fill.From there, Olivia gets refreshingly practical about what real support looks like. It looks like specificity — not “let me know if you need anything,” which dumps the burden back on someone running on empty, but “I'm bringing dinner Thursday, does six work?” It looks like consistency over time: everyone shows up the first week, but the loneliness is often loudest at the 30-day mark, the 90-day mark, and on what would have been their anniversary — so check in when the noise dies down. It looks like following their lead, asking whether they want to talk about it tonight or just eat takeout and watch something, and honoring whichever they need. And sometimes it's as simple as telling them: you are doing an incredible job, your kids are lucky to have you, and I see how hard you're working. Because being truly seen by even one person can make a brutal day survivable. The takeaway is one anyone can act on today: you don't have to have the right words — you just have to show up, again and again. That is what friendship looks like in the hard seasons, and it is enough.🔗 Check out Fresh Starts Registry:The first & only divorce registry + support platform ➡ https://www.freshstartsregistry.com/📱 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/freshstartsregistry/📘 Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/FreshStartsRegistry🎙 Podcast IG: https://www.instagram.com/divorcehappenspod/📬 Magazine: https://divorceguidemagazine.com/

Divorce grief might be the most misunderstood, most minimized, and most complicated grief there is — and the thing almost no one warns you about is that it doesn't follow the rules. In this solo episode of Divorce Happens, Olivia Howell takes on the quiet, disorienting experience of grieving a divorce: why it refuses to behave the way we expect grief to behave, and why that can make you feel like something is wrong with you when absolutely nothing is. We're all handed some version of the stages of grief — denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance — and we absorb the idea that grief has a shape, a direction, a tidy end. Divorce grief doesn't move like that. And as Olivia gently insists, the sooner we stop expecting it to, the more compassion we can offer ourselves when it doesn't.What makes divorce grief so different starts with a wrenching truth: you are grieving someone who is still alive. There's no funeral. There's no casserole on the doorstep. There's no moment where the world stops to acknowledge that you've lost something enormous — in fact, the person you're grieving might be texting you about the electric bill or showing up at Saturday's soccer game. That's disenfranchised grief: real, profound, life-altering loss that goes socially unrecognized, and it has its own particular ache. Layered on top is that you're not grieving one thing but many at once — the person, the relationship, the future you imagined, your identity as a spouse, your home, your finances, your in-laws, your friendships. Each is its own loss, and they arrive in waves: sometimes one at a time, sometimes all at once, sometimes out of nowhere. Which leads to the part that ambushes people most — divorce grief is not linear. You can feel fine for two weeks, then hear a song in a grocery store and be undone. You can reach what feels like acceptance and get hit with rage six months later. You can grieve the end of a marriage you desperately wanted out of, miss someone you know was wrong for you, and feel relieved and devastated in the same hour. All of it is normal. All of it is grief doing what grief actually does.The mindset shift at the heart of this episode is freeing: instead of something you move through in stages, picture grief as something that moves through you — in waves, on its own timeline, without asking permission. Your job isn't to manage it perfectly or to reach acceptance on schedule; it's to let it move, to not dam it up so tightly it has nowhere to go. Practically, that looks like letting yourself cry in the car, refusing to perform okayness for people who can't hold your grief, and finding at least one person or one space where you don't have to edit yourself. It also means being patient on the days you thought you were over something and discover you're not — that's not regression or failure, just the layered nature of this particular loss. If you're walking through divorce recovery, healing after divorce, or simply trying to make sense of why you still hurt, hold on to this: you don't have to be over it yet. You don't have to be anywhere other than exactly where you are. Grief is not a problem to be solved — it's love with nowhere to go, and it deserves your tenderness.🔗 Check out Fresh Starts Registry:The first & only divorce registry + support platform ➡ https://www.freshstartsregistry.com/📱 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/freshstartsregistry/📘 Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/FreshStartsRegistry🎙 Podcast IG: https://www.instagram.com/divorcehappenspod/📬 Magazine: https://divorceguidemagazine.com/

No one hands you a roadmap when your marriage ends. You're expected to make some of the biggest legal, financial, and emotional decisions of your life at the exact moment you have the least capacity to make them — and most of us walk in completely unprepared. That's the gap Ron Platt set out to close. In this practical, reassuring episode of Divorce Happens, we hear from Ron Platt, co-founder and CEO of NASDF — the National Association for Single and Divorced Families — for five fresh, foundational tips to help you prepare for divorce and walk out the other side standing on steadier ground. With more than 35 years across insurance, real estate, and social advocacy, and lived experience as a foster parent who later adopted his son, Ron built NASDF to be the resource he wished every divorcing family had: an umbrella of vetted support, services, and community for people before, during, and long after the paperwork is signed.🔗 Check out Fresh Starts Registry:The first & only divorce registry + support platform ➡ https://www.freshstartsregistry.com/📱 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/freshstartsregistry/📘 Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/FreshStartsRegistry🎙 Podcast IG: https://www.instagram.com/divorcehappenspod/📬 Magazine: https://divorceguidemagazine.com/

You already know. You just aren't ready to say it out loud yet. If you're living in that quiet, heavy, terrifying place — the one where the knowledge sits in your chest and doesn't go away — this solo episode of Divorce Happens was made for you. Olivia Howell names one of the most common and least talked-about experiences in the entire divorce process: the in-between space before anything is official, before anyone else knows, before you've even fully admitted it to yourself. It's Googling at midnight and clearing your history. It's crying in the car and then walking inside to make dinner like nothing happened. It's knowing and not-knowing at the same time, because fully knowing would mean having to do something — and you're not there yet. Olivia says the thing so many people carry in silence out loud: that space is real, and it deserves to be taken seriously.From there, the episode does the gentle, necessary work of separating two things we tend to confuse — knowing your marriage is over, and being ready to leave. So many people walking through divorce say they knew long before they spoke, sometimes for months, sometimes for years, and they carry deep shame about that gap, as if staying after they knew makes them weak, dishonest, or complicit in their own unhappiness. Olivia pushes back on that hard. Knowing is not the same as being ready, and being ready takes time for reasons that are completely legitimate: waiting until the kids are older, until the finances are steadier, until enough therapy has helped you trust what you feel. The reframe at the heart of this episode is that the waiting is not wasted. In that in-between place your nervous system is preparing and your mind is quietly building the architecture of a different life. The gap between knowing and saying isn't a failure — for most people, it's a necessary part of the process.The episode also names something tender but important: there's a version of “not ready” that is a season, and a version that becomes a cage — and only you know which one you're in. If the weight is starting to crush you, if you're disappearing inside your own life, that's worth paying attention to, not because you have to act today, but because you deserve support in that place, not just solitude. The actionable takeaway is freeing: telling one trusted person, a therapist, or a divorce coach doesn't commit you to anything. It simply means you're not carrying it completely alone anymore — and there is real relief in that, even before anything changes. If you're contemplating divorce, deciding whether to leave, or just beginning to imagine starting over after divorce, this is your reminder that you are not behind, not broken, and not failing your family. You are moving at the pace that feels survivable to you. And when you're ready — tomorrow or two years from now — the words will come.🔗 Check out Fresh Starts Registry:The first & only divorce registry + support platform ➡ https://www.freshstartsregistry.com/📱 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/freshstartsregistry/📘 Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/FreshStartsRegistry🎙 Podcast IG: https://www.instagram.com/divorcehappenspod/📬 Magazine: https://divorceguidemagazine.com/

There’s a strange, in-between place that almost no one warns you about when your marriage ends. You’re no longer who you were — but you’re not yet who you’re becoming. As one therapist put it to this week’s guest during her own divorce, you’re “somewhere in between.” In this episode of Divorce Happens, Olivia Howell sits down with Fresh Starts expert Bridget Borel, CFP®, CDFA® — a Certified Financial Planner, Certified Divorce Financial Analyst, and founder of Clairwell Financial Planning — to talk about the identity shift at the heart of divorce, and how to rebuild not just your bank account, but your sense of self. Bridget brings a rare double lens to the conversation: she has lived this transition personally and now guides clients through it professionally, which means she speaks about the rattling, disorienting middle of divorce with both clinical clarity and genuine warmth.What makes this conversation land is Bridget’s refusal to sugarcoat paired with her stubborn hope. She tells new clients the truth — it’s going to hurt, and it’s going to take longer than you think it should — and then she holds the other half just as firmly: it won’t last forever, you will get through this, and you don’t have to do it alone. She describes the “arc of the divorce experience,” watching clients move from the raw, emotional early days to suddenly booking an adventure trip or launching a business once the dust settles. The takeaway for listeners is both a mindset and a method: you are allowed to become a new person, and you can get there in baby steps — one new skill, one small financial win, one healthier conversation at a time. Whether you’re considering divorce, in the thick of it, or rebuilding on the other side, this is a grounding, hopeful listen about financial confidence, rediscovering your identity, and truly starting over after divorce.🔗 Check out Fresh Starts Registry:The first & only divorce registry + support platform ➡ https://www.freshstartsregistry.com/📱 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/freshstartsregistry/📘 Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/FreshStartsRegistry🎙 Podcast IG: https://www.instagram.com/divorcehappenspod/📬 Magazine: https://divorceguidemagazine.com/

The divorce process is one of the most life-changing things a person can go through — and somehow it’s still one of the most chaotic, confusing, and expensive. That’s exactly the problem that pulled tech founder Ryan Carson off the sidelines. A serial entrepreneur with 25 years in the tech world and three companies behind him, Ryan watched two of his three sisters — the people he calls his best friends — walk into brutal, costly divorces with almost no guidance except an attorney and a stack of baffling forms. Having grown up a child of divorce himself, he found it shocking how old-fashioned and disorganized the whole process still was. So he did what builders do: he started reading every divorce book in the library and asked a simple question — could technology and AI make this more humane and far more affordable without taking the humans out of it? The answer became Untangle, the AI divorce assistant, and the wisdom he’s gathered building it is the heart of this episode.What makes this conversation genuinely useful is how practical Ryan gets. He’s candid that Untangle pivoted — it started as a low-cost guide for people representing themselves and now powers the discovery process for law firms through its AI agent, “Grace” — but he hasn’t stopped caring about the person sitting at the kitchen table at midnight, terrified and overwhelmed. His advice for anyone navigating divorce is refreshingly concrete: treat AI as a new tool in your divorce toolbox. “This is like the internet in 1999,” he tells Olivia — something everyone is going to learn to use. Pick an assistant you’re comfortable with, pay the modest monthly fee for the smarter models, and start using it to prepare: ask what financial documents you should be gathering, get plain-English definitions for the confusing legal and Latin terms in your paperwork, and surface the questions you didn’t even know to ask. The crucial caveat he repeats is one every listener should hear: you can’t trust AI out of the box for the correct forms or numbers — it’s a guide that helps you walk into your attorney or divorce coach better prepared, not a replacement for professional advice.Underneath the tech talk, this episode is really a love letter from a brother. When Olivia asks for his words of encouragement, Ryan doesn’t reach for a product pitch — he thinks about his sisters. He watched them go through the hardest seasons of their lives, and he’s watched them come out the other side happier, healthier, more successful, and, in his words, even more alive. “They made it,” he says, “and you will get there.” That’s the mindset shift this episode offers: you don’t have to walk into divorce unarmed or alone, and the version of your life waiting on the other side can be brighter than the one you’re leaving. The takeaways are simple and immediately usable — lean on AI to prepare and ask better questions, gather your financial picture before you need it, and remember that knowledge and the right tools turn an overwhelming process into something survivable. For listeners in Connecticut (and the attorneys who serve them), Untangle is at untangle.us. For everyone else, the encouragement travels just fine: turn the lemon into lemonade, one tool at a time.🔗 Check out Fresh Starts Registry:The first & only divorce registry + support platform ➡ https://www.freshstartsregistry.com/📱 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/freshstartsregistry/📘 Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/FreshStartsRegistry🎙 Podcast IG: https://www.instagram.com/divorcehappenspod/📬 Magazine: https://divorceguidemagazine.com/

If you’re standing at the edge of a divorce right now, convinced the life waiting on the other side looks bleak and empty — this is the episode that turns the lights back on. Olivia Howell welcomes back author Betsy Cornwell, a New York Times bestselling novelist, memoirist, and divorced single mom who left an abusive marriage and rebuilt her entire life on the wild western coast of Ireland. Betsy has written six novels and the luminous new memoir Ring of Salt, which traces her journey from fleeing home with her infant son to crowdfunding and restoring a derelict knitting factory in Connemara into a sanctuary for herself and other single parents. But the line that stops you cold comes early in the conversation: “Divorce can be a portal to joy.” For a woman raised to believe divorce was a mortal sin, that sentence took years of unlearning — and now she offers it to anyone in the thick of the decision as both a lifeline and a promise that there is magic on the other side you simply cannot imagine from where you’re standing.The heart of this episode is a story of radical reinvention. After leaving her marriage, Betsy was briefly homeless, navigating a housing crisis as a low-income, self-employed immigrant single mother who had all but given up the dream of owning a home. It was a survivors’ support group that lit the way — and out of that fragile hope, she crowdfunded a historic knitting factory and turned it into both a home for her and her son and a fully funded arts-and-rest residency for fellow single parents. Her advice for anyone navigating divorce is refreshingly concrete: find your people. Seek out others walking the same road, and reach out to a domestic abuse center even — especially — if you’ve never been physically hurt but sense that something in your relationship is off. You will be listened to, believed, and supported. Whether you’re newly separated, deep in the loneliness of starting over, or quietly wondering if you’re allowed to want more, this conversation is living proof that life after divorce can hold more joy than the life you’re leaving behind. Find your coven. Face the sun together.🔗 Check out Fresh Starts Registry:The first & only divorce registry + support platform ➡ https://www.freshstartsregistry.com/📱 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/freshstartsregistry/📘 Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/FreshStartsRegistry🎙 Podcast IG: https://www.instagram.com/divorcehappenspod/📬 Magazine: https://divorceguidemagazine.com/

There is a particular kind of gaslighting that is almost impossible to name while you’re inside it — the kind where someone spends years convincing you that you can’t survive without them, and you believe it so completely that leaving feels less like freedom and more like stepping off a ledge. That was Kelly Sundberg’s reality before her divorce. Her ex-husband had her convinced she was incompetent — that she couldn’t parent alone, that she couldn’t care for herself, that without him, she would fall apart. What happened instead was that she left, earned a PhD, raised her son to 80% custody with extraordinary closeness, wrote two celebrated books about surviving domestic violence and healing after trauma, got remarried to someone who met her as a whole person and loved her that way, and became one of the most important voices in the conversation about why women stay in abusive marriages. In this warm, luminous episode of Divorce Happens, host Olivia Howell sits down with Kelly for a conversation that is equal parts literary and deeply, disarmingly human.Kelly’s first book, Goodbye, Sweet Girl, told the story of her marriage and why she stayed as long as she did. Her second, The Answer Is in the Wound — published through Roxane Gay Books — is a hybrid essay collection and memoir about what comes after: surviving PTSD, reclaiming identity after coercive control, learning to be alone, single parenting, and slowly, improbably, learning to love again. She talks in this episode about what surprised her most after leaving: not how hard it was to be a single mother, but how much easier it was than being married to someone whose presence was itself a burden. She had been carrying his emotional weight, managing his moods, parenting him alongside their son — and she hadn’t even known it. The relief of her own home, her own decisions, her own mess, her own peace, was something she genuinely hadn’t anticipated. Her time as a single parent, she says, was her favorite season of motherhood.But the moment that might stop listeners in their tracks comes when Kelly talks about codependency — and offers one of the most quietly stunning reframes in recent Divorce Happens memory. She describes how those old codependent impulses surfaced when she started dating the man she would eventually marry. And then she says this: they had nowhere to go. Her partner, eight years younger and emotionally grounded, had no interest in being managed, fixed, or rescued. Her need to caretake had no foothold. And so it faded. For anyone who has ever feared that their patterns will follow them into their next relationship, Kelly’s story is both a warning and a profound piece of hope: the right person isn’t someone who accommodates your old wounds. They’re someone whose presence simply doesn’t feed them. This episode is a gift for anyone surviving domestic violence, healing after an abusive relationship, or trying to believe that a full, joyful, loving life is still waiting on the other side of the hardest thing they’ve ever done.🔗 Check out Fresh Starts Registry:The first & only divorce registry + support platform ➡ https://www.freshstartsregistry.com/📱 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/freshstartsregistry/📘 Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/FreshStartsRegistry🎙 Podcast IG: https://www.instagram.com/divorcehappenspod/📬 Magazine: https://divorceguidemagazine.com/

What questions should you actually ask at your first divorce attorney consultation? In this solo episode of Divorce Happens, Olivia answers a listener letter from someone terrified she'll sit through her first consult, nod along, and walk out without asking a single thing that mattered — then spend three days replaying everything she wishes she'd said.If that fear sounds familiar, you're not failing. That blank-brain overwhelm is what shock does to all of us in that room. So Olivia hands you the cheat sheet: the exact questions to ask a divorce lawyer, the ones too many people only think of afterward, and the single most important thing to pay attention to that has nothing to do with the law. This is the divorce consultation prep you wish someone had handed you before you walked in, so you leave with real information instead of regret.THE QUESTIONS TO ASK YOUR DIVORCE ATTORNEY (COVERED IN THIS EPISODE):What's your experience with cases like mine, specifically? How to tell whether an attorney has handled your kind of divorce, whether that's high-conflict custody, hidden or controlled finances, business and self-employment assets, or interstate situations.What is your communication style, and who will actually work on my case? How to avoid hiring an attorney and then hearing only from a paralegal for six months.How exactly do you charge, and what burns through a retainer faster than people expect? Understanding divorce attorney fees, retainers, and hourly rates before you're emotionally deep in the process.What's your approach, and does it match what I need? How to tell whether an attorney is litigation-minded, negotiation-first, or mediation-focused, and which is right for your situation.What are the biggest mistakes people make early in a divorce? The proactive warnings a good attorney gives you up front, about money, documentation, and social media.What does a good outcome actually look like for someone in my situation? Why their answer reveals whether they truly listened, and whether your expectations are aligned.The gut-check that matters most: how does this attorney make you feel in the room? Why trusting your instinct about a divorce lawyer is data, not emotion.Plus: why shopping around for two or three attorneys before you commit isn't indecisive, it's smart.🔗 Check out Fresh Starts Registry:The first & only divorce registry + support platform ➡ https://www.freshstartsregistry.com/📱 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/freshstartsregistry/📘 Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/FreshStartsRegistry🎙 Podcast IG: https://www.instagram.com/divorcehappenspod/📬 Magazine: https://divorceguidemagazine.com/

What do you do in the first 24 hours after your spouse says they're leaving? In this solo "Hey Olivia" episode of Divorce Happens, Olivia Howell answers a letter from a woman who was standing at the stove making dinner when her husband walked in, told her he wants "a new life," and said she could keep the kids and the house. She hasn't cried yet. She thinks she's in shock. And she just needs someone to tell her what to do first. If you've been blindsided by divorce and can't think straight, this episode is for you.Olivia walks through exactly what matters in the first 24 to 48 hours after being blindsided — starting with the most important truth: nothing your spouse said in that moment is legally decided, final, or binding. She covers why shock is your nervous system protecting you (not weakness), why tonight's only job is getting through tonight, and the concrete first steps that protect you: tell one safe person, don't agree to or sign anything, start documenting what was said, and keep things simple and loving with the kids. And she offers a reframe for the hardest part — the words "a new life" — reminding you that a spouse's choice to leave is information about him, not a verdict on your worth.IN THIS EPISODE:Why that strange, blank "calm" after a blindside is shock — and exactly what your nervous system is doingWhy nothing your spouse said in the moment ("you can have the kids and the house") is a legal agreement or final decisionThe single most important rule tonight: make no decisions and sign nothingTelling one safe person and why you need a witness right nowHow to start documenting what was said — simply, in a notes app, datedWhat to say to your kids in hour one when you don't have answers yetThe reframe for "he wants a new life": his restlessness lives with him, not with youWhy the 2am spiral isn't the full truth — and who to lean on (a divorce coach, therapist, and attorney) insteadABOUT DIVORCE HAPPENS:Divorce Happens is a podcast supporting people before, during, and after divorce, hosted by Olivia Howell. The show runs on one belief: divorce is not a failure, and it carries no shame. Through honest guest conversations and solo "Hey Olivia" episodes answering listener questions, Olivia offers real tools, real comfort, and the reminder that you're so much further along than you think.SUPPORT & RESOURCES:In the first days after a blindside, you don't have to sort anything out alone. A trusted friend or family member can be a witness while you find your footing. When you're ready for the practical pieces, a divorce coach can help you prepare and stay steady, a therapist can hold space for the grief and shock, and a family law attorney can tell you where you actually stand legally — so the big decisions get made with good information, not in the middle of hour one.LISTEN & FOLLOW:If this episode helped you, follow Divorce Happens on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen, leave a rating or review, and share it with someone who's in the very first hours of this right now. You are seen, and you are doing an incredible job. 💙🔗 Check out Fresh Starts Registry:The first & only divorce registry + support platform ➡ https://www.freshstartsregistry.com/📱 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/freshstartsregistry/📘 Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/FreshStartsRegistry🎙 Podcast IG: https://www.instagram.com/divorcehappenspod/📬 Magazine: https://divorceguidemagazine.com/

How do you heal from a divorce when there's no villain — when you both still love each other and simply grew apart? In this solo "Hey Olivia" episode of Divorce Happens, Olivia Howell answers a letter from a listener ending a marriage with no betrayal, no blowup, and real care still between them. They share a child, they can still show up for each other, and she wants to know: how do you stay connected as co-parents while creating enough distance to actually heal? If you're grieving an amicable divorce that looks "good" on paper but still aches, this episode is for you.Olivia names what so few people say out loud: an amicable divorce can be one of the hardest versions there is, because the grief is quieter and lonelier when there's no anger to propel you forward. She offers a reframe that changes everything — you're not ending the relationship, you're changing its form — and walks through what healthy distance really means: not coldness, but structure. From "business-warm" co-parenting communication to protecting breathing room around the parts of life that aren't about your child, this is a tender, practical guide to mourning the marriage while building the new relationship that comes next.IN THIS EPISODE:Why an amicable divorce with love still in it can be harder, not easier, to grieveGiving yourself permission to mourn a "good" divorce no one else fully understandsWhat's happening in your nervous system when closeness feels natural and also keeps the wound openThe central reframe: you're not ending the relationship, you're changing its formWhy grief and rightness can coexist — it's allowed to be sad even when it's the right callWhat healing distance actually means: structure, not coldness"Business-warm" co-parenting and using a shared calendar or co-parenting app so every message isn't an emotional doorwayThe question to ask on the hard nights instead of "did we make a mistake?"ABOUT DIVORCE HAPPENS:Divorce Happens is a podcast supporting people before, during, and after divorce, hosted by Olivia Howell. The show runs on one belief: divorce is not a failure, and it carries no shame. Through honest guest conversations and solo "Hey Olivia" episodes answering listener questions, Olivia offers real tools, real comfort, and the reminder that you're so much further along than you think.SUPPORT & RESOURCES:Grieving a relationship you still care about is its own kind of work, and you don't have to do it alone. A therapist can hold space for the quieter grief that comes with an amicable split, and a divorce coach can help you build "business-warm" co-parenting structures and the healthy distance you need to move forward. A shared calendar or co-parenting app can keep logistics in one place, so day-to-day messages stay focused and don't reopen the wound.LISTEN & FOLLOW:If this episode helped you, follow Divorce Happens on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen, leave a rating or review, and share it with someone navigating a loving, amicable split right now. You are seen, and you are doing an incredible job. 💙🔗 Check out Fresh Starts Registry:The first & only divorce registry + support platform ➡ https://www.freshstartsregistry.com/📱 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/freshstartsregistry/📘 Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/FreshStartsRegistry🎙 Podcast IG: https://www.instagram.com/divorcehappenspod/📬 Magazine: https://divorceguidemagazine.com/

Nobody warns you that the divorce itself might be the easy part. For Courtney Gilmartin, a New Jersey mom who started her divorce journey nearly a decade ago, the 13-month dissolution of her marriage was just the opening chapter of a much longer, harder story — one that wound through post-judgment litigation, forensic custody evaluations, parenting coordinators, and years of fighting a family court system that moves nothing like the urgent, life-disrupting pace of the people trapped inside it. In this raw and remarkably practical episode of Divorce Happens, host Olivia Howell sits down with Courtney to talk about what high-conflict divorce really looks like from the inside: the emotional toll, the strategic survival, and the hard-won wisdom that comes from living it. Courtney is now the founder of NJ Protective Moms, a grassroots nonprofit focused on family court advocacy and coercive control legislation, and runs Monarch Consulting Group, where she helps women prepare for custody evaluations and complex litigation. She is living proof that the mess can become a mission.What makes this conversation so valuable is the way Courtney refuses to let the emotional and the strategic stay separate — because in high-conflict divorce, they can't be. She talks honestly about how she survived years of post-settlement chaos: the near fifty-fifty custody schedule that left her with empty weekends that felt more like exile than freedom, the way exercise — walking, Pilates, lifting weights, hot yoga — became less a wellness habit and more a lifeline. She shares one of the most useful reframes in the episode: that every professional in your case, even the ones who seem unhelpful or frustrating, can serve a strategic purpose if you approach them with the right lens. A co-parenting therapist who can’t move the needle with your ex isn’t a failure — they’re evidence. A parenting coordinator whose recommendations aren’t being followed isn’t useless — they’re documentation. In high-conflict co-parenting situations, Courtney argues, the question is never just “is this helping me emotionally?” but “how does this build my case?”The episode closes on something that feels both practical and deeply human: the power of documentation in family court proceedings. Courtney is emphatic — your case is only as strong as your evidence. Keep records. Organize everything. Not because someone will necessarily look at it tomorrow, but because when they do, you want to walk in with credibility rather than chaos. And then she offers something softer: a reminder that you are not on anyone’s timeline but your own. Whether you’re just beginning to consider leaving, waiting until the kids are older, or trying to find your footing after years of post-divorce litigation, the pressure to move faster than you’re ready to is one more thing you don’t owe anyone. Courtney’s story is a testament to what women can build out of their hardest seasons — not in spite of them, but because of them.

How do you answer your kids' questions about divorce when you're barely holding yourself together? In this solo "Hey Olivia" episode of Divorce Happens, Olivia Howell answers a letter from a parent whose kids seemed "fine" when they first heard about the divorce — and are now flooding her with questions. Where will I sleep? Will I still see my friends? Do you still love each other? Is it my fault? If you've already told your kids about the divorce and the questions won't stop, this episode is the steadying guide you've been looking for.Olivia explains why that "fine in the moment" reaction is textbook child psychology, why the wave of questions is actually a sign of trust, and the three things your kids truly need to hear — repeated as often as they need them. She shares a skill that changes how these conversations feel: listening for the question underneath the question, and answering the fear instead of the surface. And she talks honestly about you — how to stay emotionally present for your children while you're grieving too, without having to be perfect or have a script ready for every hard moment.IN THIS EPISODE:Why kids often seem "too okay" at first — and why the questions come laterHow the flood of questions is a sign of trust and attachment, not a sign you got it wrongThe three anchors every child needs to hear: this is not your fault, you'll be loved and cared for by both of us, you'll always have a homeWhy "I don't know yet, but we're working on it" is an honest, appropriate answerThe skill of listening for the question underneath the question — and answering the fear beneath itHow to directly and completely address "Is this my fault?" — even before they ask it out loudGiving yourself permission to say "Let me think about that and come back to you"Modeling emotional honesty without oversharing — and why a little realness helpsPractical anchors for this season: routines, timing, and when a child therapist can helpABOUT DIVORCE HAPPENS:Divorce Happens is a podcast supporting people before, during, and after divorce, hosted by Olivia Howell. The show runs on one belief: divorce is not a failure, and it carries no shame. Through honest guest conversations and solo "Hey Olivia" episodes answering listener questions, Olivia offers real tools, real comfort, and the reminder that you're so much further along than you think.SUPPORT & RESOURCES:If your kids are working through a lot right now, a few sessions with a child therapist can give them one warm, neutral adult who is entirely in their corner — not because anything is wrong, but because support helps. And give yourself somewhere to put your own grief too: a therapist, a divorce coach, or a trusted friend can hold space for you while you hold space for them.LISTEN & FOLLOW:If this episode helped you, follow Divorce Happens on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen, leave a rating or review, and share it with a parent who's fielding the same hard questions right now. You are seen, and you are doing an incredible job. 💙🔗 Check out Fresh Starts Registry:The first & only divorce registry + support platform ➡ https://www.freshstartsregistry.com/📱 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/freshstartsregistry/📘 Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/FreshStartsRegistry🎙 Podcast IG: https://www.instagram.com/divorcehappenspod/📬 Magazine: https://divorceguidemagazine.com/

How do you tell your kids you're getting divorced when your co-parent wants to blame you for it? In this solo "Hey Olivia" episode of Divorce Happens, Olivia Howell answers a letter from a mom whose ex plans to tell their five- and seven-year-old that Mommy broke up the family — and who yells every time she tries to talk about doing it differently. If you're terrified of how the other parent might frame your divorce in front of the kids, this one is for you.Olivia explains why telling young children that one parent "broke up the family" is genuinely harmful, then walks through a calm, doable plan for telling kids about divorce in a high-conflict co-parenting situation: how to ask for a neutral third party in the room, the non-accusatory request to put in writing first, the simple and united words to say to your kids, and what to do if your co-parent says something hurtful anyway. The heart of it: you may not be able to control what your ex says, but you are never powerless — and being the steady, safe parent is more powerful than winning any single moment.IN THIS EPISODE:Why "breaking up the family" language harms kids — the developmental reason it sticksThe simple, united story children actually need when parents divorceHow to ask for a family therapist, co-parenting counselor, or mediator to be presentThe short, non-accusatory message to send in writing before the conversation (and why a record matters)Exactly what to say to your kids — clear, age-appropriate language you can use todayHow to respond in the moment if your co-parent assigns blame, without escalating in front of the kidsWhen to bring in a co-parenting therapist, divorce child specialist, or divorce coachABOUT DIVORCE HAPPENS:Divorce Happens is a podcast supporting people before, during, and after divorce, hosted by Olivia Howell. The show runs on one belief: divorce is not a failure, and it carries no shame. Through honest guest conversations and solo "Hey Olivia" episodes answering listener questions, Olivia offers real tools, real comfort, and the reminder that you're so much further along than you think.LISTEN & FOLLOW:If this episode helped you, follow Divorce Happens on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen, leave a rating or review, and share it with a parent who needs it before they sit their kids down. You are seen, and you are doing an incredible job. 💙🔗 Check out Fresh Starts Registry:The first & only divorce registry + support platform ➡ https://www.freshstartsregistry.com/📱 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/freshstartsregistry/📘 Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/FreshStartsRegistry🎙 Podcast IG: https://www.instagram.com/divorcehappenspod/📬 Magazine: https://divorceguidemagazine.com/

What happens when you get married at 22, divorced by 27, and have to figure out who you actually are for the very first time — as a fully formed adult? That’s the question at the heart of this week’s episode of Divorce Happens, and it’s one that Sarah Vacchiano has spent the last decade not just living, but writing. Sarah is a Los Angeles-based entertainment lawyer, a first-time author, and the mother of a four-year-old — and her debut novel, Soft Launch: A Coming of Adulthood Story, is the kind of book the divorce recovery space has been quietly waiting for. Part roman à clef, part fresh start manifesto, Soft Launch follows a young woman navigating her first year after divorce in New York City, and the story is drawn unmistakably from Sarah’s own life. In this conversation with host Olivia Howell, Sarah opens up about why she wrote it, what she learned from her early divorce, and why “coming of adulthood” — not “coming of age” — was the only framework that fit.This episode is for anyone who has ever felt too young to be divorced, too old to be starting over, or too ashamed of a decision that was actually the bravest thing they ever did. Sarah and Olivia talk about the importance of representation in divorce media, the way childhood experiences shape the relationships we choose, and what it means to “live your way into the answer” — a Rainer Maria Rilke quote that Sarah has carried through her entire post-divorce journey. And for listeners who love a great beach read with emotional depth, Soft Launch is exactly the kind of divorce novel that makes you feel seen and hopeful at the same time. The takeaway isn’t just about surviving divorce in your 20s or starting fresh after marriage — it’s about giving yourself permission to become someone new, even if it’s uncomfortable, even if it’s messy, even if it takes ten years to write the book.🔗 Check out Fresh Starts Registry:The first & only divorce registry + support platform ➡ https://www.freshstartsregistry.com/📱 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/freshstartsregistry/📘 Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/FreshStartsRegistry🎙 Podcast IG: https://www.instagram.com/divorcehappenspod/📬 Magazine: https://divorceguidemagazine.com/

Nobody warns you, when you're in the thick of a divorce, that the financial fallout doesn't end with the settlement. There are tuition bills on the horizon, FAFSA forms with your ex's name on them, and a whole new layer of negotiation you never saw coming. In this episode of Divorce Happens, host Olivia Howell sits down with Vicki Vollweiler — founder of College Financial Prep, divorced mom, and former divorce coach turned college financial strategist — to talk about the conversation no one is having in the mediator's office: how to plan for your child's college education when you're navigating co-parenting, conflict, and completely separate households. Vicki brings a rare combination of personal lived experience and professional expertise to a topic that sits squarely at the intersection of divorce recovery and long-term financial planning for single parents.What makes this episode so essential is the specificity Vicki brings to a subject that most divorcing parents simply don't know to ask about. She explains why including college planning language in your divorce agreement — even when your kids are toddlers — could save you years of legal headaches and thousands of dollars down the road. She walks through the FAFSA process and why the custody arrangement in your divorce decree can significantly impact how much financial aid your child qualifies for. She shares real client stories: a parent escaping a domestic violence situation whose child ended up attending an Ivy League school for free, and co-parents who couldn't stand to be in the same Zoom room but still managed to save tens of thousands on tuition for their twins. Vicki is also refreshingly honest about the emotional labor involved — sometimes her work is less about spreadsheets and more about helping one parent understand why the other is digging their heels in.The takeaway listeners will carry out of this episode is both practical and genuinely hopeful: you don't have to figure this out alone, and you don't have to wait until your kids are in high school to start. Whether you're newly separated, mid-mediation, or years into co-parenting and wondering how you're going to handle the college conversation with your ex, Vicki's framework offers a clear path forward. She works with families across the country — from Medicaid households to high-net-worth clients — and her message is consistent: with the right strategy, college financial planning after divorce doesn't have to be a battleground. It can actually be a rare win-win for both parents. And after everything divorce puts families through, that kind of win is worth paying attention to.🔗 Check out Fresh Starts Registry:The first & only divorce registry + support platform ➡ https://www.freshstartsregistry.com/📱 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/freshstartsregistry/📘 Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/FreshStartsRegistry🎙 Podcast IG: https://www.instagram.com/divorcehappenspod/📬 Magazine: https://divorceguidemagazine.com/

She was lying on the ground in Thailand, her husband having just shoved her in public, not knowing if her neck was broken, her arm was broken — knowing only that her heart was. In that moment, journalist, traveler, and diver Lisa Niver could not have imagined that the next chapter of her life would take her skydiving, mountain biking down a ski run in Lake Tahoe, and scuba diving with bull sharks in Mexico. She could not have imagined that she would turn 50 on the other side of all that pain — freer, braver, and more herself than she had ever been. But that is exactly what happened.Lisa is the author of Brave-ish: One Breakup, Six Continents, and Feeling Fearless After 50 — a memoir that begins on the worst day of her life and traces the extraordinary journey that followed. After returning to Los Angeles alone from Asia, Lisa threw herself into the unknown: therapy, a gym with pole dancing and burlesque classes, an undiagnosed eye condition finally identified and corrected, and eventually, 50 challenges she set for herself before turning 50. Along the way, she discovered something that quietly changed everything — that bravery isn't a trait you're born with or without. It's not a light switch that's either on or off. It's exposure. It's support. It's showing up to shark school in the morning so you can go into the water in the afternoon. Lisa had spent years believing she was the kind of person who wasn't brave. Divorce, and everything that came after it, proved her wrong.This episode is for anyone who has ever stood at the wreckage of something they thought would last forever and wondered if they would ever laugh again, travel again, feel like themselves again. Lisa's answer — generous, funny, and hard-won — is yes. It gets better. And sometimes the path through is not the one you planned, but the one that asks you to try something you never thought you could do. You don't have to write the next chapter. You just have to turn the page.🔗 Check out Fresh Starts Registry:The first & only divorce registry + support platform ➡ https://www.freshstartsregistry.com/📱 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/freshstartsregistry/📘 Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/FreshStartsRegistry🎙 Podcast IG: https://www.instagram.com/divorcehappenspod/📬 Magazine: https://divorceguidemagazine.com/

There is a moment — quiet, uncomfortable, impossible to unhear — when you realize the marriage you’re in isn’t the marriage you thought you were building. For D’Ionna Washington, that moment came just one year into her first marriage. Instead of suppressing it, she eventually did what so few women feel permitted to do: she left. And then she wrote the book about it. In this candid, fire-lit conversation on Divorce Happens, host Olivia Howell sits down with D’Ionna — relationship coach, author, and the woman behind the powerfully named brand The Kept Wife Strategist — to talk about her debut book Break Up Now: Releasing the Shame of Divorce and Finding the Peace in Letting Go. D’Ionna brings over a decade of coaching experience, a faith deconstruction journey, and a deeply personal story of divorce and remarriage to a conversation about one of the most taboo questions in relationships: what if you knew early and stayed anyway?The emotional core of this episode lives in a story D’Ionna shares about her mother — a woman who stayed married for 23 years after knowing, within the first year, that it wasn’t working. That revelation cracked D’Ionna open. Suddenly she saw the pattern everywhere: women who knew, stayed silent, and spent decades managing a life that was slowly wearing them down. Her book is the answer to that pattern — a clear-eyed, shame-free argument that leaving sooner is not a failure but an act of radical self-respect. She and Olivia dig into the real reasons women stay: kids, sunk costs, religious conditioning, the fear of starting over after divorce. And D’Ionna doesn’t just validate those reasons — she dismantles them with the kind of direct, loving honesty that can only come from someone who’s lived it. Her most powerful reframe? Every year you don’t leave, it gets harder. The investment grows. The exit shrinks. If the writing is on the wall, break up now.But this episode isn’t just about leaving — it’s about what happens after you do. D’Ionna is four years out from her divorce and three years into a remarriage she describes as full of ease, peace, and genuine elevation. Her path there wasn’t through bitterness or blame — it was through radical accountability. Not the kind that absolves the other person of their wrongs, but the kind that asks: how did I get here, what was I ignoring, and what do I need to change about myself before I let someone new into my life? For listeners navigating divorce recovery, healing after a bad marriage, or wondering whether they have what it takes to start over, this episode is both permission and roadmap. D’Ionna’s message is clear: you don’t leave one hard situation to settle for a little relief. You rebuild yourself so completely that the next person has to add to an already beautiful life — not rescue you from a broken one.🔗 Check out Fresh Starts Registry:The first & only divorce registry + support platform ➡ https://www.freshstartsregistry.com/📱 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/freshstartsregistry/📘 Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/FreshStartsRegistry🎙 Podcast IG: https://www.instagram.com/divorcehappenspod/📬 Magazine: https://divorceguidemagazine.com/

If you’ve ever sat with the thought of leaving an emotionally abusive relationship and felt, instead of relief, a wave of guilt — this episode is for you. Not the guilt of someone who is doing something wrong. The guilt of someone who has been so thoroughly conditioned to put themselves last that the simple act of imagining their own freedom feels like a betrayal. In this deeply compassionate and psychologically grounded solo episode of Divorce Happens, host Olivia Howell names that specific, gut-wrenching feeling and does something more valuable than tell you to push past it: she explains exactly where it comes from. Because understanding the source of the guilt — really understanding it — is what begins to loosen its grip.Olivia walks through two of the most important and most misunderstood psychological realities of emotionally abusive relationships. The first: that the guilt survivors feel when they consider leaving is not their conscience speaking. It is the abuse speaking. Emotional abuse works, in part, by systematically training its target to feel responsible for the abuser’s feelings, reactions, and pain — so that any act of self-prioritization triggers shame. The second: trauma bonding. Olivia explains in clear, accessible terms why the brain forms a powerful attachment to an abusive partner through cycles of tension, cruelty, and relief — and why knowing a relationship is harmful is entirely compatible with feeling an overwhelming pull to stay. Both of these frameworks offer the same thing: not an excuse, but an explanation. And explanations, offered with warmth and without judgment, have the power to change everything.The episode closes with the section that will hit hardest for parents: the guilt about the children. Olivia speaks directly and without hedging to the mothers who are staying, or hesitating, because of their kids — and offers the clearest possible reframe: children do not need their parents to stay together. They need their parents to be safe and present. And a parent being worn down by emotional abuse cannot be fully present, no matter how hard they try. This is not a comfortable thing to hear. It is a true thing. And the women who need to hear it most are the ones this episode is for. If you are anywhere on the spectrum of considering leaving an emotionally abusive marriage — the questioning stage, the terrified stage, the almost-ready stage — this episode will make you feel less alone, more understood, and a little more certain that what you are feeling is not proof that you are wrong.🔗 Check out Fresh Starts Registry:The first & only divorce registry + support platform ➡ https://www.freshstartsregistry.com/📱 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/freshstartsregistry/📘 Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/FreshStartsRegistry🎙 Podcast IG: https://www.instagram.com/divorcehappenspod/📬 Magazine: https://divorceguidemagazine.com/