Explorez tous les épisodes du podcast Divorce Happens

“I looked around at a dinner with 'my people' recently, the friend group I'd had for over a decade, and realized none of them were actually there for me during my divorce.”

It’s a quiet, disorienting moment: sitting at a familiar table with people who have known you for years and realizing they weren’t the ones who carried you through the hardest season of your life. In this Hey Olivia episode of Divorce Happens, Olivia takes on a question so many people ask after divorce: is it normal to feel like your whole social circle shifted overnight?

Olivia’s answer starts with a distinction that changes everything. A decade of history and the actual capacity to show up during a crisis are two completely different things. Crisis reveals capacity, not just affection, and a friend who couldn’t show up may still genuinely care. She explains how fixed roles in long friendships can make it hard for old friends to show up differently, even when you need them to. And she reframes that feeling of being a stranger at your own dinner table: it isn’t something to push past. It’s real, useful data.

From there, Olivia offers a gentler path than confrontation. You can quietly let your time follow what’s actually being reciprocated, no dramatic conversation required. If newer friends are the ones showing up, that doesn’t make those friendships any less real or meaningful. And this kind of social loss deserves real space of its own, separate from the grief of the divorce itself. As Olivia puts it, “Crisis reveals capacity, not just affection.”

🔗 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/

"Some of our mutual friends have clearly chosen his side since the divorce, still inviting him to game nights, tagging him in photos I wasn't asked to. I've caught myself scrolling old group texts, mentally tallying who reached out and who didn't."

In this Hey Olivia listener letter episode, Olivia helps a listener let go of the compulsive habit of tallying who chose which side after a divorce.

Olivia covers:

• Why the sting of mutual friends quietly sorting themselves after a divorce is a real, specific loss, not an overreaction
• Why tallying who reached out gives concrete shape to diffuse hurt, but doesn't actually resolve anything
• The real difference between grieving a social shift and endlessly tallying it
• Why not every friend who drifted made a moral judgment — some of it is structural, tied to old patterns and existing connections
• A simple tool for interrupting the loop: naming it plainly out loud, "I'm keeping score again"
• Why redirecting energy toward the people who did show up matters more than auditing who left
• Why letting go of the tally isn't the same as pretending the loss didn't hurt

"Grieving genuinely moves you through the loss, toward something on the other side of it. Tallying substitutes for grieving."

Need support navigating this? Fresh Starts offers free consults, a vetted professional network, and free guides. Learn more at freshstartsregistry.com.

If this episode helped, please subscribe, leave a review, and share it with someone who needs to hear it today.

🔗 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/

"I always assumed my college best friends, the four of us who swore we'd be there for each other no matter what, would be in my corner no matter what happened in my marriage. When it actually fell apart, I found out that wasn't true."

In this Hey Olivia listener letter episode, Olivia helps a listener make sense of a twenty-year friendship belief tested for the first time — and coming back different than expected.

Olivia covers:

• Why this is a heavier kind of disillusionment than an ordinary friendship fading over time
• Why "no matter what" is often a promise made in theory that's never actually tested until real crisis arrives
• Why having new information now doesn't mean you got someone wrong for twenty years
• The difference between someone's capacity in a specific moment and who they fundamentally are as a person
• A truer middle ground between "they were fake friends" and "I'm overreacting": real friends who didn't have what this specific moment required
• Why making peace doesn't mean rewriting twenty years of real memories, just updating expectations going forward
• Why the friend who did show up deserves to be the center of this story, not a footnote

"Untested loyalty and proven loyalty are not the same thing, even when they're spoken with total sincerity at the time they're made."

Need support navigating this? Fresh Starts offers free consults, a vetted professional network, and free guides. Learn more at freshstartsregistry.com.

If this episode helped, please subscribe, leave a review, and share it with someone who needs to hear it today.

🔗 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/

"My sister has been showing up for me nonstop since my divorce, texting every morning and every night, asking if I'm okay a hundred times a week until the question itself starts to feel like pressure."

In this Hey Olivia listener letter episode, Olivia helps a listener navigate the flip side of support: how to ask for space from someone whose love is real, without hurting them or feeling ungrateful.

Olivia covers:

• Why needing space from even the most loving support isn't a betrayal of that love or a sign of ingratitude
• Why the guilt of wanting an hour of quiet makes sense, but isn't accurate
• The difference between constant checking and actually calibrated support
• Why asking for space is giving someone honest information, not pushing them away
• A specific script structure: gratitude first, the specific need second, reassurance third
• Why unaddressed over-support can quietly build resentment, just like under-support can
• Why a pattern of managing everyone else's feelings before your own is worth bringing to a therapist

"Asking for space isn't the same as pushing her away. It's giving her real, honest information that actually helps her love you more effectively, not less."

Need support navigating this? Fresh Starts offers free consults, a vetted professional network, and free guides. Learn more at freshstartsregistry.com.

If this episode helped, please subscribe, leave a review, and share it with someone who needs to hear it today.

🔗 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/

"Every time someone checks in on me since my divorce, I feel guilty for needing it. I keep saying 'I'm fine' even when I'm sitting on my kitchen floor crying five minutes earlier."

In this Hey Olivia listener letter episode, Olivia helps a listener navigate the disorienting role reversal of going from the one who always shows up for others to the one who needs support herself.

Olivia covers:

• Why the role reversal from "the steady one" to needing support yourself is genuinely disorienting, not a small adjustment
• Why saying "I'm fine" isn't dishonesty — it's protection, for yourself and for the people who love you
• The real cost of saying "I'm fine" every time: people take their cues from what you tell them, and eventually step back
• A middle ground between "I'm fine" and telling the whole story: honest, bounded responses that still leave the door open
• Why needing support during a life-altering season isn't a permanent identity, it's a chapter
• Why most people already suspect "fine" isn't the whole truth, and how the performance of fine creates distance instead of protecting the relationship
• A concrete step: giving one trusted person one honest answer this week instead of "I'm fine"

"There's a genuine difference between someone chronically in crisis and someone honestly, bravely moving through one of the hardest chapters of her entire life. You are the second one, not the first."

Need support navigating this? Fresh Starts offers free consults, a vetted professional network, and free guides. Learn more at freshstartsregistry.com.

If this episode helped, please subscribe, leave a review, and share it with someone who needs to hear it today.

🔗 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/

"My best friend of 15 years went quiet on me the second she found out I was getting divorced. No fight, no falling out, she just stopped texting back."

In this Hey Olivia listener letter episode, Olivia addresses a kind of loss that doesn't get nearly enough attention: losing a close friend right when you need one most.

Olivia covers:

• Why losing a friend during divorce is its own real, distinct grief, separate from the marriage itself
• Why a friend going silent often says more about her own fear or discomfort than anything you actually did
• The different reasons people withdraw — not knowing what to say, feeling pressure to pick a side, being quietly frightened by what a divorce might mean for their own marriage
• Why reaching out one more time and letting go aren't necessarily opposites
• A specific script for one final, honest, low-pressure message
• Why six months of silence, after reaching out twice, is itself a real answer worth accepting
• Why this kind of layered loss deserves its own grieving process, separate from the grief of the marriage ending

"You are fully allowed to let the silence itself be the actual information you're working with."

Need support navigating this? Fresh Starts offers free consults, a vetted professional network, and free guides. Learn more at freshstartsregistry.com.

If this episode helped, please subscribe, leave a review, and share it with someone who needs to hear it today.

🔗 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/

"Does it matter that I've been doing everything? Or am I going to sound like I'm just complaining?"

That's the question at the heart of this week's Hey Olivia letter, and I know so many of you are going to feel it in your chest. It comes from a listener who works full-time and is also the one who cooks every meal, manages the school schedule, handles the doctor's appointments, does the laundry, helps with homework, and gets up at 2am when someone's sick. Now they're getting divorced, about to sit across from their divorce lawyer, and they don't know how to explain any of it. It's a specific kind of exhausted that doesn't always get named out loud.

So I named it. The first thing I ask in this episode is that you drop the word "complaining" entirely before you walk into that meeting. What you're describing is the actual, factual shape of your household: who does what, day to day, for your kids. Your lawyer isn't there to referee who worked harder over the years. They're there to understand your family's real structure so they can represent it accurately. I talk about why this matters practically and not just emotionally, since custody and parenting time decisions are often based heavily on who has actually been doing the parenting. Being the default parent isn't a feeling you're having. It's a pattern, and patterns are exactly what a divorce attorney needs to hear about.

Then we get into the how. "I do everything" is true, but it's hard for anyone to act on something that vague, so I walk you through getting specific: who takes the kids to the pediatrician, who's the emergency contact at school, who handles bedtime on weeknights. I share a simple week-by-week breakdown you can write down before your first meeting with a family law attorney, what it tells you if your lawyer brushes past it, and how to hold the frustration of an imbalanced marriage alongside the practical question of what your lawyer needs to know right now. You get to describe your family exactly as it is, without shrinking it down first. And you don't have to figure out how to say it perfectly on your own.

🔗 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/

"I can't lose any more of her. What do we do, and who decides?"

This week's Hey Olivia letter is a really tender one, and I read it slowly. It comes from a parent whose daughter was stillborn at nine months. She was perfect, and they still don't know what happened. Now the marriage is ending, and her nursery is exactly how they left it: the tiny clothes folded in the drawers, the blanket from the hospital, a door that most days can't be opened. One parent wants to keep everything as it is. The other wants to start clearing it out. This episode is for Pregnancy and Infant Loss Awareness Month, and for anyone grieving a baby while a family is changing shape.

I started with the most important thing: nothing has to happen today. Not this week, not this month. There's no deadline on grief. I talk about why this is so much more than stuff, because those things are proof that your daughter was here and that you are her parents. And I say something gently about the two of you. It can feel like you're on opposite sides, but I don't think you are. You're two people who love the same little girl, each getting through that love in the way you know how. Keeping the room and moving through it are both love.

So who decides? You do. Together. I share words you can say out loud so that nothing disappears when someone isn't looking, and the whole gentle middle between keeping everything and clearing it all out: photos of every corner first, then tiny steps, and a memory box for each of you. I talk about the grief of not having an answer, when a therapist, a divorce coach, a mediator, or your attorneys can help, and how to be gentle with the day one of you moves out. Whatever you keep, and whatever you let go of, your daughter is still your daughter. Always.

🔗 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/

Your divorce decree is signed, and you assume the money part is done. Then the loose threads start showing up: the beneficiary you never changed, the deed still in both names, the retirement account that was awarded to you on paper but never actually divided. In this episode of Divorce Happens, Kristina Heckel, CDFA®, CFEI®, a Certified Divorce Financial Analyst, Fresh Starts expert, and the principal and founder of Bloom Divorce Advisory Services in Arizona, shares five practical tips for getting your finances organized whether you're considering divorce, in the middle of it, or rebuilding on the other side.

Kristina starts with a habit anyone can begin this week: take yourself on a money date. Pick a coffee shop, bring your statements or open a budgeting app, and spend undisturbed time learning what's coming in, what's going out, and which forgotten subscriptions are quietly draining your account. Next comes "grace with a plan," her answer to decision fatigue: take a breath, sort what truly needs your attention now from what can wait, and put deadlines somewhere you'll see them. Her third tip is to build your paper trail before anyone asks for it. Knowing what you own, what you owe, and where your money moves can save real money in attorney hours, and she walks through the kinds of documents and free reports worth gathering.

Then Kristina gets into the details that cost people later. "Not every dollar is the same": depending on your income and goals, cash, after-tax dollars, and retirement dollars can carry very different value, and dividing a 401(k) requires its own domestic relations order that many people forget about. And finally, "the paperwork after the paperwork," the beneficiary changes, deed transfers, utilities, retitling, and refinancing deadlines that don't take care of themselves once the decree is final. "Personal finance is personal," she says, and the right plan is the one built around what you actually need.

Connect with Kristina Heckel and Bloom Divorce Advisory Services:

🌐 Bloom Divorce Advisory Services (including the Vault Kit and the Bloom Forward community): https://www.bloomdas.com

📱 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/bloomdivorceadvisory/

💼 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kristina-heckel/

💙 Fresh Starts expert profile: https://freshstartsregistry.com/resourceguide/bloom-divorce-advisory-services

🔗 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/

Monique Alexander has never believed we can exist in this world without community. Not the most famous people, not the most successful, and not anyone going through a divorce. "No one is meant to go through that or any type of life transition alone," she says. In this episode of Divorce Happens, Olivia Howell sits down with Monique, a longtime friend, Fresh Starts expert, mom, educator, and founder of Monique Speaks, to talk about the part of divorce that so many of us try to carry by ourselves: asking for help, and letting it in.

Monique says the first step isn't reaching out to others. It's being honest with yourself about what divorce means for you, and recognizing that it is a state of grief. For some it's a heavy weight, for others there's relief, but everyone navigates some level of it. From there, she talks about the moment someone in her church small group asked why she wasn't letting them help carry the burden, and how needing support continually, not just once, "strips it in a whole different way." Having lived in four different states and rebuilt community each time, often far from family, she shares what it felt like when people she'd known only a few years showed up for her and her kids in ways she didn't know she needed, down to a homemade loaf of bread at a basketball game.

Then the conversation gets practical. Monique's keyword is intentionality: "Things don't just happen, right? You have to be intentional if you want certain results." She shares the four places she starts every time she builds community, why a walk or a meal or an invitation into your home matters, and why paying for community, from a coach to a gym to your kids' activities, still counts. And she offers a framework you'll want to hold onto: you can just get through divorce, alone with a compass in the dark woods, or you can go through it, surrounded by people, on the way to healing. "The core of it," she says, "is allowing others to bear your burden with you."

Connect with Monique Alexander of Monique Speaks:

🌐 Monique Speaks: https://www.moniquespeaks.org

📱 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/moniquespeaks_org/

💙 Fresh Starts expert profile: https://www.freshstartsregistry.com/resourceguide/monique-speaks

🔗 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/

After more than 20 years as a divorce attorney, Amanda Mason calls herself a "recovering divorce attorney." She spent those years watching families get "absolutely tortured by the traditional processes," whether in a courtroom or in one attorney negotiating against another. Then she went through her own divorce trial over child custody. In this episode of Divorce Happens, Olivia Howell sits down with Amanda, a Fresh Starts expert and the founder of Solagree, to talk about what she built after asking a simple question: what can we do better?

Amanda's answer starts with a promise. Every alternative to court has good ideas, she says, but none of them closed the loop. With Solagree, a couple agrees from the very beginning that if they can't resolve something, they won't go to court. They'll go to private family law arbitration instead. From there, the process has three phases. First comes intake, education, and empowerment, the part Amanda says couples lack more than anything: time to understand their circumstances, exchange information, and learn that there are paths forward and they're going to be okay. Then comes mediation with experienced attorney mediators. Finally, a neutral attorney arbitrator turns the couple's agreements into a binding document and serves as a safety net for anything still unresolved. "You've designed your own outcome," Amanda says. "That's the goal."

Olivia and Amanda talk about why a virtual process matters, from being in your own safe space to not having to figure out where to park, what to wear, and who's watching the kids. Amanda explains how Solagree builds state-based panels of professionals, how you can start learning even before you've talked to your spouse, why you don't have to be fully amicable to use it, and why privacy and cost predictability can't be overstated. Her words for anyone considering divorce are simple: "the first step is the hardest. And then it gets better from there." You're going to be okay, and you're going to be supported.

Connect with Amanda Mason and Solagree:

🌐 Solagree: https://www.solagree.com/

📝 Take the Solagree quiz: https://www.solagree.com/quiz

📅 Book a Solagree consult: https://www.solagree.com/book-a-solagree-consult

📱 Solagree on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/solagree_divorce/

📱 Amanda on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/amandamasonatty/

💙 Fresh Starts expert profile: https://freshstartsregistry.com/resourceguide/solagree

🔗 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/

One parent wants to keep the Social Security cards at their house. The other says no. And suddenly a question that will matter a handful of times in a child's life is a legal fight. That, says family law attorney Christina White, is what a high conflict divorce looks like from the inside: "they make mountains out of molehills for every problem." In this episode of Divorce Happens, Olivia Howell sits down with Christina, a Fresh Starts expert who owns and operates Christina White Legal in the western suburbs of Chicago, to talk about a term we're all using a lot more and what it really means.

There's no legal definition of a high conflict divorce, Christina explains, but after more than 10 years in family law she knows it when she sees it. Both people need lawyers. Then a mediator. Then a guardian ad litem. Then trial dates. It can go on for months and months and cost tens of thousands of dollars. She shares where she thinks it comes from, a shift in the dynamic when one person finally pushes back against years of control, and she's clear that no one who was in a coercively controlling relationship should back down. They should know it's going to be an uphill battle.

Then Christina tells her own story. When she went through her own divorce, with two little kids and a full-time law practice, she made a decision that surprises people: "You can lower your expectations." She wanted the kids most of the time and she wanted the house they had just built. She let go of both, and she was divorced in six weeks. What she kept was everything she could control: her attitude, the time she has with her kids, the school they attend, holiday travel, and a home without grown-ups screaming at each other. For anyone in a high conflict divorce right now, she leaves two practical pieces of advice, "organize your mind and organize your paperwork," and one piece of perspective: "Life is short. An unhappy marriage is long and a high conflict divorce is way too long."

Connect with Christina White:

🌐 Christina White Legal: https://www.christinawhitelegal.com

📘 Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/christinawhitelegal

💙 Fresh Starts expert profile: https://www.freshstartsregistry.com/resourceguide/christina-white-legal-llc

🔗 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/

The papers are signed. The ink is dry. And somehow you still don't feel better. Olivia Howell remembers that moment exactly: standing in her marital house, thinking she had made it through the hardest part, and then realizing she had to live the rest of her life as a divorced person and had no idea what that looked like. In this episode of Divorce Happens, she sits down with Leah Marie Mazur, a divorce recovery coach, founder of Mindfully Ready, and Fresh Starts expert who has been through three divorces herself and has spent the last six and a half years coaching hundreds of women through theirs.

Leah explains what divorce recovery actually is and why it's different from the support you had during the legal process. Your attorney, your mediator, and your financial professionals get you through the divorce itself. Then, as Leah puts it, "the ink dries, and it's like, well, now what?" The guilt, the shame, the feelings of failure, and a nervous system that has been in survival mode for months don't end with a signature. The women who come to Leah say the same three things: I want peace, I want my confidence back, and I want to know who I am again. Her answer starts in a place most people don't expect. You can't wait for your ex to change before you feel calm, because "you always have the power to find peace within yourself."

From there, the conversation gets practical. Leah shares how to regulate your nervous system in small pockets of the day, why "the power is in the pause" when a co-parenting message lands, and how one minute of doing nothing can bring you back to yourself. She and Olivia talk about people-pleasing, letting go of what you can't control, and how the tools you learn in divorce recovery become tools your kids carry for life. If you just signed your divorce papers and don't know who you are anymore, Leah's advice is the heart of this episode: you don't have to figure out your whole life right now. You just have to take that one next step.

Connect with Leah Marie Mazur:

🌐 Website and free resources: https://www.mindfullyready.com/

🎥 Free training: https://www.mindfullyready.com/mr-free-traning

👥 Free private Facebook support group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/divorcedandempowered

📱 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mindfullyready/

🎵 TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@mindfullyready

💙 Fresh Starts expert profile: https://freshstartsregistry.com/resourceguide/mindfully-ready

🔗 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/

"I'm not strong enough to be a single mom." That was the story Olivia Howell told herself when her marriage was ending, and it felt like a fact. Most people going through divorce carry a version of it: I can't handle the finances. I'm going to ruin my kids. I'm less of a parent if I only see them half the time. In this episode of Divorce Happens, Olivia asks what happens when we stop treating those thoughts as the truth and start treating them as what they are: stories.

Her guest is Fresh Starts Expert Lyerly Spongberg, a certified ADR divorce coach, pre-mediation coach, and co-parenting specialist who has seen divorce from every side. Lyerly went through her own high-conflict divorce in her 30s and has since been remarried for nearly 20 years, with a blended family of six children. She remembers believing she was not strong enough to get through it, and believing that every battle and every angry message needed her full attention. What changed things was a pause, and a smaller question: "okay, what can I handle today?" Strength, she learned, was not fighting everything. It was knowing when to fight and when to drop the rope.

From there, Lyerly shares the practical framework she uses with clients to challenge limiting beliefs during divorce. Listen for the absolute words (never, always, can't). Notice when you are mind reading or predicting the worst. Then ask: what do I actually know is true, what am I guessing, and whose voice is this? Her favorite test is a simple one: "is it a roadblock or is it a doorway?" As she says, this is not about forced positivity. "It's strategy." Listeners will come away with a new way to think about co-parenting and shared custody (you are still 100% of a parent), a reminder to put their energy into what they can control, and one line worth keeping close: this is a really difficult chapter, and it doesn't define the whole book.

Learn more about Lyerly Spongberg: https://www.freshstartsregistry.com/resourceguide/step-up-with-lyerly

🔗 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 a particular kind of grief that comes from sitting in a school auditorium, watching your child on stage, and realizing you are not really there. Your body is in the seat, but your mind is in the lawyer's office, in the bank account, in the question of what happens next. In this episode of Divorce Happens, host Olivia Howell opens up about the early days of her own divorce, when anger made her feel robbed of time with her kids, and asks the question so many people going through divorce are afraid to say out loud: is it okay to feel joy while everything is falling apart?

To answer it, Olivia sits down with Fresh Starts Expert Lisa Lisser, a certified divorce coach and founder of LZL Coaching whose path runs from attorney to nonprofit leader to Jewish educator and spiritual counselor. Lisa brings all of it to this conversation, drawing on the holiday of Sukkot, when families build a temporary, fragile shelter with a roof open enough to see the stars, and are told to feel joy inside it. For Lisa, that is the emotional work of divorce in a single image: you are living in a temporary structure that feels like it will never end, and you are still allowed to eat, to learn, to invite people in, and to look up. As she puts it, "You can't command joy, but I could set myself up so that at least I have the opportunity to feel joy."

What follows is a gentle, practical conversation about finding joy during divorce without pretending the hard parts are gone. Lisa walks through how to be present for your kids for one 45-minute recorder concert, why rumination disconnects you from yourself, and how releasing guilt opens the door to small moments of light, whether that is a granddaughter's smile or a rerun of a show you forgot you loved. Listeners will leave with two mindset shifts for divorce recovery and co-parenting: you do not have to wait until the divorce is over to feel good again, and you do not have to go through this fragile season alone. If you have been telling yourself you are not ready for joy, this episode offers both permission and a place to start.

Learn more about Lisa Lisser: https://www.freshstartsregistry.com/resourceguide/lzl-coaching

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This week's letter is a tender one. A listener wrote in after a pregnancy loss, holding the rainbow baby they prayed for and quietly planning to end their marriage. Everyone around them says how lucky they are. And they are grateful. They're also grieving the baby they lost and the marriage they're leaving, and feeling guilty about all of it. Their question was simple and enormous: "I don't know how to hold the joy and the grief at the same time. How do I hold both?"

Since October is Pregnancy and Infant Loss Awareness Month, it felt like the right time to answer it.

In this Hey Olivia episode of Divorce Happens, I start with what I most want anyone in this spot to hear: you don't have to pick one feeling to be the real one right now. Grateful and heartbroken can live in the same body on the same day. A rainbow baby doesn't erase a pregnancy loss, and the loss doesn't take anything away from the joy. We talk about why everything feels so loud with a newborn (the exhaustion, a body that's still healing, and a huge decision sitting in the middle of it all), why the guilt of being sad during "the happiest chapter" is a script you're allowed to set down, and why it's okay to grieve the marriage itself. Loss can pull two people closer or quietly pull them apart, and sometimes it does both along the way.

You'll leave with a few small, practical things to hold onto: a way to give the baby you lost a place that's just yours, one kind sentence for the "but you finally got your baby" comments, and a two-list exercise for the days when gratitude and grief show up together. I also talk about the support that can carry this with you, from a therapist who understands pregnancy loss and perinatal grief to a divorce coach who can take on the logistics. If you're navigating divorce after pregnancy loss, divorce with a newborn, or any season where joy and grief are sharing the same room, this one is for you. Nothing is wrong with you. Both belong.

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There is a particular kind of grief that comes with realizing you are not going to be with your children every day anymore. For so many moms going through divorce, especially women who have spent years as the primary caregiver, co-parenting isn’t simply a new schedule—it can feel like an entirely new identity. In this episode of Divorce Happens, Olivia sits down with Kristina St. Cyr, certified divorce coach, divorced mom, and founder of Kristina St. Cyr Coaching, to talk honestly about the emotional whiplash of early co-parenting after divorce: letting go of control, learning to trust a new family structure, and figuring out how to protect your own peace while still putting your children first.

Kristina works primarily with women who have reached the threshold of divorce—they know something has to change, but they have no idea what comes next. She explains why the transition to shared parenting can feel especially destabilizing for moms who previously carried the mental load, managed the schedules, made the decisions, and built the infrastructure of family life. Together, Olivia and Kristina unpack practical co-parenting tips after divorce, including creating written communication systems, establishing specific parenting schedules and exchange times, and setting boundaries around each parent’s responsibilities. Sometimes saying, “I’m not available—that is your parenting time,” can feel uncomfortable. But Kristina reminds listeners that consistency and predictability aren't just boundaries for parents; they can also create security for children navigating divorce.

And perhaps the most reassuring message in this conversation is that you do not have to figure out your entire co-parenting future today. Kristina encourages overwhelmed moms to break divorce recovery into manageable pieces: choose one boundary, one conversation, or one decision you can handle today and allow that success to become evidence that you can handle the next thing, too. Co-parenting after divorce may never look like the family life you once imagined, but with clear expectations, thoughtful boundaries, and a child-centered approach, it can become something steadier, healthier, and more sustainable—for your kids and for you.

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College can feel impossibly far away when your children are young and you’re in the middle of a divorce. And then, somehow, senior year arrives—and suddenly you’re staring at FAFSA forms, financial aid applications, college lists, divorce agreements, remarriages, and the terrifying realization that some schools now cost close to six figures a year. In this episode of Divorce Happens, Olivia sits down with Vicki Vollweiler, founder of College Financial Prep, to unpack what divorced and separated parents need to know about paying for college, applying for financial aid, and creating a college strategy long before acceptance letters start arriving.

Vicki breaks down FAFSA for divorced parents, the CSS Profile, need-based financial aid, merit scholarships, student loans, and one of the biggest sources of confusion for divorced families: whose financial information actually counts. FAFSA generally looks at the parent providing more financial support to the student, while some colleges using the CSS Profile may request financial information from both parents—and potentially stepparents, too. That means divorce agreements, remarriage, household finances, and co-parenting dynamics can all affect the college financial aid process. Just as importantly, Vicki explains why parents should talk openly about the college budget early, without necessarily sharing every detail of their income or assets, so a teenager doesn’t spend senior year falling in love with a school the family was never realistically prepared to afford.

But underneath all the forms and financial strategy is something much more emotional: this is your child’s future, and for divorced parents, college may be one of the first major milestones that forces old family dynamics back to the surface. Vicki shares how she sometimes acts as an intermediary for parents who cannot communicate directly and why planning as early as 10th or 11th grade can reduce conflict, guilt, resentment, and financial stress later. Her simplest first step for overwhelmed parents? Find the tax return you’ll need for FAFSA. You do not have to solve college today. You just need to start building a strategy—because after divorce, clarity around college costs can give both parents and their child more choices, not fewer.

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It’s time to retire the phrase “failed marriage.” A marriage can last twenty years, contain children and homes and illnesses and inside jokes and terrible fights and beautiful vacations, and still come to an end. None of those years disappear simply because the relationship eventually becomes something that can no longer continue. In this solo episode of Divorce Happens, Olivia Howell challenges one of the most damaging cultural beliefs surrounding divorce: the idea that the end of a marriage is automatically proof that somebody failed.

Olivia explores how the fear of becoming “the divorced woman” can keep people trapped in marriages long after they have stopped asking whether the relationship itself is healthy. Instead, the questions become: Did I try hard enough? Did I choose the wrong person? Am I selfish? Did I fail my children? But a person is allowed to make decisions using the information they have now—even if the younger version of themselves made a different decision years ago. Divorce does not require rewriting the entire marriage as a mistake, either. You can have loved someone deeply and still know you cannot live with them anymore. You can remember beautiful years while acknowledging painful ones. You can feel relieved and devastated, miss your former spouse and never want the marriage back, or know divorce is right and still grieve what is ending.

Ultimately, this episode asks listeners to reconsider how we measure relationship success. Longevity alone cannot tell us whether a marriage was loving, healthy, safe, or fulfilling. Staying married is not automatically the same thing as succeeding at marriage—and ending one is not automatically failure. For anyone navigating divorce recovery, questioning an unhappy marriage, grieving the end of a relationship, or struggling with shame after divorce, Olivia offers a different framework: your marriage ending is a fact about your life, not a verdict on your life. There is no prize for suffering quietly forever. You get one life, and you are allowed to make decisions about how you want to live it.

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You do not have to know yet. You do not have to wake up tomorrow morning certain that you are getting divorced, certain that you are staying married, certain that the relationship can be fixed, or certain about what your life would look like on the other side. In this solo episode of Divorce Happens, Olivia Howell speaks directly to the person who has Googled some version of “How do I know if I should get divorced?” more times than they would ever admit. If you are quietly considering divorce, questioning your marriage, or simply beginning to acknowledge that something does not feel okay anymore, this episode offers permission to stop demanding an immediate answer from yourself.

Olivia explores why so many women feel like they are not “allowed” to investigate divorce until they are completely sure they want one—and why that expectation makes no sense. You can talk to a divorce attorney without filing. You can meet with a financial professional, call a therapist, research custody laws, look at apartments, understand health insurance costs, or tell one trusted friend what is really happening. You can even imagine what your life might feel like if you were no longer married. Information is not betrayal, and imagining a different life is not a decision. Gathering facts can actually help you make a clearer, more grounded choice about whether to stay, leave, or ask for significant changes within your marriage.

This episode also challenges the idea that a marriage must look disastrous from the outside before you are allowed to question it. Sometimes there is no dramatic smoking gun. Sometimes it is loneliness, contempt, carrying the entire household alone, asking for the same change for years, feeling constantly tense, or realizing you no longer like who you are becoming inside the relationship. Olivia offers a series of questions for anyone considering divorce: What am I experiencing? What have I normalized? What have I already tried? What would need to change for this marriage to feel healthy for me? And if nothing changed, could I live exactly like this five years from now? You do not have to know yet. Sometimes the first fresh start is simply becoming curious about your own life again.

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When you’re getting divorced with children, there are some decisions that look deceptively simple on paper: Where will the kids sleep? Who takes them to soccer? What happens on Thanksgiving? Who schedules the dentist? But those seemingly small questions are actually the architecture of your family’s next chapter. In this episode of Divorce Happens, Olivia sits down with David Fein, an attorney and divorce mediator based in the Chicagoland area, to demystify parenting plans, divorce mediation, and what it really means to build a co-parenting structure that works for your children—not just during the divorce, but for the years that follow.

David works with families navigating divorce and other family transitions through mediation and non-litigation family law services. He explains that a parenting plan can cover everything from custody schedules and transportation to school communication, medical appointments, extracurricular activities, holidays, and how parents will make decisions together. But the real value of mediation, he says, is the ability to get thoughtful and specific before future disagreements happen. Rather than relying on a one-size-fits-all custody arrangement, parents can build a plan around their children’s ages, routines, emotional needs, friendships, activities, and the realities of each parent’s life. David describes this as child-centered, not child-controlled: children can have a voice in the process without being forced to carry the weight of deciding between their parents.

Perhaps the most reassuring part of the conversation is David’s reminder that you do not have to get your parenting plan perfect the first time. Children grow. Jobs change. Activities shift. Families evolve. Parenting plans can evolve, too. David discusses why parents sometimes return to mediation after divorce to revise an existing agreement and how trial and error can be part of building a healthier co-parenting relationship. For anyone overwhelmed by divorce with kids, custody schedules, or fear about making the “wrong” parenting decision, this episode offers a more hopeful framework: divorce changes the structure of a family, but it does not end the family. You are creating a new system—and you can keep adjusting it as your children grow.

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"I started believing that the criticism, the feeling small, the walking on eggshells, was just what marriage was. I've caught myself telling friends 'it's not that bad' about things that, when I actually say them out loud, sound really bad." In this Hey Olivia listener letter episode, Olivia helps a listener recalibrate what she actually deserves after years of quietly minimizing a painful pattern in her marriage.

Olivia covers:

• Why the gap between what you say casually and how it actually sounds out loud is real, valuable information
• The difference between normal marital friction and a sustained pattern of criticism, walking on eggshells, and feeling small
• Why lowering your expectations to survive an intolerable situation isn't weakness — it's a common coping response
• A practical tool: asking "would I want this for my daughter, my best friend, someone I love?" instead of minimizing your own experience
• Why feeling safe and respected in your own home is a baseline, not something you have to earn
• Why years of minimizing don't mean the original wanting was wrong — it just got buried
• Why a therapist can help untangle a habit of minimizing that's been running automatically for years

"Feeling safe and respected in your own home is a baseline, not a bonus reserved for people who've somehow proven something first."

Need support navigating this? Fresh Starts offers free consults, a vetted professional network, and free guides. Learn more at freshstartsregistry.com.

If this episode helped, please subscribe, leave a review, and share it with someone who needs to hear it today.

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Sometimes, when your life is falling apart, the thing that helps you hold yourself together is something as ordinary as getting dressed. Not because a great outfit can solve your problems, but because sometimes you need a physical reminder of the person you are beneath all the stress, grief, and uncertainty. In this episode of Divorce Happens, Olivia Howell sits down with Tracy D. Galloway, Esq., M.A., a Massachusetts divorce attorney, litigator, online divorce coach and educator, and creator of Divorce Bootcamp, for a conversation about three surprisingly simple ways to support yourself when life feels impossibly hard. Drawing from both her professional expertise and deeply personal experiences, Tracy offers a refreshingly human approach to divorce recovery, emotional resilience, and finding your footing when you're not entirely sure what comes next.

Tracy begins with a black blazer that belonged to her mother. During an extraordinarily difficult family crisis, when even her professional knowledge and access to experts couldn't fix what was happening, that blazer became a way of helping herself feel capable enough to make another phone call and face another difficult conversation. Then there's her favorite coffee mug, which reminds her that humor, imperfection, and self-forgiveness all have a place in getting through hard times. Finally, there's the pillow she recently bought herself, a simple investment in physical comfort and the feeling of being held. Olivia shares her own experiences of creating a comforting bedroom after divorce and finding unexpected solace in a stuffed bunny, while Tracy recalls the stuffed dog that helped her face a friend's funeral. Together, their stories explore something we often overlook during divorce: the small, tangible ways we can create comfort and care for ourselves when so much else feels beyond our control.

But beneath the blazers, coffee mugs, pillows, and stuffed animals is a much bigger conversation about allowing ourselves to imagine a different life. Tracy talks about the years she spent in an unhappy marriage while raising young children and the limitations she once believed surrounded her choices. Her most important reminder is that feelings are not facts, and having a thought is not the same thing as making a decision. You are allowed to imagine leaving. You are allowed to consider new possibilities. You are allowed to think beyond your current circumstances without immediately changing everything about your life. For anyone considering divorce, navigating divorce recovery, single parenting, or starting over after a difficult relationship, this conversation offers practical self-care ideas and a hopeful reminder that you can begin taking care of yourself long before you have figured out your entire future.

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One of the most heartbreaking parts of divorce can happen after the agreements are signed and the custody calendar becomes real: suddenly, you may no longer see your children every day. For parents adjusting to shared custody or a 50/50 parenting schedule, the empty bedrooms, missed bedtimes, and stretches of time apart can feel almost impossible to accept. In this episode of Divorce Happens, relationship and divorce coach Molly Rubesh shares five compassionate, practical co-parenting strategies for staying deeply connected to your children—even when they are spending part of their lives in another home.

Molly works with women around the world, supporting them from the difficult decision to divorce through the transition into a healthy, sustainable co-parenting relationship with an ex-husband. Drawing from both her professional coaching work and her own divorce experience, Molly explains why children need explicit permission to love both parents, how small and predictable check-in rituals can create emotional security, and why parents may need to rethink what “time with my kids” actually looks like. That might mean volunteering at school, coaching a team, becoming the reliable home base for soccer cleats and backpacks, or answering a 7 p.m. FaceTime call even when it lasts only 90 seconds. These seemingly ordinary moments can become powerful anchors during divorce recovery and shared custody.

But Molly’s most important reminder may be the simplest: your bond with your children cannot be reduced to the number of overnights on a parenting plan. The years you have spent loving, comforting, raising, listening to, and showing up for your children do not disappear because a divorce decree divides their time between two homes. This conversation offers reassurance for moms struggling with co-parenting grief while also providing actionable co-parenting tips for creating stability, reducing pressure on children, and building connection after divorce. If you have ever wondered, Will my children still feel as close to me if I only have them half the time? this episode offers both practical guidance and a deeply hopeful answer.

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There is a very specific kind of fear that comes with thinking about divorce when you have no idea how your spouse is going to react. Maybe every difficult conversation somehow gets turned back on you. Maybe keeping the peace has become your full-time job. Maybe you’ve spent years being the reasonable one, the accommodating one, the person who gives a little more because it feels easier than dealing with what happens when you don’t. So how do you finally say, I want a divorce, when you believe the person on the other side of that conversation may become highly reactive or high-conflict? In this episode of Divorce Happens, Olivia Howell talks with Courtney Harkness, certified divorce coach and divorce strategist, about preparing to leave a high-conflict marriage with clarity, strategy, and support.

Courtney came to this work through her own experience leaving a 21-year high-conflict marriage, finalizing her divorce in 2024, and exiting the business she had co-founded with her former husband. Today, she primarily helps successful, high-achieving women navigate high-conflict divorce. Her first piece of advice is deceptively simple: once divorce is on the table, stop assuming you and your spouse are approaching the process as one team. That does not mean becoming cruel, retaliatory, or combative. It means understanding that protecting your future is not the same thing as being unkind. Courtney talks about the particular challenge this creates for people pleasers, who may believe that staying agreeable, giving up assets, or avoiding boundaries will somehow keep a divorce amicable. As she explains, civility and self-protection can exist at the same time.

This conversation gets deeply practical, too. Courtney shares why she encourages clients to prepare before announcing their decision, consult with divorce professionals ahead of time, think carefully about where that conversation takes place, avoid revealing every negotiation priority, and—perhaps most importantly—learn not to react every time a high-conflict spouse tries to provoke an emotional response. Her mantra is powerful: your superpower is not reacting. Whether you are considering divorce, preparing to leave a high-conflict marriage, dealing with a spouse who exhibits narcissistic traits, or simply trying to understand how to begin the divorce process, this episode offers a roadmap for moving from fear and chaos toward preparation, strategy, peace, and the belief that this difficult season will not last forever.

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Sometimes the hardest part of divorce isn’t only ending the marriage. It’s realizing how many beliefs you’ve inherited about what ending a marriage is supposed to say about you. Marriage is often presented as the goal. Divorce becomes the thing nobody wants to become. Being single is treated like an unfortunate waiting room before the next relationship begins. In this episode of Divorce Happens, Olivia Howell sits down with Tamar Queen Barbash, breakup and divorce coach and founder of New Beginnings Breakup and Divorce Coaching, for a conversation about the cultural stories surrounding marriage, divorce, relationships, and starting over—and how changing those stories can change the way we experience our own lives.

Tamar works with people navigating breakups and divorce, helping them examine not only what happened in their relationships but also the societal expectations shaping how they judge themselves afterward. She explains that divorce and unhappy marriages can feel profoundly isolating because people often assume everyone else is doing relationships better than they are. Social media can intensify that loneliness by replacing real community with carefully curated versions of other people's marriages and lives. Tamar created her Shifting Perspectives podcast series to push back against those assumptions by bringing honest conversations about marriage, divorce, singleness, the divorce process, and even infidelity into the open. When people hear experiences that resemble their own, shame can begin to loosen its grip.

The conversation ultimately asks listeners to consider a powerful question: What would you choose if you stopped making decisions based on what marriage, divorce, or being single is supposed to look like? Tamar discusses how fear of becoming “a divorced person” can keep someone in a relationship, how fear of being alone can make people stay when they no longer want to, and why being single does not have to mean being lonely. Divorce recovery, she argues, can involve shifting the perspective from failure to choice—from being trapped by a decision you made years ago to recognizing that you are allowed to make a different decision now. For anyone questioning a marriage, navigating divorce, rebuilding after divorce, or learning how to be alone without feeling isolated, this episode offers validation, community, and permission to imagine another way forward.

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"I've said 'we're staying together for the kids' so many times it's basically become my personality. But my daughter asked me last week why I always look sad when he's talking, and I didn't have an answer for her." In this Hey Olivia listener letter episode, Olivia helps a listener sit with the question her daughter unknowingly asked her — and what it means to let a years-long belief be questioned.

Olivia covers:

• Why a child noticing something you thought you were hiding is real, meaningful information
• Why protecting your kids and staying together aren't automatically the same thing
• How kids learn what love and partnership look like by watching, not by being told
• Why questioning a years-long plan isn't a betrayal of past decisions or a sign of failure
• Why re-evaluating with new information is wisdom, not inconsistency
• The identity grief that can come with questioning a self-image built around staying and sacrificing
• Why both things can be true at once: staying wasn't a failure, and questioning it now is valid too

"Sometimes staying protects kids. And sometimes it teaches them something you never actually meant to teach them at all."

Need support navigating this? Fresh Starts offers free consults, a vetted professional network, and free guides. Learn more at freshstartsregistry.com.

If this episode helped, please subscribe, leave a review, and share it with someone who needs to hear it today.

🔗 Check out Fresh Starts Registry:

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"Everyone keeps saying 'you must have known,' and honestly? I didn't. Now I'm replaying every conversation, every weird silence, every time something felt off and I told myself I was being paranoid." In this Hey Olivia listener letter episode, Olivia helps a listener let go of the retrospective self-blame that follows discovering a betrayal she never saw coming.

Olivia covers:

• Why you only ever know a relationship based on the information you actually had access to at the time
• Why "you must have known" is one of the least fair things people say after a betrayal comes to light
• Why dismissing a weird silence as paranoia wasn't a failure of judgment — it was a reasonable conclusion from incomplete, filtered information
• Why shame implies you failed at something you had the tools to succeed at, when you were never given the full picture to begin with
• A key reframe: he was responsible for being honest, and you were responsible for reasoning honestly with what you had — two different jobs
• Why the retrospective timeline only looks clear now because you're standing somewhere you weren't standing back then
• Why a therapist experienced in betrayal trauma can help separate what you could have known from what you're now judging yourself for

"I only had the information I was given. I reasoned well with what I had."

Need support navigating this? Fresh Starts offers free consults, a vetted professional network, and free guides. Learn more at freshstartsregistry.com.

If this episode helped, please subscribe, leave a review, and share it with someone who needs to hear it today.

🔗 Check out Fresh Starts Registry:

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📬 Magazine: https://divorceguidemagazine.com/

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"I've read the books. I've gone to therapy, solo, since he won't come. Every time something doesn't work, my first thought isn't 'this isn't working,' it's 'I must not be trying the right thing yet.'" In this Hey Olivia listener letter episode, Olivia helps a listener see the pattern hiding in plain sight after years of genuine, varied effort to save her marriage alone.

Olivia covers:

• Why years of varied effort — books, solo therapy, different communication styles — is the opposite of giving up too soon
• Why "I must not be trying the right thing yet" is easier to believe than "this isn't working," even when it's not more true
• Why a marriage isn't a puzzle one person can solve alone, no matter how much effort they bring
• How to look at what's actually been constant across every approach: not the method, but the response you got back
• Why effort not being the problem doesn't mean your efforts were wrong or wasted
• Why not every ending requires a villain — the absence of a partner's participation is still the deciding factor
• A direct way to answer the question: has your effort ever been met with real, even imperfect, reciprocal effort?

"The constant across all of it was never your methodology."

Need support navigating this? Fresh Starts offers free consults, a vetted professional network, and free guides. Learn more at freshstartsregistry.com.

If this episode helped, please subscribe, leave a review, and share it with someone who needs to hear it today.

🔗 Check out Fresh Starts Registry:

The first & only divorce registry + support platform ➡ https://www.freshstartsregistry.com/

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📘 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/

"I posted something on TikTok during an angry divorce spiral last night, mid-rant, feeling completely justified in the moment. This morning I woke up and read it back and felt sick." In this Hey Olivia listener letter episode, Olivia answers a question so many people have quietly lived through: what to do the morning after an emotional, regretted post during divorce.

Olivia covers:

• Why posting in anger at midnight during divorce is a genuinely human response, not a sign something's wrong with you
• Why it's okay to simply delete a regretted post without overthinking the optics of the deletion itself
• Why deleting something isn't a confession of guilt or an admission of hiding anything
• When it's worth a quick, honest conversation with your attorney if you're in an active legal process
• Why screenshots can exist even after deletion, and what that means practically going forward
• How to build in a pause before posting during high-emotion moments — even just writing it in a notes app first
• Why you're allowed to have a private outlet to vent that isn't public: a trusted friend, a journal, a voice memo you never send

"One moment of oversharing doesn't define you, and it doesn't undo everything else you're doing to handle this whole process with genuine care."

Need support navigating this? Fresh Starts offers free consults, a vetted professional network, and free guides. Learn more at freshstartsregistry.com.

If this episode helped, please subscribe, leave a review, and share it with someone who needs to hear it today.

🔗 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/

"Since my husband and I separated, we keep ending up back in bed together. It's not planned. It just happens." In this Hey Olivia listener letter episode, Olivia answers one of the most common — and least talked about — parts of separation: continuing to sleep with a spouse you've split from, and why it's so much harder to stop than it sounds.

Olivia covers:

• Why this is one of the most common things that happens during separation, even though almost no one admits it out loud
• The real chemical bonding that comes with physical intimacy with someone familiar, regardless of where things stand emotionally
• Why keeping this private isn't shame — it's often just protecting yourself from managing other people's reactions
• Why the "setback" feeling afterward isn't confusion, it's clear information: the body wants comfort, growth wants distance, and both are true at once
• Why structural changes work better than willpower alone — limiting alone time, meeting in public, having a plan for loneliness
• How to get specific about whether the craving is for that person, or for touch and closeness in general
• Why deciding your boundary on a calm day beats deciding it in a lonely moment

"Your body wants comfort. Your growth wants distance. Both are true."

Need support navigating this? Fresh Starts Registry offers free consults, a vetted professional network, and free guides. Learn more at freshstartsregistry.com.

If this episode helped, please subscribe, leave a review, and share it with someone who needs to hear it today.

🔗 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/

"I've been thinking about divorce for months, but I haven't told a single person. Does that mean I'm not actually serious about it?" In this Hey Olivia listener letter episode, Olivia answers a question so many people carry silently — and makes the case that staying quiet doesn't mean you're not serious. If anything, it might mean the opposite.

Olivia covers:

• Why silence is not the same thing as ambivalence
• Why processing privately first is often the safest, smartest way to approach a life-changing decision
• Why months of quiet thinking is actually fast, not slow, for something this big
• Why telling one person doesn't have to be a "starting gun" for anything
• Why a thought that won't go away is usually strong evidence it's real — not evidence that it isn't
• Permission to move at your own pace, on your own timeline, with no outside benchmark to meet

"The thoughts that don't go away are usually the ones trying to tell you something true."

Want somewhere to say it out loud for the very first time, without it being a starting gun for anything? Divorce Happens offers free consults, a vetted professional network, and free guides. Learn more at freshstartsregistry.com.

If this episode helped, please subscribe, leave a review, and share it with someone who needs to hear it today.

🔗 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/

"How do I actually know if what I'm feeling is 'this is over,' or just a rough patch?" In this Hey Olivia listener letter episode, Olivia answers one of the most common quiet questions in marriage — the doubt that comes and goes, with no single big reason attached. She walks through five honest, practical questions to help you tell the difference between a temporary rough season and something more permanent, without rushing you toward an answer before you're ready.

Olivia covers:

• Why feeling doubt about your marriage isn't automatically proof "it's over"
• How to tell if what you're feeling is tied to a specific season versus something more permanent
• The difference between a thought that flares and settles versus one that's become a constant low hum
• Why your body's honest, gut-level reaction often knows before your mind does
• How to check whether you're the only one still reaching in the relationship
• Why wanting clarity isn't the same as looking for a reason to leave

"You don't have to know for certain right now. You're allowed to keep asking the question for as long as you need to."

Want help thinking this through with someone who isn't inside your marriage and won't rush you toward an answer? Divorce Happens offers free consults, a vetted professional network, and free guides. Learn more at freshstartsregistry.com.

If this episode helped, please subscribe, leave a review, and share it with someone who needs to hear it today.

🔗 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/

Do you feel like you need an airtight, defensible reason before you're even allowed to think about divorce? In this solo episode, Olivia pushes back on that pressure and hands you permission you didn't know you were waiting for: "something isn't right for me" is allowed to be a complete reason, full stop. This episode is for anyone stuck in the private, early stage of questioning their marriage — before they've said a word to anyone else.

Olivia covers:

• Why we've all absorbed a hierarchy of "acceptable" reasons to leave a marriage — and why that hierarchy is a trap
• The real difference between explaining your feelings and justifying them to someone else
• Why waiting for a "good enough" reason can keep you stuck in the thinking stage for years
• Why "I don't know exactly why, I just know something feels off" is a complete sentence
• A simple script for holding your boundary when people push for more detail than you're ready to give
• Why you're allowed to still be figuring it out, with no defense prepared in advance

"Something isn't right for me" is allowed to be a complete, sufficient reason. Full stop.

Need a place to think this through out loud with someone who won't ask you to justify a single word of it? Fresh Starts Registry offers free consults, a vetted professional network, and free guides. Learn more at freshstartsregistry.com.

If this episode helped, please subscribe, leave a review, and share it with someone who needs to hear it today.

🔗 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 Financial Clarity Academy™ is a six-week live program designed to help women better understand the financial decisions that come with divorce—including the questions they may not even know they need to be asking yet. Led by Donna Cates of Money Matters Wealth Solutions, with guest professionals joining throughout the program, the Academy begins September 18. Registration is now open. Investment: $297

Learn more and register here: bit.ly/divorcefinancialclarity

Why does your heart race, your hands shake, or your throat tighten the moment you finally say "I'm getting divorced" out loud? In this solo episode, Olivia breaks down the physical, nervous-system side of disclosing a divorce — the part almost nobody talks about. This isn't about the emotional grief of divorce; it's about what's actually happening in your body in that first raw moment of telling someone, and why that reaction is completely normal.

Olivia covers:

• Why your body reacts so intensely the first time you say it out loud
• The nervous system science behind shaking hands, a racing heart, nausea, or a tight throat
• Why keeping a divorce private feels "safer" — and what changes the moment you tell someone
• How to recognize a normal stress response instead of thinking something's wrong with you
• Simple aftercare for after a hard conversation
• Why healing isn't linear, and why that's not backsliding

"Your body is going to have a reaction, and that reaction is not a red flag. It's proof this matters exactly as much as you think it does."

If this episode helped, please subscribe, leave a review, and share it with someone who needs to hear it today.

🔗 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 Financial Clarity Academy™ is a six-week live program designed to help women better understand the financial decisions that come with divorce—including the questions they may not even know they need to be asking yet. Led by Donna Cates of Money Matters Wealth Solutions, with guest professionals joining throughout the program, the Academy begins September 18. Registration is now open. Investment: $297

Learn more and register here: bit.ly/divorcefinancialclarity

There's a piece of paper that ends your marriage and quietly runs your life for years afterward — and almost nobody reads the whole thing. In this episode of Divorce Happens, Olivia sits down with Molly Rosenblum, Esq., founding attorney of The Rosenblum Allen Law Firm and one of the most respected family law attorneys in Las Vegas, Nevada — the self-described “divorce capital of the world.” With more than two decades of experience trying family law cases to verdict and a career built almost entirely around helping people through divorce, Molly is exactly the guide listeners need for the deceptively simple question at the center of this conversation: what actually is a divorce decree, and why does it matter so much more than anyone tells you going in?

Molly walks Olivia — and every listener who's ever stared blankly at their own divorce paperwork — through what a decree actually contains: property and debt division, custody and visitation schedules, child support, alimony, and, depending on your state, requirements as specific as whether you're reverting to your maiden name.

She compares it to “the rule book” of your divorce, the document a court will always return to if a dispute resurfaces years later. Molly shares real moments from her practice, including panicked holiday phone calls from clients convinced their ex is violating the custody schedule — only to discover, decree in hand, that the schedule was on their side all along. It's a candid look at how much confusion, fear, and even relief lives inside a single legal document, and why understanding it before you sign it may be one of the most protective things you can do for yourself and your kids.

What makes this conversation land is Molly's refusal to treat divorce as something to whisper about. She talks about clients who've framed their finalized decrees on the wall — a symbol of survival, not shame — and reminds listeners that divorce, however common it's become, still deserves to be met with knowledge instead of fear.

Two takeaways to walk away with: read every single word of your decree before you sign it, and keep a certified copy somewhere safe, because you'll need it in places you'd never expect — school enrollment, the DMV, even the Social Security office. Whether you're heading into your first consultation or you've been divorced for years and just realized you never actually understood your own paperwork, this episode offers the clarity, and quiet confidence, you didn't know you needed.

Learn more about Molly Rosenblum:

Molly Rosenblum is the founder and managing attorney of Rosenblum Allen Law Firm, a leading Nevada family law firm serving Las Vegas, Henderson, and Summerlin. Raised in Las Vegas, Molly graduated Cum Laude from the William S. Boyd School of Law at UNLV in 2002 and began her career gaining valuable courtroom and litigation experience before founding her firm in 2005. For more than 20 years, Molly has focused on complex family law matters, including high-asset divorces, contested custody cases, and prenuptial and postnuptial agreements. Today, Molly leads a growing team of attorneys and has handled more than $100 million in high-asset family law matters. She is a court-appointed Guardian ad Litem, a Certified AFCC Parenting Coordinator, and a member of the Raise the Bar committee, helping shape professional standards for family law practitioners in Las Vegas. She is licensed to practice in Nevada and Idaho.

Helpful Resources

Rosenblum Allen Law Firm has more on both situations:

→ Enforcing a Divorce Decree in Nevada

→ Post-Divorce Modifications in Nevada

Learn more about Rosenblum Allen Law Firm.

This episode is a sponsored placement, presented by The Rosenblum Allen Law Firm

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:

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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:

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📬 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.

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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.

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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:

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📱 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/freshstartsregistry/

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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/

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📬 Magazine: https://divorceguidemagazine.com/

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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/

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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/

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📬 Magazine: https://divorceguidemagazine.com/

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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/