Explore every episode of the podcast Divorce Happens

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.

🔗 Check out Fresh Starts Registry:

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💛 The Divorce Happens Community: https://divorcehappens.substack.com/

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.

🔗 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/

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.

🔗 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 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.

🔗 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/

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.

🔗 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 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.

🔗 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/

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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📬 Magazine: https://divorceguidemagazine.com/

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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.

🔗 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 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.

🔗 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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🎙 Podcast IG: https://www.instagram.com/divorcehappenspod/

📬 Magazine: https://divorceguidemagazine.com/

💛 The Divorce Happens Community: https://divorcehappens.substack.com/

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.

🔗 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 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:

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/

"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:

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 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/

📱 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 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/

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📬 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.

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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.

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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/

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🎙 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/

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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/

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🎙 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/

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🎙 Podcast IG: https://www.instagram.com/divorcehappenspod/

📬 Magazine: https://divorceguidemagazine.com/

💛 The Divorce Happens Community: https://divorcehappens.substack.com/

A mediator is not a magician. That single line, dropped early in this episode of Divorce Happens, sets the tone for one of the most genuinely useful conversations in the show’s mediation series so far. Host Olivia Howell continues part two of her four-part collaboration with Allison McFadden, a Washington D.C.-Baltimore-area family law attorney, Certified Divorce Coach®, and court-appointed mediator who founded Divorce by Allison after more than a decade practicing family law.

If the first episode in this series answered the question of what divorce mediation actually is, this one answers the question almost nobody thinks to ask beforehand: how do you actually prepare to walk into the room? Because as Allison makes clear, preparation isn’t a formality — it’s one of the biggest predictors of whether mediation succeeds.

Allison walks listeners through exactly what real preparation looks like, and it’s far more concrete and reassuring than most people expect. She encourages listeners to interview their mediator ahead of time — asking about their style (facilitative versus evaluative), how long sessions run, what topics will be covered, and how they handle high emotion in the room. She also normalizes a fear many listeners carry quietly: the worry of being talked over or steamrolled by a spouse during mediation.

Allison’s answer is refreshingly practical — you’re allowed to bring support. A pre-mediation divorce coach, a consulting attorney, even a financial advisor can join the process, and she breaks down exactly how that works logistically, from private side-conversations in a Zoom breakout room to sitting at the table together. Olivia adds her own lived experience here, sharing that her mediation began over Zoom and evolved into each side bringing in their own attorney to help finalize things — without ever coming close to court.

What makes this episode so actionable is how far it goes beyond generic advice. Allison gets specific about the documents that actually matter (account and mortgage statements and a school calendar, not birth or marriage certificates), the importance of walking in with a clear intention or “North Star” for why you’re there, and the value of preparing flexible proposals rather than a single non-negotiable demand.

She closes with something rarely discussed in divorce circles: how to prepare mentally, naming that mediation can surface real emotional triggers and encouraging listeners to build a plan — through therapy, coaching, or somatic techniques — before those moments catch them off guard. Listeners walk away with a genuine sense of agency: mediation isn’t something that happens to you, it’s a process you can walk into prepared, supported, and clear-eyed.

🔗 Check out Fresh Starts Registry:

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

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

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

🎙 Podcast IG: https://www.instagram.com/divorcehappenspod/

📬 Magazine: https://divorceguidemagazine.com/

💛 The Divorce Happens Community: https://divorcehappens.substack.com/

Most people going through a divorce have heard the word “mediation” — and almost none of them know what it actually means. That gap is exactly where this episode of Divorce Happens begins, with host Olivia Howell kicking off a brand-new four-part series on divorce mediation alongside Allison McFadden, a Washington D.C.-Baltimore-area family law attorney, Certified Divorce Coach®, and court-appointed mediator who has spent more than a decade helping families untangle divorce and co-parenting without setting foot in a courtroom.

After years as a litigation attorney, Allison made a deliberate pivot: she founded Divorce by Allison to give people a private, collaborative, and far less combative path through one of life’s hardest transitions, and in this conversation she pulls back the curtain on a process that is often misunderstood, underexplained, and quietly one of the most empowering options available to divorcing couples.

What makes this episode so valuable is how thoroughly Allison reframes what divorce mediation actually offers. She explains that mediation is a confidential, voluntary process guided by a neutral third party — not a judge, not a decision-maker, but a facilitator whose entire job is to help you and your co-parent or spouse reach an agreement that fits your family. That distinction matters enormously, because it means you retain control over nearly everything: who your mediator is, how quickly or slowly things move, and how creatively you solve the issues in front of you, from custody and parenting plans to the house, the finances, and everything in between.

Allison contrasts this directly with divorce court, where a judge who has spent only a few hours with your case ultimately makes decisions for your family within the narrow limits of state law. She also gently dismantles one of the biggest myths clients bring into mediation: the fear that a mediator will simply tell them what to do. “The mediator is not there to make the decisions,” she reminds listeners — the mediator is there to help you and your co-parent find your own answer.

Listeners walk away from this episode with real clarity and real hope, especially anyone who assumed mediation wasn’t an option because things with their spouse or co-parent feel too difficult.

Allison walks through exactly what the process looks like in practice, from a free 20-minute consultation call to a prep checklist to a roughly two-hour mediation session that ends in a written agreement, and she makes the case that even high-conflict or emotionally complicated situations can still be strong candidates for mediation, because the process is built to be tailored to your family rather than forced into a courtroom template.

This episode is the first in a four-part Divorce Happens series on mediation, so if you’re newly considering divorce, trying to avoid a costly and public court battle, or simply want to understand your options before you decide anything, this conversation is the essential, judgment-free place to start.

🔗 Check out Fresh Starts Registry:

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

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

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

🎙 Podcast IG: https://www.instagram.com/divorcehappenspod/

📬 Magazine: https://divorceguidemagazine.com/

💛 The Divorce Happens Community: https://divorcehappens.substack.com/

She planned it for months — saved up, found an apartment, rehearsed the speech. She was sure. And three weeks after filing, she’s crying in a Target parking lot, smelling her almost-ex-husband’s hoodie before she donates it, waking up sobbing from a dream where they were still together. In this Divorce Happens “Hey Olivia” episode, host Olivia Howell reads a listener letter word for word and answers the question underneath it: if leaving was the right call, why does it still hurt this much? It’s one of the most tender, disorienting parts of divorce recovery — the grief that shows up even when you were the one who filed — and Olivia meets it head-on with clarity, warmth, and zero judgment.

Olivia’s core teaching reframes the entire experience: grief after a decision you made on purpose still counts as grief, full stop — it is not a scoreboard telling you whether you got it right or wrong. She walks through why the nervous system doesn’t distinguish between a sad ending and a wrong one; when a marriage ends, you’re not just losing a person, you’re losing an imagined future — the routines, the holidays, the version of “us” you’d built in your head. That’s why a dream of getting back together isn’t a gut-check reversing the divorce, and why missing the smell of a hoodie isn’t longing for him back — it’s a body flagging something familiar that’s disappearing. Olivia names this for what it actually is: withdrawal, not regret.

The episode lands on two mindset shifts listeners can use immediately. First, a diagnostic question for the 3 a.m. spiral: do I miss him, or do I miss not being alone with all of this? One is about a person; the other is about fear — and you’re allowed to sit with both without acting on either today. Second, a somatic tool: hand on chest, out loud, “this is grief, not a mistake.” Olivia is clear that clarity isn’t the goal right now — care is, alongside a real runway of weeks or months before trusting any conclusion grief hands you in its loudest moments. It’s a compassionate, validating listen for anyone in the disorienting early weeks after filing, wondering if missing someone means they made the wrong call. They didn’t. Their body is just catching up.

🔗 Check out Fresh Starts Registry:

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

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

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📬 Magazine: https://divorceguidemagazine.com/

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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.

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📬 Magazine: https://divorceguidemagazine.com/

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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:

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📱 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.

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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:

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📱 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:

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

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🎙 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/

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🎙 Podcast IG: https://www.instagram.com/divorcehappenspod/

📬 Magazine: https://divorceguidemagazine.com/

💛 The Divorce Happens Community: https://divorcehappens.substack.com/

Most people think divorce begins with paperwork. Leslie Mathews will tell you it actually begins in your nervous system. In this candid, deeply practical episode of Divorce Happens, Olivia sits down with Leslie Mathews, JD, MSW, a former attorney turned therapist, mindfulness coach, and founder of The LooM Life and LooM Life Therapy.

Leslie brings a rare combination of expertise to the conversation: a law degree, a master's in social work, and her own lived experience of divorce, which she says taught her exactly what was missing from her process, and exactly what she now builds into every program she offers women navigating separation and starting over after divorce.

At the heart of Leslie's work is a truth most divorcing people never hear until it's too late: high-stakes conversations about money, custody, and separation can trigger the nervous system into freeze, and freeze can mean walking out of a meeting with no memory of what you just agreed to. Leslie has watched clients make life-altering decisions in a room full of people and retain nothing about it, and she now teaches nervous system regulation and dissociation awareness as the foundation of divorce preparation, before a single conversation about alimony or custody even happens.

From there, the work moves into attachment styles and trauma bonds, naming the disorienting experience of craving a spouse you can't stand, and into grief work for the parts of life divorce quietly takes with it: the extended family, the favorite restaurants, the whole ecosystem you didn't realize you'd lose. She even makes space for reclaiming pleasure and libido post-divorce, treating self-connection as both healing and protective against reconnecting with an ex out of loneliness.

What makes this episode so hopeful is Leslie's own hard-won clarity: divorce may be one of the worst things you go through, but she promises that life on the other side gets shockingly good, and that the self-awareness built during the process isn't wasted, it's the foundation for everything that comes next. Listeners walk away with two concrete takeaways: first, that preparing your nervous system before high-conflict meetings is just as important as preparing your case, and second, that noticing your reactions with curiosity, rather than shame, is what actually changes the outcome.

Whether you're weighing whether to leave, mid-process, or newly divorced and trying to figure out who you are now, this conversation offers real tools for healing after divorce and rebuilding identity on the other side.

🔗 Check out Fresh Starts Registry:

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

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📬 Magazine: https://divorceguidemagazine.com/

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In this solo episode of Divorce Happens, Olivia reads a piece from her personal writing Substack, The Happenstance, called "The Hidden Cost of Having a Husband." It's a reflection on domestic inequity — the invisible labor that piles up in a marriage even when a task only needs one person to do it.

Olivia shares her own story, including the time she broke her foot and still had to keep the household running. It's honest, a little funny, and gets at something a lot of women feel but rarely say out loud.

This piece originally ran on The Happenstance. Follow along at oliviahowell.substack.com for more essays like this one.

What if the single biggest predictor of how your kids come through your divorce has almost nothing to do with the divorce itself? That's the question at the heart of this episode of Divorce Happens, where Olivia sits down with Maria Natapov, a BeH2O® Certified Co-Parenting Coach, Rapid Resolution Therapy® Facilitator, and founder of Synergistic Stepparenting. Maria has spent years helping divorcing and divorced parents move from reacting to responding, and she brings something rare to this conversation: the lived experience of a child of divorce and a stepparent, paired with the clinical grounding of a family systems coach who has watched, up close, what actually determines whether kids come out of co-parenting resilient or overwhelmed.

Maria's central insight reframes everything: it isn't separation itself that shapes a child's long-term wellbeing, it's their ongoing exposure to parental conflict — the frequency, duration, and intensity of it. Through her signature BeH2O® framework, Maria helps parents build an internal operating system for co-parenting after divorce, likening the process to building muscle at the gym rather than waiting for a court date or a milestone to magically deliver peace. She's also candid about the limits of simply "being nice." Many of the parents she works with are seasoned over-functioners running on an internal pressure cooker — anticipating everyone's needs, absorbing everyone's emotions, and quietly burning out, until the pressure finds its way out anyway, often at the expense of the very kids they're trying to protect.

Where this episode offers real hope is in what Maria says comes next: parents who commit to the work report they stop replaying conversations late at night, stop feeling responsible for managing everyone else's emotions, and start setting boundaries without guilt — changes that ripple directly into how safe and steady their kids feel. Listeners walk away with two clear, actionable shifts: first, that co-parenting peace is built through consistent, repeatable patterns rather than a single finish line, and second, Maria's simple reframe for high-conflict moments — what kind of parent do you want your child to remember, and what would it take to be that person today? For anyone navigating co-parenting after divorce, blended family stress, or single parenting on the other side of separation, this conversation offers a genuinely usable place to start.

🔗 Check out Fresh Starts Registry:

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

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📬 Magazine: https://divorceguidemagazine.com/

💛 The Divorce Happens Community: https://divorcehappens.substack.com/

You survived the divorce. Then your kid turns thirteen, and a new bill you never quite planned for starts looming on the horizon: college. In this practical, reassuring episode of Divorce Happens, Olivia sits down with Vicki Vollweiler, MBA, CDC, the founder and CEO of College Financial Prep and author of College Planning for Divorced and Widowed Parents. Vicki built her practice specifically around separated, divorced, remarried, and widowed families after years of working as a certified divorce coach, when clients kept asking her the same question: how am I possibly going to afford college as a divorced parent? As a divorced mom herself, currently guiding her own daughter through the college search, Vicki brings both firsthand experience and deep technical expertise to a topic most divorced families don't realize they need to plan for years in advance.

The heart of this episode is a financial aid distinction most parents have never heard of, and one that can cost or save a family tens of thousands of dollars: the difference between the FAFSA, which typically considers one household's finances, and the CSS Profile, used by many selective schools, which often wants information from both biological parents and their new spouses, meaning a blended family could suddenly be reporting four incomes instead of one. Vicki walks through the hidden costs that catch divorced families off guard, from test fees and application fees to campus visits and tutoring, and the fee waivers available to offset them. She's equally candid about the emotional layer underneath the spreadsheets: co-parents often carry different values and different definitions of "the best school for my child," and neither is wrong, but those differences need to be named and discussed long before decision letters arrive.

What makes this episode so hopeful is Vicki's reminder that this process doesn't have to be adversarial or lonely. Listeners walk away with two clear, actionable takeaways: first, to check whether college is even addressed in their divorce agreement, and if it isn't, to start that conversation with their co-parent now, ideally years before senior year, since tax returns from tenth and eleventh grade can shape a family's first financial aid award; and second, to loop in the wider support system, whether that's grandparents, aunts, uncles, or family friends, to help make campus visits and the college search feel like a gift instead of a burden. For any divorced or divorcing parent staring down the cost of college, this conversation offers real clarity, real savings strategies, and genuine reassurance that this milestone can still be joyful.

🔗 Check out Fresh Starts Registry:

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

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

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📬 Magazine: https://divorceguidemagazine.com/

💛 The Divorce Happens Community: https://divorcehappens.substack.com/

What if the way back to yourself started with getting your head under water? That's the question at the heart of this episode of Divorce Happens, where Olivia talks with Kate Washington — a Sacramento-based writer, former dining critic, and author of two deeply personal memoirs: Already Toast: Caregiving and Burnout in America, and her brand-new release, Midstream: A Life Remade in 50 Swims. Kate's byline has appeared in the New York Times, Time, and HuffPost, but this conversation isn't about her résumé. It's about the year she turned a personal challenge — swim in fifty different bodies of water before her fiftieth birthday — into the roadmap for finally leaving a twenty-three-year marriage that had quietly hollowed her out.

Kate's story complicates the narrative around divorce and caregiving in exactly the way this show exists to do. For years, she was the primary caregiver not only for her two daughters but for her then-husband through a severe cancer diagnosis — carrying, as she puts it, the vast bulk of the mental load in a marriage that was quietly draining her. The 50 Dunks Project started as something playful, a way to reclaim the joy and childhood wonder she'd lost somewhere along the way. But immersing herself, literally, in rivers, hot springs, and the waters of southern France became something more: a practice of embodiment, presence, and boundary-setting in a life that had none. Kate shares the test that ultimately helped her decide to separate — asking herself whether she'd tell her own daughter to stay in a marriage like hers — and speaks candidly about the guilt of choosing divorce while her ex-husband was still chronically ill, and the very real grief her daughters carried alongside her.

The episode closes on the note this show always returns to: divorce is not the crisis it's made out to be — it's often the exit from one. Kate's final swim, on her fiftieth birthday, with both daughters at her favorite spot on the South Yuba River, becomes a quiet, hard-won reconciliation after years of pain neither of them chose. Her message to anyone circling the decision to leave an unhappy marriage is direct: the freedom on the other side comes sooner than you'd think, and it is worth it. Listeners will walk away with two practical takeaways for starting over after divorce — a simple gut-check question for evaluating whether a marriage is serving you, and a reminder that reclaiming joy, in almost any small form, is never a frivolous first step toward midlife reinvention.

🔗 Check out Fresh Starts Registry:

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

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

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

🎙 Podcast IG: https://www.instagram.com/divorcehappenspod/

📬 Magazine: https://divorceguidemagazine.com/

💛 The Divorce Happens Community: https://divorcehappens.substack.com/

Somewhere in your divorce, a well-meaning friend has probably told you to "hire a shark." Lisa Lisser wants you to pause before you do. In this grounding, clarifying episode of Divorce Happens, Olivia welcomes back one of the show's most beloved recurring experts: Lisa Lisser, a Certified Divorce Coach®, BeH2O® Child-Centered Co-Parenting Coach, and founder of LZL Coaching.

A retired attorney who built a career in litigation before becoming a divorce coach, Lisa brings a rare blend of legal fluency, lived experience of her own divorce, and spiritual grounding to a conversation about something most divorcing people never slow down long enough to find: clarity.

Lisa's signature framework, divorce clarity, starts from a simple but radical idea: before you can make good decisions during divorce, you have to get honest about your values, and that requires pausing instead of reacting. She walks through what she calls "the pause for clarity," a moment to ask where am I right now, what am I feeling, and what's the fear underneath the fear, before the nervous system's fight, flight, freeze, or fawn response takes the wheel. From there, she introduces "strategic curiosity": the practice of asking the questions divorcing people are often too afraid or too overwhelmed to ask, whether that's what does hiring a shark attorney actually mean for my case, or who can answer my questions about qualifying for a mortgage on my own. Lisa is candid that she didn't ask enough questions during her own divorce, and that she now builds her entire coaching practice around helping clients avoid that same regret.

What makes this episode so reassuring is Lisa's insistence that clarity is buildable, even for someone in the most heartbroken, spiraling phase of divorce, one pause, one breath, one question at a time. Listeners walk away with two clear, actionable tools: first, the pause for clarity itself, a simple nervous-system reset to use before any high-stakes conversation or decision; and second, a challenge to name their own top three to five values as a compass for who they want to be, both during the divorce process and in the life that comes after it. For anyone navigating divorce fog, decision paralysis, or the pressure to react fast instead of think clearly, this conversation offers a genuinely calming, practical place to start.

🔗 Check out Fresh Starts Registry:

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

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

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

🎙 Podcast IG: https://www.instagram.com/divorcehappenspod/

📬 Magazine: https://divorceguidemagazine.com/

💛 The Divorce Happens Community: https://divorcehappens.substack.com/

Everybody talks about how to say the words. Almost nobody talks about the bathroom-floor hours right after. In the final episode of this Divorce Happens series, host Olivia Howell goes straight to the moment listeners rarely hear addressed anywhere else: you've just told your spouse you want a divorce, the words are out and can't be taken back, and instead of feeling free, you feel shaky, numb, and quietly confused about why relief hasn't arrived. Olivia meets that exact feeling head-on, with a single, steadying message — you did the hard thing, and you just moved through one of the biggest moments of your entire life.

What makes this closing episode so validating is the plain, physiological explanation Olivia offers for that floaty, unrelieved feeling. Even a conversation that goes “well” floods the nervous system, she explains, because the body doesn't distinguish between brave and dangerous — it just registers overwhelm. From there, she hands listeners real permission: no rule says logistics have to start today, no lawyer has to be called tonight, and tending to the body first — a walk, slower breathing, a phone call to the right friend — isn't a detour from being productive, it's what actually makes every next decision clearer. She also offers grounded scripts for a spouse who keeps circling back to relitigate the conversation, along with permission to withhold details on logistics until they've had time to think.

As the finale of the full series, this episode closes with something larger than a single conversation: the reminder that the goal was never to do any of this perfectly or fearlessly, only honestly — and that listeners already did that. The actionable takeaway is small and deliberately doable: text one trusted person three words, do one thing that grounds you, and let yourself rest, because the logistics will still be there tomorrow. For anyone at the start of divorce recovery, this episode offers the exhale the rest of the series was building toward, along with a clear invitation to let other people, including a therapist or coach, help carry what comes next.

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For so many people preparing to leave a marriage, saying the words was never the scariest part — it's everything that might happen the second after. In part three of this Divorce Happens series, host Olivia Howell goes straight at that fear: what if they rage? What if they cry and beg and I cave? What if they twist this until somehow I'm the villain? Olivia hands listeners the single reframe she wants them to carry into that room — a spouse's reaction reveals how they feel, not what the listener is obligated to do. Those two things get blurred together after years of marriage, and pulling them apart is the real work of this episode.

What makes this episode so grounding is how specifically Olivia names the nervous system response underneath the fear. That overwhelming urge to explain yourself for hours isn't weakness, she explains — it's a body that has spent years learning to manage a partner's feelings to keep the peace, and naming that pattern out loud is what lets someone feel the pull without obeying it. From there, she offers real, calm scripts for the specific reactions listeners dread most: anger, accusations of selfishness, begging and tears, and attempts to reopen the decision as a debate — each one paired with a steady sentence designed to hold a boundary without escalating the moment.

The episode closes with its most serious and most important note: if a spouse's reaction moves into threats, intimidation, or manipulation, listeners are allowed to end the conversation completely, without guilt or further explanation, and lean on support rather than try to tough it out alone. Olivia repeats the National Domestic Violence Hotline as a resource to keep close, free and confidential, for anyone who feels unsafe in that moment. For anyone deep in the fear of the reaction stage of divorce, this episode offers real language, real permission, and the reminder that they are stronger than this one conversation — with the next episode addressing the quiet, disorienting after.

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There's a particular kind of freeze that happens after someone finally decides to end their marriage — not doubt, just a total blank when they try to imagine the actual words. In part two of this Divorce Happens series, host Olivia Howell meets listeners exactly there, at the moment between the decision and the sentence. She opens with something disarmingly honest: there is no perfect sentence that makes this stop hurting. What listeners are actually looking for isn't flawless, it's true — something they can get through without falling apart. From there, she hands over real, usable scripts for finally telling a spouse you want a divorce.

What makes this episode so useful is the range of real situations Olivia scripts for, not just one generic template. She offers a clear, no-blame opener for the conversation itself, a version for when love and the decision to leave coexist in the same breath, a co-parent-centered script that keeps kids steady without weaponizing them, and a firmer close-the-door version for anyone whose spouse has historically talked them out of their own decisions. Underneath every script is the same quiet architecture: name the decision, stay out of blame, and resist the urge to over-explain — because long justifications don't create understanding, she reminds listeners, they create arguments.

The episode closes with the instruction Olivia says matters most: practice out loud. Reading a script silently isn't the same as hearing it in your own voice, and rehearsing to a mirror, a trusted friend, or a steering wheel in the driveway lets the shake happen in private, so the real moment can be steadier. For anyone deep in the emotional work of starting over after divorce, this episode offers something rare — permission to prepare, and real words to borrow until they sound like your own, with the next episode promising support for what happens after the words are said.

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📬 Magazine: https://divorceguidemagazine.com/

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There is one conversation that so many people preparing to leave a marriage dread more than the lawyers, more than the logistics, more than dividing up a house: actually telling their spouse they want a divorce. In this episode of Divorce Happens, the first in a new four-part series, host Olivia Howell opens with a single reframe that changes the entire shape of that conversation — you are not asking for permission. If you've arrived at the decision to end your marriage, you get to name it as a decision, not a request you're hoping will be granted. This episode is Olivia's guide to the quiet, private work that has to happen before a single word is spoken out loud.

What makes this episode essential listening is how directly it treats this moment as both emotional and safety-sensitive. Olivia walks through getting clear with yourself first — not your spouse — by sitting with honest questions about certainty and hoped-for outcomes. Then she turns, without flinching, to something most divorce content skips entirely: the possibility that this conversation isn't safe for everyone. She names the specific warning signs worth taking seriously — a history of rage, control, monitoring, or fear around money — and offers the National Domestic Violence Hotline as a resource to keep close no matter where a listener is on this road, making clear that no one needs to feel certain they “qualify” for support before reaching out.

The episode closes with real permission and one small, doable step. Olivia reminds listeners that timing matters, that they don't owe their spouse a full map of every detail, and that “I'm still figuring that out” is a complete and honest sentence. The actionable takeaway is simple: write down, in your own words, the one sentence at the center of this decision — “I've made the decision to end our marriage” — and notice what your body does when you read it back. For anyone in the early, terrifying stage of deciding to divorce, this episode offers both a script for self-clarity and a steady hand, with the next episode promising the actual words for opening the conversation itself.

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There's a sentence I hear from listeners more than almost any other, and it usually starts the same way: “I don't know if this even counts as a big deal.” In this solo episode of Divorce Happens, I read one of those letters on air — from a listener whose ex spent years making jokes about her weight, her job, the way she loaded the dishwasher, then dismissed every objection with the same four words: “I'm just kidding, why are you so sensitive?” If you've heard that line aimed at you, or caught yourself saying it to someone else, this episode is for you.

What follows is a close look at contempt — the eye-rolling, mocking, condescending pattern that relationship researchers consistently identify as one of the strongest predictors of divorce, stronger than how often a couple argues or even what they argue about. I walk through what separates ordinary marital friction from a genuine pattern of emotional abuse hiding behind humor, why “just kidding” so often functions as a way to make you responsible for someone else's cruelty, and why the slow accumulation of these moments can quietly erode a person's trust in their own perception long before it ends a marriage.

This episode is ultimately about permission — permission to trust that what hurt actually hurt, without building a legal case or winning an argument about whether it “counts.” For anyone in the middle of divorce recovery or just starting over after divorce, I offer a concrete mindset shift: the absence of contempt is something you'll feel in your body before you can name it, and that quiet, punchline-free peace is not nothing — it's what respect actually feels like. I also share one simple thing to watch for while dating again: how someone talks about people who aren't in the room.

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There's a version of divorce we talk about a lot — the heartbreak, the grief, the legal logistics — and then there's the version almost nobody prepares you for: the sheer, relentless awkwardness of it. In this solo episode of Divorce Happens, host Olivia Howell turns her attention to the strange, small, almost comedic moments that fill the space between the big milestones of divorce. The Target run-in with someone who knew you as a wife. The invitation addressed to both of you by accident. The insurance card that still has his name on it. Olivia makes the case that naming how genuinely weird this process is — not just how painful — is its own form of relief for anyone living through it.

Olivia walks listeners through the specific textures of post-divorce awkwardness: the exhausting social corrections of learning to say "my ex" like a new language, the administrative unwinding of a life built around an "us" that no longer exists, and the quiet strangeness of moving through your own home like an archaeologist of a life you used to have. She also names something rarely talked about in divorce recovery spaces — the awkwardness of joy. The guilt that can show up when you catch yourself laughing too loudly, sleeping diagonally across the bed, or feeling a flash of peace you're not sure you're allowed to keep. Olivia's insight here is a powerful one: freedom can arrive wearing the same shoes as grief, and relief and sadness are allowed to live in the same body on the same day.

What makes this episode so validating is its permission to laugh, wince, and exhale all at once. Olivia's core takeaway is that divorce isn't one big dramatic ending — it's hundreds of tiny, weird, unglamorous endings, and starting over after divorce happens quietly, in ordinary places, not in a single cinematic moment. For anyone navigating the social awkwardness of divorce, the identity shifts, or the surprising guilt of feeling okay again, this episode offers real comfort: you're not doing it wrong, and the strangeness you're feeling is simply part of how a new life begins.

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There's a specific kind of relief that comes from finally having a name for something you've lived inside for years without being able to explain it. In this solo episode of Divorce Happens, host Olivia Howell gives that name to a dynamic so many listeners will recognize instantly: weaponized incompetence. Not a partner who's simply bad at laundry or forgetful about pediatrician appointments — but a pattern of consistent, strategic underperformance that trains the other partner to just take over, permanently, while the underperforming partner maintains complete deniability. Olivia makes the case that this isn't incompetence at all. It's a strategy for opting out of the labor of a shared life, and it deserves to be named as clearly as any other form of control.

Olivia walks through exactly how this dynamic feels to live inside — the exhaustion of being the only functioning adult in a two-adult household, the resentment that builds so slowly it goes unnoticed until it's overwhelming, and the particularly insidious self-doubt that creeps in when "you're just the capable one" starts to feel like a compliment instead of the trap it actually is. She's direct about why this qualifies as control even though it never looks aggressive or dramatic: when one partner successfully opts out of shared labor, they gain time, freedom, and rest — and the other partner loses exactly those things. That transfer isn't accidental, and it isn't neutral, even when it's dressed up as "that's just how he is."

What makes this episode land is the permission Olivia gives listeners to stop doubting what they lived through. Her core message: the exhaustion was real, the resentment was earned, and the inability to point to one dramatic incident doesn't mean the pattern wasn't happening. Her actionable takeaway is a reframe — from "I'm just the capable one" to "I was maneuvered into carrying everything" — and an invitation to release a role that was never a fixed truth about who you are. Whether you're untangling this dynamic from a past marriage or recognizing it in real time, this episode offers language, validation, and a clear-eyed path toward relationships where the labor is actually shared.

🔗 Check out Fresh Starts Registry:

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📬 Magazine: https://divorceguidemagazine.com/

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There's a particular kind of exhaustion that comes from living inside a marriage you've stopped questioning — not because it's fine, but because you've explained it to yourself so many times that the explanations have started to feel like truth. In this solo episode of Divorce Happens, Olivia Howell turns her attention to one of the quietest forces behind unhappy marriages and delayed divorces: normalization. Not the big, dramatic ruptures that make for tidy divorce stories, but the slow, invisible erosion of patterns so many people live inside for years without ever calling them what they are.

Olivia walks through five of the most common things we normalize in marriage — and why each one matters more than we tend to admit. She starts with contempt disguised as humor, the mockery and dismissiveness wrapped in "I'm just kidding," and points to relationship research showing contempt, not conflict, as one of the strongest predictors of divorce. From there she names the invisible mental load carried by one partner, the way emotional unavailability gets excused as a personality trait, and the particularly insidious pattern of being made to feel like the problem every time you raise a concern. She closes with the ache of loneliness inside a marriage — the experience, more common than most people realize, of feeling completely alone while technically not being alone at all.

What makes this episode land isn't just the naming of these patterns — it's the permission Olivia gives listeners to see their own marriage clearly, without guilt and without building a case against anyone. Her core takeaway: normalizing something doesn't make it okay, it just makes it invisible, and understanding your own experience fully is what allows you to make different choices going forward. Whether you're contemplating divorce, in the middle of one, or years into rebuilding, this episode offers the kind of clarity that turns hindsight into self-trust — and a reminder that you deserved better then, and you deserve better now.

🔗 Check out Fresh Starts Registry:

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Most women don’t wake up one morning and announce a divorce. They spend months — often years — in the quiet space of knowing, where a gut feeling won’t go away but guilt over the kids and fear about money keep the words stuck in their throat. In this candid, galvanizing episode of Divorce Happens, Olivia Howell sits down with divorce coach and award-winning journalist Amy Polacko to talk about what to do in exactly that space: the quiet divorce plan every woman needs before she says a single word. Through the lens of Belle Burden’s viral memoir Strangers — the stay-at-home mom whose hedge-fund husband pulled the rug out from under her idyllic life — Amy and Olivia name a hard truth women are rarely warned about: the financial vulnerability that comes with building your life around someone else’s career.

What makes Amy’s guidance land is that it is strategic without being cynical. Her north star for clients is simple and steadying: plan for the worst and work toward the best. You are not manipulative or evil for protecting yourself, she insists — you are being the CEO of your own divorce. The actionable heart of the episode is preparation you can begin quietly and safely: build your team before you announce anything, and start gathering your financial documents — tax returns, bank statements, retirement accounts, insurance policies, credit card statements, business records. Amy’s reporter instincts shine here. Even women experiencing financial abuse, who don’t control the accounts, know more than they think they know; jotting disparate details in a notebook (the old Fidelity account, the inheritance, the bank that “disappeared”) becomes powerful ammunition your attorney can pursue in discovery. And anything that touches moving money or assets, she’s clear, belongs in a conversation with your attorney and a certified divorce financial analyst first.

The conversation never loses its humanity. Amy and Olivia talk about the trap of the “nice girl” who so badly wants an amicable divorce that she forgets to protect herself, the way a once-generous partner can change the moment it becomes “his” money, and the quiet courage it takes to put even one toe out the door. For anyone not yet ready, Amy offers a gentle on-ramp — a single hour with a coach focused on your biggest crisis right now — and a tender emotional practice anyone can start today: journaling. Putting your experience on paper validates feelings that gaslighting tried to erase, and one day you’ll read it back and see how far you’ve come. This episode is a strategy session and a permission slip at once: you are allowed to prepare, you are allowed to protect yourself, and you don’t have to do any of it alone.

🔗 Check out Fresh Starts Registry:

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

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📬 Magazine: https://divorceguidemagazine.com/

Nobody hands you a map for the in-between. You have decided to divorce — or you are circling the decision — and yet you are still sharing a kitchen, a hallway, maybe even a bedroom with the person you are in the biggest conflict of your life with. It is one of the most common and least talked-about chapters of the divorce journey, and in this grounding episode of Divorce Happens, host Olivia Howell sits down with divorce coach Lisa Lisser to name it out loud. Lisa is a retired attorney who practiced litigation in New York City, a CDC Certified Divorce Coach and child-centered co-parenting coach, a Jewish educator, a spiritual counselor, and the founder of LZL Coaching — and she is also a divorced mom of three who lived this exact season herself. She calls it the in-between: the narrow, uncertain space between being a married couple and being two separate people. “It is wanting certainty while living in uncertainty,” she says — and if you are cohabitating during divorce right now, you already know exactly how tight that jacket feels.

What makes this conversation so useful is that Lisa does not leave you in the discomfort — she hands you a structure. She walks Olivia through four boundaries that help everyone in the household breathe: physical, parenting, financial, and emotional. The physical boundary is permission to claim your own space, whether that is a bedroom, a family room, or a corner of the basement, and her reframe lands hard: creating that space is not punishment, it is agency. You do not need anyone’s permission to exhale, to cry, to research, to simply close a door. The parenting boundary is a clear, child-readable schedule — who drives, who packs lunch, who handles pickup — because kids feel the weight of a changing house even when no one is fighting in front of them, and predictability is how they stay anchored. Threaded through it all is one of Lisa’s most tender insights, shared from her own honest hindsight: your children have the right to love both of you, and protecting them from the details is its own act of love.

The financial boundary is about building a blueprint before anyone gets blindsided — agreeing on who pays what, who funds the account, and how the household runs while you are still under one roof — because, as Lisa puts it, divorce creates uncertainty, uncertainty creates anxiety, and money magnifies both. And the emotional boundary may be the one that ties it all together: when the person who used to be your support system is now the source of the stress, you have to build a new team. A coach, a therapist, a support group, the friends who can hold your story without a stake in it. Olivia and Lisa land on the throughline of the whole show — that the strongest, bravest thing you can do is ask for help, and that divorce was never meant to be carried alone. If you are surviving the in-between right now, this episode is a deep exhale and a real plan: gentle, pragmatic, and full of permission to get outside the box you have been living in.

🔗 Check out Fresh Starts Registry:

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

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📬 Magazine: https://divorceguidemagazine.com/