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.

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

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

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

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🎙 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.

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📬 Magazine: https://divorceguidemagazine.com/

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

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

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

🔗 Check out Fresh Starts Registry:

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

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🎙 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/

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

📬 Magazine: https://divorceguidemagazine.com/

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

Olivia covers:

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

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

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

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

🔗 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, 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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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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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/

📘 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 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/