Show Notes:

• A writer reads her original flash nonfiction piece about grief, permission, and the marriage she knew she needed to leave
• On the particular cruelty of losing your mother while also losing your marriage—and what happens when there is no space to grieve both at once
• The moment she told the sky before she told anyone else, and how her mother's voice found her on a morning run
• Why so many women feel they need to justify leaving a marriage, that wanting out isn't enough, that intuition doesn't count, that we need external evidence before we can trust ourselves
• On the cultural training that teaches women to discount their own inner knowing, and the quiet devastation of a partner whose response to grief is "now you know what it feels like."
• What the hospital room felt like in the minutes after her mother passed—and why that experience remains one of the clearest pieces of evidence she has that love continues
• On modeling something better for our daughters—and how that clarity made the next step easier to take

Read this piece and subscribe to the Redacted Substack column here.

This episode begins with two anonymous essays and unfolds into a conversation about marriage, divorce, patriarchy, emotional labor, and the things women learn to normalize.

Using the lens of a neglected house, today’s writer explores what it means to spend years trying to be “respectful,” “patient,” and “not a nag” while slowly disappearing inside your own life.

Together, we talk about:

• the emotional labor of walking on eggshells
• the stories women inherit about being “good wives”
• why so many women stay longer than they want to
• how writing helps us untangle complex experiences
• the freedom of no longer managing someone else’s emotions
• the small domestic details that reveal deeper truths

This conversation is tender, funny, insightful, and deeply validating for anyone who has ever mistaken survival for peace.

Standout Quotes

• “Things became so normal and routine that you honestly forget they’re not normal.”
• “You don’t understand how much work it is until you don’t do it anymore.”
• “The house and I, we both moved on.”
• "If there's only one question to ask your potential next partner: is me putting up a facade a requirement for you to feel good in this relationship? Because if it is, I'll take the check please."

You can read “The House” on Substack here, and “Summer Meadows” here.

Topics covered:

• Parachute relationships — what they are and why they matter (and why they sometimes crash-land hard)
• “Divorce doulas” — passing the torch, bearing the lantern, and why women are the safety net nobody talks about
• Unhealed men, therapy, and the resignation that keeps people stuck
• The “sorry about us” part — apologizing for your own existence in relationships
• Going from shame about your circumstances to “I’d fucking date me”
• Why the lessons keep coming until you actually learn them

Quotes:

• “I’d fucking date me.”
• “I just keep thinking of a line of women passing buckets of water down — that’s what we do for each other.”
• “I want us to celebrate men leaving unhappy marriages, much like I want them to go to therapy and figure out their shit. Because the result of them not doing that work is that here we go, into more relationships with yet another unhealed man.”
• “One of these days you’re just gonna be like — I’d like a clementine.”
• “You are not here to be a poster woman for the right way to feminist. You are a human being in pain.”

**The Writing Divorce 12-prompt series is accessible for paid subscribers here.

Dana Schwartz’s piece, “Support Group for Broken Hearts, Middle Aged Version,” on the Redacted Substack column. 

Today’s episode of the limited podcast series features one of last year’s anonymous authors reading her piece, Definitely not a phoenix. It received so much support ran it ran on the Substack column—many divorced women related to the pressure to “rise from the ashes” as some sort of before/after success story. This piece is a much more honest look at what healing really looks like. I loved the conversation we had after she read her piece, and I think you will too. 

Show Notes

• A writer reads her original personal essay about the summer she took her children to a lake house in Wisconsin — retreating from a small town that knew too much, and sitting with a truth she wasn’t yet ready to name
• Why thirteen years later, she still doesn’t have a phoenix story to tell — and why that honesty struck a nerve with thousands of readers
• The cultural pressure to “rise from the ashes” after divorce, and what gets lost when we only share the tidy, finished version of our healing
• The difference between being a lantern bearer and being a self-help formula — and why sometimes what people need most is someone bleeding alongside them, not someone who solved it a decade ago
• On trusting the woman inside you who already got through the worst of it — and why that track record matters more than reaching any mountaintop
• You can be grieving and uncertain, and celebrate your own resilience.

Quotes:

“I feel shame that I am still grieving and unsure of my place in the world after all this time.”

“I think we’re taught to look for the transformation, but sometimes the truth is… you’re still living inside the question.”

"A lack of mountaintop experience does not mean that you have failed in the story of your own perseverance."

"No matter where you are on the spectrum, someone's ahead of you and someone's behind you in terms of healing."

Follow the Substack here.

Show Notes

• A writer reads her original personal essay about the moment she knew her marriage couldn't survive — a business trip, a broken collarbone, and a husband who refused to take their three-year-old son to the hospital
• Host Steph and the guest discuss what it means to heal from a relationship you didn't initially recognize as traumatic, and why recovery is anything but linear
• The impossible calculus of divorce when children are involved — staying feels wrong, but leaving means they're with the other parent without you there
• Why the essay's ending resonated so deeply with readers: the radical honesty of saying I am not yet strong at the broken places
• The particular isolation of high-conflict divorce, and why community — even an anonymous one — can be a lifeline

Follow Redacted on Substack here.

Content warning: This episode contains a personal essay that references infidelity and the discovery of illegal pornography involving minors. Please listen with that in mind.

Show Notes

• A writer reads her original personal essay about discovering her husband’s infidelities, disturbing online activity, and a Craigslist ad — and the quiet, calculated way she chose to end her marriage
• Steph and her anonymous guest reflect on the painful decision to protect a spouse’s image from their adult children, and the hidden cost of carrying that silence alone
• They discuss the generational programming that kept so many women “playing small”—and the moment it finally became impossible to continue
• The unexpected freedom and joy of building a life entirely on your own terms — pink bedrooms, yellow walls, and all. 
• How do you know when it’s time to go? And what role does parenting play in the decision to leave a marriage?

Quotable Moments

• “I’d rather be alone than lonely with someone.”
• “We owe ourselves something and we owe our children being able to see their parent living their best life.”
• “How do my children learn to take chances and bet on themselves if their own mother can’t do the same?”
• “The most important thing was making a life that I wanted to live. . . I have built a life that I love.”
•  “I worried about all of the dark things that we do when we’re radically changing our lives.”
• “ Surrendering control over the situation is when I finally found the space to be me.”
• “Alone is beautiful, too.”

**This episode references this piece on couples’ counseling with a narcissist on The Mother Lode by Cindy DiTiberio

We are halfway through the Writing Divorce prompt series—paid subscribers can find the prompts as they drop here on the Redacted Substack column.

Welcome to Redacted: What Divorced Women Aren't Telling You, a limited podcast series featuring stories and conversations from anonymous divorced women. 

In today's conversation, we cover: 

• The question that haunts many marriages: "Is this all there is?"
• What it looks like to have the courage to leave an unsatisfying marriage—especially 35 years ago. 
• The gifts of living alone, and the negotiations of living with a partner
• How women in particular edit themselves in relationships or make themselves small
• The importance of having lantern-bearers: Strong, brave women who have gone before us and can show us the way. 
• Heroics or survival? We discuss the nuances of choosing yourself and a happy, fulfilling relationship over staying in a marriage that is no longer working