Divorce is a death — of a marriage, an identity, a family, a home — and yet our culture offers almost none of the support it would for any other kind of loss. In this solo episode, Karen gets honest about the grief of divorce: why we wildly underestimate it, why we're often left to navigate it in isolation, and what it actually looks like to move through it with intention.

Karen introduces the concept of ambiguous grief — the particular pain of losing someone who is still very much present in your life as a co-parent — and why that "gone but not gone" experience makes healing so disorienting. She also calls out the trap of pain shopping: the social media stalking, the gossip, the drive-bys that keep picking at a wound that's trying to heal.

You'll also hear Karen's case for including divorce in the Family Medical Leave Act, practical advice for surviving those first brutal transition days when the kids leave for the other home, and why the goal isn't to stop caring — it's to reach a place of emotional indifference, where your ex's choices simply don't rattle you anymore.

This is an episode worth sharing with anyone in your support circle who wants to show up for you but isn't sure how.

Topics covered:

• Why divorce grief is invisible — and why that isolation makes it harder
• The many losses layered inside one divorce
• Ambiguous grief and the "gone but not gone" experience of co-parenting
• Pain shopping: what it is and why it sets you back
• How scars are different from wounds (and why that's good news)
• What emotional indifference actually means — and why it's the goal
• The grief-relief cocktail: feeling two things at once
• Practical tips for transition days when the kids leave
• Karen's advocacy for divorce-inclusive workplace policies

Resources:

• The Good Divorce by Karen McNenny
• The Good Divorce Academy — online community & classroom
• thegooddivorcecoach.com

"Everything will be okay in the end. And if it's not okay, it's not the end."