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

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