We're Writing a Book. Here's What That Actually Looks Like.
Divorce Happens: A Compassionate Guide to Starting Fresh
Three years ago, Olivia and I started talking about writing a book.
We had ideas. We had outlines. We had a lot of very strong opinions about what the divorce space was missing and what a book could do that a registry, a podcast, and a magazine couldn't quite reach. What we didn't have — not yet — was the right book.
That took a little longer.
Today, we're thrilled to announce that DIVORCE HAPPENS: A Compassionate Guide to Starting Fresh, by Olivia March Howell and Genevieve Dreizen, is officially under contract with Sheldon Press, an imprint of Hodder & Stoughton.
What the book is
Divorce Happens: A Compassionate Guide to Starting Fresh is a roadmap for navigating one of life's most disorienting transitions — with clarity, confidence, and care. It gives readers the tools to process their divorce, reclaim who they are, and envision what comes next.
It is not a legal guide. It is not a therapy workbook. It is the book that sits at the intersection of both — the practical and the personal — and treats readers as capable adults who deserve honest, grounded guidance at every stage of the process.
The book is for anyone who is going through a divorce, thinking about one, or rebuilding in the aftermath. It is for people who have found themselves Googling questions they were embarrassed to ask out loud. It is for the version of yourself who just needs someone to say: you're going to be okay, and here's what okay can actually look like.
How we got here
Fresh Starts Registry launched in October 2021 as the world's first divorce registry — a concept Forbes called a first-of-its-kind product category. In the years since, we've built an expert ecosystem of over 140 divorce professionals, launched Divorce Happens (the podcast), founded Divorce Guide Magazine, and accumulated over 10 billion organic press impressions.
We have spent three years watching what people need most. We've read every question submitted through our platform. We've listened to every expert session, every Tuesday Table conversation, every piece of feedback from the community we've built.
What kept surfacing, again and again, was this: people didn't just need resources. They needed a framework. A through-line. Something to hold onto when the process felt unnavigable.
That's the book.
What's different about this one
This is not the book we set out to write three years ago.
When we first started talking about it, we imagined something more like a guide to the registry process — practical, product-adjacent, useful. The book that emerged from three years of running Fresh Starts Registry is something larger. It is structured around the Fresh Starts Framework, the six-part model we've developed for how people actually move through divorce and into what comes next.
It is the book that needed to exist in the world. We just had to build enough of Fresh Starts Registry to know what that meant.
The details
Title: Divorce Happens: A Compassionate Guide to Starting Fresh
Authors: Olivia March Howell and Genevieve Dreizen
Publisher: Sheldon Press (Hodder & Stoughton)
Category: Non-fiction / Advice / Relationships / Self-Help
Agent: Morgan Strehlow, The Bindery
Publishing: Late August 2027
The deal was announced in Publishers Marketplace on March 11, 2026.
What happens next
We are writing it now. We'll be sharing pieces of the process here — what it looks like to write a book while running a company, what surprises us, what doesn't, and what the Fresh Starts Framework looks like in practice across twelve chapters.
We're also keeping a running tally of how much money we've spent writing in cafés.
Current total: $0. Check back soon.
If you've ever thought about writing a book — or you're just curious what it actually looks like from the inside — we want to hear your questions. Drop them in the comments or send us a note. We'll be answering as we go.
More to come.
Olivia March Howell and Genevieve Dreizen are the co-founders of Fresh Starts Registry, the world's first divorce registry and expert ecosystem. They co-host A Fresh Story and are the co-authors of DIVORCE HAPPENS: A Compassionate Guide to Starting Fresh (Sheldon Press, 2027).