We’d love to introduce you to the Divorce Happens Community!
About The Divorce Happens Community
The Divorce Happens Community is a totally free, year-long space we built for anyone navigating divorce—and we could not be more excited about it. Whether you're bracing for it, in the thick of it, or years past it and still piecing together who you became, this is a place to actually feel understood. We built it because so much divorce content out there is logistics: lawyers, custody schedules, financial checklists. We wanted something different—a place for the identity questions nobody prepares you for. Who am I now? What do I actually like? Why am I still so angry? Hosted on Substack, the community runs on monthly themes, each one a different facet of rebuilding a self after a marriage ends, and every single month is packed: journal prompts to dig into the theme, a giveaway, a Zoom hangout with Olivia, a Substack Live with special guests, ongoing Substack chats, and a steady stream of insight and writing to keep you company along the way. We're not interested in sugarcoating any of it—the tone is gritty and honest, sometimes funny, always specific. This is a place to laugh, rage, cry, and rebuild—together.
Happening This Month
September launches the Divorce Happens Community, and the month's theme is "When It Entered My Atmosphere" — about the moment divorce stopped being an abstract possibility and became your actual life. We're kicking things off with Michelle Yoswa and Katherine Brown of the Divorced & Dating Podcast, who'll join us to talk candidly about that disorienting entry point and what it looks like to eventually find your footing (and maybe your sense of humor) again. Throughout the month, members get weekly touchpoints: reflective posts from us, journal prompts and affirmations, a personal essay, and a live conversation with our featured guests. And mark your calendars — join Olivia for our very first Zoom call on September 23rd, 8–9PM EST! We'll be diving into this month's journal questions, doing a reading, and chatting about life updates and how we can support you during this time. We're gonna laugh, we're gonna have a great time, and you're gonna feel like you're not alone. Everything is designed to meet people wherever they are — you don't need to be freshly separated to relate to "when it entered my atmosphere"; plenty of our members are years out and still unpacking that initial shock. September sets the tone for the whole year: honest, unpolished, and real.
Coming Up in October
October's theme is "The Lie I Told Myself" — the story you told yourself to survive the marriage, or to leave it, or to explain it to everyone else. It's one of the rawer themes on the calendar, and we're pairing it with author Heather Sweeney, whose memoir Camouflage digs into exactly this kind of self-deception and the slow work of seeing clearly again. Heather will contribute a piece to the community and join us for a live conversation, and we're also running a giveaway of Camouflage for members. Join Olivia for our October Zoom call on October 22nd, 8PM EST, where we'll dig into the month's journal questions and talk through where everyone's at. As with every month, the content leans into identity and emotion rather than logistics — this isn't about the practical lies (finances, custody arrangements) but the internal ones: the stories we tell ourselves to keep going, to keep the peace, or to keep from admitting something was wrong long before it ended. October builds directly on September's momentum, moving from "this happened to me" into the murkier territory of "what did I do, or believe, to get here" — setting up the self-honesty work that carries through the rest of the year.
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