Episode
Hey Olivia, I filed for divorce and now I'm drowning in grief—did I make a mistake?!
- Podcast
- Divorce Happens
- Published
- Jul 29, 2026
- Duration seconds
- 365
- Processing state
not_requested- Canonical source
- https://www.freshstartsregistry.com/divorce-happens
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Summary
She planned it for months — saved up, found an apartment, rehearsed the speech. She was sure. And three weeks after filing, she’s crying in a Target parking lot, smelling her almost-ex-husband’s hoodie before she donates it, waking up sobbing from a dream where they were still together. In this Divorce Happens “Hey Olivia” episode, host Olivia Howell reads a listener letter word for word and answers the question underneath it: if leaving was the right call, why does it still hurt this much? It’s one of the most tender, disorienting parts of divorce recovery — the grief that shows up even when you were the one who filed — and Olivia meets it head-on with clarity, warmth, and zero judgment. Olivia’s core teaching reframes the entire experience: grief after a decision you made on purpose still counts as grief, full stop — it is not a scoreboard telling you whether you got it right or wrong. She walks through why the nervous system doesn’t distinguish between a sad ending and a wrong one; when a marriage ends, you’re not just losing a person, you’re losing an imagined future — the routines, the holidays, the version of “us” you’d built in your head. That’s why a dream of getting back together isn’t a gut-check reversing the divorce, and why missing the smell of a hoodie isn’t longing for him back — it’s a body flagging something familiar that’s disappearing. Olivia names this for what it actually is: withdrawal, not regret. The episode lands on two mindset shifts listeners can use immediately. First, a diagnostic question for the 3 a.m. spiral: do I miss him, or do I miss not being alone with all of this? One is about a person; the other is about fear — and you’re allowed to sit with both without acting on either today. Second, a somatic tool: hand on chest, out loud, “thi…