After my divorce, I struggled to talk about it. Here’s how I handled the sensitive subject with friends and strangers.

The author, not pictured, struggled to talk about her divorce at first.

“You and your partner don’t walk the dog together anymore?” a neighbor whose name I don’t know recently asked me.

It has been the better part of a year since my ex-partner walked out and I learned we were getting divorced. This neighbor and I didn’t know each other’s names but have nodded to each other on early mornings or rainy late nights while walking our dogs for years.

“We got divorced,” I said and watched the look of horror cross her face. I quickly followed it up with, “It’s not a bad thing.”

She smiled and recounted her own divorce decades ago as the best thing that happened to her. Our conversation moved on to talk about my new puppy and our aging senior dogs.

But that was when I realized something: Talking about divorce is rarely easy.

I had to tell most people I was getting divorced immediately

Getting divorced is life-changing. You’ll have to talk about it everywhere, from the bank and the post office to conversations with friends and family. It was hard and destabilizing at first, but the more I talked about my divorce, the easier it became.

I had a dentist appointment the month after my ex left and the hygienist who has cleaned my teeth for years took one look at me and knew something was wrong. I explained what had happened but managed to hold back tears. It was the first time I had said I was getting divorced without crying. This felt like progress.

The day before, another neighbor had come over to deliver a package mistakenly left on his porch. He asked how I had been, and I started crying. Healing from divorce isn’t linear, and I learned quickly that the kindest thing I could do to myself was give myself the time to process what had happened. For me, that included continuing to share my life, the good and the bad.

I met with a divorce attorney and asked if she would review the public statement I wanted to make on social media. I wasn’t trying to air my dirty laundry, but as an author and content creator, nothing about how I live my life has ever been private, and this wouldn’t be either.

I couldn’t just keep working, which meant writing about my life and acting like I wasn’t going through something traumatic. I needed to speak the truth of what had happened to move through it. My attorney approved my statement of what had happened, I posted it through tears but immediately felt relief.

I learned that everyone doesn’t need to know everything

I soon realized that when discussing my divorce, it’s important to only share what details you are comfortable with letting others know. For me, that has looked like creating a tiered level of trust. There is information I share publicly, what I share with intimate strangers like my favorite coffee shop barista, and the full details that go to my inner circle of most trusted people.

Just like people naturally will slow down to look at the scene of an accident, I found the same thing to be true with divorce. People with no right to information will press for details, but I don’t give away all the details to just anyone.

Talking about my divorce is rarely easy, but that’s OK

At first, I couldn’t talk about the way I was blindsided by divorce without crying. I accepted that I would cry if the topic came up and let the tears fall. Sometimes, people were uncomfortable, but I learned to be OK with that, too.

Over the weeks and months, it became a much less raw topic of conversation. As I started building a new life that I love, the divorce got easier to talk about. I also had an easier time discussing the divorce the more settled my life became. Everything was easier to talk about once I knew I wouldn’t have to move or sell my home.

Radical transparency has always been core to my creative and personal process. I’ve never been interested in sharing all the details of what my ex-partner did or didn’t do, but I’m also not going to shy away from what it’s like to be a middle-aged queer person going through an unexpected divorce. Sharing my divorce experience publicly has helped me feel less alone and more connected to my friends, chosen family, and community.