EP86 The Long Echo of Divorce: Why It Can Still Hit You Years Later

You think you’re through it. 

You’ve done the therapy, the crying in Sainsbury’s car park, the awkward first dates, and the bad hair phase. 

You’ve moved on. 

And then….. BAM…. years later, you bump into the ex-husband at a family do, and it hits you: the long echo of divorce is still reverberating a tiny bit in your chest.

In this episode, we’re talking about that sudden rush of sadness/weirdness/nostalgia that can show up long after divorce…. often triggered by a totally innocent moment (like your grandson pointing out that “Daddy’s Mummy and Daddy’s Daddy are both here!”). 

It’s bittersweet, sometimes funny, always human …. and you’re not alone in feeling it.

In this episode, we look at……

📦 The “Tupperware drawer” of emotions….. how grief can get packed away but still rattle when you least expect it  

🧠 Why our brains sneakily serve up nostalgia in moments that are emotionally charged or tender (like grandkids, birthdays… or seeing someone who used to make you want to scream into a cushion)

🪞 Why you might feel like your old married self again *just for a second*.... and how disorienting (and infuriating!) that can be

💔 Why it’s okay to mourn what could have been ….. even when you’re super f*cking glad it’s over

😂 When the ex gives you the ick all over again

💡 This episode is for you if:

- You’ve been divorced for a while and are shocked by sudden pangs of emotion

- You’re trying to make sense of complex feelings that resurface when your worlds collide

- You want permission to feel a bit sad *and* a bit smug *and* a bit confused…. all at once

- You need a reminder that healing isn’t linear …. and it’s okay if the past taps you on the shoulder sometimes

Hope you enjoy (and if you do, PLEASE rate and review ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐)

Loads of Love,

Sarah x

🌸

P.S. In April in the Divorce Book Club, we’re reading The Midpoint Plan by Gabby Logan

🔥 Why should you join?

📚 Because healing after divorce isn’t a straight line. This club gives you a step-by-step roadmap to make sure you don’t stay stuck.

📚 Because reading books on your own is great, but actually applying what you learn? That’s where the real magic happens…. and this club makes sure you do.

🔥 What’s included?

📚 A say in what we read each month…. because this is YOUR journey, and your input matters.
 🎙️ A private podcast episode per chapter, breaking it all down into real-life takeaways you can actually use.
 💬 A private Facebook community where you’re fully supported, celebrated, and connected to like-minded women.

🔥 Who is this perfect for?

💡 If you feel stuck and need a clear path forward but don’t know where to start.
💡 If you’ve read all the self-help books but struggle to actually apply them.
💡 If you want a supportive community of people who actually get what you're going through.
💡 If you’re ready to stop overthi

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Chapters

• 0:00 Divorce is like Glitter..... it shows up freaking EVERYWHERE
• 3:30 He'll grow up understanding divorce because of his bloody Grandad
• 6:20 The echoes of that broken marriage find their way into a sunny Saturday afternoon
• 10:01 The Plot Twist in Marriage: The Musical
• 12:47 The Aftershocks of a Bad Earthquake (but you have to kinda laugh too)
• 16:06 I can honour the memory without resurrecting the wardrobe
• 19:12 Books - why I DIDN'T bawl my eyes out in Tesco car park

Transcript

Sarah Elizabeth  00:00

Hello and welcome to the divorce chapter podcast. I'm your host, Sarah Elizabeth, and my mission is to bring you all that you need to turn the divorce shitshow into something freaking amazing, because they don't teach you this shit at school, do they? You get sex education, don't you? But no fucker sits you down for divorce education do they? There's no exam on how to emotionally unravel in the Tesco car park 10 years after signing the papers, or how to explain to your grandkids why daddy's Mummy used to be daddy's daddy's wife. Oh. Which brings me on to today's episode, and it was inspired by something that caught me totally off guard, a little unexpected gut punch of, I don't know, sadness, weirdness, the kind of ness you think you're done with. You think you're fine. You are fine. Years have passed. Therapy has been therapied, and your ex is a distant memory, filed somewhere between ancient history and glad I dodged that. But apparently divorce is like glitter. It just keeps freaking showing up everywhere. Oh, let me set the scene. So a couple of weekends ago, I saw the ex husband, which in itself isn't exactly a headline. We've been divorced for years now. I've done all the healing. You know, journaled that shit to death, burned all the sage, deleted the photos had a glow up, built a whole new goddamn life, you get the picture, right? I mean, I'm on a bloody podcast about it, you know? But then out of nowhere, bam, there he is standing with you at a football match your son is about to play in, making small talk and awkward jokes, and next to him, two of our grandkids and one of them my utterly gorgeous, Best Boy in the whole world. I can say that because the rest are girls. My grandson turns to me and says, Daddy's mummy and daddy's daddy are both here. 

Sarah Elizabeth  02:28

And I smiled at him, and then then this bizarre wave of something washed over me like a weird mix of nostalgia, sadness, this strange kind of tug at me, you know, because my innocent little grandson, who is six, he doesn't realise that we were ever married, that little boy has no idea, absolutely zero, that the two people standing awkwardly next to each other, avoiding eye contact and pretending to care deeply about Harry Potter, who said grandson is obsessed with, those two people were once a husband and wife, just like his mummy and daddy are now. And it just kind of hit me, this boy, this child, all of the grandkids, will only ever know us as exes, as separate, as people who used to be something but aren't anymore. He'll grow up understanding divorce because of his bloody grandad. And even though the marriage ended for fucking good reasons, and even though I wouldn't go back if you paid me a million quid on a naked Gerard Butler, there's still something a little bit sad about it all in there, you know, because this is the thing about long divorced life, you kind of get used to being okay. You are okay. You build a new routine, you create a new story. You refer to him as the ex, just like it's another label, like the postman or the pilates instructor or the guy who still hasn't returned my tupperware. But every now and then, there he is, again, like a bad smell, not in a dramatic bump into each other in the supermarket aisle kind of way, though, that totally did happen a few weeks in and he was with his second new girlfriend, but anyway, not in that dramatic way, but in the we're both now grandparents, and occasionally end up in the same place with small people who don't know the history, kind of way it's freaking there in your bloody face looking weirdly shorter than you learn. But we're in the same kind of clothes he wore in 2009 and suddenly you're not just a confident, independent woman anymore. You're some sort of human time machine being transported back to old kitchens and arguments about shit and that one really awkward anniversary dinner where he forgot to book the restaurant. 

Sarah Elizabeth  05:21

And let's be super honest, it's really not that you even miss him. It's more that you're just a bit momentarily thrown by the fact that you ever shared a life with this person that you once shared everything, a house, a bed, a bank account, bodily fluids, an extremely questionable IKEA lampshade, everything you shared. You know, it's been like seeing your old school uniform hanging out in a charity shop. You don't want to wear it again, but it still makes you pause and reflect. His was the only mobile number  I knew by heart for fuck sake. Now I don't even know what mug he drinks his coffee from. Anyway, all of that, I call this this feeling, the long echo of divorce, because Divorce isn't just a clean instant break, it's like a reverberation, one that keeps bouncing around and around and around. Years after the papers are signed and the Facebook status has changed, you might be completely fine, living your life, feeling fabulous, doing yoga with candles and cucumber water, then out of nowhere, your grandson says something innocent and sweet and true, and your eyes well up behind a costa coffee. And that echo shows up at the weirdest bloody times, like when your kid gets married and there's a family photo and you're on one side of the frame and he's on the other. I mean, although when my son got married, we didn't even get in the same photo and we sat at opposite ends of the top table. Or like when you find an old card tucked in a book in his handwriting to the love of my life, or some bullshit, or like the one the ex sent me in his desperately trying to get me back era that said he couldn't live without me, erm, you appear to still be breathing. And look, it's not a sadness like it was. It's really not. It's just like, I don't know, I guess a kind of sadness that this family My grandkids are a part of is shaped by choices they had no say in, like sad, that even now, the echoes of that broken marriage find their way into a sunny Saturday afternoon, and it's absolutely not that I want to be with the ex again. Good lord, no, let's be very fucking clear on that one, that ship didn't just sail, it caught fire, sank and was quietly removed from the maritime records, but it brings a weird kind of sadness from nostalgia, I suppose, and that's why I wanted to talk about it, in case You too find yourself in a similar situation and question what it means. Like it doesn't mean you regret the divorce, it doesn't mean you want them back. It purely means that love, loss, family history, it's fucking complicated, right? And it also means we need space to talk about this stuff, because the world loves the dramatic divorce story, but those softer, sad, reflective kind of moments, the echoes, they don't get much air time. 

Sarah Elizabeth  09:00

And I think we do sort of imagine that divorce is this single, clear event, a one off like a door slamming, crash, Boom. Done. Move on. But it's not. It's more like a weird, bizarre plot twist in a long running series. So you're watching the show, let's call it marriage, the musical. And suddenly the lead actor leaves. Halfway through season four, the writers will, you know, hold emergency meetings, the costumes will change, the storyline veers off, and you're sitting there wondering what the fucking hell this new show is even about. And just when you think you've settled into the new script, the old actor turns up for bloody cameo. don't he? Sometimes literally, like standing in front of you with a juice box and a sheepish grin or metaphorically, through memories, dreams, random thoughts you did not invite. But are somehow. having while brushing your teeth, that's the long echo. It's not linear. It kind of loops. It surprises, it hits you even when you're done. I still, even now, have sometimes these random dreams where my sons were little boys and we were still married, living in the house that we lived in, and I wake up in a freaking panic. I'm like, oh my god, the relief I then feel when I realised it was just a dream or nightmare, whichever way you want to look at it. But here's what I want you to know, having a small wave of nostalgia, sadness, weirdness, whatever it feels like years later, does not mean you're broken. It does not mean you failed. It just means you're human, and a human with a heart that remembers shit, it's okay to feel sadness for the version of you that thought this was gonna last forever. It's okay to feel grief for a family unit that you thought you were building. It's okay to be a little bit wistful about the what ifs, even if you're 100% sure that the what ifs would have driven you fucking crazy. That's not backsliding. It's processing on a longer timeline than most people expect. Grief doesn't have an expiry date, neither does weirdness, neither does healing. You know, none of it does. 

Sarah Elizabeth  11:45

Think of it like I call my divorce show as having been like an earthquake, because this whole world we've built together just came crashing down around me in a pile of fucking dust and rubble, and I had to completely rebuild my entire life. And these kind of sudden echoes years later, I think of them just like mini aftershocks, mini tremors, because it was a bad fucking earthquake, you know. But also, the other thing I find helpful is to freaking laugh. I've told before about the value of humour, like sometimes gallows humour, sometimes dark humour, can just actually be really the best thing for your brain and your nervous system, because, you know, let's be real. Sometimes these moments are just so fucking awkward and weird you have to laugh, like when someone says you and your ex have such lovely grandchildren, and you want to just go, thanks, we make excellent humans, just not great marriages, or when your grandson instantly groups you together as daddy's mummy and daddy's daddy, and you both smile politely whilst wondering how on earth you once shared a Netflix account, let alone a bed. Or when you look at your ex and get hit with a tsunami of ick, and you're like, you know, Did I really cry over that man as he tucks a napkin into his shirt collar to eat a sandwich and Oh, my God, that ick. Oh, fucking hell. It's wild how someone you once married can now feel like the human version of socks and sandals. It's so Ick. But anyway, yes, divorce does have a long echo, but thank fuckity. Fuck so does humour? So what do we do with these unexpected emotional echoes? Well, we acknowledge them, we make space for them, we don't shame ourselves for feeling things, and we definitely don't call our ex and say, I saw you today and felt weirdly nostalgic. But also you had crumbs in your beard. Don't do that, humour. Sorry, you know, but no. Instead, we do what grown up emotionally intelligent women do? We sit with the feeling. We let it pass. This too shall pass. We write about it. We text a friend, we make a podcast episode. We laugh, we cry, we go for a walk, we dance it out to high vibe tunes. We journal something that starts with, okay, this was unexpected. We do any or all of that, and then, and then we keep going, because this feeling is just an echo, an aftershock. It's not a sign, it's not a summons. It's just. Just a reminder that we lived, we loved and we moved on. 

Sarah Elizabeth  15:06

Let's be honest, most of the time, what we miss isn't even the ex, it's the version of ourselves we were when we still believed in that story. It's the younger us who thought we had the plot figured out that's the illusion, the dream, the safety, the predictability, the idea of family as we imagined it, and that's okay, you know, you can grieve the idea of the thing without wanting the actual thing back, like a velvet jumpsuit you wore in 1987 you can be fond of it. You can remember how good you felt in it, but you don't need to wear that shit again. Let that be your mantra. I can honour the memory without resurrecting the wardrobe. But you know, here's the beautiful thing too. When the echo fades, what's left is strength, so much fucking strength, perspective, a sense of humour about the whole bloody thing, a gratitude for how far you've come. You get to look at your grandchildren and know that while life didn't go as planned. No, it did not, but you've created something so god, I'm gorgeous. Anyway, we get to understand divorce, not as a failure, but as pure freaking resilience. That's what we're showing our children, our grandchildren and that gorgeous little grandson of mine who was so intrigued to have daddy's mummy and daddy's daddy in the same place. Well, one day, he's going to grow up and understand that families are complicated and messy and full of people who sometimes disappoint each other, but they're also full of people who show up, who keep loving, who keep trying, who clap from the sidelines, even when things didn't go to fucking plan. And maybe that's the real legacy, not the broken bits, but the way we carry them, gracefully, awkwardly, sometimes with tears, sometimes with snacks into whatever comes next. We carry it as a goddamn transformation, as part of what made you you. So if you've ever had a sudden wave of sadness, weirdness, nostalgia hit you years after your divorce, I just want you to know it's normal. You're not broken, you're not regressing, you're not alone. It's just that long echo. It doesn't mean you go back. It just means you loved, you lost and you're still fucking here. So next time it sneaks up on you, just say hello, thank you, and then carry on, because you've got whole story left to right. And mate this next chapter, it's gonna be fucking epic.

Sarah Elizabeth  18:11

And don't forget to if you want some bad I'll support in writing that next chapter, I've got you covered with the free guide to the 10 best books to read after heartbreak. Books, really, Sare, I hear you say, Yes, books, imagine having expert insights, hard earned wisdom and practical advice right at your fingertips, on and for you, totally guiding you from heartbreak to healing, all for free. I've been where you are right and honestly, just having that guidance and knowledge is the game changer. This is why I didn't end up bawling my eyes out in Tesco fucking car park when I saw the ex at football. It's why I can laugh at it and just acknowledge it as freaking weirdness, because I've learned through all of these amazing, amazing books. So I put together the ultimate list of breakup books that 1000s swear by. And these books, these pages are filled with everything you need to start mending your heart, reclaiming your confidence, rediscovering you and finding that laughter again. So if you want to copy, grab it at www, dot the divorce book club.com, and if you want the extra support of a like minded community as well going through the same shit, then come over and join us at the divorce book club and all. It's like therapy, personal coaching and book club all rolled into one, without the awkward small talk or commitment to finishing the book on time. You get so much in it, you get to help decide what. Book we read each month. You get private podcast episodes that break down each chapter into easy to apply takeaways. You get private Facebook group where you can ask questions, share, wins, connect with others who truly get it. You get access to pulse book discussions, insights you never, ever, ever need to miss a transformation because it's all there for you. You get exclusive reflection prompts, exercises to make sure you're not just reading, you're actually growing. And you get a safe space to be heard, supported, inspired. Every single goddamn month, you get all that and to go from pain to peace with a little laugh along the way, all for a tenner a month. Now, if that isn't the best value healing you'll find online, I don't know what is, but honestly, okay, so that is all for me for this week. I hope you found that helpful today, talking about this long echo, and if you are listening to this on the weekend, this episode comes out. Happy Easter, my loves. I hope you get to eat lots of chocolate and enjoy some downtime. I mean, Easter is all about resurrection and rebirth and all that. And much like Jesus, we too have risen, albeit from the ashes of a shit marriage that look better on Instagram than it fell in real life. But on that note, I'm gonna leave you to your cream eggs and Hot Cross Buns. Sending you so much love until I am back in your beautiful earbuds. Bye. You.