There is a lot of paperwork involved in the end of a marriage. There are also feelings that don’t have names — something between relief and failure, between freedom and grief, arriving sometimes in the same hour. In these essays, Will Foster-Schmidt writes about what it is actually like to watch a life you built together come apart, and what you do with yourself once the signatures are dry.Documentation Index
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What these essays examine
Divorce gets talked about in two registers: the acrimonious legal drama, or the triumphant liberation narrative. Will is interested in neither. These essays live in the uncomfortable middle — the ambivalence, the guilt, the moments of unexpected tenderness toward someone you are also furious at. The way you can grieve a marriage even when leaving it was the right thing to do.- The practical
- The emotional
- The aftermath
The essays don’t shy away from the logistics: the dividing of furniture, the closing of joint accounts, the conversations about what to tell people. The mundane machinery of uncoupling is part of the story, and Will writes it with unflinching specificity.
Why Will writes about this
Because divorce is one of the most common experiences in contemporary life and one of the least honestly written about. The shame around it — the sense of having failed at something fundamental — keeps people from naming what it actually feels like. Will writes about his own divorce to break through that shame, and in doing so, to make space for everyone else carrying theirs.What you’ll find when you read
You’ll find your own contradictions reflected back at you without judgment. These essays don’t tell you how to feel about a marriage ending — they sit with the complexity of feeling everything at once. If you have been through a divorce, or are in one, or love someone who is, these essays will meet you where you are.Grief
On loss, mourning, and the long aftermath of losing someone.
Becoming
Who you are on the other side — and how you get there.
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