The Post-Divorce Glow-Up Show

64: Back to School After Divorce? Hell Yes, You Can.

• Quinn Otrera

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Divorce may be the end of a marriage, but it’s not the end of your becoming. In this episode, Quinn gets personal and powerful about what it’s like to go back to school in your 50s, what it means to reinvent your career and identity post-divorce, and why the idea that you’re “too old” or “too late” is a damn lie.

From brain science to time management, from limiting beliefs to midlife clarity—this episode is a love letter to every woman who’s felt the spark to try something new but shut herself down with fear or shame. If you've ever thought, "Who am I to go back to school now?"—this one's for you.

In this episode, Quinn shares:

  • Why divorce is both tragedy and transformation—and how you get to choose how to use it
  • The truth about adult neuroplasticity and how learning protects your mental health
  • Personal stories of post-divorce reinvention (including her own!)
  • Powerful resources to learn how to learn, including Barbara Oakley’s course and book recs
  • Encouragement to start small and take just one step
  • A rally cry to trust your timing, your brain, and your badass self

Resources Mentioned:

Connect with Quinn:
Got a spark you’re ready to follow? Want to talk about going back to school or making a big life pivot?
💌 Email Quinn at quinn@postdivorceglowup.com

PostDivorceGlowUp.com

Email: quinn@postdivorceglowup.com

Hello lovers. It is such a good day to be divorced, don't you think? One of my friends last week, she asked me what it's like to be the voice of someone who is promoting divorce, in her words promoting divorce, and I said, it feels pretty damn good. She then said, but for so many people, divorce is such a tragedy. And my reply was that divorce is a tragedy. It is a comedy, it is a dramedy. It is all the things. It is part of life. We get to choose how we use it. the world I grew up in. I got the message that divorce was the end of a life worth living like you might as well just pack it in and go home. There's nothing more for you. But instead, I am using it to fuel this beautiful life. That I have, and it's not all beauty. I gotta say. you know, divorce can be a tragedy and a comedy and drama and all the things, but so is life. It is all the things. You don't get to choose out of the tragedy and the comedy and drama of life. But today is less than two weeks from when I go back to school. A year ago, I didn't know what I was getting into going back to school, but at the time I was 53 and heading back to school for the first time in a very long time, And I had so many limiting beliefs about what would be possible for me going back to school. I didn't really know what to expect. I knew that in the past I had done well in school. I knew that I could learn online, and most of my classes were going to be online. I was excited and terrified at the same time. A lot of my friends, a lot of my clients don't know what's possible for them, but they have these beliefs Thinking that they are too old to go back to school or get a new job, or it's too late to start over, or I have too many kids, or my brain just doesn't work anymore. And I see this most often in women in perimenopause and menopause. I hear you. I am post menopause and I have had to learn how to learn, but I want to talk to you. About all the myths and bits that blur the evidence that we can make huge shifts in our lives at any age. It doesn't mean it's easy, it means it's life. So this episode is for any woman who has felt that spark, that something that that sparked to do something new. For me, it was to go back to school, changing careers. Maybe you feel like you would like to explore some new class or try a new field. And then you immediately shut yourself down with shame and doubt or fear. And if that's you. Take a breath, get cozy, grab your favorite beverage, and let's talk girlfriend. Here's what I want you to know. First, the voice in your head saying that you are too old or it is too late or something in your circumstances is preventing you from making a quantum leap into something new that is not. Necessarily your wisdom, it is most likely your conditioning. We live in a culture that trains women to believe that, especially if you're over 20, your best years are behind you. you know, the messaging that's out there, you know, you're, you're withered up by the time you're 30. In the Mormon culture, when I was growing up, if you were 21 and not married, ooh. I was 26 when I got married, and I was definitely considered an old maid, like, you've missed your shot if you're that old And yet, as I have gotten older, as I have become more comfortable in my skin as a woman in her fifties, I realized so much that has been fed to us about. Our worth, our value, our ability, it's just a damn lie. Let's be honest. A lot of us got funneled into marriages and families or certain careers, survival mode. Before we even had a chance to ask ourselves what we wanted, and frankly, we get to change our minds about what we want. That's one of the beautiful things about being a human, that there's so many opportunities for growth and exploration, and when divorce blows your life all the way open, suddenly there are a lot of questions back on the table waiting to be answered. What do I want? Who am I? What would I regret? Not trying. What would I study if I could, what kind of work would make me feel proud, powerful, and alive. This is not a midlife crisis. This is clarity. I love getting older. For that reason, there are so many. Layers of conditioning that start to just slough off. So if you are midlife or if you are younger, I welcome you into clarity. The clarity of asking different questions, the clarity of listening to yourself really deeply, truly, you are not too old and it is not too late. That is true. You are not too old and it is not too late. Your brain has the ability, even the perimenopause to menopause, 40, 50, 60 7-year-old brain, it is still growing. We are learning so much more about the. Adult maturation process. We don't stop growing when our brain becomes fully myelinated at age 25. We get to keep growing, keep learning, and this isn't just an affirmation. I'm not trying to give you a rah rah speech. This is actual. This is neuroplasticity, and it means that your brain is capable of creating new neural pathways throughout your entire life. And when you challenge yourself by learning something new, taking a class, solving a problem, your brain rewires itself. You literally become sharper, more adaptable, more resilient. And when you have the, the emotion. The drive because of deep desire for exploring your life. When you have that as the engine behind the learning, I mean, the learning is tough. I am not gonna try to say that it's not this last year of taking classes that have never been on my radar before. The chemistry, the anatomy, the statistics. It was a lot of new information and my brain would ache, and it was a challenge, but it was doable. Our brains are capable of creating these pathways and we get stronger in them. We literally only stop learning when we choose to stop learning. There's opportunities to continue to grow and this is the perfect time post-divorce. When you are dealing with quote unquote, so much, so many transitions, schooling or more education can be a really beautiful structured place that you can sink into. So, no, your brain is not too old. It is just waiting for you to give it something to start chewing on a new language, a new city, a new relationship, new investments in yourself and others. And here's something wild studies show that adults who engage in lifelong learning, they have better memory. They have better moods and their mental health outcomes over time are drastically improved. Learning protects your brain, and since women are living longer than men and we have more of a propensity to have dementia than men, it's so important for us, for our sense of community as well as our brain health. To engage in regular learning, and it can be a class like going back to school, but it can also just be a training or a new hobby. Something, just something to get your brain going. if you have been considering going back to school or learning a new skill. That is not selfish. That's one of the best things you can do for yourself. And those of you who think, I shouldn't be doing that right now, I still have kids at home. This is one of the best things you can do for your kids sitting around the table at night after dinner and doing homework with my kids, it. Is one of the most bonding experiences we get to have all of us striving in some way. They're so excited for me when I get my grades to see how mom did on her test. They get to see that it's okay to struggle with information and to keep pushing through. And it's thrilling. It's thrilling to learn new things that I didn't know in the past. Now let's talk about specifically what happens to us post-divorce as we start looking to learn new things. For many of us, divorce is one of the first times in our adult life that we really get serious about who am I? Who am I outside of this marriage? Who am I outside of motherhood? Who am I outside of survival mode? And it can be kind of scary, right? Because reinvention of your life doesn't come with a syllabus. It's so uniquely yours. There's no one handing you a check. List and saying, all right, here's the right path. This is what you do, and this is the class you take. So much of what your learning involves is based on your choices and you learning to trust yourself. But here's the thing, you. Ending or enduring the end of a major chapter of your life in your divorce, that that was incredibly brave of you to just get through it, even if it's not something that you actually chose. You made decisions through that process for your own wellbeing. If you have children, you had to make choices for your children's safety, and you made choices about your future peace. And now you may feel terrified of something like college algebra. Babe. You have already survived emotional warfare. You can survive college algebra. You can start with something smaller and build up. You can choose any path to the end that you want. You're not in a race. One of my clients, she came to me a year ago and she wanted to work on boundaries, but within a couple months she was nailing her boundaries like a boss. But by the end of the time together, she had decided to explore going back to school, and this is a woman who has. I think six children, five or six children. She works from home and she didn't see how she could go back to school, but she started by just having conversations, understanding what resources were available to her at her local college, and I just reached out to her a few weeks ago and asked if she's still planning. To go to college, and I was so thrilled when she said yes, she is going back to college, and she had never been to college. She got married very young and started having lots of babies. She has one of the most incredible stories. She is so strong and so brave, and so capable and terrified of school. Understandably so. She's got a lot on her plate, but truly there are resources for those of you who think maybe you can't do it, that your situation excludes you from finding another way. I promise you. I promise you, there are ways for you to get the education, the opportunities that you want. This particular woman that I'm thinking about, she is starting with her local community college, and then she will go again the next semester and the next semester. The days are going to pass anyway. That's like with me, it's, it's gonna take me years, literal years to become a midwife, but those years are going to pass anyway. And when my kids are all out of the house, that's what I'm going to be doing with my time. And that's important. Who I am and how I show up and the work that I do in this world is important. Just like the work that you are doing is important. So if your inner critic is screaming, you can't do this, you do not have to argue with it. Your brain may give you dozens of reasons why you can't go back to school, why you can't get a different career. You don't have to argue with your brain. You can just ignore it. Let it come along for the ride as you prove it wrong. There are a few things that you can start doing. If you live in the United States, you can check out your local community college. There are certificate programs that are free and low cost. You can check out courses through Google or Coursera or edX, or learn new skills on YouTube. Visit a campus. Have a call with an admissions advisor or spend a night researching what you might want to do. Take some aptitude tests, and it might give you some insight into yourself, especially if you're thinking, I have no idea what I want to do. You do not have to have it all figured out today. It is just about taking a step and giving life something to work with. It's okay if I don't become a midwife, if I get sidetracked. I'm putting myself out there into the world. So life has something to work with so it can create. My life and present it to me for me to live. I don't have this figured out, and you don't have to figure it out, but you do have to be willing to be a beginner. You may have to be willing to be bad at whatever you're doing. Be willing to be awkward, be willing to be the oldest student in the classroom. That's me. You get to be willing to be confused. You don't have to be confident to start. You just have to be willing to start trying, and that's how we grow. That's how we get stronger. There are so many resources to help you learn how to learn. I realized a couple weeks ago, my high school daughter came home and for the first time, she's in a class where she needs to study. And she has this huge world history book and she sets it on the table and said, how do I learn this? And I realized. I haven't taught her. She's watched me study, but I haven't taught her how to study. And if you feel like you have never learned how to study, I wanna tell you some of the top resources for learning how to learn. There is a woman that you should all know about. Her name is Barbara Oakley and she created a popular online course. And this is free and it teaches the science of how your brain works. Especially when it's learning and how to use that to study smarter instead of studying harder, she has short videos, very beginner friendly, very empowering, and you can find it@coursera.org and I will put a link. To this resource in the show notes. She also has some books. She has the book Mind Shift It's an incredible book, kind of a follow up to her online course, and it is specifically created for adults to help you overcome fear and self-doubt and mindset blocks around school and career. A Mind for Numbers is the name of her book, which originally inspired the learning how to learn course because it focuses on math. She was terrible, terrible in math and science. But she learned how to learn and she is now a professor of engineering. It teaches how to use techniques like space, repetition and chunking, and focused and diffuse thinking in order to learn difficult subjects. I cannot recommend it highly enough. if you are going to go back to school, one of the things you really have to learn how to do is manage your time well. And one of my favorite creators around this topic, his name is Ali Abdal. He's a doctor over in the UK and he has this incredible YouTube channel and he wrote the book Feel Good Productivity, which I think is one of the best. Books I have ever read about productivity because it's not about hustle culture, it's more about how do we learn in a way that feels good to us? Because if you're going back to school, sweetheart, there is a lot of learning to be done, a lot of coordinating especially if you've got kids and relationships and work, All the things that we want to have thrive while we're in school. There are also flashcard apps. Anki, A NKI is a free one that you can use on your desktop. I think the mobile app does have a price, and Quizlet is one that I like to use. Another great website is the learning scientists.org, This is a research based site run by cognitive scientists who translate the science of learning. Into actionable tips, so clear strategies like retrieval practice and elaboration and dual coding. One of the resources my college kids love is notion. I have never used notion. I have never learned, they tried to set it up for me. So if you know, you know people who love notion like love it, I have not learned to love it, but I know that it is something that my college kids. Like, so if you're going back to college, consider looking Up Notion and Another great book is the book called Make It Stick, and it is also on the Science of Effective Learning. And it's a great book because it combines the storytelling, research, and practical advice to become a lifelong learner. So even if you don't go back to school. You still wanna learn, right? You wanna learn about yourself, about your new lovers. You wanna learn about the world. Ugh. There is so much at life still to be lived. I wanna leave you with this. I promise you, you are not behind. You are not too late. You are not a failure. You are becoming, you're becoming who you are And that is the adventure of a lifetime. You are becoming a woman who chooses herself. A woman who dares to try something new, to learn something new. You, my friend, are the woman who says, I'm not done yet, and goes forward, takes another step. you are allowed to be afraid to just don't let that fear decide your future. You can do it. Okay, so here's your homework for this week. Find one thing that excites you. One class, one program, one subject or career field that sparks some curiosity, and then take one small action. Research it. Talk to someone about it, write about it in your journal, or just say it out loud to someone you trust. And if you need to say it to me, you can say it to me and I will cheer you on and you can reach me at Quinn Q-U-I-N-N at post-divorce glow up.com. You've already proven that you can survive really hard things. Now, I wanna help you prove to yourself that you can thrive. You're not too old, you are not too dumb. You are a whole grown ass woman stepping into her power, and I am so proud of you. Keep going, just keep going, and until next time, remember, you are the best thing that ever happened to you. You truly are always choose you babe. Trust yourself and I'll talk to you next week.