Insights from the Couch - Real Talk for Women at Midlife

Ep.71: Reclaiming Identity After Divorce with Heather Sweeney

• Colette Fehr, Laura Bowman • Season 6 • Episode 71

Share episode

In this deeply moving episode, we sit down with the brilliant author and military spouse-turned-memoirist, Heather Sweeney. Her new book Camouflage: How I Emerged from the Shadows of a Military Marriage takes us inside the complex emotional terrain of identity loss, divorce, resilience, and ultimately, self-discovery. Heather's story is not just one of heartbreak, but of reclaiming voice, power, and purpose—especially for women navigating life after a long-term partnership.

We talk about everything from the layered reality of military marriage to the quiet courage it takes to start over. Heather shares what it's like to lose yourself inside someone else’s story—and how she found her way back. If you’re feeling stuck, alone, or like your identity has been swallowed by your roles, this episode is your permission slip to rediscover who you are.

 

Episode Highlights:

 [0:00] – Introducing Heather Sweeney: Writer, military spouse, and memoirist
 [1:35] – From blogging to bylines: Heather’s journey to becoming a published author
 [3:42] – Riding the roller coaster of military life and finding connection online
 [5:38] – Heather’s national writing credits and how she landed in The New York Times
 [8:38] – The invisible load of military marriage and emotional isolation
 [10:41] – Losing identity in someone else’s career—and the silent toll it takes
 [15:00] – Why divorce was always “in the air” and how it evolved over years
 [19:43] – The emotional aftermath of a partner’s divorce request
 [23:25] – Financial freedom as the catalyst for leaving
 [26:03] – Navigating in-house separation and the complicated new normal
 [28:20] – Military custody realities: long-distance parenting and letting go
 [31:31] – The bridge from loss to liberation: reclaiming your voice
 [33:56] – Building a new relationship from a place of strength and clarity
 [36:52] – Advice for women at the edge of leaving: where to begin
 [39:34] – Heather’s reflections on rediscovering herself through writing and therapy
 [40:13] – Where to find Heather’s book and follow her journey

Links and Resources:

·         Order Camouflage: http://posthill.to/B0F316HJTD 

·         Website: https://www.heatherlsweeney.com/ 

·         Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/writersweeney 

·         Substack: https://heathersweeney.substack.com/ 

If today's discussion resonated w

Pre-order The Cost of Quiet now! Colette’s new book, The Cost of Quiet: How to Have the Hard Conversations that Create Secure, Lasting Love, launches February 3rd. Secure your copy today and get VIP bonuses available only before launch day. https://www.colettejanefehr.com/new-book

🎙️ Love the podcast? Come talk about episodes with us inside The Midlife Chat. It’s a free, private community just for women at midlife who want to keep these conversations going. We’ve created this space for real talk, fresh resources, and honest connection—where you can share ideas and resources, ask questions, and get support from women navigating the same season. Come join us—we’d love to have you!

👉 Join The Midlife Chat here: https://www.facebook.com/groups/795863256460970/

Pre-order The Cost of Quiet now! Colette’s new book, The Cost of Quiet: How to Have the Hard Conversations that Create Secure, Lasting Love, launches February 3rd. Secure your copy today and get VIP bonuses available only before launch day.

Colette Fehr:

Marc, welcome to insights from the couch, where real conversations meet real

Laura Bowman:

life. At midlife, we're Colette and Laura, two therapists and best friends, walking through the journey right alongside you, whether you're feeling stuck, restless or just unsure of what's next. This is a space for honest conversations, messy truths and meaningful change.

Colette Fehr:

And our midlife master class is now open. If you're looking to level up, get into action and make midlife the best season yet. Go to insights from the couch.org and join our wait list. Now let's dive in. Welcome back to insights from the couch. I'm so excited to introduce you guys to a friend of mine, super talented author, Heather Sweeney, her book that is just out now, camouflage how I emerged from the shadows of a military marriage is something you're all going to want to go grab ASAP. Her writing is beautiful, and this is really a story about identity, recovery, resilience, reclaiming yourself that I already have goose bumps. I can't wait to dive in, and I want Heather to tell you everything in her own words. So Heather, welcome. We're so happy to have you here.

Unknown:

Thank you so much. Colette and Laura. I'm thrilled to be here. I love your podcast.

Colette Fehr:

Thank you. Thank you. So maybe we could just start by tell us a little bit about yourself and how this book came to be,

Unknown:

sure, sure. Well, I'm Heather Sweeney. I have been a writer for about 15 years or so, and I've done some freelance work. I started, actually, I started as a blogger. I was a stay at home mom, and I kind of needed something that wasn't mommy, wife related. And I was a military spouse, and my then husband was about to go on deployment again, and I thought I just, I need something for me. And it was actually my mother in law who was like, why don't you start a blog? And I'm like, Well, I don't know how to blog, but I did, and just kind of figured it out as I went along, and that it kind of spiraled and snowballed, and I ended up getting a job as a writer, and I started freelancing more, and the way the book came to be, it's funny, I wasn't even writing this book. I was writing a novel. I was writing fiction, something completely different, and I had published this article, and I had gotten divorced, and I published this article, and it was called The Five marriage tips from a divorced military spouse. Oh and yes, and I had gotten so much response from it just emails from other military spouses saying, Nobody talks about military divorce. Please write more. Please write a book. I thought, Well, okay, I'm not sure I have enough for a book. I'll just, I'll go through my own journals. Well, I was just an avid journaler. I journal like crazy, and I went back through about 20 years of journals. Oh my gosh, thinking that I might not have enough material for a book, and then suddenly I had a very, very long book that I had to cut 1000s and 1000s of words from. But yeah, so then, you know, it kind of went from there looking for an agent and a publisher. And here it

Laura Bowman:

is, yay. I mean, can you, first of all, I'm curious, like, what was the blog about?

Unknown:

It was called riding the roller coaster, and it was about just military life, being a spouse. And, you know, I had lived in Japan before I moved here to Virginia, and I so wish I'd started a blog when we lived in Japan, because how cool was that we were there for three years. My daughter was born in Japan, and yeah, just I met so many wonderful people that I'm still friends with through blogging. It was a lot of just online connections, and we kind of realized, Oh, wow. Well, we're going through the same things. We're all kind of lonely. Our husbands are gone, and there's some male military spouses, but mostly women. And I just connected and thought, this is just wonderful that we're all sharing our stories. And I had no I was like, kind of dealing with all of this internally and being resilient like we're supposed to be. And I have a hard time with that word sometimes, because I heard it so much as a military spouse, be resilient, support your spouse's career, and, you know, play your role as the spouse. And it was hard sometimes, so it was nice and rotary on the on the blogging world.

Colette Fehr:

Heather, You're so modest. I just want to throw out. To the audience. Heather is a major, known writer whose work appears. No, it is. And I know you're not going to be bragging, so I'm going to be bragging. I just want to set the scene here that not only are you a talented writer, but you're all over the place, like USA Today. Good Housekeeping. Can you just name a couple of places? I mean, I've read your article that you wrote on the golden bachelor that was in the newspaper. I mean, you write, and these are pieces that you write, like when I'm in the news. It's a quote for me as a relationship expert, but you are a contributing writer to the biggest national publication. So can you just name a place as a few places where people can find your work?

Unknown:

Sure, then. And the New York Times, The Washington Post, Huff Post, News Week, Business Insider, I have hundreds of articles that military.com Health Line, grown and flown. I know I'm leaving now,

Colette Fehr:

but at least people get the idea like, Yeah, I mean you're, you are a big time writer, so to turn all of that into a memoir, right? This is your first memoir, correct?

Unknown:

It's my first book. It's my first memoir, yes, yes, and I was gonna say my the way it all started with my freelancing was I kind of just lucked out with a New York Times editor, but I ended up announcing my divorce in the New York Times, wow. Wait, tell us that how? Yes, most people you know announce their their weddings.

Colette Fehr:

Yeah, mine was it. My wedding was in The New York Times wedding, and I got divorced a few years later. That should have been in there.

Unknown:

Yeah. And you know what, I've actually read things recently. Oh, should people announce their divorces or just kind of go quietly, you know, into social media with somebody else? But yes, so I had worked with this New York Times editor twice before. He was the magic editor of the at war section of New York Times, and it was a lot of veterans and service members and spouses writing just about military life. And I messaged him one day and I said, Look, I've got this piece. I'm getting divorced. And actually, my piece that I wrote before that was about going to marriage counseling and how marriage counseling was going to save my marriage. You know, spoiler alert, it didn't but I said, I've got this piece. I'm getting divorced, but I promised my future ex that I was not going to write about the divorce until the year long separation was over and the divorce was finalized. And he's like, great. Send me a draft and we'll sit on it. Just let me know when you want me to post it. I'm like, fantastic. So court date rolls around, I'm fully divorced. I have reverted back to my maiden name. I'm leaving the courtroom with my best friend and doo doo doo. I send out an email, and about two hours later, my divorce was announced in the New York Times. Wow,

Colette Fehr:

yeah, very cool, that that needs to become a thing, yeah, yeah.

Laura Bowman:

Like, proudly,

Unknown:

I was very lucky. You know, a lot of editors, they want to post something when they want to post it, and he's like, No, I'll wait. I'm good. Like, great. So cool, yeah, so I

Laura Bowman:

just want to go back. I love your bio. That's amazing. I'm glad our listeners get to know, like, what a true writer you are. But I'm just curious about because I don't know, and I'm guessing, like some of our listeners don't know either, like, what, what are the contours of, like, a military marriage?

Unknown:

Oh, wow. It's very layered. It's very nuanced. It's not easy. It's not an easy lifestyle, lifestyle. My hat goes off to every military spouse right now. It's a lot of uncertainty. There are deployments. There's a lot of moves, even little trips. He would go off for, you know, just a week or whatever, but it was always very last minute and throwing stuff into a bag, and, you know, forgetting things, and it's not easy, and, you know, and I wouldn't say that my divorce. I can't blame the military on my divorce. I think that there are plenty. I've a ton of military spouse friends who, you know, they'll complain about certain aspects of the military life, but ultimately they're with the right person, and those hardships are a little bit easier when you're with somebody that you can share it with and talk it over with, and you know you can commiserate and you understand each other. I was going through these hardships with the wrong person, and we were just not on the same page, and I felt very alone, even when he was home. And there were times also, and I started realizing that things weren't going well when I started looking forward to him leaving, even when we were in Japan, and I'm far away from my family. We had two little kids at the time when we were in Japan. Newborn baby and a four year old, and I there was one time he left and I had the stomach flu. I had to do Easter by myself. I had the two little kids, and the second he walked out the door, I just kind of exhaled, and I'm like, Oh my gosh, I'm I'd just rather deal with this all by myself.

Laura Bowman:

That's when you know. That's when you know,

Colette Fehr:

what is it about a military like? Is there anything that might surprise someone about a military marriage, or the unique challenges you face that you can think of because I can't even imagine, you know, I don't have a frame of reference for what that's like. As far as

Unknown:

being a spouse. I don't know what it's like being a service member. They have a whole separate you know, write a whole book on the hardships of a service member, but I think as a spouse, one thing that I dealt with, and I saw a lot of other spouses deal with, and I completely lost my identity in his career, and I was a stay at home mom, and kind of my full time job was being a spouse, because I had to hold down the home front while he was gone. And he was gone a lot, I would say he was gone for more than half of our marriage. Wow. And you know, I'm raising the kids by myself, and I only had two. I'm like, I don't even know how people with more than to do it. I just, I couldn't run that. But you're not really supposed to complain about the hardships. Nobody says that. It's not. It's kind of an unwritten rule. You there's, there's one thing that a lot of military spouses hear from their civilian counterparts, and we all just, you know, kind of cringe when, here it is. You knew what you were getting into and I always hated that, because first of all, when I married my husband, he was not in the military yet, and he joined the military about a week, two weeks after we got married, but so I knew it was coming. But you know, it's almost like telling a newly pregnant mother who doesn't have any other children? Oh, well, you knew you asked for this. You knew what you were getting into being a mother as well. You don't know until you're in it, till you're in the thick of it. And you even if some people grow up as a military brat, and then they marry into the military, and still, it's a completely different perspective as a spouse rather than as a child, and it's just on the job training. And I'm a really good Packer. I can pack really well. We moved a lot. In Japan, we lived in three different houses. Even we were in Pensacola, Florida first, and we lived in two different houses. So yeah, we moved a lot.

Colette Fehr:

How long were you married? And how old were you when you got divorced?

Unknown:

We were married for 13 years, together for 15 and I was 37 I believe 36 or 37 I was probably 36 when we separated, and about 37

Colette Fehr:

when we divorced. And how old were your kids at the time of the divorce?

Unknown:

They were five and nine. Okay,

Colette Fehr:

yeah, yes. And so are you, to whatever degree you're comfortable sharing, what are some of the I mean, I appreciate you made the distinction between even though there are challenges and special factors that are unique to a military marriage, that it is not the military that caused this divorce. That's not the story. Was not the right person. We were not right for each other. And as you both and all our listeners know, I'm sure by now, I also got divorced around the same time. Length of relationship, not a military marriage, when my kids were one and a half and three and a half? Yeah, so, and I think there are a lot of people out there, we know, just bringing in the relationship perspective, that the two biggest times of divorce in people's lives are when the kids are young, because there's such intense demands that if there are fractures in the relationship, they tend to be expressed at that stage, and then also the emptiness stage, when people may have for years focused on a kid centric marriage and grown apart, and they wake up one day and look at each other and go, I don't even know you, and I don't want to the newly named Gray Divorce. So I think there, and I know there are a lot of listeners out there. Obviously some are happily married, some are happily single, but there are also a lot of people out there divorced, a lot of people who are in marriages that are not fulfilling, that are not emotionally connected, that they're grappling with. Should I get a divorce? Should I not get a divorce? Maybe they haven't even talked to anybody about it, because it's still even though it's so common, it's so stigmatized. So could you share just a little bit of again, whatever you're comfortable with, like your thought process, what was pushing on you to consider divorce? Because it's not an easy step to take, and there had to be some pretty big reasons or compelling factors that moved you. Oh.

Unknown:

Boy, we actually talked about divorce for years. I mean, the word was out, and in our marriage, it was in our atmosphere for many years. And the first time he told me he wanted a divorce, we were in Japan, and my daughter was nine months old, and I'm like, Well, I don't have a job. We agreed that I was going to be a stay at home mom, just it's and I had a master's degree. At the time, I had gotten a master's degree. I finished it up when our son was six months old, and he was in Iraq, so I was on my own. He's in Iraq about a six month old. I just got my master's degree, and then four months later,

Colette Fehr:

really shit, yeah, what's your master's

Laura Bowman:

in? Yeah, what's the Master's in? I

Unknown:

I'm all over the place. My undergraduate degree is in psychology, and my master's degree is in elementary education. I was going to be a teacher. I was a kindergarten teacher for two years before I became a full time writer. I love that. Wow. So part of our problem at the be, at the get go, was that, because we were apart all the time, we kind of swept our problems under the rug. And so every time we had like, so when he was preparing to go somewhere, whether it was a deployment or even like, sometimes he would go to Europe for six weeks, I mean, or sometimes it was a week. But when they're preparing to leave, you have a lot to do. You've got to just get we always had to have an updated Power of Attorney. For me, his will always had to be updated, you know, going on deployments to the Middle East, you know, we basically had to prepare for him not coming back. Wow. So you're trying to do the logistics while also, I have to spend quality time with him. I'm not going to see him for six months. And then while he's gone, you don't want to fight while he's gone, because you're supposed to miss him. What? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Strikes are high, right? And so then when he comes back, there's actually a term called reintegration, which nobody told me about. When they first come back from deployment, everybody has to learn how to live together again. So it's called reintegration. I had to get used to share, you know, I had a schedule with my kids, and he interrupted it when he came home. But then when he came home, he's used to, you know, having his own schedule and eating what he wants, and not having a toddler tugging on his pant leg. And so it was an adjust, and that, you know, the kids wouldn't when he came home from Iraq. Or, you know, we left, my son was six months old. When he came back, he my son was a year old. Well, he didn't know his dad, who his dad was. So there's just this reintegration, and then, so you don't want to use that time fighting either. And then the next thing you know, we're moving to another country.

Laura Bowman:

And then there's never time to process.

Unknown:

There's never time. And there's also, it's not so much anymore, because we're talking this was about 10 years ago, more than 10 years ago, and there is such a stigma for people in the military getting help, because you think of the military and you kind of associate it with strength, both physical and mental strength. That's our military. They're strong. They're fighters. And so when we really needed the counseling, we couldn't get it in Japan. It was a very, very small base. We hung out with and sang karaoke with the counselors, so maybe they sensed something, but we couldn't, you know, we hung out with them, and then we moved back here, and it was just he didn't want to go to counseling, and I understood why he didn't want it in his military record. Now there's a much less stigma to it. But at the time, you know, this was 2010 2011 and he's just like, we just can't do it. We saw, we ended up seeing three different counselors, one of which was an employee of the military, and she was not for me. She was not advocating for me. She was definitely hired to make sure that the service member was ready to go and didn't care so much about my mental health, like

Laura Bowman:

keep you in your role. Essentially, absolutely,

Unknown:

absolutely. My role was to be a spouse and to hold down the the home front and do whatever I needed to do to make sure he was good to go on his his mission.

Colette Fehr:

Wow. So when you when he says to you the first time, you know, I might want a divorce, that words first floated at that point, are you so emotionally disconnected already that it doesn't devastate you? Or are you floored by this, and like just gut wrenched.

Unknown:

I was surprised that he verbalized it, but I was kind of having my own divorce daydreams myself and for me. And I do write about this in the book, my first thoughts were not, Oh, my God. I can't live without this man. Oh my gosh. What am I going to do? My first thoughts were, how do I get a job? How do I get some money? Where am I going to live? You know, how am I going to find childcare? How am I going to pay for childcare? Those were my first thoughts.

Colette Fehr:

And telling, isn't it? It's telling, because that was, those were my first thoughts too.

Laura Bowman:

But thank you for saying that, because I think that we under report how much that like, really factor. I mean, I think that is such a huge factor for women, is like, How safe are they? Can they really take care of themselves? Can they take care of their kids? And if the answer comes up, no, you're really stuck there

Unknown:

for a while I was I was stuck for years.

Laura Bowman:

Okay to talk to me about being stuck for years,

Unknown:

I think after the first time we talked about divorce, gosh, that was probably in about 2008 and we didn't separate until 2012 So, gosh, yeah, four more years

Laura Bowman:

were you planning the whole time? Like, tell what was the process behind the scenes for you?

Unknown:

I wasn't again. It was kind of like when we first talked about it, we were about to move from Japan back to the states, like all of our furniture was already packed up, like everything we already bought a house here in in Virginia, I'm still in the same place where we moved after Japan, and we just swept it under the rug again, like we did for everything else, because there were so many things we were moved to Virginia. We had to buy a car, we had to get the kids enrolled in school and look for daycares, and then he had to start and, you know, at the same time, he's starting a new job every three years. So he's in the he was in the Navy, but every time you go to a different duty station, you're doing a different job. So he's got a new boss, he's got a new position, he's got new co workers. And so he's getting used Can you imagine, like, starting a new job every three years? And so while he's dealing with that, you know, I'm dealing with, I'll never forget. Like the movers came with our stuff in our house, and he had to go do work stuff. And so I've got, I've got a 10 month old baby in a pack and play on the front lawn, and a four year old watching way too much television inside. I didn't know anybody. My family is not here. I didn't know any of the neighbors yet, and so I did the entire move into our house by myself. And he came home at the end of the day and he was like, how did it go? I'm like, I'm really tired, yes, and so, and shortly after that, he started to his travel cycle started. And so it was just very difficult. And even when we started counseling, the first counselor, we did rapid fire sessions. We were going a couple times a week for, I think our longest session was two, two and a half hours, because she was employed by the military. She knew we had to, we had to lock in some some issues. And we saw her for a while. We thought we were doing better, and then he left for six weeks, and he came back, and we were at square one.

Colette Fehr:

Yeah, so what? Finally, what was the impetus for this divorce that had been percolating and getting swept back under the rug for it to finally come to fruition? Did you just feel ready? Did you feel like you could no longer live without your identity, like, what? What was it for you?

Unknown:

It was the combination of things. I'd say the first couple of times we talked about divert divorce, he initiated it, and then the next couple times it was me. But honestly, in reality, it was because I got a job that was paying real money. And you could finally that we talk about being stuck again, but I had no means of supporting myself, yeah, and so once I got a job, there was no reason for me to stay anymore.

Colette Fehr:

Yeah, I'm so glad you said that, too, just like Laura said, you know, as therapists, sitting with people so often it is the financial piece, and I kind of did a Kamikaze, the opposite, where I had no means of supporting myself. And I said, Fuck it, I'm doing it anyway. And honestly turned out to be a disaster. Now, in the long run, I landed on my feet, but it was a disaster because I had had no career. I had no job, I very foolishly said, I don't really want any money from you beyond a very small amount of rehabilitative I think I got two years of measly rehabilitative alimony that was peanuts. In addition to I did get child support, but it wasn't enough to live on, and it's a big factor. You know, I had worked for two years or so out of college, so I had nothing to fall back on, and had to drop out of a master's degree in creative writing that I was enrolled in because I couldn't afford to diddle around with this idea of being like a creative writer and potentially teaching. Teaching, I had to figure out, what am I going to do to make a living? So I think even for people who have been married for a long time, even for people who have worked, this financial piece is so huge, and I think we would see a huge change in the rates of divorce if things were not so outrageously expensive here, and more people felt like they could afford to leave. It is the number one thing I hear in my office from couples who are ambivalent about wanting to get a divorce. I think it's going to be a financial disaster. I don't know how I'll support myself. So it really I'm glad that you said that, because once you could leave like your truth was there, but you didn't have the ability to do it sooner.

Unknown:

Absolutely, and we even for financial purposes in the state of Virginia, you can do an in house separation, as long as you prove that you are living separate and apart. And we did a seven month in house, separation.

Laura Bowman:

What does that look like? Oh, it was a nightmare.

Unknown:

He was dating. I watched him go out on dates. Oh, my to his credit, like I I will never go back and say, Oh my gosh. What is he doing? Like we, we talked about it. He said, How do you feel about dating? I'm like, go for it, man, I'm out. We're not smiling. Go have fun. A year is a really long time to be alone. And if you want to date, go for it. That's fine. I mean, it was hard, don't get me wrong, and I wasn't really dating. My friends made me get on match and everything, but I stayed in therapy for quite a while, and women always do that. Men go and women go to therapy, yes, but I said to myself, you know, the biggest thing that I'm walking away with is I've completely lost my identity. I don't know who Heather is anymore. I was a military spouse. I was his wife. I am my kid's mom. And finally, you know, with my writing career kicking up, I'm like, Well, I finally have a voice. I need to just roll with that and go from there. And I did a lot of work on myself. And then finally, as far as the in house separation, we got to this point where he just wasn't going anywhere. He was not going to be the one moving out. And I my therapist finally said to me, it's like, Heather, don't you think it's time for you to to move out there? Don't you think there are too many ghosts in your house? And I said, you know why you are right? So I ended up finding an apartment in a school zone that I liked. I moved across town with the kids, and we had already arranged, because he was on, again, on a travel cycle. The kids would stay with me during the week. They would go to him on the weekends. And that's, you know, talking about custody. Another very unique thing about military divorce is the custody schedules, because we had a great custody schedule going. And then he got stationed in DC for a year, so he's commuting, you know, four hours each way to come home on the weekends to be with the kids. He did that for a year, and then he got military orders again to Hawaii.

Colette Fehr:

Oh, my God, sir, how do you do? Right? You can't do every other weekend, no.

Unknown:

So So what ended up happening is he proposed a scenario where he wanted the kids to stay with me during the school year and go stay with him in Hawaii for 10 weeks every summer. I didn't love that idea. I went back to an attorney to see what kind of rights I had, and she basically said, I wouldn't waste your money hiring me. I live in a very highly populated military city, and she said the military judges around here are very sympathetic to military people who want to spend time with their children. And he did, and that was the thing, too. He wanted to spend time with them. I couldn't fault him for that either. And I couldn't say, Well, don't move Hawaii. You know, there's the military says, you go, you go. And so for two summers, we only did it for two summers, because the first summer he was there, it took him a while to find a house, so he was living in a hotel. So yeah, for two summers, I had to put my babies on a plane. He came and got them, so I didn't have to put them on a plane alone. And yeah, of course, they loved Hawaii. Who wouldn't love spending their summers in Hawaii. But I was devastated. I was I'd never been apart from them for that, but it's hard for you to get

Laura Bowman:

like a rhythm. It's always changing, right? Even being divorced from him, it's still like this, like you say it's this roller coaster.

Unknown:

Yeah, that. That was the name of my blog. It was it, yeah, riding the roller coaster.

Laura Bowman:

I've had clients where it's been like a military custody situation. And you're absolutely right. They're very sympathetic to the military member. And it was like, oh, some heartbreaking situations I've seen. Wow. So it's got good advice. From your lawyer

Unknown:

well, and I was also considering, because, you know, again, I don't, I didn't have any family here, and I was considering moving to Florida to be near both sets of grandparents. And I kind of brought up the subject with him, and he said, Don't, please don't leave. Please give it another year, because after Hawaii, I'm trying to come back, but where my parents are, like, there was really very little chance of him being able to get stationed where I was planning on going, and so I said, Okay, well, we'll give it, I'll give it a year, and then I'm out of here because I'm alone here. I'm raising these kids all by myself. And sure I've I have friends. I have a ton of friends. Takes A Village, but I miss being close to family and so, but I ended up I'm still here because I did start dating. There you go. There is hope at the end of all of this. And I did meet somebody, and so we are still here together, so I did not move to Florida.

Colette Fehr:

Yeah, and you guys seem to have such a great connection. You and I have talked about it, and of course, I'm we're connected on social media. So let's talk about for our listeners a little the place in between where we are now and where you find new love and the right person. You know, what is the divorce experience like for you, in particular, with respect to reclaiming your identity? You know, what's the good that can come out of divorce? Because I do think there's quite a

Unknown:

bit there. There's so much good. And you know, it's funny because one person said to me after my divorce, because most people like, oh my gosh, I'm so sorry I could never do it. What happens? I always, never liked that question either. What happens? You know, when you first get divorced, you're like, I just want to move on. Someone said to me once, my condolences and congratulations and like, I love that. That's great, brilliant. And I think all of the work that I did in therapy reintroduced me to myself, and I ended up going to my 20th high school reunion. I hadn't I was kind of sort of dating, I think, but I went to my 20th high school reunion, and everybody was like, You're the same exact person. You're just spunky. And I went alone. I at first, I'm like, Oh, I don't have a plus one. I'm embarrassed to tell people I'm divorced, but, you know, at that point, I'm like, You know what? Fuck it. Here I go. I'm going. And I had a blast. And that kind of made me realize, you know, okay, this is who I am. And it was one of those situations when I did really start dating, and I did get on the apps, and, you know, my friends kind of pushed me, and my married friends were living vicariously through me and this cute guy. And of course, I'm almost 40 years old, and at the time like, Oh, I'm dating it, you know, 39 but going into dating, knowing myself again and reclaiming that identity that was completely lost behind my my then husband. It really made it a little bit easier the dating, yeah, you know, the dating wasn't super fun. I had a lot of really bad first dates, but I think the reason I never got into another bad relationship after that was because I'm like, Well, I'm not putting up with this again, and I'm not putting up with this again. And you know, if they don't like who I am, well, he can leave. I don't need to keep going on dates. Are plenty of guys out there, and I did realize after a lot of bad first dates that I would much rather be alone than be in a bad relationship again.

Laura Bowman:

That's such a powerful place.

Colette Fehr:

That's the tagline of life, right? It's better to be alone than in a bad relationship,

Laura Bowman:

but that's the energy you have to occupy to actually attract something that's worth having.

Unknown:

I agree, and I do like for for me, I was used to being alone. I spent a lot of my marriage alone, and so, you know, the, actually, the military taught me a lot about the things I needed. You know, we go back to that word resilience. You know, I was resilient. I knew how to be resilient. And I knew if I could just push through, okay, I if I could just move into this apartment and get settled and make it a home, I'll be fine. I'm gonna get settled at this, this job that I have, I'm making money, you know, all of these things. I just knew I'm like, Okay, I'm just going to push through. I know I'm resilient. I know I could deal with this. This is a rough time. And someone did once tell me, they said, the first year after the divorce is going to be the hardest year of your life. And it was. And I tell people, too, I don't want to blow smoke up anyone's rear ends, but it is very hard, don't yeah, like, it wasn't instantly easy, but there is a time where you're like, Wow, I'm so glad I left that marriage, because I cannot even imagine living the rest of my life with that person. It would have hollowed you. Out absolutely I already felt like like a shell of a person, right?

Colette Fehr:

Because it's the self abandonment that cost you. This is what my upcoming book is about, that you sacrifice your relationship with yourself, your essential self, to stay into something that robs you of who you are. And I think this is really the biggest reason to end a relationship, not that anybody needs to justify their decision to leave, but when it when it comes to that, when you can't be who you are, when you can't feel safe and whole and connected, it's a really, really risky proposition. And so I think what you're saying right now, that I love is that for somebody listening, maybe, who is grappling with wanting a divorce, but really scared, you know, scared of dating, scared of finances, scared they'll be alone forever, scared of judgment, any and all of the above that there is a rough period. There's a period of right? It's still a loss, it's still a death, it's still change, which is hard on our system. We have to have a reintegration, like you mentioned, for our new life and to being truly alone, because there's being alone every day, logistically, but there's the feeling, the existential feeling of knowing that you move through the world on your own that can really hit you in a profound way. So you have to come to terms with that. But then there is just so much there's Healthy Love, there's boundaries, there's knowing who you are, there's knowing you can be on your own. So there's so much hope for anybody who's feeling like I want to do this, but I can't, or I'm scared I can't.

Laura Bowman:

Where do you tell like, our listener, if some, if a woman is in that place right now, like, where do you start? Like, what's the first step? Oh, boy,

Unknown:

as far as, like, deciding you want to divorce, or the first steps,

Laura Bowman:

the thing that will, like, pull you through, like, maybe the thread that carries you through, or the first thing to start investing in.

Unknown:

I think, just Well, as you know, get a good counselor, learn more about yourself, get a village. You know, I could not have gotten through my divorce with certain people, with my parents, my brother, my best friends. You know, the people you could call in the middle of the night and just spiral and talk in circles and just get it out of your system. You know, brain bomb, it. Do your research. You know, know what your financials are. And for the longest time, you know, before I started looking into that and really looking at lawyers, and I paid the bills, but I didn't really know where all of our money was, and so I just kind of learned up on, okay, this is, this is in this account, and this is in this account, and this is how much we owe in the house and things like that. And then I started making a budget, okay, this is how much I can afford. So when I started looking for apartments, I knew how much I'm like, Okay, I can't go over this monthly amount, but there are places that I can afford to start looking, maybe get a realtor, but just, just have people in your corner. Don't do it alone. And I think for me, I suffered so long in silence, like I'm in this horrible marriage, I didn't even tell some my closest friends. You know, there was one time we just moved here from Japan. I think we were even still jet lagged, and we moved into our house. And the house we bought the house sight unseen. It was a mess. It needed so much work. So one of my friends came in from out of town, and she was helping me scrape wallpaper and going to TJ Maxx with me and home goods, and she pulled me aside one time, and she's like, You guys fight constantly. And I was like, Yeah, you know, we do, right? And I'm trying to confide in her, like I still hadn't told her, Oh, yeah, like a few weeks ago, he told me he wanted a divorce, and you know, you you can't, you can't keep it in. You also can't internalize these things for the longest time. I'm like, Well, this must be my fault, so I'm the one holding down the home home front, and I'm the person who's stabilizing our entire lives so that he can get his job done. And I just thought it was me, and he would ask me, Well, are you depressed? I'm like, No, I'm not depressed. I just, I don't, I don't like, I've again with starting the blog, I needed something more in my life. And I think once I left the marriage and kind of got back on my feet, looking back, I realized, Oh, I needed something else, and that something else was my identity, because it was just gone.

Colette Fehr:

Wow, yeah, that's it. Okay. This is so powerful. And I think not only are people going to enjoy the book for your story and your beautiful writing, but really, just to get a lot, even if you're not going through a divorce, about the process as women, particularly in midlife, of really reclaiming our identity, being truly connected to ourselves at the core, who we really are, and living a life that'll. Allows us to be that, whether it's with a partner or not. So I want to Heather as we wrap up, can you just tell everyone how to find you and how to find your book? And we'll have this in the show notes, of course, too.

Unknown:

Absolutely. So my book is called camouflage, how I emerged from the shadows of a military marriage. You could buy it on Amazon, Barnes and Noble bookshop, Target, Walmart. You can check me out on my website. It's Heather l sweeney.com and I'm probably not a bunch of socials. I'm probably most active on Instagram. That is writer Sweeney. I have a sub stack that I'm kind of sort of writing on regularly, but I'm on blue sky. I'm on Twitter, X, whatever you want while I'm still on that. So, yeah, I'm kind of all over the place. I'm pretty easy to find.

Colette Fehr:

It's great. It's great. So definitely connect with Heather after the episode and grab her book. I really, I am not one to rave about anyone's writing, but I really do think, I mean, it's true, it's true, Laura,

Unknown:

it's true.

Colette Fehr:

Yes, you're really just so talented, and I think your story is going to impact our listeners and a lot of people, and give people again, so much hope about what's possible in our second chapters. So thank you so much for being here.

Unknown:

Thank you so much for having me. This was so much fun. And Colette, I can't wait for your book.

Colette Fehr:

Thank you. It's feels like it's, it's gonna be like we're gonna be 90 years old and doing a new podcast on like, preparing to die by the time my book comes out. But eventually it'll be here. Only five months to go. Yes, it'll be here. So thank you so much again, Heather, so excited for you. Everyone go grab your copy of camouflage. Thank you all for listening. We hope you got some great insights from our couch today, and we'll see you next time. Bye guys. You.