Still, divorce is hard. I ate a plate of garlic bread for dinner one night. We don’t need anyone telling us how hard it is while we’re living it. I was lucky enough to have friends tell me they were proud of me. All these serious conversations included clusters of laughter. I really believe that if you have friends and laughter you can get through anything.

The typical response to these cards from customers is, “Oh, my friend just told me she’s getting divorced, I knew exactly where to go.” People care and they want an easy way to show their support. It’s a small but mighty way to rally around someone in a difficult time. And with greeting cards, you don’t have to wait until your friend can get their head above water to see you in person or catch a phone call. They’ve got a lot going on.

My already divorced friends have also been profoundly moved by the cards. I’d almost call it cathartic. Some of them have their own stories about learning the phrase “covert narcissist” only after it was way too late.

One friend even suggested I take the cards in a more sentimental direction, offering a more heartfelt message in addition to the funny ones. Based on her story, I came up with a card that reads, “My heart hurts for you because you didn't sign up for this. You didn't think you'd be walking this road alone and none of this feels right. But what you need to know is…my heart also sings for you, because on the other side of the sadness and doubt, past the anger and shock is a life more beautiful and worthy of you than you could ever dream."

When I texted her the copy she replied, “A card like that would have had me bawling like a baby.”

While funny, the humorous cards are rooted in moving past traumatic experiences. It might be hard for someone to understand without the corresponding life experience, but those of us who have had to do the work to accept a new reality and then unpack why a predator or narcissist found us appealing…we need humor to get through the dark times.

I have burned sage to reclaim my home and lamented that human psychopaths don’t have neon skin. For every shocking documentary about marital betrayal on streaming services, there’s someone watching and thinking it’s awfully familiar. Learning and healing involves understanding the world and dark possibilities better, but it can be unpleasant or even unmooring to look back on old memories with new data. We couldn’t have known because we hadn’t learned the right things yet. Hearing “You couldn’t have known,” from people meant the world to me. I clung to it.

I think society’s perceptions of divorce are really different than the individual stories of divorce. Divorce usually has negative connotations, and it’s almost treated like a failure or weak show of force. Did they try hard enough? But what if divorce is about fixing a mistake? What if it’s realizing that therapy isn’t magical enough to fix everyone and every situation? People fight just as hard for their divorce, but no one tells them they’re heroes for it.

As a society, we’re not supposed to root for the divorce or break-up. It’s been programmed in us through the existence of marriage counselors and countless romantic comedies. I’ll admit, I’d find it hard to write a feel-good screenplay that ends in a divorce. But maybe that’s okay. Divorce can be a beginning, too. Maybe that’s the movie we still need.

Divorce saves lives. Sometimes, it saves kids. I don’t know if these cards can help societal perceptions, but my hope is they can help the people wading through them. I want people getting divorced to feel seen and valued. I want there to be a counterweight to the auto-response, “Have you tried therapy?”