Counseling for Women After Divorce in North Carolina

You’ve Lost You…

You Used to Know Exactly Who You Were. Now You’re Not So Sure.

Before the divorce, you had a clear picture of your life. Career on track. Marriage that looked solid from the outside. Kids who were thriving. You were the one your friends came to for advice, the colleague who always delivered, the mom who showed up for everything.

Now you're standing in your Charlotte kitchen at 6 am, coffee getting cold, staring at a custody calendar that makes your stomach clench. Or you're lying awake in your Raleigh bedroom at 2 am, running through every decision you made that led here. Or you're sitting in your Durham office pretending to focus while your mind replays the same conversation for the hundredth time.

The worst part? You keep waiting to feel like yourself again. But the person you were before your marriage, the one who existed independently, who had her own dreams and opinions and sense of direction, she's become hard to access. You know she's in there somewhere. You just can't seem to find her.

You're a woman who solves problems. You research; you plan; you execute. So naturally, you're treating divorce like another project to manage. Another challenge to push through.

But this one isn't responding to your usual approach.

The Reality of Your Post-Divorce Days

It's Wednesday morning, and you've already snapped at your kids twice before school. You promised yourself you'd be patient today. You had a whole plan. And then your 10-year-old couldn't find her shoes, and your 7-year-old spilled cereal everywhere, and suddenly you were yelling about things that don't actually matter. Now you're driving to work in Cary feeling like the worst mom on the planet, composing an apology text in your head that you'll probably never send.

Your ex texts about switching weekends, and your whole body tenses. It's a reasonable request. But something about the way it's phrased, or maybe just the fact that it's from them, makes you want to throw your phone across the room. You spend twenty minutes crafting a response that sounds calm and cooperative, then delete it and start over three more times.

At night, you pour a glass of wine and scroll through social media, watching other people's lives look effortless. You know it's a highlight reel. You know comparison is pointless. But you can't stop. It's either this or lying in bed thinking about everything you should have done differently.

Your daughter asks if you're happy, and you don't know what to say. You want to protect her. You want to be honest. You want to model healthy emotions. Instead, you change the subject and feel like a coward.

Friends keep telling you how strong you are. You smile and thank them, and inside you think: if they only knew. If they knew about the crying in the car. The panic attacks in the grocery store. The days when getting out of bed feels like running a marathon.

Why the Usual Fixes Aren't Working

You've done what capable women do when faced with a crisis: you've tried to solve it.

The divorce books are stacked on your nightstand. You've listened to podcasts during every commute. You've downloaded apps for meditation, for co-parenting coordination, for mood tracking. You've made lists and schedules and backup plans for your backup plans.

Maybe you even tried therapy once. Sat in someone's office and talked about your childhood while silently wondering what any of this had to do with the fact that you can't sleep and your kids are struggling and your entire identity has collapsed.

Here's what no one tells you: you can't strategy your way through this. Divorce isn't a problem that yields to spreadsheets and willpower. The reason you're struggling isn't that you haven't found the right system yet. It's that your nervous system is in overdrive, your sense of self has been shattered, and the coping mechanisms that got you this far in life aren't built for this particular storm.

A Different Kind of Divorce Support

I'm Dr. Emily Fornwalt, and I specialize in working with women across North Carolina who are navigating life after divorce.

I won't give you another list of tips. We won't spend our sessions strategizing about co-parenting logistics or dissecting what went wrong in your marriage.

Instead, we'll work with what's actually driving your distress—the patterns beneath the surface that keep you reactive, exhausted, and disconnected from yourself. I use approaches called AEDP and interpersonal neurobiology, which is a fancy way of saying we address your nervous system and emotions directly, not just your thoughts.

When you're stuck in fight-or-flight mode (which you probably have been for months or years), your brain can't access its full capacity. You can't think clearly, regulate your emotions, or make decisions you feel good about. No amount of planning or positive thinking changes that. But working with your nervous system does.

I hold a PhD in counseling from UNC Charlotte, and I work exclusively via telehealth. Whether you're in the Triangle, the Triad, or a small town in the mountains, we can meet without adding another errand to your overloaded schedule.

your life can change after divorce counseling

This work creates real shifts in daily life, not just "feeling better" in some vague way, but tangible differences in how you function:

You respond to your kids instead of reacting. That morning chaos doesn't disappear, but you stop losing yourself in it. When your daughter can't find her shoes, you help her look instead of spiraling into frustration. When your son has a meltdown about going to your ex’s house, you can hold space for his feelings without falling apart yourself.

You handle communication with your ex without the emotional hangover. Texts don't ruin your whole day anymore. You say what needs to be said, set boundaries when necessary, and move on. The constant mental rehearsal of conversations, past and future, starts to quiet down.

You sleep. Not perfectly, not every night, but your brain stops running its 2 am highlight reel of regrets and anxieties. You wake up with enough energy to face the day.

You make decisions. About the house, about the kids' schools, about your career, about what you actually want. The paralysis lifts. You trust yourself again.

You let people in. When a friend asks how you're doing, you tell her the truth sometimes. You accept help without feeling like a burden. You stop performing "fine" for everyone around you.

You discover who you are now. Not a return to who you were before, because that person doesn't exist anymore. Someone new. Someone who's been through something hard, and came out clearer about what matters.