Online counseling in North Carolina
Counseling for women after divorce in Charlotte, North carolina
Therapy for divorce grief
It’s a Monday at 9:30am and you’re in the bathroom on the floor of the building you work in. You have a meeting at 10 and you’re checking your makeup because your eyes have been doing that thing where they look a little red around the edges and you can’t tell if anyone else can see it. A colleague you’ve been working with for six years walks in, sees you, and says, “Hey, how was your weekend?” The kindness of the question catches you the wrong way. You smile, you say it was fine, you turn back to the mirror, and you spend the next sixty seconds making sure you don’t cry before you walk back into the meeting.
You made it through the divorce in one piece. You handled the property division, the custody schedule, the conversation with your boss about whether to take leave (you didn’t), the move into the new place or the renegotiation of the mortgage. Your colleagues didn’t notice the dip. Your clients didn’t notice the dip. That’s the kind of person you’ve always been: the one who got through the residency or the MBA or the bar, the one who keeps thinking when she’s tired, the one who handles things.
The loneliness is harder than you thought it would be. It’s the specific shape of your life that doesn’t exist anymore. The person you’d debrief with at 9pm. The plus-one at the work event. The other parent at the school pickup line. That’s the part you didn’t see coming.
This is grief, and the tools that got you through everything else don’t work on it. It shows up in the meeting where the colleague is kind. At the airport, at the hotel breakfast bar, at the school pickup line. At 11pm on your ex’s Instagram for the fourth time this week, looking for evidence of something you couldn’t explain if you found it. At the kitchen island at 9pm when the house is quiet in the specific way that didn’t exist when there were two of you in it.
The phone buzzes with your ex’s name on it. Your stomach drops before you’ve read the message. It’s about your kid’s school pickup, which is fine, but your chest is already tight, and the rest of the evening has a low hum of anxiety beneath everything else.
What you haven’t admitted yet, even to yourself, is how scared you are. You’re scared the grief is going to take your career on the way out. You’re scared you’re going to be the divorced woman at every event for the rest of your life. You’re scared this is what the next decade of your life feels like.
Why the Books, the Podcasts, and Your Last Therapist Aren’t Helping You Figure Out Who You Are Now
You’ve read everything. You can explain attachment theory at a dinner party, when you still get invited to dinner parties. You’ve listened to every podcast about gray divorce and identity reconstruction on your commute. You’ve ordered books that sit half-read on the nightstand. You did therapy last year and your therapist was kind and you understood your marriage better, and you’re still in the bathroom on the floor of your office building making sure you don’t cry.
The books helped you understand what happened in your marriage. They weren’t going to help you figure out who you are now. That part takes time, and it doesn’t happen just by waiting it out. It happens in a relationship where someone is helping you figure out what you want your life to look like after your divorce
What Changes in Your Week After Six to Twelve Months of Therapy With Me
You sleep through more nights than not, and you wake up in the bed you live in now without immediately doing the math on where your ex is or what time it is at the other house. You make coffee, you read for ten minutes, you start the day at your own pace.
You drop your kid off at the other parent’s on Sunday afternoon and you come home, and the silence is something you walk into instead of something that hits you. You eat dinner at the kitchen counter, you read a novel, you take a long bath. The empty house is a place where you live now, where you have your own routines and your own quiet.
The phone buzzes with your ex’s name and your stomach stays where it is. You read the message about the pickup, you answer in two sentences, you put the phone down, and you go back to what you were doing. The message doesn’t have power over the next three hours of your day.
Your kid asks the hard question about the divorce, the one you’ve been dreading. You sit down on her bed and take a breath. You answer her honestly, in a way she can understand at her age. She nods and goes back to her phone, and you walk out of her room feeling like you gave her an answer that could help her understand a little more.
You sit through a board meeting, or a long case review, or a presentation, or grand rounds, and your thoughts stay in the room instead of going to the custody calendar or your ex’s Instagram. You write the follow-up note in twenty minutes the way you used to, and the project you’ve been putting off gets finished. By Friday you can tell what you accomplished this week, and you’re proud of the answer.
Saturday morning you walk in the park or you go to the farmer’s market or you take your kid to the science museum. You text a friend and make plans for next week with people you want to see. You sign up for the class you’ve been thinking about for two years. By Monday morning the weekend feels like a weekend instead of a 48-hour pause before the next round of co-parenting logistics.
The bathroom moment still happens sometimes, and it’s smaller now. The kind question from the colleague doesn’t catch you the same way. You answer it, you mean what you say, you put your lipstick on and walk back into the meeting, and the meeting is just a meeting again.
How Therapy With Me Changes the spiral Itself
I work with women who’ve already figured themselves out and are still in the office bathroom checking their makeup, still scrolling their ex’s social media, still doing all the right things and not feeling any better. I don’t do the version of therapy where you sit on a couch and tell the story of your divorce.
I’m trained in evidence-based approaches that help smart, self-aware women change responses they already understand but can’t seem to stop.
I keep a small caseload, around ten clients at a time, so I know your situation between sessions. If something comes up during the week, you can reach out. I won’t tell you to hold the thought until next Tuesday.
I see clients exclusively by telehealth, with no commute and no childcare for the appointment. You log on from home, from the office, sometimes from the car between meetings.
our sessions will be
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Collaborative: We will work together. Here’s at least one thing you’re not gonna be handling all on your own.
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Encouraging: Even if you can’t name them right now, I know you have strengths. You might roll your eyes when I point them out (I’ll allow it.).
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Real: I'll tell you the truth; you’ve got no time for therapy games where someone sounds like a cliché. You got that on your last Netflix binge.
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Fun: I can pretty much guarantee some laughs. You can demand more humor if needed, because I know you could use that break.
i’m Emily.
About Dr. Emily fornwalt
I’m a licensed therapist in North Carolina with a PhD in counseling from UNC Charlotte. I spent years in community mental health and academic teaching before opening my private practice, and a lot of those years studying what changes people and what doesn’t. The answer, it turns out, isn’t more insight.
I’m warm, and I’m honest. You can bring me the tired version of yourself, the angry version, the version who just hit send on a text she regrets, the version who cried in the bathroom at work and put her lipstick back on like nothing happened. I won’t flinch, and I won’t judge you. I’ve sat with women whose lives looked exactly like yours, and not one of them was wrong to be taking this as hard as she’s taking it.
Session Length, Fees, and How to Schedule
Sessions are 45 minutes, typically once per week, at $225 per session. Initial sessions are 90 minutes at $450.
Sessions are completely private pay. I don’t bill insurance, and I don’t provide the paperwork some practices give you to submit to your insurance for reimbursement.
I see clients exclusively by telehealth. You can be anywhere in Virginia with a stable internet connection.
how to start
Schedule your first session using the link below, which takes you to my private and secure calendar.
Complete intake paperwork that arrives by email.
Show up. That’s the hardest part, and you’ve done harder things this week.
Schedule Your First Session: Book your first session online here
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No. All sessions are online. Telehealth works for Charlotte women whose schedules already don’t have room for a commute on top of court days, hospital rounds, custody-schedule logistics, and the rest of what you’re holding. You log on from home with the door closed and headphones in, from the office, or from a car parked somewhere quiet.
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Yes. Many of my clients do. We can schedule a recurring midday or end-of-day slot that fits your calendar. Most clients leave a session steadier than they walked in, so a midday slot doesn’t blow up your afternoon.
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Yes. Many of my clients start during the divorce, not after. We work with whatever stage you’re in, including the messy parts: negotiating custody, telling extended family, deciding whether to keep the house.
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Most clients notice changes in the first few sessions: a little more space between the trigger and the spiral, slightly better sleep, slightly less reactive when the ex’s name appears on your phone. Bigger changes in identity, work focus, and the quality of the time alone usually unfold over six to twelve months of consistent work.
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No. I’m completely private pay, and I don’t provide reimbursement paperwork.
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Most of my clients have. Insight-based therapy can take you a long way, and there’s a point where understanding why something is happening doesn’t change that it’s happening. That’s where I work. We don’t spend our time recounting the story of the marriage or analyzing where it went wrong.
frequently asked questions about online therapy in charlotte
Not quite ready to book? Send me a note instead.
Call or Text
423.281.4089
emily@alignedcounseling.com
Office mailing address
404 S Roan St., Johnson City, TN, 37604
areas served in Charlotte
Online therapy for women rebuilding after divorce in SouthPark, Myers Park, Dilworth, Ballantyne, Cotswold, Eastover, Plaza Midwood, Elizabeth, Foxcroft, Mountainbrook, Beverly Woods, Madison Park, Davidson, Huntersville, Cornelius, Waxhaw, Matthews, and surrounding Charlotte neighborhoods.
also serving divorced women across North Carolina
I work with women rebuilding after divorce across North Carolina, including Raleigh and the Triangle, and other communities.