Online counseling in North Carolina
Counseling for women after divorce in raleigh, North carolina
Therapy for divorce grief
It’s a Tuesday at 9pm and you’re sitting at the kitchen island with your laptop open to a half-finished email. Your kid is upstairs doing homework, and the house is quiet in the specific way that didn’t exist when there were two of you in it. You’re trying to think about the email and you can’t, and what’s happening instead is the slow realization that you have nobody to talk through the day with anymore.
You made it through the divorce in one piece. You handled the custody schedule, the property settlement, the mortgage math, the questions from your kid. Your colleagues never noticed a dip. That’s the kind of person you’ve always been: the one who got through the postdoc or the residency 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 absence of having someone to think out loud with. Someone who knew the names of the people you complained about. Someone who’d hear the half-sentence you started about something at work and finish the thought with you. 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 someone asks for your input and you have to ask them to repeat the question. At the grocery store when you reach for the brand of cereal nobody in your house eats anymore. At 11pm when you find yourself on your ex’s Instagram for the fourth time this week, looking for evidence of something you couldn’t explain even if you found it. At the grant deadline you’re going to miss for the first time in your career, and the manuscript that should have been three drafts ago.
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 logistics, 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 the version of you that can think clearly is gone for good. 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 sitting at the kitchen island at 9pm not getting the email written.
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 logistics, 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 lab meeting, or a release planning meeting, or a long surgery day, and your thoughts stay in the room instead of going to the property settlement or your ex’s Instagram. You write the follow-up note in twenty minutes the way you used to, and the proposal 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.
It’s 9pm and you’re at the kitchen island again, and the silence doesn’t send you to your ex’s social media. You finish the email or you decide it can wait. You close the laptop and read a chapter of a book before bed.
How Therapy With Me Changes the spiral Itself
I work with women who’ve already figured themselves out and are still sitting at the kitchen island at 9pm, 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 Triangle women whose schedules already don’t have room for a commute on top of the workday, the kids’ activities, 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 Raleigh
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 the triangle
Online therapy for women rebuilding after divorce in Raleigh, Durham, Chapel Hill, Cary, Apex, Morrisville, Holly Springs, Wake Forest, Hillsborough, Carrboro, Garner, Knightdale, Fuquay-Varina, Pittsboro, and surrounding Triangle communities.
also serving divorced women across north carolina
I work with women rebuilding after divorce across North Carolina, including Charlotte and other communities.