Ep. 7 - Reinventing at 47: Embracing Your Second Chance at Life

Divorce doesn’t always arrive as one explosion. Sometimes it shows up as a quiet, relentless grind that slowly convinces you something is fundamentally off. I sit down with Tanya Garcia to talk about what it’s like to realize the cracks are there early, push through anyway, and then spend years trying to make a marriage work while your body and mind are screaming for relief.

Tanya takes us from a lightning-fast courtship and a big move to France to the reality of daily incompatibilities, chronic stress, and therapy that can’t fix patterns that won’t change. We talk about becoming parents under pressure, including the fear and exhaustion of a premature birth and NICU time, and how different stress responses can turn a partnership into a constant competition. If you’re searching for divorce support, emotional healing, or just a truthful story about resilience after divorce, you’ll hear your own thoughts echoed back in a way that feels grounding.

We also get real about the divorce process itself: what happens when one person doesn’t want to end it, why things can turn financially contentious, and how long it can drag on through lawyers, mediation, and arbitration. Tanya shares what kept her steady, especially as a mom: focusing on what her child needs and holding onto the simple truth that the suffering would end.

By the end, we zoom out to the takeaways that matter most: the nonnegotiable values divorce clarifies, the complicated grief of wishing you left sooner, and the gift of reinvention after divorce, even later in life. If this conversation helps you feel less alone, subscribe, share the episode with a friend, and leave a review so more people can find these real stories.

Transcript

What Bitter Or Better Is

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome to Bitter or Better, Real Stories of Divorce and Resilience, the podcast that gets real about the messy middle of divorce and what it takes to come out stronger on the other side. I'm your host, Abby England, marketer, national board certified health and wellness coach, and author of the upcoming book, Bitter or Better, and I've personally earned my divorce Kevlar. This podcast isn't legal advice. It isn't tips and tricks and don't forgets and hacks and how-tos. There's plenty of other podcasts out there, interviewing lawyers, therapists, accountants, all sorts of divorce scientists. This podcast is raw, real conversations with everyday people who have jobs, kids, responsibilities, commitments, and yet they've weathered the heartbreak, rebuilt their lives, and found unexpected strength along the way. Because while divorce can break you, it can also make you better. You are not alone. Let's hear someone else's story and see what resonates. I'm really excited to be interviewing you and talking with you. It's conversation. It's not an interrogation, it's a conversation. I don't know much about your story, but I know that we connected on it when we had lunch at Alans months ago at this point. But if you wouldn't mind introducing yourself and just a quick background bio.

SPEAKER_01 1:23

Yeah, so it's great to be here. Thank you for having me. For anyone who's watching, Tanya Garcia, I have been living in Atlanta for about 30 years almost. I have been, I think importantly for this podcast, divorced for five years now. I had been married for 16. I'm trying to do some math. Yeah, so so technically divorced for four called the end of the marriage a little bit over five years. I have one son here in Atlanta who is getting ready to go to college, which is mind-blowing. But obviously the most important part of my story.

SPEAKER_00 2:04

Well, thank you for for one for just being here. And let me ask.

SPEAKER_01 2:21

First of all, I don't think divorce is ever really in your heart and in your being, at least for me, entirely behind me. I think a lot of people I've spoken to feel similarly. You move past it, but hopefully you're taking learnings from it and you're letting it inform in in helpful ways your future. So I think for me that's a very important thing. But the question about why I agreed to come and talk about this very vulnerable, painful part of your life from of my life, it's a really good question. And when you first initially told me about the podcast, I was like, sure, it's great. I love talking to Abby, it's fantastic. But really, when I delved into why I did agree to it, I think it comes back to the first part, which is you're never really entirely past it. No matter how you feel, no matter what happened, it's such an impactful and traumatic thing, no matter what the circumstances are, that I think it's helpful for me to process it and perhaps have a conversation that I haven't had before about it to help inform my future path. So that's part of it, and I think the other part of it is no one plans on getting divorced. And it is incredibly painful even in the best of circumstances. So if what I have experienced and learned as a result can help anybody else, or even just make anyone else feel like they're not alone in what they're going through, I'm all for it.

SPEAKER_00 3:59

Yeah. I know when I was in the muck of it, being able to talk with friends, even new friends, like we didn't even know each other that well. But uh just having someone else who was on the other side of it to say it's gonna be okay is extremely helpful. So thank you again for not for not backing out.

SPEAKER_01 4:19

No, of course. No, I I'm I'm happy, happy to talk about it at at any time.

SPEAKER_00 4:25

So let's maybe start from the beginning. How did you meet? What attracted you to each other?

SPEAKER_01 4:30

So my ex it's it's a bit of an unusual situation, but my ex-husband um was in a PhD program at Georgia Tech, and so was my sister. My mother also worked at Georgia Tech, big Georgia Tech family, and my mother was very active with helping students find scholarships and job opportunities and internships and all of that. I don't remember exactly how she met my ex-husband, but she did meet him and helped him get a scholarship for a summer program, and then she introduced him and my sister because they were both at tech studying, and they became quite good friends. I was already working, I was in the thick of the corporate world working like 90 hours a week. So I knew him via my sister and interacted with him at times. My parents are always hosting people for dinner, so he was there from time to time, and so that's how we met. He and my sister became good friends, they did a lot of stuff together, and and we hung out a few times as a result of that. He's very smart, he's very clever, he was just very refreshing to me because as much as I've been in the corporate world my whole life, I like to have fun, I like to have clever conversations, as do most people, I think, but we just had that. And I think there was a certain element of comfort and safety with the fact that he was a friend of my sister's and I had had some not great relationships, as is the case for most of us previously. So there was a certain element of just comfort that was very natural. So that's how we met.

SPEAKER_00 6:10

It just sort of happened one night with a little too much alcohol, and I'm gonna be curious how many stories have alcohol in them? Yeah. So when I interviewed stories, a lot of the stories. The great liquid courage. Correct, correct.

SPEAKER_01 6:28

The great, yes. So it just kind of happened, and I was at a point in my life where I I had always wanted to get married and have a big family and children, and just do that. That was very much part of my DNA. I was 31, all of my friends were married and we're having babies and all of this stuff, and he was very expressive about his feelings for me. I I felt very comfortable with him, we had a great time, so it was just kind of normal and easy, I would say. And I'll just, you know, go ahead and say this is probably a precursor to some other questions, but we started it wasn't even really dating. It was just sort of we were together. He was finishing up his PhD, he had an opportunity to move to France for his postdoctorate. We started dating in March. We knew pretty quickly he was gonna be moving to France, and he asked me if I would go, and I said, I'm not going without, like, I'm not leaving everything I've built unless we're married. And so we got engaged in August, just five months after we started dating. Oh and then we married in December.

SPEAKER_00 7:43

Oh, wow.

SPEAKER_01 7:44

Yeah, so we got engaged in August, he was in France, I was here, so we were separated, and then we got married in December. Okay, and then I moved to France and we were there for for two years. So it was a very, very, very quick courtship, yes, I guess.

SPEAKER_00 8:00

Yes. That there wasn't even really courtship, it was just we're together. Yeah. So it sounds like he won some points because he was comfortable, easy, clever, credible. Yes, absolutely. So describe the family dynamic, yeah, the family and marriage dynamic.

Early Cracks And Therapy Starts

SPEAKER_01 8:19

We spent the first two years of our married life in in France, away from all family, all friends, everything, in a very in sort of concentrated time together where it was just us. And there were there were cracks pretty early on, which I know is the case for some people, not the case for everyone, but I what I expected to be this sort of romantic, oh now we're in Paris together, and I've left everything for you, and here I am, and didn't really happen. I think in retrospect, I know we are so different. What is important, deeply important to each of us within a relationship, is very different. And that was apparent to me very, very quickly. And I remember having some of those initial misgivings that I did not know how to process. But I would even send my mom and my sister these messages saying, I think I made a mistake, I I don't, this is does not feel right. But being very stubborn as I am about the fact that this was going to work, it had to work.

SPEAKER_00 9:31

There was a veil of you had given up so much everything, your entire life, yes, pretty much, yes, to make this move and transition. Yeah. So it had to be. This is the only plan.

SPEAKER_01 9:43

No. Of course, now I know like there's always a way you figure out the plan B, but at the time it was just no. Like I there was I could not wrap my head around it.

SPEAKER_00 9:54

So take us through what happened as the idea of divorce maybe started to you know, maybe it wasn't like blinding headlights from a semi-truck. Maybe it was a little more subtle, but but take us through that process of where that realization came.

SPEAKER_01 10:14

Yeah, there were absolutely times in those first couple of years where I was sort of smacked with the reality that this was not what I expected. But I again I I I could not, as you said, wrap my head around the plan B. And so we moved back to the US, we moved back to Atlanta where my family is. So that was in 2005, and then there were more and more sort of cuts, right? I I refer to them as cuts because you know the average death by a thousand cuts really applies, and it's easy to just dismiss one or another, but over time that cumulative effect is pretty significant. So we moved back. I at the time was 34. I really, as I mentioned, desperately wanted kids. That became a point of contention for us, but I did end up getting pregnant, and I'll say this: we ended up in uh therapy almost as soon as we got back, which was scary because my parents had been together forever, his parents had been together forever, and in my mind, it was we're a union if we already need therapy. So that's why it was scary.

SPEAKER_00 11:31

It's like, shouldn't we still be in the honeymoon for that? Correct, absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 11:35

Now, I'll also say I think it's very healthy if you're having if you're struggling with things to go to therapy and and try to fix them. So then a year later, I got pregnant, and it was a very scary, anxious, again, one of those this is not going the way I expected it to go. I was scared because it's a scary big thing. He was angry and scared in a way that I didn't expect. That was something we had to work past, and we did, and then we had our son, and that was a whole other stress. He was born early. There was a lot, there's a tremendous amount of stress that came into our marriage consistently. What became clear was that the ways we handled stress were so different from each other, and the ways we dealt with sort of the everyday stresses of being an adult were so different.

SPEAKER_00 12:28

Can you give us an example of how you guys were different in terms of stress management?

SPEAKER_01 12:35

Yeah. So I am, as I mentioned, very stubborn, and I'm sort of a, and I don't say this as a as a good thing. I am sometimes it's good, but I am very much a you just gotta push through. Like you you gotta, you gotta keep going, you don't get paralyzed by the fear, you just keep moving and you'll figure it out, and this is just the way it is. He does not operate that way. All of the stressors that came at us individually and as a couple, he reacted to it in a very different way. He became very focused on his work, his career, what he needed, and our son had been born premature, he was in NICU for a week, it was a very stressful, he wasn't eating, he had to take appetite stimulant. It was very just yeah, he was four pounds. You know, it was a very stressful, intense entry into parenthood. And my ex-husband really went into that like hyper focus. I'm gonna control what I can control. And in many ways, I was in this there is no control. Like I am up all night, I'm trying to feed this kid, I'm trying to make sure my career, I was the breadwinner, my career stays on track, just very different approaches. His family is very different than mine, so that added some stressors. There were very few common threads, and it didn't feel very much at that early, really significant test that we had a common thread, uh, and and it was like, okay, we're in this a hundred percent together. So that was the first big one, and we worked past that. We were in therapy for the bulk of our marriage, but over time, what really started crystallizing in my mind were was there's some really key behavioral things that that are painful for me that that don't work for me, and I don't think they work for our family. And we did go through a lot of therapy, but the behaviors weren't changing, and so I think probably at about the 12-year mark, we really did come to a period where it was like this is imploding. It was a very difficult time for both of us, but we went back into therapy, we had taken a hiatus. I'm trying to remember exactly the the sequence and condense it all, but we kept at the therapy, but again, that behavior wasn't changing, and then eventually I got to the point where I thought, you know what, I need to go to therapy on my own because the things that bothered me from the very beginning are still bothering me, therefore, I don't have a whole lot of faith that they're gonna change, and so I have to figure out how I'm going to deal with all of this. I I think I knew then that divorce was probably inevitable. I say this to a lot of people, but many ways I grieved the end of my marriage while we were still technically married.

SPEAKER_00 15:38

That makes sense. Yeah. So about 12 years in is when you realize this is maybe heading towards divorce. Yeah. Talk to us about how it came up.

The Point Of No Return

SPEAKER_01 15:50

That's an interesting question because, well, it it came up so often. You know, we talked about it in therapy, but then sort of again at that like 12-year mark, I think we both sort of started hinting at it. Like there were times where he and even earlier had said, I'm just gonna move out. And I was like, uh, okay, that's that's a final act. I think we both realized that there were some fundamental flaws in the relationship and in the union, and it came up, and then we just both pushed through because I think we were both scared. And we had a kid. We had a family, even if it wasn't the family that I wanted, it was a family, and it was very it was the most important thing to me. We kind of tiptoed around it, and then I got to a point at again, I'm using it just in terms of like years, I don't want to give exact years, but we had been married for 15 years. Um, we needed to move and we're trying to figure out where, and it was so problematic, and it was so much tension and conflict. Everything was a conflict. At one point, he said, I don't want to keep looking for a house because I feel like it's going to be the end of us. And in my mind, it was if that's gonna be the end of us, then the end is here, right? Because that should not break a marriage, a a good marriage. And then a few months later, after we had bought the new house, I hit an absolute, I cannot do this anymore. I at the worst possible time. We were in the middle of renovating a brand new house, we were living in another house just in the interim. Our son had just started a new school, and interestingly, I used to always say to him, I'm gonna hit a limit. I'm going to hit a point of no return where I'm not gonna be able to salvage this. I'm I'm just it's gonna be too much. And I hit that point. So then I I basically said, I I I just I can't do this anymore.

SPEAKER_00 17:55

And it made it finite this time because you were at that limit. I was.

SPEAKER_01 18:01

I was absolutely at that limit. It was deeply impacting my son, the constant conflict. I was exhausted. I'm a pretty high energy, pretty high threshold person, but I just was tired of the constant bickering and the what felt like a competition of wills all the time. I just I I did. I hit a I had an absolute point that I could not come back from.

Getting Validation To Move Forward

SPEAKER_00 18:25

So you hit that point, yeah, and then you have to gear up for divorce. Yeah. What did you need to get in order or learn or do in order to start the divorce process?

SPEAKER_01 18:39

So I had started individual therapy about a year prior. One of the things I really needed was the validation that I had tried everything I possibly could try. Yes. And that I wasn't just saying, oh, we've hit a bump in the road, I'm out of the car. That was very, very important to me. So I needed that just from my therapist and objective third party. But the other thing I really needed from the people who knew me came when I started, frankly, sharing some of the stuff that had been going on in the marriage. The people who really saw it most were my sister, who I'm very close to and who obviously knew him longer than I had, and my parents. I first started with my sister, and when she said, Yeah, we've been seeing this, that was another thing that I needed. And when I started talking to my closest friends, because I'm pretty siff upper lip, keep going, but when I started talking about it with my closest friends, they were all very much in the Yeah, Tanya, like duh.

SPEAKER_00 19:48

They could they could all see something that you couldn't see. Yeah, absolutely. And what did it feel like to get that validation?

SPEAKER_01 19:56

It was it was very humbling in a lot of ways because I was like, oh my goodness, these people stuck by me in all of this discomfort that they sat in also that I didn't even realize they were sitting in. Um, and so in that way it was very humbling. I felt extremely grateful to have the people who were willing to say, yes, this is not okay. And do what you gotta do. You're gonna get through it. You're strong, you're gonna get through it. It was very, very, very important. And then there were people who I didn't even know that well who knew what I was going through because when you do go through divorce, it affects every part of your life who may not have even known my husband. And and they basically said, Look, you're tough, you're strong, you're smart, the only way out is through. You just keep going. That was very sort of strengthening for me.

SPEAKER_00 20:46

Like, yeah, I do push through.

SPEAKER_01 20:48

Yes, okay. I'm not making a rash decision, I'm not making an emotional decision, which is funny considering that I even thought that considering the fact that we had spent the bulk of our marriage in therapy. But yes, I needed that sort of, yeah, okay, it's okay to to call it.

SPEAKER_00 21:05

That validation of I have tried everything resonates so much with me, and I hope with other listeners. I remember I would call my cousin probably sometimes three times a day. I mean, she was my lifeline through this. And I remember I needed to have a conversation, and she said, Abby, don't you just want to make sure that you've tried everything? And I want to be able to say, Yes, I've tried everything. So that just resonates so much.

SPEAKER_01 21:35

It does. I think for most people, it's the loss of a dream, it's the loss of the future that you planned. It's so shattering in every way. And I think it is important for people to hear, yes, you've tried everything.

When Divorce Turns Brutal

SPEAKER_00 21:53

So on a scale from maybe one to ten, one being easy peasy, ten being the hardest thing. You know, I don't really have a good definition for 10, but one through ten. How how difficult was your actual divorce process?

SPEAKER_01 22:10

Is 2713 an option? Oh, absolutely.

SPEAKER_00 22:14

It was brutal. Okay. It was brutal.

SPEAKER_01 22:16

If you feel comfortable sharing, what made it brutal? So a couple of things. One was he did not want the divorce, and he didn't believe that I would ever reach that limit and maybe had dismissed it, which was another sort of ironically validating point for me. Because I said, I've been telling you I was gonna get here for years, and I know myself. I am here. That was hard because I still had a lot of care for this person. I didn't want to hurt him. And it was I w I had a very hard time believing that after everything we've been through and all of the therapy and all of the arguing and the kind of life that we had ended up in, that he would not also say, Yeah, you're right, it's not working. So that was really hard. Obviously it was hard for him, but it was very hard for me to see that he really did not think that that end was ever gonna come. I realized he was not going to ever call it, which I think happens, but then it became very bitter and contentious. I had really hoped that we could just say, look, let's go in these directions. He got to this place where he thought, well, I deserve to be live in the life I've gotten accustomed to. He actually tried to really come after me financially, etc. Then the lawyers got involved, which typically lawyers get involved, but it was a very bitter argumentative. I mean, we had to have mediation, we had to have arbitration. It was really, really ugly. And it lasted a long time. You know, he I think was clutching on, and I just wanted it to end so that I could move on, he could move on, and we could go into our but again we're very different people and approach things very differently.

SPEAKER_00 24:19

You wanted it to end. How did you kind of maintain your ground or position? Because when I talk to other people, sometimes the advice is just get it over as fast as you can, do whatever you need to do, get to that next chapter, get to the other side. And when I got that advice, okay, I I see there being value in it, but I also don't want to sacrifice my position just to get it over with. So, how did you balance? That's an excellent question.

SPEAKER_01 24:48

That's a really good question. I think when you have a kid, it adds a whole different level of complexity. So for me, there were two things that grounded me. One was what did I have to do to get my kid through this hole? And obviously, no matter what I do, it's gonna impact him. But what do I need to do to ensure that my son is going to be okay? That was very much of the the grounding for me and the guidepost because I really do believe that even if you have kids, it is so horrible for kids to be surrounded by an unhealthy, toxic relationship. And even my son's therapist, who who I had found a couple of years earlier, had said, this is really impacting him. Um, the the the the state of the marriage, not the divorce. That really got me through it and sort of had me focused on pushing through. And the other piece was, and this is a a weird thing, and a lot of people sort of recoil from saying this, but it's the truth. Once I knew that there was gonna be an end to what I had been struggling with for so long and could not fix on my own, and I knew was not gonna get fixed, as hard as it was, and it was brutal in every way, there was a lot of other stuff going on in my life at the same time that was equally hard. I was so aware that the suffering was gonna be over that that also got me through. So it was a combination of really, first and foremost, my kid, and then second, knowing that that suffering, angst, pain was gonna come to an end. Those were the two sort of rudders I guess kept me moving forward. Does that answer the question?

Nonnegotiable Values And Reinvention

SPEAKER_00 26:41

Absolutely, yeah. Those were the tools, if you will, the guideposts that got you through it. You had mentioned early on that it became clear your values were different. I think divorce, it does a lot of things, but I think one thing it really does is like crystallize one's values. So, what values have now become almost non-negotiables for you?

SPEAKER_01 27:06

Yeah, which is so, and you're right, it does, you know, it puts them into laser focus because you're like, oh my god, these things are so different, and then it helps you realize like these are the the absolutes. So, values for me, it's very much around loyalty and honesty to family, and I don't mean that in just the oh, you see each other once a week and ha ha. It's really knowing that you're going to protect each other and you're going to support each other. And I don't think we we interpret that in the same way. He had had a very good relationship with my parents and my sister. He used to say, I fell in love with Tanya's family first before I fell in love with Tanya. That was very important to me. But for some reason, after we moved back from living in France, he became very resentful of my family, and that led to a lot of, frankly, just really painful behavior, mocking, public mocking, which I think is just so disloyal because you can give your family grief to each other, but you you never take that outside, right? Just a lot of dismissive behavior, what had been a very close relationship between him and my sister really started suffering and going in a in a very painful direction for her, and she struggled with that, which was odd for me and awkward and really uncomfortable for me because I was like, Yeah, I see what you're talking about, but he's my husband. So that's tough. It is so I think that value was one, and it everything really centers around that. I think in my mind, when you make a commitment and uh a commitment to marry someone and be with them, part of what you are bringing to this is a commitment to doing and supporting the things that are important to them as well. And that did not exist. So, for example, I'll just say intimacy, our social life, you know, he's very sort of insular and isolated, whereas I love being around people, having people over for dinner, all that stuff. It's a good question because it's helping me even now crystallize it that the way I interpret loyalty and honesty and commitment was just, I think, very different from his.

SPEAKER_00 29:33

Yeah, because we can use the same words, but they might not mean the same thing to different people.

SPEAKER_01 29:41

100%. I think that was also a big part of it as well. I think I just got much earlier to the point where I was like, we're not, we're not what the other one needs.

SPEAKER_00 29:51

So if you could go back, or not go back, but you know, you've got new Tanya who has come through it. She's more resilient, clearer on her values, happier. What would she say to the Tanya who was in the lowest of lows?

SPEAKER_01 30:11

I hope this answers your question. One of the hardest things about divorce, especially if you have a kid, is that you realize that there's this thing that didn't work, but in some ways it did work because I have my son. And so my marriage, painful as it was, had to happen because my son had to happen. The the only one thing I would say, but even this, I I sort of am gonna challenge myself on. I'm I'm very hard on myself. And so the one thing that I have consistently said was, you should have left earlier. How did you allow? You know, there's a lot of humiliation in admitting that you let someone treat you in a way that you should not have let them treat you. For me, it was very humiliating, it's embarrassing, it makes me angry with myself because I'm like, you're smart enough and strong enough and self-aware enough to know that that is not good behavior. But at the same time, you cannot precipitate a divorce. Like you have to do things when you're ready to do them, especially something like divorce. I mean, I remember crying to my my sister, who was my lifeline in every way, um, just a few years into the marriage, and she would say, What are you gonna do? And I would say, I just don't know. Like, I'm not ready. And I wasn't. So while the emotional side of me says, You should have left that first thing that was really messed up, you should have left then. Things happen, you know, you have to you have to go through the process, unfortunately.

SPEAKER_00 31:49

Yeah, and you're a different person today than you were.

SPEAKER_01 31:52

I am in all of the best ways, right? I am calmer, I'm happier, I do have a partner who is absolutely unbelievable. He's an amazing father, he's an amazing friend. He's just he's a partner in the way that I need a partner, and I'm a partner to him in the way he needs a partner. So you do come through it. You do. Everyone does.

SPEAKER_00 32:16

In our last closing question, and it's kind of odd, but um gifts or opportunities did your divorce bring you?

SPEAKER_01 32:27

Another great question. My father, when I was in the thick of it, said to me, Tanya, this is an opportunity for you to completely reinvent yourself in every way if you want. I do think that's a gift that comes from divorce. You really can say, okay, this really is a new life in every way. And I can make it go however I want to make it go. Realizing that and embracing that is scary, but I'm a lot older than you. So when you get to, I guess I divorced at 47, sort of reinventing yourself and starting from a blank slate at 47 is a lot scarier than it is at you know, 30, but but it's a gift. I'm 39, by the way. So it's still a gift. I'm still a lot younger. Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 33:18

No, someone else said to me, You have a second chance at life. You do. That didn't even enter my brain until they said that to me, and I was like, oh my gosh, I do have a second chance. Yeah. You do.

SPEAKER_01 33:32

You have a second chance at everything. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_00 33:36

Well, thank you so much for being here. Thank you. This is gonna be one of my favorite episodes. I just know it. I feel it in my gut. So thank you. Well, it's super fun. I hope it helps people. Yeah, me too. That's the intent. I think there's two things. People will either realize I'm not alone in this or a level of gratitude that maybe the story they hear is, you know, on that scale from one to ten. Maybe that story is a nine or a ten, and they realize, hey, my situation is maybe a five or a six compared to this, and maybe there's a sense of gratitude with it. Yeah. But well, thank you. Thank you. Thanks for listening to Bitter or Better, where we turn heartbreak into healing and survival into strength. As Brene Brown says, vulnerability is the last thing we want to show, but the first thing we look for in others. That's what this is all about. Real people showing up, sharing their stories, and reminding the rest of us that we're not alone. If this episode resonated with you, share it with someone who might need to hear it too. And remember, you have a choice better or better. See you next time for more real stories, real people, and real resilience.