[Podcast #344] Courageous Divorce: An Interview with Alisha Roth

Brave Writer Podcast

What happens when faith, prayer, endurance, and every “right” effort still do not make a marriage safe?

In this brave and deeply honest conversation, we talk with Alisha Roth, author of Courageous Divorce, about young marriage, religious expectations, abuse, motherhood, homeschooling, community loss, and the difficult clarity that can come when a woman finally listens to her own body and life.

Alisha Roth
Alisha Roth

Together, we explore divorce not as failure, but as a serious boundary, sometimes the one that makes healing, safety, forgiveness, and a more honest future possible.

Listen in for a tender conversation about faith, courage, and choosing to truly live.

Show Notes

When Divorce Becomes a Boundary

What happens when you do all the “right” things and the relationship still isn’t safe?

You pray, read the books, go to counseling, and choose your words carefully. You try to be patient, forgiving, generous, faithful, and tell yourself that every marriage is hard. You remind yourself that your children need a family. You try again.

And then one day, your body tells the truth before your mind can bear to.

We’ve heard from so many women who know this story from the inside. They were raised to believe that marriage was a sacred container, that endurance was maturity, that self-sacrifice was love, and that divorce represented failure. For women formed by religious communities, the pressure can be even stronger. Stay. Submit. Forgive. Pray harder. Protect the marriage. The family. The story everyone else wants to believe.

But what protects the woman?

That question matters.

One person’s devotion alone cannot heal a marriage. No amount of careful language, spiritual discipline, emotional labor, or maternal effort can make an unsafe relationship safe if the other person refuses accountability. A woman can contort herself for years trying to become gentle enough, quiet enough, faithful enough, forgiving enough, only to discover that the problem was never her lack of effort.

Sometimes the most honest act is to stop pretending that endurance is the same as health.

Divorce is often described as an ending, and of course it is.

It can:

  • change homes, finances, friendships, holidays, family rhythms, and the story you thought you were living,
  • bring grief, confusion, fear, and loneliness,
  • and expose how fragile some communities are when a woman tells the truth about her life.

But divorce can also be a boundary.

A strong one. A serious one. A boundary that says: this level of intimacy is not safe. This arrangement is not healthy. This proximity is causing harm. Something has to change.

That framing can be clarifying. A boundary is not revenge nor bitterness nor a refusal to forgive. A boundary names reality. It creates distance where distance is needed. It may even make compassion more possible because the person who was being harmed is no longer trapped inside the harm.

For mothers, the decision can feel especially agonizing. We may worry about what divorce will do to our children, fear losing the life we built around homeschooling, shared meals, read-alouds, rhythms, and traditions. We may wonder whether choosing our own safety means taking something precious away from them.

Choosing Safety

But children are not only shaped by the presence of two parents in one house. They are shaped by the emotional weather of that house. They are shaped by what gets excused, what gets hidden, what gets normalized, and what gets named.

A mother who chooses truth, safety, and health is teaching something too.

Life after divorce may not look like the life you imagined. It may require creativity. Homeschooling may change shape. Parenting schedules may require flexibility. Holidays may need new traditions. Community may have to be rebuilt from the ground up.

Still, there can be life there.

There can be:

  • sleep, laughter, and children who adapt,
  • women friends who let you tell the whole truth.
  • work, travel, dating, solitude, courage,
  • and a new relationship with your own body and inner knowing,

There can be a future you did not know you were allowed to want.

The work is not easy, and no one can make the decision for another woman. There are consequences to staying and consequences to leaving. Each person has to reckon with her own life, her own children, her own safety, her own faith, her own truth.

But we want to say this clearly: your well-being matters. Your body matters. Fear matters. Clarity matters. Your life is not merely the support structure for someone else’s story.

You are allowed to live.

Resources

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Produced by NOVA

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Practical Tips for Reading Aloud

Brave Writer

Reading aloud to your child exposes them to high-quality writing as they learn grammar, punctuation, spelling, and literary devices. It helps you engage in conversations about writing that help concepts stick and deepen your child’s relationship to reading, writing, and you!

Watch the replay below of a recent “How to Use Literature to Teach Writing” webinar with Brave Writer president, Dawn Smith.

Intro 00:00
Why Reading Aloud Matters 00:52
Practical Tips 29:30
Q&A 41:03

Resources

Brave Writer

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Looking for Wonder

Brave Writer

Have you noticed wonder recently? It shows up with a spark in your child’s eyes or a glimmer in their smile. And it melts your heart.

You might see it when they catch that first whiff of warm cookies floating their way. Or when they’re reading a book, or watching a movie, or observing wildlife at the birdfeeder. Even while they’re playing a video game!

It happens in a flash, and, before you know it, they’re poring over a new passion.

How can you cultivate that curiosity so learning can take root and sprout?

Spoiler alert

Children are more likely to make meaningful connections when we aren’t marking things off a checklist.

You have the freedom to hold a desired outcome gently and allow skill-building to happen naturally as your learner is immersed in life.

Yes, we are learning. But we are also growing robust human beings.

What a gift. What an honor!

Brave Writer

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