Hot Divorcée Summer

A manifesto for a summer of burning it down

I published a version of this essay in my newsletter in 2021 and, in hindsight, maybe I published it a bit too early. I thought of it this year after reading essay after essay about women breaking. And book after book about the same thing. 

So, because I am traveling this week, I thought I’d republish it slightly altered, of course.  If you are in LA and want to see me, you can still sign up for my events in Studio City and Bel Air!

So many new books explore the subject of women who’ve hit their limit. First there was More, Molly Roden Winter’s fascinating look at her journey into polyamory to vent her anger at her marriage. Then, in February, Leslie Jamison and I published two very different books about divorce. Both books became bestsellers. Miranda July’s new novel is about a middle-aged woman whose life is coming apart so is Ali Wong’s new stand-up. Sociologist Jessica Calarco has a new book about how American women are breaking. And Sarah Manguso’s new novel Liars, is about the unraveling of one woman’s marriage; so is Scaachi Koul’s forthcoming memoir.

You can tell women are shattering by the amount of effort politicians and pundits are putting into forcing them back together. They’re trying to legislate what constitutes a woman. They want women to get married. They want to end no-fault divorce. And to force pregnant women to stay with their husbands.

But the breaking isn’t just happening on a personal level. It’s happening nationally, as students protest their universities' investments in the war machine. Demands to divest from the machinations and industries that support violence are another kind of breaking. 

Even the orcas have had enough. 

Actually, let me rephrase. We are not breaking; we are just responding to the brokenness all around us. If we’ve lived through the past four years, we’ve experienced unimaginable loss. Loss of our jobs and our friends or parents or grandparents. The nation’s capital was under attack. Remember that? Airlines got huge bailouts, while our nation’s mothers are being forced from the workforce. And this is just the highlight reel. We are burned out, overloaded, overworked, and under showered.

Sorry to quote myself, but let me just quote myself from something I wrote for Rolling Stone:

Every woman my age I know is exhausted from managing children, unequal partnerships, aging parents, the erosion of our rights, careers where pay gaps still exist, and there is no girlbossing our way out of them. Over the past decade, we voted. Pantsuitted. Pussy hatted. #MeToo-ed. Shouted our abortions. All to end up here, in 2024, in this Temu-brand 2016 redux. It’s enough to make any woman commit an (alleged) murder or walk into the sea. 

This is not a summer of pretending things are fine. Of going back to normal. This is the summer of calling this shit out. Of saying it’s not okay. Of standing up for ourselves. Of nuking our lives. Of breaking them down. Of letting go. Of refusing to hold it all together. Of refusing to smile and say, “He helps; he picked up dinner the other night.” When you and I both know he left a stack of dishes in the sink for you to figure out, even though you had two Zoom meetings and inexplicably it was dress-like-a-penguin day for online school. No. We are done with that. And it ends now.  

I am not suggesting that you, personally, get a divorce. Although maybe you want to. In that case, I do suggest you get a divorce. Rather, what I am saying is this is the summer of breaking. Of burning. Of shouting and yelling and divesting. Letting it all go. What we are letting go of is the bad relationships, the bad jobs, the bad year, and the patriarchy. This is a time of having the courage to imagine something different.

Let me tell you what I mean. Two years ago, I went to a cocktail tasting in my town. And there I saw the mayor, who had failed to respond to a natural disaster in my town that left people homeless. I saw a businessman who, last summer, got outed for donning blackface. I saw an ex of mine who runs a restaurant that violated mask mandates. I smiled at all of them and gave them the finger while sipping bourbon. I laughed with my friend as we remembered the last time we’d gone to this same event. Then, three years ago, I’d hidden under a table to avoid my old pastor, my divorce mediator, and two Tinder mistakes.

Now, there was no more hiding. I would take up space. I would smile. I would drink. I would wear a low-cut top and hug my friends. I would make a joke about nuts and say, “That’s what she said” very loudly. I would not care.

We are back in the world, but the world can go to hell.

We talk about breaking as if it’s a failure. As if our endings and refusals and hard “nos” are something to apologize for. But every woman I know has said that her endings were a relief, a joy, a weight lifted off her shoulders. 

So, this is the summer of quitting the things that don’t serve you. The summer of decentering the expectations of culture and doing what you want to do, whether that’s join a knitting group, or become a bog witch. It’s the summer of caring a lot, but not giving any fucks. It’s the summer of gentle ministrations to your soft body of survival. It’s the summer of grief and joy. A summer of knowing all we’ve lost but knowing how much more we have to live. 

College campuses are filled with protestors calling for systemic breaking. Our books our filled with personal breaking. It’s only going to get more intense as the weather heats up and we get closer to the election.

Last night a woman told me she wasn’t divorcing, but she was going to start living like she had 50/50 custody. “I’m sick of constantly negotiating for my freedom. I’m done,” she said. “I’m just taking it.”

So, it’s the summer of letting it all out. Of being a public mess. Of loud revenge. Of drinks with friends on the porch. Of crying to Taylor Swift and Olivia Rodrigo, and blasting “Gaslighter” from the speakers of your minivan. Don’t have a minivan? Well, you do have one, spiritually.

There are no rules anymore. Wear your leggings. Or don a dress with a sexy cut-out. Two pieces? Whatever. You are sexy. So just do it. Bare the soft curves of your body that held all the Doritos and late-night wine. The body that kept you alive. You are alive.

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My book makes an amazing wedding shower gift.

Also, last year, I wrote about the summer of the whales.