My guest today met her husband when she was 19. Three kids and 27 years later, he fell in love with another woman. For several months after finding out, she did little aside from scrape herself off the floor and care for her kids, through their misery and her own. She says of this time: ‘I felt like I was either going to die or learn how to live again’. Laura chose life – as well as learning to sit with pain as a lifelong optimist. Laura Friedman Williams is my guest today - the author of Available: A Memoir of Sex and Dating After a Marriage Ends.

Here, we talk about:

• Feeling invisible
• Losing the future we planned
• The shame problem
• Learning to grieve
• Being ‘good enough’
• What family means now
• Starting over (& ‘sex treadmills’)

My book, How To Be Sad – the key to a happier life – is now out in paperback wherever you get your books. Get in touch @MsHelenRussell and or howtobesadpodcast@gmail.com

Thanks to Joel Grove and Matt Clacher at HarperCollins for production.