Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Madisen Rose. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.
Hi Madisen, thanks for joining us today. It’s always helpful to hear about times when someone’s had to take a risk – how did they think through the decision, why did they take the risk, and what ended up happening. We’d love to hear about a risk you’ve taken.
I call 2023 the radical clearing. My fiancé and I were planning a year long trip around the world, followed by a wedding and starting a family. In preparing to go, I started to close down my life in Colorado. We were leaving the country and didn’t know when or if we would be back permanently.
A month before the last day at my job, we broke up. The two year long process of planning, saving, selling everything, training my replacement was now all for not. It felt like my life was a train, charging full steam ahead and someone flipped the track switch. I didn’t see it coming.
One version of me wanted to go back to the life I had just left. Instead, I said “Screw it, I’m going”.
Everything in my life changed in a few short months – my work, my partner, my home, my routines, all of it. I spent months abroad mostly in Mexico and Peru. A long layover in Portland to see friends turned into five weeks. I was open to whatever came next and held on loosely to potential plans that could change.
Instead of a life filled with back to back meetings and calendar invites dictating my days, I had days and weeks with the only “appointment” listed was my accommodation. I could breathe, lay on the beach, go to the market, cry, nap in the sun, and have space to listen to my own rhythms; learning how I live when there is nothing but open space.
Solo traveling supercharged my adaptability and opened me up to believing that the unexpected can be better than my best laid plans.
People have said to me, “I wish I could do what you’re doing”. My response is, “You can. You’ll just have to change your entire life”.
Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.
I’m a former wedding planner and community fundraiser turned divorce recovery guide. I’ve been married, divorced, engaged again and now single. I won’t ever stop celebrating small milestones, finding the best cappuccino in each new city, and believing that every experience is teeing me up for the next phase of my life. I thought I had found the love of my life and would live happily ever after, yet divorce turned out to be the plot twist that led me to starting Better Half to Whole.
Better Half to Whole provides online resources and support for the recently divorced and their loved ones – the resources I wish I could have found during my divorce in 2018. When I felt like my life was over, I needed practical supports to help me navigate my new reality, the stigma of divorce, and changes to my family dynamics. Everyone said, ‘You’ll get through this”, but no one could tell me how.
The list of top tips from the google search that told me to talk about my feelings, go to therapy, hang out with friends, and get a new hobby wasn’t going to cut it.
Through Better Half to Whole, I guide my clients to mobilize their support system, restore a sense of stability and agency in their new reality, and reframe holidays, weddings and other social situations without a plus one. I offer downloadable guides, one on one sessions and am preparing to launch a self paced online course for the recently divorced.
We often self isolate – culturally everyone reinforcing that grief is meant to be kept at a distance. The go to response to divorce is “Aww, I’m sorry” and “let me know what you need” which doesn’t do much for you when you don’t know what you need and you’re sick of people saying they are sorry for you.
What I want people to know is that Better Half to Whole isn’t really about divorce, it’s about everything that happens afterwards. My approach is love, but with a little edge. Balancing compassion, with solidarity and also honesty to help the divorcing rediscover their individuality and embrace their whole selves, both within and beyond their relationships.
Life as you knew it may be over, but your life isn’t over. My hope is that through Better Half to Whole, the divorcing will feel less alone, validated in their experience, have language for their situation and clarity on how to get the support they need.
We often hear about learning lessons – but just as important is unlearning lessons. Have you ever had to unlearn a lesson?
I was raised to believe that the epitome of love was selflessness. Turns out, when I was focusing on everyone else all the time, my sense of identity was too closely connected to how I met other people’s needs or acquiesced to them because they “cared more”. Going through divorce was disorienting, partially because I was comfortable with the “we” so much so that I didn’t know what I liked for breakfast. Would I have bacon and eggs if my partner wasn’t there or is that just what “we did”?
I prided myself on being laid back because I was easy to please when the absence of preferences meant that I didn’t truly know myself.
It was an adjustment to walk through the grocery store after my divorce and decide what to buy, instead of the weekly autopilot list. What did I actually want? I started testing things out and noticing; asking myself more often and reminding myself that I could have it.
Getting what I wanted didn’t make me less loving or take away from anyone else. Getting raspberries instead of grapes didn’t make me selfish.
What do you think helped you build your reputation within your market?
Giving an honest and relatable account of everyday life after divorce is only possible because of my personal experience. Sharing questions and doubts I’ve had about the future, expressing feelings of loneliness, and giving glimpses into my own healing process offers an opportunity for people to recognize themselves in my story. Someone can watch a video, read a caption, or download one of the guides and feel a sense of being seen without judgement in an experience that often comes with shame and stigma. Sharing openly about divorce might not be “sexy”, but it certainly is real, and resonance builds trust.
So much of the healing process is done privately: behind closed doors with a therapist, at home alone, or within your own body and mind. It’s not necessarily a workplace norm to list in your weekly wins that you only cried three times on the way to work instead of five like last week. This is progress, but it’s not always shared, acknowledged or seen as significant. Better Half to Whole speaks to the parts of the divorce recovery process that are often not seen and not shared.
I’m coming from a place of stability and not resentment which, I believe, gives people hope that divorce won’t be all consuming in their life forever.
I won’t tell you that you’ll have a linear, clean, perfect healing process. But I will tell you that you can keep moving forward and that it won’t hurt this badly forever. People need validation and they also need hope.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.betterhalftowhole.com
- Instagram: @betterhalftowhole
- Facebook: Better Half to Whole
- Linkedin: Madisen Rose
Image Credits
Explore Younique
Shay Wills Photography