Welcome to AF+ Editor’s Notes where we invite members into the behind-the-scenes of making a series on Autostraddle happen. Here, Carmen and Nico, co-editors of Divorce Week, share our brainstorming and thought processes, the inspiration behind visual elements, and how we’re feeling now that it’s all published and we’re on the other side.

Carmen

Famously, I am not a divorced person. In fact, famously, I haven’t succeeded in making a romantic relationship last longer than roughly six months. That feels weirdly vulnerable to write, especially in the context of Editor’s Notes (you’re here to learn a little behind-the-scenes of how we put this package together, not an unsolicited therapy session on my love life) — but I think it’s essential to talk about what drew me to Divorce Week to begin with. My love stories have always depended on fierce independence and sense of self, it’s the only way I’ve known to survive.

The idea of “Divorce Week” has been kicking around Autostraddle for years, and we’ve always wanted to time it in February or to Valentine’s Day Week, specifically. But something always felt like it stood in the way, something didn’t fit in one way or the other, until this year we were given an unexpected gift. Kayla was getting married to the love of her life (hi Kristen!!) and we were going to be without the person whose job it is to manage our calendar for two full weeks in the middle of February. Because all our editors are also writers on the site, we were going to be down an essential content creator as well, which opened up holes that desperately needed to be filled. A desire for some calendar structure and deep need for content led Nico to say, “I think it’s finally time for Divorce Week” — and a rollercoaster was born.

There were some logistics to work out. Nico and I agreed that we wanted Divorce Week to touch on some practical advice, some traditional Autostraddle humor (you really can’t launch something like Divorce Week during Valentine’s Day and not have fun with it), and pieces that centered people going through divorce but also pieces that felt accessible to everyone. After all, you don’t have to have gone through divorce to know heartbreak, or what it feels like to start all over again after the life you built for yourself unexpectedly falls apart. In between all those themes of content, we also wanted some barn-burner, gut punching, personal essays. That was a non-negotiable.

Because I am not a divorced person, I felt like some of my contributions came in Divorce Week’s touches of tongue-in-cheek (because divorcees are hot, and I will not be moved from this point) and coordinating with other team writers and editors. Christina and Ashni were pitch perfect fits to write a style guide for Divorcee-core or a how-to on planning a Divorce Party for your bestie — their work set a tone for the whole week in a place that was funny, but also thoughtful and warm. We brainstormed a TV roundtable riff to riff on the meme “Don’t let your husband stand in the way of your future wife,” and Drew knocked it out of the park. Kayla (who was banned from touching most Divorce Week content because I am Latina and superstitious) gifted us with Drew’s You Need Help on when it’s time to divorce your transphobic wife before she left, which ended up being one of my favorite pieces of the week even though I never touched it (well, I added the formatting, but you know what I mean). Just outstanding. I’m also grateful to Riese, for lending us her data brain to explore if there’s truth behind the myth that lesbian marriages are more likely to end in divorce (our stats tracker tells me that you all are reading the hell out of that one in the last two days, by the way). Stef pitched Nico and I what was originally intended to be a funny listicle and it ended up being something genuinely moving and sincere? I just! JUST!

Not everything went as I hoped. I ended up getting very sick with the flu almost immediately after we launched Divorce Week, meaning that I ended up missing Kayla’s wedding altogether!! And I’m still climbing my way out of the work pile that the illness created. But through it all, I got to spend every day of the last month in Nico’s DMs.

Nico and I have created a lot of truly fantastic shit for Autostraddle together over the years, there are parts of past fundraisers that are going to go down in my all time greats. As an editor, they are one of my favorite writers to edit. I have learned so much from them about project management, about how to speak honestly with your audience, about what it means to put everything you’ve got into your work. I don’t know what Nico’s learned from me (I hope… something?). But I wanted to use my last bit of time here to say how grateful I am to be their coconspirator, co-worker, and more than anything, their friend.

Nico

Divorce week came from a wedding. And while most divorces start with a wedding, it’s true, that’s not exactly what I’m referring to. Divorce week is something originally conceptualized as Conscious Uncoupling by past Autostraddle Managing Editor Rachel Kincaid, past Autostraddle writer and editor Ryan Yates, and also current Chief of Staff, Laneia Jones.

In the chat (October 2020), as we brainstormed ideas:

Laneia: what about a letter to ourself on the day of our wedding L O L
hahahahHAHAHAHAHA OMG omg sorry that is so funny

Nico: “Run.”

***

And then, as with many plans made in 2020, Divorce Day / Week did not come to fruition. Nevertheless, the idea lived on, and it floated around the office, brought up here and there…until we had the perfect circumstances for execution: Kayla’s wedding.

You see, Kayla was going to be out for two weeks…over the course of Valentine’s Day. This left a lot of work to be done so that she could truly take the time off and we could keep publishing meaningful content that serves you, our community and readers and members, while also making sure that Kayla did not have to lift a finger to make it happen.

But the wedding was over Valentine’s Day. And I think we all know that Carmen is practically Captain of Team Love Is a Lie. Also, you might or might not know that I also got engaged, along with Kayla, over Christmas of 2022 but am NOTABLY no longer engaged (two engagements enter, one leaves). So we had to come up with what? Two weeks of sickly sweet Valentine’s content? I think if that happened, Carmen and I would need to return to the waters of Lake Erie from whence we both came. Not happening.

So, we took the idea, the notion of Divorce Week, and we made it our own. We planned a week or, really, a Baker’s Week* of content. We filled the calendar with our hopes and dreams for a week that would barely, lightly (but sweetly) acknowledge Valentine’s Day. This week was for us, the people left out on the curb on our asses by love, even while at the same time, it was also rooted in the fact that we are a Team around here, and when a team member has something as good as their awesome lesbian wedding happening, we want her to be able to celebrate.

(*The possible origins of the Baker’s Dozen are fascinating (this is just the first article I found, but also, in Ancient Rome I think that flour was distributed to bakers who then baked citizens’ free bread rations, and there were severe penalties for cutting the flour with things like saw dust or for finding other ways to cheat on weight). If anyone wants me to just autistically write a post that is just: here is a list of things with commentary that I thought were interesting that I found while researching one of my Special Interests — ancient and medieval food and cooking — let me know. Queer people also presumably ate food throughout history, so there’s the Autostraddle tie-in. I’ve been aching to crack my JStor account back open, even though I think it’s been so long some moths might fly out.)

Unfortunately, you won’t find the “letters to our past selves on the day of our wedding” in the package, but, to be very serious, this entire thing is a letter to my past self.

Years later, now, away from my divorce, and now post-engagement-break-off, one thing has stood out to me as being particularly painful about breaking off both — the loss of both friendships and also social legitimacy within extended family. Both marriage and engagement are unique in relationship structures because they make a promise of unifying social groups, friends and especially family. I still remember the way my family came together around my wedding, the way I was becoming a Real Adult and family member in their eyes. At work, getting married was an easy topic of conversation for anyone in the highly social job I held (development/membership manager at a contemporary art museum, so you can imagine the endless nights of small talk). Being engaged, planning a wedding, being a newlywed — all welcome topics of conversation! Divorce? Not so much!

I will never forget going to a party five days after my ex-husband (this is a queer / not cis situation but we don’t get into it) slammed our front door shut and went to his parents’ house. When someone at the party, who I only just met, asked me how my week was going, I said, “well my husband walked out on me and I haven’t heard from him,” and there might as well have been a record scratch sound effect with the way the room held their breath until I cackled and followed that up with, “I’m just honestly really pissed.” And then there was the way that extended family members wouldn’t hold eye contact with me when I returned to Buffalo, divorced and failed, to attend my cousin’s Catholic barn wedding. (Taxidermy! And a giant Crucifix!)

Above all, the friends who no longer talk to me ripped the biggest chunk out of my heart when it was plunged into the piranha pool of divorce. I knew going into this that I wanted to talk about that aspect somehow, the way that social groups, communities, families treat people — and especially, particularly, queer and trans people — during and after divorce. (Right down to the first thing they say after learning someone’s divorced.)

Carmen and I, in the planning phases of this project, decided that we wanted to look for divorce lawyers and couples counselors to talk to — but that wasn’t how it wound up going. No, instead we spoke to a divorce doula and a psychotherapist who runs a divorce salon. There, I got to ask them about community responses to divorce, about stigma, about how friends can better support people going through a divorce. The interviewing, the discussing with Carmen, the writing and editing of that piece was immensely cathartic. It’s the tiara on top of the head of the divorcee burning their wedding outfit of Divorce Week, and we wanted to save it for the end.

At the start of this, when putting out a call for personal essays (have you read “Well, It Seemed Like a Pretty Good Idea At The Time” or “I’m a Psychologist Who Didn’t See My Own Divorce Coming“?), I wrote; “You may be divorced, but you’re not alone.” We ended up making it the catchphrase of the week. But it wasn’t until we got to the end of Divorce Week, until I finished that piece, that I actually felt like I wasn’t alone in what I went through. So, I hope that it really sinks in. You are not alone. I’m immensely proud of the work Carmen and I put into this week. I know that it’s what we both want for Autostraddle — to be publishing pieces that meaningfully serve our community, that add to the conversation thoughtfully, that give you something to chew on (or a pair of shoes, maybe).

In the midst of planning for Divorce Week’s visuals, I kept coming back to In the Mood for Love. It’s not a movie about divorce. The protagonists in this movie, by all means, should get divorced, but they do not. Instead, the movie is filled with a poignant, humid, adult longing for connection. That emotional wavelength was what was resonating with me about that movie and Divorce Week. On a call with Carmen, she dissected the color palette and we moved the visual brainstorm, then, away from perky Valentine’s pinks and into rusty reds, hollow golds, skeletal hints of blue, and desolate blacks and grays. I pinned images of rotting fruit to a board and Carmen collected film stills. The graphics themselves were put together by designer and artist Jess Jaffe.

There is a darkness to Divorce Week. To me, it’s a stark reminder of the ways we do and don’t show up for each other, but also the ways that we can. It’s not a definitive treatise on the subject either — and in fact, the series opened up questions for me that I hope Autostraddle will continue to dig into in the future, questions about how we practice restorative justice in an interpersonal social way, even in lower-stakes conflicts such as breakups where there isn’t abuse but maybe is harm, and how we take an abolitionist approach to supporting people going through divorce. Because the appeal of state-sanctioned gay marriage and all the status, protections and fun that come with it is still very much there, but, while the institution of legalized gay marriage may be shiny, siren-like with its sweet song of legitimacy, the edges are sharp and we can get cut.

Just like divorce isn’t the end, the culmination of Divorce Week does not mean that we’re done talking about divorce here on Autostraddle.com. Far from it. It’s our sincere hope that we’ll continue to dig into the questions raised throughout the week, that we will keep telling the stories of queer and trans people as we navigate systems that weren’t made for us (or for the health of anyone, to be honest), and come out on the other side, still here, still standing.

And if anything, I hope that I get the chance to work with Carmen again on a project like this. We’ve pulled off big projects before, but there was something about this one, a certain conspiratorial giddiness that comes from editing so much content around a topic people are hesitant to dig into, even in queer spaces, that made it sing. And as always, whenever I get edits back from Carmen, or pose a hard question, or try to navigate sensitive subject matter, I’m left smiling, with sincere admiration for her skill and her leadership. Is it weird that I’m sappy about Divorce Week?? I am. I’m a little sad it’s over. Now, someone else has to get married, so I can have an excuse to pitch a bizarre week-long editorial series that eats both of our social lives to Carmen again. Who’s gonna be the lucky winner (victim)?!

Divorce Week is a celebration of taking a life-changing step, of coming out the other side of devastating trauma and being all the better for it. It’s co-edited and curated by Nico Hall and Carmen Phillips. Remember, you may be divorced, but you’re not alone.

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