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When I got divorced at thirty-nine, with four little kids, I couldn’t picture how my life was supposed to work. But every day kept coming anyway. As I pushed the stroller up and down Madison Avenue and raced across town to school pickups, my old, parallel existence was thrown into sharp relief, and the new world I’d just entered was still murky. Yet under the door that was now cracked open, I could see the tiniest bit of light shining through. I kept racing toward it.

The hardest part—there were and continue to be many hard parts—was having to share my kids, having to drop them off bimonthly. After protracted goodbyes, I would find myself standing on the street alone—and I would crumble. I could feel the sinking feeling in my gut, as if one of those boules thrown by old French men with cigarettes dangling from their lips had suddenly landed in my stomach. Plunk. In the rawness at the beginning, I would hide between parked cars to shield myself from the sure-footed march of pedestrians carrying on with their lives in ways that I found incomprehensible.

Joint custody. Joint is the worst word for it; I had never felt so disjointed. Every joint in my body ached from the loss: My shoulders creaked, my knees and feet throbbed as I walked away every two weeks.

I did have Kyle, but our new relationship couldn’t offset the feelings of loss every time the kids left. On my therapist’s leather couch in a cramped office off Lexington Avenue, I would loudly shift in my seat to grab a tissue, horns blaring just beyond her window. The hole in my heart wasn’t closing. Nothing was helping as I wandered past the kids’ empty bedrooms on those quiet nights when they were gone. Should I keep their doors open or closed? I would stop occasionally to sit with the stuffed animals on my son’s armchair and cry in the dark.

“You love reading. Read more books,” my therapist said, sitting cross-legged on her armchair, still in her spinning clothes. “With a good book, you’ll never be lonely.”

While I’d always been an avid reader, as a newly divorced mom I threw myself into bibliotherapy. Reading was the only thing that could keep me from feeling the heart-shattering absence of my kids. Instead, I felt the delightful introduction to hundreds of characters dancing around in my mind, stories that entertained me, inspiring tales of others who had overcome injury, illness, addiction. I would plow through multiple books each weekend. When I married Kyle, my friends threw me a “book shower.”

And then, in the middle of the ground reshuffling, I started a literary podcast so I could interview those authors. I wanted to hear more, directly from them. I had questions. While there were professional reasons for the podcast, perhaps the truest one was that it was a response to that sinking feeling I navigated every other weekend without the kids.

Years later, I’m in our bright, happy kitchen laughing with Kyle, his sister, Stefanie, father, Bernard, and stepmother, Miriam. We’re cleaning up after dinner, wiping down the counters, clanking dishes in the dishwasher, and rinsing wine glasses with jazz playing and snow falling outside.

During dinner, I’d been texting with my older son under the table and had just FaceTimed with my older daughter. Technology was keeping us all closer on those weekends apart. That, and time, was helping to dull the ever-present ache.

Bernard picked up one of the books I was reading. I could see him trying to figure out where to safely put it down as we cleaned, food remnants on every surface.

“Everywhere I look, there’s a book!” he said, chuckling. “Really, what’s with all the books? Is this some kind of book fetish? Look at this!”

I laughed so hard I had to clutch my stomach. It’s true—we were surrounded by books. I’d gotten so many advance reader copies in the mail that I’d recently bought a library cart for the overflow.

With a good book, you’ll never be lonely.

It worked.

Excerpted with permission from Between Chapters: How I Started Over, Took Some Chances, and Found the Plot. Copyright © 2026 by Zibby Owens. Published in the US by Zibby Publishing. All rights reserved.

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