Should You Stay or Should You Go? Author D’Ionna Washington on Breaking Up Now, Releasing the Shame of Divorce & Building a Life You Actually Love

About this episode

D’Ionna Washington discusses her journey of leaving an unfulfilling marriage and the insights from her book on embracing self-respect in relationships.

There is a moment — quiet, uncomfortable, impossible to unhear — when you realize the marriage you’re in isn’t the marriage you thought you were building. For D’Ionna Washington , that moment came just one year into her first marriage. Instead of suppressing it, she eventually did what so few women feel permitted to do: she left. And then she wrote the book about it. In this candid, fire-lit conversation on Divorce Happens, host Olivia Howell sits down with D’Ionna — relationship coach, author, and the woman behind the powerfully named brand The Kept Wife Strategist — to talk about her debut book Break Up Now: Releasing the Shame of Divorce and Finding the Peace in Letting Go . D’Ionna brings over a decade of coaching experience, a faith deconstruction journey, and a deeply personal story of divorce and remarriage to a conversation about one of the most taboo questions in relationships: what if you knew early and stayed anyway? The emotional core of this episode lives in a story D’Ionna shares about her mother — a woman who stayed married for 23 years after knowing, within the first year, that it wasn’t working. That revelation cracked D’Ionna open. Suddenly she saw the pattern…

People in this episode

Host: Olivia Howell

Guest: D’Ionna Washington

Topics covered

• divorce
• relationships
• self-respect
• coaching
• shame
• personal growth

Keywords

• divorce
• relationship coaching
• self-respect
• shame
• personal story
• women's empowerment
• marriage

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: The Kept Wife Strategist

Books & works: Break Up Now: Releasing the Shame of Divorce and Finding the Peace in Letting Go

More episodes of Divorce Happens

• She Turned Her High-Conflict Divorce Into a Movement. Here’s What Courtney Gilmartin Learned About Surviving, Documenting & Fighting Back · June 13, 2026 · 15 min
• Hey Olivia, We Told the Kids About the Divorce — Now the Questions Won't Stop. What Do I Say? · June 11, 2026 · 8 min
• Hey Olivia, My Ex Wants to Tell the Kids the Divorce Is My Fault. How Do I Stop Him? · June 10, 2026 · 7 min
• Divorce Books: Soft Launch: A Coming-of-Adulthood Novel by Sarah Vacchiano · June 8, 2026 · 21 min
• Everything You Need to Know About College Planning and Divorce with Vicki Vollweiler · June 8, 2026 · 15 min
• 50 Challenges. 6 Continents. One Divorce: How Lisa Niver Found Herself — and Fearlessness — After 50 with Lisa Niver · June 5, 2026 · 15 min