What I Needed During My Divorce Didn’t Exist. So I Built It.

This Saturday, September 26, Divorce Resource Network | DFW will hold its first official gathering.

Which is a shockingly simple sentence for something that has occupied an unreasonable amount of my brain, time, energy, and life for most of this year.

I started developing the idea for Divorce Resource Network in early 2026 because I know what it feels like to go through a divorce and feel profoundly alone.

Not theoretically. Personally.

My own divorce was one of the loneliest periods of my life, and that experience stayed with me long after the legal process was finalized.

Divorce doesn't just end a marriage. It can change your home, your finances, your children's lives, your routines, your friendships, your parenting, your sense of stability, and the people you normally reach for when life gets hard. Basically, your entire reality gets turned upside down. And that’s often the pretty way of putting it.

Even worse, at the exact moment when you need more support than you ever have before, your world can get very, very small.

There are resources. That doesn't mean women can access them.

One of the things I want to be careful about when we talk about “divorce resources” is the assumption that everyone already knows what those resources are.

They don't.

We can casually list attorneys, therapists, financial professionals, mediators, Realtors, lenders, and other specialists as though every woman entering a divorce is handed a directory and a checking account large enough to use it.

That is not reality.

Some women don't know what kind of professional they need. Some don't know what questions they should even be asking. Some don't know which financial or parenting decisions they're making today could affect them a year from now. Some know what they need but simply do not have the funds to afford it.

Some have access to excellent professional guidance.

Some categorically do not.

And sometimes what you need first isn't another appointment with a professional anyway.

Frankly, sometimes you just need to be in a room where you don't have to explain how hard this is. You need people who understand why an ordinary Tuesday can suddenly feel like your entire life is falling apart. Somewhere you can ask questions without feeling stupid.

Or say nothing. Or listen. Or find out that there is, in fact, a professional who handles the exact problem you've been trying to solve by yourself.

That was the gap I wanted to fill.

The original idea was pretty simple: create a local community where women navigating divorce could come together regularly for actual human support and safe community—and make trustworthy professional education and resources available when they were wanted or needed.

Not a professional networking organization masquerading as a support group. Not a sales funnel. Not therapy. Not a room where anybody is required to tell her story.

And definitely not a place where somebody is going to tell you that divorce is secretly the beginning of your BEST CHAPTER YET while you're still trying to figure out where your kids are sleeping next Wednesday.

Support first. Resources when you need them. People, connection, useful information, access to help, and the ability to come exactly as you are now.

A place for women at any stage of this process: considering divorce, preparing for it, actively moving through it, reconciling, rebuilding afterward, or supporting someone close to them.

Where you can talk. You can ask questions. You can listen.

Listening counts.

Building the thing

Pretty early on, I knew this needed another person.

So, I reached out to Melissa Touris, a local friend, Realtor, and referral partner I work with, and asked if she would be interested in building it with me.

Thankfully, she said yes.

Over the last six to nine months, Melissa and I have met again and again to talk through what this could be, what women actually need from it, what we absolutely did not want it to become, and how to create something that could work in real life—not just what looks good on a mission statement.

Melissa created and manages our private Facebook group and has taken the lead on all local gathering logistics.

And then there was...executing the rest of it. 😂

The mission. The identity. The structure. The member experience. The privacy standards. The visual identity. The brand system. The language. The website. The applications. The registration process. The event structure.

Apparently, there are about eleven billion tiny decisions between “I have an idea” and “this is a real thing people can actually join.”

I've built those pieces over many, many months. And I underestimated the hell out of how much work that would be.

There is this romantic idea of starting a community initiative where someone has a meaningful idea, works very hard, drinks infinite coffees, and eventually launches the thing.

True to form, mine has been somewhat less…photogenic.

I'm a Senior Mortgage Advisor without a guaranteed income. I'm a single mom. I have kids who deserve my time, a business that requires it, a house and property that do not magically maintain themselves because Mama has developed a sudden interest in learning web architecture, and chickens who refuse to be concerned with my passion projects.

Every hour I spent building Divorce Resource Network came from somewhere.

A lot of them came from my free time (which was scarce to begin with). Some came from time I could have spent with my kids. Some came from my business, which means there has been a real financial cost. Some came from the endless list of things involved in managing a home and property by yourself.

There have been plenty of moments when I’ve looked around at everything else I wasn't getting done and thought:

Julie…who do you think you are?

And the answer kept being the same: this matters.

And I’ve been the woman who desperately needed it.

This Saturday, it becomes real.

Until now, Divorce Resource Network | DFW has largely existed in conversations, planning meetings, documents, websites, design files, systems, registrations, and the minds of two women stubborn enough to keep working on it.

On Saturday, September 26, we hold our first official gathering.

And that feels so much different.

Because the point was never the website. Or the logo. Or the color palette I spent an arguably inappropriate amount of time fixating on.

All of those things exist to support the thing that actually matters: women getting in a room together and realizing they do not have to navigate this alone.

Our gatherings are intentionally private. They aren't photographed, recorded, livestreamed, publicly checked into, or turned into social-media content.

What is shared there stays there.

Because if we're going to ask women to trust a community during one of the most complicated and straight-up-scary periods of their lives, that trust deserves to be treated seriously.

We still live in a world where women cannot assume safety, and that is not something we’re willing to negotiate.

DFW is only the beginning.

I have much bigger plans for Divorce Resource Network than one group.

The immediate priority is clear: build this community well. Learn from the women who participate. Protect what makes it useful. Let the actual needs of members shape what comes next.

But I already have visions for some of the next chapters.

I want to create similar local support communities for men navigating divorce, because isolation doesn’t discriminate based on gender. I want co-ed groups for people who are single after divorce—not dating events, but genuine community for people rebuilding social lives that may look very different than they did while married.

I want us out in the community volunteering together.

Because eventually support shouldn't only mean sitting in a room talking about divorce. It should also mean having people to do life with again.

And long term, I want Divorce Resource Network to exist beyond Dallas-Fort Worth.

The identity and structure have been intentionally built so local chapters can grow without reinventing the entire thing from scratch.

Different city. Same basic promise:

Local support. Honest connection.

I don't know yet if or when any of that will happen.

Right now, I'm thinking about Saturday. About the women who will walk through the door. About the me who needed that room. And about the fact that an idea I started carrying around in my head earlier this year is finally becoming an actual community.

Divorce Resource Network | DFW is officially here.

If you're a woman in the Dallas-Fort Worth area navigating divorce at any stage—or you know someone who is—you can learn more, request to join, and see upcoming gatherings at divorceresourcenetwork.org.

You do not have to navigate divorce alone.