Divorce Doesn’t Have to Destroy You or
Your Family
The Good Divorce offers a bold new approach to navigating divorce—one that confronts a system built on conflict and shows couples how to separate without destroying what matters most. Instead of treating divorce as a weapon, Karen McNenny reframes it as a family evolution, not a failure, proving that a marriage can end with respect, compassion, and a shared commitment to raising children together.
Imprint of Wiley Publishing
Did You Know?
The divorce industry profits from your pain.
You don’t have to follow the outdated model.
Imagine navigating divorce with clarity, dignity, and a shared commitment to your children’s well-being. This book proves it’s possible.
This Book is for You
- Divorce-Curious
- Going Through Divorce
- Re-Building After Divorce
- Divorce Professional
- Mental Health Professional
- Adult Child of Divorce
- Manage Divorcing Employees
- Supporting a Divorced Friend or Family Member
My story proves that divorce doesn’t have to destroy families. Sometimes, when we have the courage to end what isn’t working, we create space for something better to emerge. While society still views divorce as a tragedy, I’ve discovered it can be a tool for transformation—not just for individual families, but for how we think about love, commitment, and the many ways we can be a family.
A Practical Roadmap to Ending Your Marriage Without Ending Your Family
Blending her personal divorce experience with professional expertise, McNenny challenges the pervasive negative narrative that often pushes families toward unnecessary harm. The book offers a child-centered, dignity-driven path for navigating divorce with clarity, stability, and long-term family well-being.
The Love
Honoring the relationship you had — and what it means to reach its end with grace, not bitterness.
The System
How the divorce industrial complex — from lawyers to banks to workplace policies — profits from family pain, and how to navigate it wisely.
The Break Up
The early days of separation: what to say, what to protect, and how to keep the wheels on when everything feels like it’s falling apart.
The Kids
How to talk to your children about divorce — and what children of divorce most need from their parents, at every age.
The Home
Dividing a shared life — the physical logistics, the emotional weight, and how to create stability across two households.
The Grief
Divorce is a loss. Naming the grief — rather than outrunning it — is what allows you to eventually move forward with intention.
The Community
How friends, family, colleagues, and neighbors can either help or hurt — and what to ask for from the people who love you.
The Self
Rediscovering who you are outside the marriage — and why rebuilding yourself is not selfish, but essential for your children.
The Logistics
The practical co-parenting architecture: schedules, communication systems, and how to be in the bleachers together without it being a battlefield.
The New
What family looks like five, ten years on — and why “different” is not the same as “broken.” A vision for what’s truly possible when families restructure with intention.
Attorneys will GET you divorced. This book will help you learn how to BE divorced.
This isn’t just advice — it’s a framework grounded in real-life experience, professional expertise, and proven results.
Karen’s Professional Credentials
Limited Time Pre-Order Offer
After purchasing, email your receipt/proof of purchase to bonus@KarenMcNenny.com
Your bonus materials will be sent directly to your inbox along with a link to join Karen for a virtual book launch party.
Bonuses Just for You
Move from Conflict to Conversation
Stop dreading difficult conversations. This practical guidebook is filled with scripts, exercises, and tools for transforming conflict in your daily life.
Virtual Book Launch Event
Join Karen live for a conversation that goes beyond the page — real questions, real answers, real change.
Saturday – May 23rd, 10:00 am MST or Wednesday – May 27, 6:00 pm MST
Book Club Guide
Read together. Think differently. Every conversation is an act of resistance against a system designed to divide families.
I was in relationship purgatory, but I wasn’t stuck between a good place or a bad place—both options in front of me looked terrible. Had I known of a middle path (one with less destruction, despair, and debt), I might have decided sooner. I might have been able to exit without doing more harm. But as it was, I stayed too long, and we all suffered the consequences. In the absence of a clearly marked exit, I acted like a kamikaze pilot, ready to dive bomb, ensuring a fiery ending.
I wrote the book I needed 15 years ago
The night I decided to end my marriage, I panicked. I pulled off the road and walked into a bookstore, convinced that if I could find the right book — something that would tell me how to do this without destroying everything — I could walk into that dreaded conversation with a little more steadiness.
What I found were shelves filled with strategies for winning. For getting what you deserve. For making your ex pay. Not a single book for what I actually needed: a way to end a marriage while protecting what mattered most. I needed to know how to BE divorced, not just how to GET divorced.
That night marked the beginning of the story I had to tell.
As a mediator, divorce consultant, and co-parenting specialist, I’ve had a front-row seat to what the traditional divorce system does to families at their most vulnerable. It shouldn’t be this hard. Families deserve better — and most never know another path exists.
I would have given anything for my family to stay under one roof. But it didn’t go that way for us. And for many other families where it doesn’t go that way, we owe it to them — especially the children — to offer something better than a battlefield.
This is this book I was looking for.
I wrote it for you.
—
What Readers and Experts Are Saying
This book serves up a whopping dose of illumination on the all-too-often fraught topic of divorce. By sharing her personal story, and modelling how families can evolve through divorce, Karen McNenny challenges the norms, and gives families a fresh and practical perspective.”
Amid an industry built on escalation, Karen writes about restraint, respect, and the quiet power of divorcing well. Families deserve this option.”
Karen McNenny names what so many parents feel but rarely hear out loud: our divorce systems were not designed to support families living across two homes. Blending lived experience with meaningful data, The Good Divorce delivers a child-centered, realistic path forward that is reassuring without being idealistic.”
Karen McNenny has provided a unique and refreshing balance between sharing her personal traumas and triumphs combined with practical strategies in explaining that The Good Divorce really is possible. While confronting many of the problems with the adversarial “system,” she shows how to successfully navigate a good new co-parenting relationship that protects your children, your finances and your mental health.”
With rare, relatable honesty, Karen McNenny draws from her own divorce to guide readers through the complex reality of getting unmarried, holding both grief and relief while navigating the limits of our often misaligned legal system. Her vivid storytelling honors the pain without leaving readers stuck in a victimized story, helping parents feel less alone and ready to move forward with clear steps and possibility—toward a Good Divorce and a healthier next chapter for themselves, their families, and their children.”
Meet Karen McNenny
Karen McNenny is a dynamic speaker, storyteller, and social activist who’s spent more than two decades helping work—and life—not suck. Known for her warmth, humor, and practical wisdom, Karen brings authenticity and authority to conversations about leadership, workplace culture, and human behavior, all with the goal of creating a more peaceful world, one workplace (and one family) at a time.
A Montana native, Karen earned her BFA in Media and Theater Arts from Montana State University, toured with Montana Shakespeare in the Parks, and completed her graduate studies in London as a Rotary International Scholar. Her career includes roles with Camp Mak-A-Dream and Providence Services. Her training spans the Disney Institute, the Center for Ethical Leadership, and the Kaufmann Foundation. She has also been featured as a speaker on the TEDx stage.
With more than two decades successfully providing consulting services to the nonprofit, corporate, and public sectors, Karen expanded her work to include divorce consulting. As a certified mediator, divorce coach, and co-parenting expert, she helps couples end their marriages without ending their families. She is the founder of The Good Divorce Academy and host of The Good Divorce Show podcast. Karen grew up in Montana where she raised two wonderful children with her wuzband. She and her dog Moab can often be found running with scissors throughout the Rocky Mountain West.
