Season Three-Episode One: How To Embrace Healing When Life Falls Apart

Written By Dr. Cynthia Edwards-Hawver, Psy.D.
Dr. Cynthia Hawver recording podcast and explaining episode on healing after your marriage falls apart

In this deeply personal episode, Dr. Cynthia Hawver returns to The Mama Shrink Podcast after surviving a year that nearly broke her.

From the end of a 31-year marriage to the financial and emotional shock of becoming a single mom at 52, she shares what true healing looks like behind closed doors.

Dr. Cynthia returns to The Mama Shrink Podcast after a few years that asked more of her than she ever expected — and she's sharing what that actually looked like.

It didn't happen all at once.

It started with losing her mother. And somewhere inside that grief, she began to see something she had been too close to recognize, that her burnout wasn't just from losing her mom, parenting at midlife, or the busyness of running a private practice. It was coming from her marriage. From years of carrying something that was costing her more than she had admitted to herself. From a trauma bond she didn't have a name for yet, but had been living inside of for a long time.

She tried everything. For years, she tried. She showed up, she worked on it, she hoped it would change. But when it became clear that it never would and when she understood what staying was teaching her children about what a relationship was supposed to look like, she made the most difficult decision of her life and asked him to leave.

She did it to protect her kids. She did it to save herself.

What came next was hard in ways she hadn't fully anticipated. The friends she thought she had quietly disappeared — some of them choosing his side, some of them simply not knowing what to do with her new reality. There was no village waiting to help her through it. She was rebuilding her finances, her home, her sense of self, and navigating daily life on her own while still showing up every day for her kids.

This episode is an honest conversation about what that rebuilding process actually felt like: the hard days, the uncertainty, and what getting through it one day at a time really looks like.

In this episode:

  • How burnout can live inside a marriage for years before you name it

  • What the grief of losing your mother reveals about the rest of your life

  • Trauma bonding — what it is and how she lived inside one without knowing it

  • Trying everything to save a marriage — and knowing when it's time to stop

  • Making the most difficult decision of her life and doing it completely alone

  • Losing friendships in the aftermath of divorce and what that costs

  • Rebuilding your life without a support system to lean on

  • Parenting through it all while protecting her kids from what she didn't want them to grow up seeing

  • What she wishes someone had told her in that first year

If you are a woman who is quietly holding it together while your life looks nothing like what you planned — this episode is for you.

Dr. Cynthia Edwards-Hawver, Psy.D.

Dr. Cynthia Edwards-Hawver, Psy.D., is a licensed clinical psychologist with over 25 years of experience helping high-achieving women heal from narcissistic abuse, trauma bonding, antagonistic relationships, burnout, divorce, and the overwhelming reality of parenting while recovering from relational trauma. She specializes in working with midlife mothers who feel emotionally exhausted, confused, and destabilized while trying to protect their children and rebuild their lives after toxic relationships.

Dr. Edwards-Hawver earned her B.S. with distinction from Cornell University, completed her doctoral training at Wright State University, and her APA-accredited internship at Penn State University. She is licensed in Pennsylvania and practices across state lines through PSYPACT, providing telehealth services to women navigating complex divorces, post-separation abuse, and parallel parenting with narcissistic or antagonistic partners.

Her clinical focus includes trauma bonding, gaslighting, nervous system exhaustion, narcissistic burnout, post-separation abuse, and the impossible position mothers face when trying to heal while co-parenting or parallel parenting with a toxic ex. She works with intelligent, capable women who can excel professionally yet feel trapped, doubting themselves, and unable to understand why leaving feels so impossible.

What sets Dr. Cynthia’s work apart is her refusal to offer oversimplified advice. She does not minimize how hard this is. She understands that burnout—not weakness—keeps women stuck, that trauma bonding alters decision-making, and that traditional relationship advice does not apply when narcissism and emotional abuse are present.

She is the host of The Mama Shrink Podcast, where she discusses parenting, mental health, physical health, and the realities of healing while raising children in the midst of high-conflict relationships. She is currently writing her first book on healing from narcissistic burnout and rebuilding life at midlife while parenting through it.

Beyond her clinical practice, Dr. Cynthia is building an educational platform that includes a YouTube channel, online courses, a healing membership community, and resources for mothers navigating narcissistic relationships, divorce, and generational trauma while trying to create safety for their children and themselves.

Her work is grounded in decades of clinical experience, rigorous training, and lived understanding of what it takes to recover from relational trauma while embracing her new life as a single mom.

https://www.drcynthiahawver.com
Next

Episode Two: Sorry Not Sorry: Let’s Talk About Toxic Apologies