A Memoir
Love Rehab
A Memoir of Divorce, Resilience, and Unexpected Joy
Sometimes a marriage ends not in anger or resentment, but in the quiet realization that two people are no longer the right fit, and that moving forward means finding the courage to begin a new chapter.
Vivian Tyler
Writer, divorce survivor, and reluctant expert on starting over.
The Book
A divorce memoir that lets you laugh
Love Rehab begins on the worst afternoon of Vivian Tyler's life and refuses to stay there. Part field report from the end of a marriage, part instruction manual for anyone rebuilding from scratch, it moves through the paperwork, the pity casseroles, and the strange, bright mornings that follow — with the kind of humor that only arrives once you have survived the thing.
It is a book for the woman sitting in her car in a parking lot, deciding what happens next.
- 01The Day the Future Changed Its Mind
- 02Splitting the Towels and Other Acts of Grief
- 03Apparently, This Is What Starting Over Looks Like
- 04Heartbreak, Healing, and a Questionable Amount of Takeout
- 05Learning to Laugh in the Empty Spaces
Excerpt
Chapter One
The dress was still in the garment bag when I carried it out to the alley. I had imagined this moment as something cinematic — wind, a lifted chin, a soundtrack. What actually happened was that the bag caught on the dumpster latch and I stood there in the July heat, sweating, negotiating with a zipper.
Nobody tells you that the end of a marriage is mostly logistics. The grief arrives on schedule, but it has to take its turn behind the account transfers and the mail forwarding and the question of who keeps the good pan.
This is the part I want to tell you about: not the ending, which everyone can picture, but the eleven months after it, when I had no idea what I was doing and did it anyway.
— Vivian
About the Author
Vivian Tyler
Vivian Tyler is a writer whose work sits at the intersection of grief and comedy, because that is where most of real life happens. Love Rehab is her first book.
She writes about marriage, divorce, healing, and the unglamorous mechanics of starting over — for readers who want the truth and a reason to laugh in the same paragraph.
Available for interviews, book clubs, and events.
Reviews
“Funny in the way only honest books are funny.”
Advance praise
“I handed it to my sister before I finished the last chapter.”
Early reader
“A memoir about resilience that never once lectures you.”
Book club reader
Buy the Book
Love Rehab is available now
Hardcover, ebook, and audiobook. Ask for it at your local bookshop, or order from any of these.
