If you want to support independent women's media, become a Mamamia subscriber . Get an all-access pass to everything we make, including exclusive podcasts, articles, videos and our exercise app, MOVE. 

This article is an edited version of one that originally appeared on Morgan Tait's Substack. Sign up here .

This isn't the Substack I ever imagined I'd be writing.

My divorce was something deeply private, incredibly painful, and, truthfully, something I tried to hide from because I felt so much shame around it.

But one thing adulthood has taught me is that life doesn't pause just because your world is falling apart.

Watch: First it was conscious uncoupling, now divorce has had another rebrand... and it's all about not using a certain word. Post continues below.

You still have meetings.

Deadlines.

Emails.

Expectations.

There's no cinematic pause where everyone at work collectively understands you're having a hard time. And honestly, I don't even know if I would want that.

I think there's a strange experience that happens when your personal life is quietly falling apart while your professional life still requires you to perform normally.

You become very good at compartmentalising.

You answer calls. Approve decks. Give feedback. Have strategy conversations. Then sit alone at home eating eggs on toast trying to process your actual emotions.

I also think people underestimate how much identity shifts during divorce. Not just emotionally, but structurally.

Your routines change. Your friendships change. Your stability changes. Your idea of your future changes.

And yet, at the same time, work can also become the thing that grounds you. Not as avoidance, but as momentum.

At the time, I was working as Senior Art Director at P.E Nation while building CEE CLEAR.

To this day, I don't know how I managed it.

I vividly remember leaving the apartment I shared with my ex-husband in the morning, going straight to a 10-hour shoot, with almost no one knowing what was happening behind the scenes, crying in the bathroom in between looks, and then leaving the set that afternoon to drive to my new apartment.

I had too much on my shoulders, but I still showed up for work.

CEE CLEAR became so much more than a business. It gave me purpose when I felt lost. It gave me something to nurture when other parts of my life were breaking. It reminded me that I was still capable of creating, dreaming and building a future for myself.

While I often talk about the lessons the business has taught me, I don't talk enough about what it gave me during that period of my life.

Even now, I get a lump in my throat thinking about it. CEE CLEAR gave me stability when I needed it the most. It was the thing that kept me standing when everything around me felt like it was shifting.

Most of the time, whether this was healthy or not, work was the only thing that made me feel remotely like myself.

Work – and the girls – was what I needed to give me purpose, get me out of bed so to speak.

It reminded me to appreciate the other parts of my life that brought me joy, helping me focus on what was still good amidst everything else.

Listen: A newly single Unleasher needs advice, and Sally Hepworth swears she's got the answer. FPost continues below

I'm not interested in turning painful experiences into inspirational content. I believe some things deserve privacy and I think it's why I never really spoke about it (outside of my closest girlfriends).

That chapter of my life is well behind me now, and thankfully, I'm happier than I've ever been before.

But I also think pretending ambitious women move through life untouched by grief, relationship breakdowns or uncertainty is completely unrealistic.

You can be heartbroken and still highly functional.

Both things can exist at once.

Sign up to Morgan Tait's Substack here , or find her on Instagram here .

Feature Image: Supplied.