'I’ve never been happier but I’m angry at myself' - Sharon Horgan wishes she had divorced sooner

Although not without its difficulties, Sharon Horgan has spoken candidly about her divorce, and her positive take could be just what women going through the same process need to hear.

It's fantastic when celebrities raise awareness of important topics, and along with those in the public eye doing their bit for better understanding of menopause and perimenopause, there are plenty of other midlife challenges.

Divorcing in midlife and beyond is becoming increasingly common, and has even been given its own term - grey divorcing. Although not the best name it could be given (not everyone is, or chooses to embrace their hair colour at this age thank you very much,) it's good to know that if it's a growing concept, there's going to be more discussion and hopefully more support for it.

Actress and writer Sharon Horgan, aged 54, has been very candid about her midlife divorce, and her take on the process is actually really refreshing. The star married TV producer Jeremy Rainbird in 2005, and divorced in 2019 - they share two daughters named Amer and Sadhbh.

Speaking on Elizabeth Day's How to Fail podcast, Sharon recalled feeling the marriage wasn't working for some time, but having children and working closely together caused her to keep trying to make it work.

In hindsight, the Bad Sisters actress revealed she was "angry" with herself for staying in an unhappy marriage for so long, candidly suggesting the reason she left it so long to leave was “connected to confidence.”

Her former husband clearly began to feel the same way about the pairing. "There came a point where it was so clear that it wasn’t right for either of us,” she explains, adding, “I don’t know whether it’s slightly being Catholic, some of that stuff was still in me, that idea of not getting a divorce or you just don’t get a divorce."

Many women can likely empathise with Sharon fearing stigma around getting divorced - stigma, challenges of re-entering the dating scene as an older woman, and navigating everything that comes with the process alongside the physical and emotional effects of menopause, can just feel too overwhelming.

Although definitely without challenges, Sharon asserts she's never been happier since her separation, wishing she'd done it sooner. "It’s an odd one because," she expresses, adding, "I’ve never been happier but I’m angry at myself, not for the failure of the marriage but for not figuring it out earlier."

“It’s so destructive I think, and I mean you get one life and that’s an awful lot of time to spend on something that’s not working," she says frankly.

The process took four years to complete, and although the star acknowledges that it was time consuming and a big drain financially, that still hasn't detracted from the constructive effect it's had on her life.

"Divorce has had such a positive impact on my life," she says, continuing, "It’s such a massive move to make that you do need that clarity to move forward with it." She's also revealed that she co-parents exclusively alone, and her former husband is not involved in parenting at all.

Despite this, she has still found the positives of her new circumstances to outweigh the negative - and this could be very reassuring for those on the precipice of divorce themselves.