Starting over after divorce at 50 – How Di rebuilt from nothing
Di Geddes left a 21-year marriage with no savings, no confidence and a breast cancer diagnosis behind her. Within a few years she had started a home care business with a modest inheritance. She now calls losing everything the best gift she was ever given.
Key takeaways
Di knew on her wedding day that the marriage was in trouble. She stayed 21 years.
What ended it was her eldest son telling her he couldn't live in the house any more.
Emotional and financial abuse left her with no money of her own and no belief in her own judgement.
Letting go of her anger came before anything else could change.
She started her business in her fifties, from nothing, and it now employs a team.
The marriage she knew was wrong on day one
"In all honesty, I probably knew it was bad the day we got married," Di says.
She stayed for 21 years. That's much longer than the Australian average – the median Australian marriage that ends in divorce lasts 9.4 years to separation, according to the ABS, with 49,158 divorces granted in 2025. The median age for women at divorce is 44.4.
Di's reasons for staying will be familiar to a lot of women. She had made promises in front of God. Her mother was, in Di's words, "very Victorian in her views" and didn't believe in divorce. And she believed she was holding a family unit together for her two sons.
"I look back now and think how stupid I was, because it wasn't a family unit that was helpful for them at all. But I couldn't see that then."
There was something else at work too, and she names it plainly: "You hope that it'll get better, and you hope that if you put a lot into that person, they will become a better person. And the exact opposite happened."
What emotional and financial abuse looks like from the inside
Di is careful about this distinction. "I need to say it wasn't violence. It wasn't physical violence. But it was that ever-chipping away – non-verbal and verbal stuff."
That pattern is far more common than most people realise. ABS Personal Safety Survey data shows 23 per cent of Australian women – around 2.3 million – have experienced emotional abuse from a cohabiting partner since the age of 15. Sixteen per cent, about 1.6 million women, have experienced economic abuse.
The effect compounds. By the end of her marriage Di had, as she puts it, "no financial stuff behind me, no self-belief, no nothing".
Her older sister had no idea. When Di rang to say she was separating, the response was: No, no, no, don't do it, we can fix this.
"I said, for 21 years I've done everything, nothing works. She had no idea. She had no idea at all."
[Internal link suggestion: link "emotional abuse" to an existing WDA article on coercive control or financial abuse, if one exists.]
The moment her son said it out loud
Di had a breast cancer diagnosis 12 months before the marriage ended, and it shifted something. Her fear wasn't dying. It was dying and leaving her boys to be raised by their father.
"It was like a light bulb moment where I thought, what the hell am I doing? If I don't want him to raise my children, why am I even with him?"
But the decision itself came from her eldest son. He came to her and said he couldn't live in that house any more.
"I find it fascinating looking back now that I was prepared to put up with it for me. But I wasn't, once one of my children came to me and said this is awful."
This is the part many women hold onto hardest – the belief that staying protects the children. Di's experience ran the other way. Her sons were 16 and 18 when the marriage ended, and the effects have been long and complicated, including on her relationship with them.
"I protected them, and therefore they didn't notice it was being done to me. I put the happy face on. So they don't understand it."
The losses kept coming after she left
Leaving wasn't the end of the hard part. Within roughly three years of the separation, Di lost her father, then her mother. She went through two workplaces where she was bullied. She had no money and two teenagers to support.
"Every time I'd take a step forward, I'd feel like I'd get knocked back five steps."
The long financial picture backs up how heavy this period is for women. AIFS research following older Australians over 16 years found divorced women in later life were materially worse off than women who stayed married, with lower household assets and lower employment rates over time.
Di's approach to surviving it has a rhythm to it. When she reached the point where she couldn't keep going, she would take a few days away from everything.
"Blinds down, and just cry. But I'd always have an end date in my mind as to when I had to get my shit together again."
Her eldest son eventually told her to go back to her psychologist, and she did.
The thing she had to let go of first
The turning point came in a church pew.
"The minister said we have to learn to forgive everyone. And I started to sob." Di's thought at the time was that she would never be able to forgive her ex-husband, and therefore could never get better.
What she landed on instead was something different from forgiveness.
"I'll never forgive him for the stuff he did. But I don't need to worry about it now, because I learnt that the more energy I give that, it's not doing anything to him and it's ruining me."
Today, she says, news about him produces nothing at all. "You could tell me anything about him today and it wouldn't even get an emotional response, because I've got nothing left."
Starting a business from a standing start
Di was working for a home care organisation she loved when she realised the people running it didn't share her values. "For them, they were all about counting the money."
When her parents' estates came through, she paid down her mortgage, fixed a few things around the house and kept $20,000 as emergency funds, because she never wanted to be without a cent again.
She put $10,000 of it into starting her own home care business on 1 December 2021. At Christmas dinner three weeks later, her 28-year-old nephew told her to put the lot in. She landed on about $15,000.
"Why I needed my 28-year-old nephew to give me that freedom, I'm not sure. But I needed someone to tell me it was okay to put a little extra in."
Four and a half years later, Exceptional Care for You is a multi-million dollar business providing in-home aged care and disability support. Di is candid about how she got it off the ground.
"Look, it was all bullshit, really. I mean, the business was sound. But me – I can do this and I can do that. I had no evidence I could do that. I thought I could, and people bought it, and I did it."
Asked where she'd be if she'd stayed married, the answer is immediate: "I certainly wouldn't be here, because I wasn't allowed to do anything that would make me look more successful than him."
Listen to the full conversation
Di talks about all of this and more in her episode of Divorce With Carolyn, including writing her memoir, Courage to Be Me, and what she'd say to a woman sitting where she once sat. Listen to the episode here.
Frequently asked questions
Is it too late to start over after divorce at 50?
Di started her business in her fifties with $10,000 and no track record as a business owner. Her experience suggests the barrier is less about age and more about having enough self-belief to begin, which for many women has to be rebuilt first.
Does staying together protect the children?
Not always, and not in Di's case. Her son asked her to end the marriage. Children often see far more of what's happening than parents realise, even when a parent works hard to shield them.
What counts as abuse if there's no violence?
Emotional and financial abuse are recognised forms of family violence in Australia. Ongoing verbal criticism, controlling money, and isolating someone from friends and family are all patterns 1800RESPECT can talk through, 24 hours a day, on 1800 737 732.
How long does it take to feel like yourself again?
For Di, it was around five years after the separation before she felt she was growing again. That timeline is hers, not a rule, and it was lengthened by losing both parents in the same period.
If you see yourself in Di's story
Most women arrive at separation the way Di did – not sure what they're entitled to, not sure who to believe, and not sure what to sort out first. You don't have to work that out on your own. Find out about working with me one-on-one.
With love, Carolyn xx
