The objective of the article is to analyze how divorced women construct their postdivorce status and describe ways of overcoming divorce and finding new meaning in life. The interviewees were people whose identity as married women had been largely based on the celebrity status of their ex-husbands. The analysis of interview material published in Eesti Naine (Estonian Woman) from the mid-1980s to the early 2000s demonstrates that the approach toward the subject of divorce has changed considerably—from ignoring it in the 1980s to outspoken stories including full names in the second half of the 1990s. The study indicated that divorced women interviewed for the magazine reconstructed their postdivorce identities by using three main types of narrative—success stories, sad stories, and stories constructed around postdivorce parenthood. Our study suggests that there is interplay between changes in the social context and attitudes toward divorce and postdivorce status.
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