On Instagram feeds often crowded with curated, contrived content, a recent post from Monette Wagner stood out for its disarming openness.

Looking into the camera, Wagner, a 36-year-old mother of three, said in the video: “Divorce can feel like a death.”

In what resembles a digital journal, Wagner has been posting videos in real time about the emotions and life changes that have come with her recent divorce. Building financial independence, adjusting to co-parenting and moving on from heartbreak are recurring themes in her Instagram posts.

A growing number of people, the majority of them women, are sharing unvarnished divorce stories on social media, both offering and seeking advice. By moving beyond the stigma around discussing marital breakdowns, the content gives creators a space to heal and gives followers a way to relate to and reflect on their own experiences and emotions. The trend reflects broader shifts in how divorce is discussed publicly: while the overall U.S. divorce rate has declined over recent decades, census and survey data have shown that divorce has become more common among adults in their 40s and older — the age group now spanning older millennials and Generation X — even as it has dropped among younger adults.

Wagner, a professional photographer in Indianapolis, already had an Instagram platform to share and promote her work. But she recently took the page in this more vulnerable direction.

Alongside posts about the heavier moments, she also shares lessons learned and more optimistic reflections. She has posted about wanting to reconnect with the confident, curious person she was more than a decade ago, before she met her now-former husband. She is revisiting passions she had as a teenager, including skateboarding and learning to DJ.

“I wanted to show my kids that you can still be strong even through these hard days. I wanted to show them how strong hope is,” she said. “I feel more confident. I feel resilient. I feel like I faced my fears of showing up scared, of putting myself out there as my authentic self.”

On TikTok, where niche categories of content often earn a nickname, posts focused on marital woes have been dubbed “divorce-tok.” The format is part of a wider pattern on the platform, where communities such as “CleanTok” and “BookTok” have shown how hashtags can turn personal interests and life experiences into audiences numbering in the millions.

The amount of detail creators choose to share about their divorce and marriage varies widely. Some, like Wagner, do not post about their ex-partners. Others offer detailed accounts of problems in their marriages and the sometimes messy and lengthy process of finalizing a divorce.

The voyeuristic world of social media tends to reward story-time-style videos in which creators speak as if they are chatting on the phone with a friend, sparing no details. Some creators post one-off videos, while others make divorce the center of their platforms. Divorce-related trends also appear periodically online, including this season’s “hot divorcée summer” videos and clips showing people’s post-divorce “glow-ups,” or physical and, in many cases, emotional transformations. The #divorce hashtag has millions of posts on both TikTok and Instagram.

Jen Hamilton, a labor and delivery nurse with more than 5 million TikTok followers, has recently been sharing the “nitty-gritty” details behind her divorce, as she said in one video. Hamilton has explained how her husband led what she called a “double life” with another partner, and she has posted videos of herself crying, cracking jokes and processing the news while maintaining her signature optimism.

In a more celebratory post, Hamilton shared photos and videos from what would have been her 14th wedding anniversary, marking the occasion with what she called a “Jendependence Day” party. More than a dozen friends and co-workers joined her at her North Carolina home as she burned her bedsheets and toasted to her future beyond her marriage.

“I feel like if I share my pain with you, I don’t feel so alone, because there’s so many other people going through the exact same thing,” she said in a video in July. She added that her followers, in turn, feel less alone too.

Some men have posted content along these lines, but women make up the vast majority of creators posting about divorce.

Many of these creators say they are not sharing their stories in hopes of gaining pity or sympathy, but rather to build a sense of community online with people who have gone through similar experiences.

Alex Daly, a 41-year-old creator in Philadelphia, started posting about her divorce about three years after it happened. Once she felt she had processed her emotions, she was eager to talk about it. She aims to reach people who are “still in the thick of it, because it’s a really hard place to be,” she said.

“It can feel very lonely and isolating. It can feel like you’re the only person going through it,” Daly said. Followers have thanked her and told her she is saying what they have been thinking and feeling. “You’re making me feel normal,” some people message her, she said.

It may seem paradoxical that a topic that can be difficult or awkward to discuss with family and friends is also one some people are comfortable sharing with potentially millions of strangers online. But digital connections can be easier to form than in-person ones, according to Tasha R. Dunn, an associate professor at the University of Toledo who researches the relationship between lived experiences and media, including how people present their lives on social media.

“There are few divorce support groups in a given community, but you have something at the tip of your fingers on your phone or computer where you can find people who’ve literally shared your same experience,” Dunn said. “People maybe feel a little bit safer to put that content out there rather than to have a physical town hall and say, ’Everybody come, I’m going to share my experience.’”

The candor that makes divorce-related content so popular could also be harmful for people posting while legal proceedings are ongoing.

Jackie Combs, a matrimonial and family law attorney in Los Angeles, said she does not recommend that people share anything related to their divorce, especially personal grievances or intimate details, publicly online.

“Every single reel that you put out there, every piece of content that’s related to it, you have to presume that somebody is watching and is going to use it as evidence, if needed,” she said.

On social media, Combs herself often posts about divorce, speaking about the importance of financial independence and prenuptial agreements. She said she sees social media as a key part of the “destigmatization” of divorce and a way to show people it is “not the end, it’s just a pivot.”

Creators like Wagner and Daly can also become targets of intense trolling and negativity.

Daly said she has received comments and messages from people saying she is “ruining people’s lives” or that she does not have morals. She said she tries not to let those reactions get to her because those people do not know what happened in the privacy of her marriage or who she truly is.

The negativity is “just proving that there is still a stigma and a taboo around divorce,” Daly said. That keeps her motivated to “share about how divorce just doesn’t have to be the end of your life and how it can actually be an amazing beginning.”

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com