Latest / Reflect Reclaim & Liberate - with Sallyanne Hartnell / Divorce Is Not The Worst Thing

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Divorce Is Not The Worst Thing · Reflect Reclaim & Liberate - with Sallyanne Hartnell

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome to Reflect, Reclaim and Liberate, a podcast covering all things relationships, separation, and divorce.
• 0:09
  SPEAKER_00: How to create healthy, happy, fulfilling relationships without sacrificing any part of yourself.
• 0:15
  SPEAKER_00: Supporting anyone feeling challenged in their relationship or marriage, these are confidential conversations for you if you're navigating separation, divorce, or reorganizing life afterwards.
• 0:26
  SPEAKER_00: Decide whether to stay or leave a relationship or marriage, divorce with less drama, and consciously choose what's next for you.
• 0:36
  SPEAKER_00: I acknowledge the traditional owners of the land on which this podcast is recorded, the war and tree people of the Poolin Nation, and pay my respects to their elders, past, present, and emerging.
• 0:45
  SPEAKER_00: I acknowledge them as the original storytellers of this land.
• 0:53
  SPEAKER_00: Hello, hello, and welcome to this week's episode of Reflect, Reclaim and Liberate.
• 0:58
  SPEAKER_00: Today I want to say something that might land a little sideways for you.
• 1:04
  SPEAKER_00: And that is, divorce is not the worst thing that happened to you or that could happen to you, but staying might have been or might be.
• 1:16
  SPEAKER_00: And if that feels uncomfortable or disruptive to hear, I would invite you just to allow it, just allow it to sit there for you for a moment.
• 1:27
  SPEAKER_00: And also consider this a message from the other side, from women, from those who've already been where you are, right where you are, and a message from me.
• 1:41
  SPEAKER_00: Because I know for some of you that's going to feel immediately viscerally true, and for others listening, it might feel like more of a poke, a provocation.
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_00: Like, I don't know your story, I don't know what you've been through, what you're going through, I don't know how much you loved them, how hurt you were, how hard you tried, or how many times you almost made it work, you made it fixed, you made it healed, right?
• 2:15
  SPEAKER_00: You're right, you're absolutely right.
• 2:17
  SPEAKER_00: I do not know the specifics of your individual story, but I do know this.
• 2:24
  SPEAKER_00: Most of the people, most of the women I work with, most of the women who actually find their way to this podcast, to working with me, didn't end up navigating divorce because things were fine, right?
• 2:41
  SPEAKER_00: They ended up here because something on some level was not working.
• 2:47
  SPEAKER_00: And sometimes that was true for a really long time, often longer than they would care or like or want to admit, or were longer than they were willing or even able to see while they were still in it, and it's only afterwards, in the quiet, in the reflection, that it becomes clear that they can finally look back and really clearly see it for what it was.
• 3:18
  SPEAKER_00: And somewhere in the process of moving through, surviving the messy, hard parts, getting through what needs to be moved through, the legal process, the logistics, the grief, the chaos, the uncertainty, and that sheer overwhelming relentlessness of navigating separation, divorce.
• 3:39
  SPEAKER_00: The marriage or relationship itself sometimes gets rewritten a little in memory.
• 3:47
  SPEAKER_00: It gets a bit softer, a little easier, a little safer, and I'm talking emotionally safer here, not about abusive relationships in any form.
• 3:56
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not saying that we rewrite the history of that.
• 4:00
  SPEAKER_00: But looking back, the marriage, the relationship is rewritten into a version perhaps a little easier, simpler, softer, better than it really was.
• 4:13
  SPEAKER_00: Because that's what we tend to do as human beings, right?
• 4:16
  SPEAKER_00: Big-hearted, caring, generous humans that we are, we have a tendency or almost a bias to gloss over the parts we don't really want to remember or recall and really focus on or attend to draw our attention to the good parts, the better parts, to look back with those rose-tinted glasses on, right?
• 4:38
  SPEAKER_00: And it's not necessarily a flaw or a fault, it's a very human experience or very human thing to do.
• 4:47
  SPEAKER_00: But what it can actually do then is make us grieve a version of the relationship that perhaps wasn't entirely real, the highlight real version, right?
• 4:59
  SPEAKER_00: An edited version of something that really was far more complicated, layered, nuanced.
• 5:07
  SPEAKER_00: And what happens then is we can make ourselves, our decisions, our choices, our behaviors wrong or at fault for leaving, for choosing, for rebuilding after being left.
• 5:20
  SPEAKER_00: We can center ourselves in the wrongness and apportion all the blame to us and carry all of that, right?
• 5:30
  SPEAKER_00: So I want to offer a different framework or a different reframe today.
• 5:36
  SPEAKER_00: What if divorce isn't the tragedy?
• 5:39
  SPEAKER_00: What if divorce isn't the tragedy in your story?
• 5:43
  SPEAKER_00: And what if if you're still in that holding pattern and still asking the questions, what if divorce is not going to be the tragic part of your story?
• 5:53
  SPEAKER_00: What if it's actually the turning point?
• 5:57
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm not saying this because it isn't hard or hasn't been hard, it has been or it will be hard, or it's still hard.
• 6:07
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not saying this because I want to gloss over or minimize the hard that you know intuitively is coming for you if you decide to end your marriage or leave a relationship, or you're in the middle of that, or you've already moved through it.
• 6:25
  SPEAKER_00: What if it is one of the hardest things?
• 6:29
  SPEAKER_00: One of the hardest things you've ever done, or it's going to be one of the hardest things you'll have to do maybe ever.
• 6:35
  SPEAKER_00: That's real, and I'm not minimizing it for one second.
• 6:39
  SPEAKER_00: And this isn't about toxic posity either, right?
• 6:43
  SPEAKER_00: If you're in the messy hard part right now, if you're asking those hard questions about your life, about your marriage, about who you even are anymore, I'm not asking you to reframe that into a blessing.
• 6:56
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not suggesting that you look on the bright side or find the lesson or the silver lining or be grateful about what's happening.
• 7:04
  SPEAKER_00: Not yet.
• 7:05
  SPEAKER_00: And maybe not for a while.
• 7:06
  SPEAKER_00: And maybe there will be parts of it that you're never grateful for, and that is fine and true and real, right?
• 7:15
  SPEAKER_00: But hard and wrong are not the same.
• 7:19
  SPEAKER_00: Hard and wrong are not the same thing.
• 7:21
  SPEAKER_00: Some of the most important transformative moments of our lives are also the hardest and the most painful, and that doesn't make them mistakes or wrong.
• 7:37
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes it makes them exactly the right thing.
• 7:41
  SPEAKER_00: Not necessarily what we wanted, but perhaps what we needed.
• 7:53
  SPEAKER_00: I know when I ask those women, would you go back?
• 7:58
  SPEAKER_00: Would you change things?
• 7:59
  SPEAKER_00: The answer is always, I was gonna say, it's always grey.
• 8:04
  SPEAKER_00: It's never black and white, it's always nuanced, right?
• 8:08
  SPEAKER_00: Some of the smaller details, yes, they would go back and change.
• 8:12
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe they wish they'd found support sooner.
• 8:16
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe they wish they'd asked for help earlier or in a different fashion, a different form.
• 8:22
  SPEAKER_00: There are always things in hindsight that might have been done with a little more grace, a little less pain, a little more clarity, or a bit more kindness, or even self-compassion.
• 8:32
  SPEAKER_00: There are always things that those clients will look back and think, could have done that differently, might have chosen differently there, might have spoken differently there.
• 8:43
  SPEAKER_00: But that bigger decision, that stay or go, stay or leave, rewind to that moment, and almost universally the answer is no.
• 8:57
  SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna say 99.95%.
• 9:00
  SPEAKER_00: The answer is no.
• 9:02
  SPEAKER_00: And that's not because what came after was easy.
• 9:05
  SPEAKER_00: That's not because the divorce and the process was easy, because it very rarely is.
• 9:13
  SPEAKER_00: And if it is, they're probably not working with me, right?
• 9:16
  SPEAKER_00: If it's an easy, simple, clean decision and moving on without difficulty or challenge, they're probably not coming to work with me.
• 9:27
  SPEAKER_00: But it's not because the process that they moved through was easy, it's actually because what came after and who they became after was worth it.
• 9:42
  SPEAKER_00: And their lives, these women I'm talking about, their lives are not neat and perfect, they're absolutely not.
• 9:48
  SPEAKER_00: They're full and messy and complicated, and they've got all the messy parts that come along with reorganizing a life or maybe a business, work, kids, family, after divorce, reorganizing all that stuff, and also their lives are completely unapologetically theirs, their own.
• 10:11
  SPEAKER_00: And so wherever you are in your process, your relationship experience or journey, I want you to find those people.
• 10:22
  SPEAKER_00: I want you to find those women.
• 10:24
  SPEAKER_00: I want you to look ahead on the path and find the ones who are two, five, ten steps ahead of you and look at what they've built for themselves.
• 10:37
  SPEAKER_00: Not because their life will look exactly like yours, but because they give you evidence, they give you hope, they give you proof of what's possible, living proof that you will get through it, that there is actually another side, and there is actually good stuff, a great life waiting for you on the other side.
• 11:01
  SPEAKER_00: You know, we seek mentors in all sorts of areas of our life.
• 11:05
  SPEAKER_00: You know, we have coaches at the gym, we have mentors at work, we have people who know what we don't quite know yet, people who are doing something that we want to know how to do for ourselves.
• 11:19
  SPEAKER_00: And I really want us to let separating, moving out of relationship, navigating divorce to be just one more thing like that.
• 11:28
  SPEAKER_00: So find your people because those who are five, ten, or twenty steps ahead of you, they didn't know there was another side.
• 11:37
  SPEAKER_00: They couldn't be certain that any of this good stuff was coming for them when they were in it, they couldn't see it, and you might not be able to see it right now either, and that's okay.
• 11:50
  SPEAKER_00: You don't need to be able to see the whole picture, you don't need to be able to see the whole staircase.
• 11:56
  SPEAKER_00: You just need to trust that it exists, and if you can't trust that yet, borrow the trust of women who've already climbed the staircase in front of you.
• 12:09
  SPEAKER_00: Look to those who are a few steps ahead of you and see what they're creating for themselves.
• 12:15
  SPEAKER_00: Let them show you and let them be your proof and your hope about what's possible for you.
• 12:21
  SPEAKER_00: So if you are in the middle of this right now, if it feels like the worst thing that has ever happened to you, or if you're considering it, quietly questioning, quietly terrified of what that might mean, the hard that's coming for you, I want to gently offer you this.
• 12:38
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe it is the hardest.
• 12:40
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe it is the absolute hardest thing that you are doing, that you have ever done, that you will ever do.
• 12:46
  SPEAKER_00: And maybe maybe it's also the thing that gives you your life back.
• 12:52
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe the marriage ending isn't the greatest loss.
• 12:57
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe it's actually the beginning of you finally getting back to begin, you starting to come back to yourself, you coming home to yourself, you living your life on your terms and in your own way.
• 13:15
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm not suggesting or asking that you or expecting even that you do all of that or feel all of that today.
• 13:22
  SPEAKER_00: I'm just asking you to consider leaving a small window open for yourself to the possibility that one day, maybe not today, and maybe not for a while, but one day you might look back at this very moment and see it differently.
• 13:42
  SPEAKER_00: Just like those women I spoke about.
• 13:44
  SPEAKER_00: You might look back at this moment and see it differently, feel differently about it, and know that this is where it started for you.
• 13:55
  SPEAKER_00: This is where it started.
• 13:57
  SPEAKER_00: And maybe that's enough for today for now.
• 14:08
  SPEAKER_00: If this landed for you, if something in this conversation stirred something, I would invite you to stay in touch.
• 14:19
  SPEAKER_00: There's a link in the show notes to join my mailing list and it's where I share things that I don't necessarily put anywhere else.
• 14:26
  SPEAKER_00: Thoughts, reflections, announcements, invitations.
• 14:29
  SPEAKER_00: And if you're at a point where you are ready to stop navigating this, whatever this is for you alone, and you want someone in your corner who gets it professionally, yes, but also personally, my one-to-one coaching practice is open for applications.
• 14:50
  SPEAKER_00: Again, that link is in the show notes.
• 14:53
  SPEAKER_00: No pressure, no pitch, just reach out and let's have a conversation about what that could look like for you.
• 14:59
  SPEAKER_00: Support that meets you exactly where you are on that staircase, right?
• 15:06
  SPEAKER_00: For now, go gently, take good care of yourself until next time.
• 15:12
  SPEAKER_00: Bye for now.
• 15:15
  SPEAKER_00: I'm Sally Ann Hartnell, divorce coach and strategist, and you've been listening to Reflect, Reclaim and Liberate.
• 15:21
  SPEAKER_00: You can follow me on Instagram at Reflect Coaching.
• 15:23
  SPEAKER_00: And if you can think of anyone who would love or benefit from listening to this episode, please share it with them.
• 15:29
  SPEAKER_00: I'd also be so grateful if you would follow and review the podcast so we can get in the ears of a whole lot more people just like you who are ready to reclaim and liberate themselves in life and love.
• 15:40
  SPEAKER_00: I hope you'll join me next week for another episode of Reflect, Reclaim and Liberate.
• 15:45
  SPEAKER_00: Until then,