Latest / Reflect Reclaim & Liberate - with Sallyanne Hartnell / The Divorce Plot Twist No One Tells You About

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The Divorce Plot Twist No One Tells You About · 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.
• 0:14
  SPEAKER_00: Supporting anyone feeling challenged in their relationship or marriage, these are confidential conversations for you if you're navigating separation, divorce or reorganising 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 Warrentry people of the Kulin 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: Welcome to this week's episode of Reflect, Reclaim and Liberate.
• 0:59
  SPEAKER_00: If you're new here, I'm Sally Ann, divorce coach, strategist, and someone who's sat probably exactly where you're sitting right now.
• 1:09
  SPEAKER_00: And I've coached and supported a whole lot of people through whatever it is you're experiencing, about to experience.
• 1:18
  SPEAKER_00: And if you're in it right now, if it's brutal and messy and heartbreaking, and you feel like you can barely see past the next hour, let alone next week, I want you to know that I see you.
• 1:34
  SPEAKER_00: This episode is for you.
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_00: If you are starting to come up for air, if you can see that glimmer, that glimpse of something on the other side of the messy and the hard stuff.
• 1:49
  SPEAKER_00: And it's also for you if you are through the worst of it and starting to reclaim and rebuild.
• 1:59
  SPEAKER_00: But sometimes at 2 a.m.
• 2:01
  SPEAKER_00: you still wonder.
• 2:03
  SPEAKER_00: You still wonder if it was the right thing, if it was all worth it.
• 2:07
  SPEAKER_00: This episode is for all three of you because what I want to talk about today is what comes after, and not in a toxic posity, everything happens for a reason, silver lining kind of way.
• 2:21
  SPEAKER_00: I want to be really clear about that.
• 2:23
  SPEAKER_00: I really dislike that framing, and I won't do that here, and I won't do that to you, but I do want to talk about and touch on the fact that there is an after, and that after can actually be if you choose it, if you create it consciously, if you do the work, if you let it, it can be genuinely, deeply, surprisingly even good.
• 2:50
  SPEAKER_00: It can be really good, not perfect, not without hard, not without loss and grief, and some of that all still comes in sometimes, right?
• 3:00
  SPEAKER_00: But good, really, truly good.
• 3:04
  SPEAKER_00: I walked with somebody who I did support through her messy, hard separation, divorce earlier this week, and we talked about how fantastically good it can be afterwards.
• 3:21
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, there's hard, yes, there's loneliness, yes, there's challenge, yes, there's stuff that still comes up, but we talked about how good, really good, deeply fulfilling, love-filled life can be afterwards.
• 3:38
  SPEAKER_00: So let's talk about it.
• 3:40
  SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna split it into parts.
• 3:42
  SPEAKER_00: Part one is the hard truth, right?
• 3:45
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not gonna skip past the hard part just to quickly get to the good stuff because that would be unfair, a disservice, and untruthful, right?
• 3:56
  SPEAKER_00: Because there is a hard truth.
• 3:57
  SPEAKER_00: Divorce is or has been or is going to be one of the hardest things you will ever do.
• 4:04
  SPEAKER_00: And I want you to hear that, acknowledge that, allow that, not as a warning or as some dramatic kind of overstatement, but just as a simple fact, a simple acknowledgement of what is true.
• 4:20
  SPEAKER_00: There is pain, there is that real physical, almost bone-deep pain, the kind that hits you, sits in your chest when you or your stomach when you wake up at 3 a.m.
• 4:34
  SPEAKER_00: and for a split second maybe you've forgotten and then it all comes back.
• 4:38
  SPEAKER_00: That kind of pain.
• 4:40
  SPEAKER_00: There's grief, there's grief for the relationship, grief for the version of your life you thought you were going to have, grief for the family unit.
• 4:49
  SPEAKER_00: Even if leaving or ending the relationship was the right thing, you are still allowed to, you are still grieving, all of that.
• 4:57
  SPEAKER_00: There is heartbreak, full stop, even when you were the one who chose to leave, even when you know it was the right thing, even when staying would have been unhealthy, the wrong thing.
• 5:10
  SPEAKER_00: You can know something is right and still feel the hurt, the pain, the loss of it.
• 5:16
  SPEAKER_00: Both things are true, can be true at the same time.
• 5:20
  SPEAKER_00: And there is the practical chaos, the legal process, the financial reorganization reckoning, the logistics of splitting a life, a shared life in half, parenting across two homes if you have kids, supporting and explaining things to your kids.
• 5:41
  SPEAKER_00: That's an ongoing thing, right?
• 5:43
  SPEAKER_00: Explaining it to your family, explaining it to yourself, even.
• 5:47
  SPEAKER_00: All of it's hard, and I'm not going to gloss over that or dress it up.
• 5:52
  SPEAKER_00: And also, this is the end, not the but.
• 5:57
  SPEAKER_00: There is something else happening at the same time of the as the heart, right?
• 6:04
  SPEAKER_00: Part two is the crack.
• 6:07
  SPEAKER_00: Because here's the thing about going through something that hard, it cracks you, it cracks you open, and not always in a graceful Instagram, lovely kind of way, but in a raw, uncomfortable, messy, really not glamorous kind of way, but it cracks you open nonetheless, right?
• 6:29
  SPEAKER_00: And when you are cracked open, truly cracked open, things can come in that maybe you didn't have room for or that couldn't get in before.
• 6:41
  SPEAKER_00: And possibility is one of those things.
• 6:44
  SPEAKER_00: When you are cracked open, you are open to possibility.
• 6:48
  SPEAKER_00: And I know that might feel a little bit trite or hollow right now if you are still in the thick of it.
• 6:57
  SPEAKER_00: Possibility, yeah, sure.
• 6:58
  SPEAKER_00: Possible that my life is in pieces, possible that I have no idea what comes next, possible that I am completely overwhelmed and terrified, and yes to all of that, and also possibility that you get to decide what comes next, and maybe for you it's the first time, or the first time in a really long time, or maybe it's in a way that you never have before, because what I see over and over and over again, and that came up in that conversation when I was walking with the person that I supported through her separation divorce earlier in the week, what I've seen, and what and even in myself, right?
• 7:41
  SPEAKER_00: When the life you were living is no longer your reality, it's no longer available to you.
• 7:48
  SPEAKER_00: When it's been pulled apart by choice or by circumstance, you are forced to really look deeply at your life, at yourself, at who you actually are, at what you actually want, at what you have been letting go of, minimizing, shrinking, setting aside, telling yourself that you didn't want or need, or maybe that it wasn't for you, or it was unrealistic, or that would hurt or impact or upset too many other people.
• 8:17
  SPEAKER_00: That process of really going deep and looking closely, of cracking yourself wide open, is uncomfortable, painful, challenging.
• 8:29
  SPEAKER_00: And it's also one of the best things you can do for yourself.
• 8:35
  SPEAKER_00: It is one of the most profound things that will ever happen to you.
• 8:40
  SPEAKER_00: Part three is what you realize.
• 8:43
  SPEAKER_00: And I want to talk about what starts to happen, not straight away, not immediately, not while you're still stuck in that survival kind of mode, getting getting things done, but just gradually as you start to come out of it, as things start to settle even a little bit, you start to realize things.
• 9:04
  SPEAKER_00: And this can actually happen while you're in the muddy, hard, dark tunnel, too, right?
• 9:11
  SPEAKER_00: You realize what you're made of, you realize what you're capable of, you realize how freaking fantastic you actually are, and that is not a small thing.
• 9:24
  SPEAKER_00: Most of us, many of us, go through our lives never really knowing what we're capable of.
• 9:31
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe we've been held in structures, in relationships, in roles, in identities, in family, uh, in family roles, right?
• 9:39
  SPEAKER_00: That told us who we were, what we could do, how much we could handle, and then when those structures fall away, or you choose to step out of them, or they get blown up, and you're standing there in the rawness, in the rubble, and you're thinking, How am I gonna get through this?
• 10:00
  SPEAKER_00: And then you do, you do the thing, right?
• 10:03
  SPEAKER_00: You get through it, and no, not perfectly, not without having your moments on the bathroom floor, not without falling apart sometimes, not without calling your people, your best friend, crying on the kitchen floor, but you get through it.
• 10:18
  SPEAKER_00: So somewhere in that process, you realize you meet a version of yourself you maybe have never fully met before.
• 10:26
  SPEAKER_00: The one who is really strong, really powerful, really anchored in what she wants and what she knows and what she'll settle for, who is capable, resilient, and who is, despite everything, despite the hard stuff, still here, still standing.
• 10:44
  SPEAKER_00: And I think what I see a lot, not I think, what I see a lot is clients, people, reflect community people realizing what they've been minimizing about themselves, and it really tends to hit people.
• 11:06
  SPEAKER_00: It's not always that big dramatic revelation.
• 11:09
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes it is a slow burn, a slow dawning, a slow realization, a recognition of all the things that you've put down or pushed aside or told yourself that weren't for you, your voice, your needs, your ambitions, your joy, your pleasure, your body, your thoughts, your opinions, your vision for your own life, yourself essentially, and you realize it's you because it always is, it always comes back to you, right?
• 11:36
  SPEAKER_00: The thing that you've been minimizing, holding back on, making smaller, it's you, and you realise maybe for the first time what you've been capable of all along.
• 11:49
  SPEAKER_00: You just needed this space to find out, and it's not necessarily what we'd choose, right?
• 11:56
  SPEAKER_00: It's not necessarily the way we choose to have this realization.
• 12:04
  SPEAKER_00: But there it is, one of the gifts that divorce can give us, and that brings me to part four.
• 12:14
  SPEAKER_00: It's the space, it's often the thing that surprises people the most, something that they didn't expect, and that is space, spaciousness.
• 12:26
  SPEAKER_00: And yes, I'm talking about physical space, but I'm also really talking more about internal space, the space that opens up when you are no longer accommodating another human being, no longer or in such a big way accommodating wants, hopes, needs, dreams, desires of someone else.
• 12:56
  SPEAKER_00: You're no longer bending your life and yourself around that other person.
• 13:01
  SPEAKER_00: You're no longer maybe even managing someone else's moods or tiptoeing through your own life or making yourself smaller to fit this version of a life.
• 13:15
  SPEAKER_00: You suddenly have space, space to breathe, space to exhale, space to let go, space to think your own thoughts and think them all the way through to the end.
• 13:31
  SPEAKER_00: Space to feel what you truly actually feel without thinking about how that impacts someone else, without immediately editing it.
• 13:45
  SPEAKER_00: You have space to become the version of you that you most want to be, and maybe that's the parent you most want to be.
• 13:53
  SPEAKER_00: You have space to show up in your own life, fully, wholly, without apology, without holding back.
• 14:02
  SPEAKER_00: You have space.
• 14:03
  SPEAKER_00: And I talk, this is gendered, and I talk to women all the time who actually tell me they feel guilty about this, about the relief, about the fact that amidst all of the hard stuff, all the grief, all the chaos, all the overwhelming, there is also this.
• 14:20
  SPEAKER_00: There is space, space to breathe, a kind of quiet space that feels really foreign and a little bit terrifying, and also underneath all of that, it feels like something close to peace.
• 14:40
  SPEAKER_00: So if you're feeling secretly guilty about the space that this decision, this life event, this season has brought, you're allowed to feel okay about that space.
• 14:53
  SPEAKER_00: You are allowed to feel peaceful, present, at ease, even happy, joyful, open, curious.
• 15:00
  SPEAKER_00: These aren't things that divorce will take from you permanently.
• 15:06
  SPEAKER_00: And for many, they are things that a separation, a relationship breakdown, a divorce actually give us back the space to feel all of those things again.
• 15:22
  SPEAKER_00: The next part is change, things change.
• 15:26
  SPEAKER_00: So let's talk about what else shifts and changes because it's not just internal, there are real external changes that come for you.
• 15:37
  SPEAKER_00: Your environment changes, sometimes your house changes, your postcode, your financial situation, your daily rhythms and routines change.
• 15:47
  SPEAKER_00: The things that used to anchor you or anchor your identity, even might be gone or different or changed, even unrecognizable.
• 15:57
  SPEAKER_00: And sometimes your people change, right?
• 15:59
  SPEAKER_00: And this can be really unsettling.
• 16:02
  SPEAKER_00: It's something that I don't think any of us is prepared for.
• 16:06
  SPEAKER_00: There is a social shifting, a social change that happens when you separate.
• 16:11
  SPEAKER_00: Some friendships can't hold space for the version of you that you're becoming.
• 16:19
  SPEAKER_00: Some people don't know how to be with you now that you're not part of a couple.
• 16:26
  SPEAKER_00: Some spaces don't hold space for you as a single person.
• 16:35
  SPEAKER_00: Some friendships, some relationships fade, just fade quietly, a gradual drifting that neither of you barely notice, even until it's kind of happened, it's done.
• 16:48
  SPEAKER_00: Others might crash and burn for whatever reason, and that can really hurt.
• 16:55
  SPEAKER_00: That can come as an extra layer of loss and grief.
• 17:00
  SPEAKER_00: But also what I know to be true from my own experience, but also from supporting and guiding so many others through it, new friendships, new social connections are formed and built.
• 17:16
  SPEAKER_00: And yes, from the pieces and parts of who you are becoming, from the new version of your life, from the newness of your life, real friendships, deep ones, true ones, often with those who've walked the path ahead of you, or even alongside you.
• 17:35
  SPEAKER_00: Um, friendships, relationships, connections that don't require you to show up as a version of yourself that no longer exists.
• 17:47
  SPEAKER_00: And when you show up as yourself in this new version of yourself, some friendships will fall away, but you actually tend to call in and attract people who are ready to meet the new version of you, ready to meet you right there, people who see you, all of you, and choose to make room for both who you are now, and they're excited to welcome who you're becoming, right?
• 18:18
  SPEAKER_00: And that is not that is not a small thing.
• 18:22
  SPEAKER_00: And then part six is I think one of my favorite things to witness and support my clients in when I work one-on-one, and that is the choosing.
• 18:36
  SPEAKER_00: You start choosing yourself, and it's not a one-and-done type choice here, right?
• 18:42
  SPEAKER_00: And it doesn't always have to be a big traumatic gesture, although for some it is exactly that: a trip, a car, a wardrobe edit, whatever.
• 18:54
  SPEAKER_00: But more importantly, it is more than once, it is a process of choosing you over and over and over again in the big moments and the small moments.
• 19:07
  SPEAKER_00: It might be just a moment you say no, no thank you to something that drains you and open up possibility to say yes to something that really lights you up.
• 19:19
  SPEAKER_00: It might be the moment that you do book that thing, take the trip, sign up for the class, send the email, have the conversation that you've been avoiding having, whether that's with your ex-partner, with your boss, whoever.
• 19:33
  SPEAKER_00: It's the moment that you look in the mirror instead of clocking and cataloguing everything that you don't like, everything that you think is wrong, you see the whole of yourself.
• 19:45
  SPEAKER_00: You see a person who's been through something pretty enormous and is still standing here.
• 19:53
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, perfectly imperfect, messy, but also amazing and beautiful and strong and powerful and full of potential and love and hope and joy.
• 20:03
  SPEAKER_00: And in those moments, it's in those moments that you really choose yourself without apology, without guilt, without the weight of all the old stories about what you're supposed to want, who you're supposed to be, how much space you're allowed to take up, whatever it is for you.
• 20:24
  SPEAKER_00: You choose yourself joyfully, unapologetically.
• 20:27
  SPEAKER_00: And again, it's not a one-time thing, it's a practice, it's a daily, ongoing.
• 20:34
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes you get it right, sometimes you nail it, and sometimes you don't sort of practice of coming back to yourself and of choosing yourself again and again and again, and then you open up yourself to the next part, part seven, which is the dreams or the dreaming, and it might be those dreams that you stopped letting yourself have or believe in, ones that you quietly folded up and tucked away somewhere, safe somewhere, secret, ones that you told yourself were unrealistic, or they were for someone else, or for later, or after, always after something else.
• 21:15
  SPEAKER_00: But those dreams have a have a habit, a sneaky habit of surfacing when you've created this space for yourself, and those dreams are there waiting, and they are for you.
• 21:29
  SPEAKER_00: They're not too much, they're not unrealistic, they're not for someone braver or luckier or smarter or further along the path than you are, they're for you.
• 21:39
  SPEAKER_00: So you stop shrinking your vision to fit your old life, and you start dreaming of what this future life really could look and feel like, and you start consciously creating and building a life that is big enough to hold all of That, all of that dreaming.
• 22:01
  SPEAKER_00: And I don't mean a life big enough.
• 22:04
  SPEAKER_00: When I say that, I don't necessarily mean an extravagant life.
• 22:08
  SPEAKER_00: Not necessarily.
• 22:09
  SPEAKER_00: Not a life that you know ticks all the boxes and looks impressive from the outside, but a good life, a good life for you, a life that fits you, and a life that's lived consciously and intentionally on your own terms, however, that looks for you specifically, and not according to what someone else sees as a great life.
• 22:33
  SPEAKER_00: It is about no compromising on the things that really matter to you, no minimising, no shrinking, no keeping yourself or your dreams small.
• 22:44
  SPEAKER_00: And some of those dreams we only dare to kind of just take a peek at.
• 22:50
  SPEAKER_00: We only allow them to be live at you know 2 a.m.
• 22:57
  SPEAKER_00: They're the ones that you maybe whispered to yourself in the dark, and ones you did not dare to say out loud in case they sounded ridiculous.
• 23:06
  SPEAKER_00: Those are the dreams I'm talking about.
• 23:08
  SPEAKER_00: And they stop being secrets you keep from yourself.
• 23:11
  SPEAKER_00: They become something that you actually step toward openly, joyfully, without needing or asking or wanting anyone else's permission to do it.
• 23:26
  SPEAKER_00: It is your joy, your life, your call, your dream, your dreaming.
• 23:31
  SPEAKER_00: And then finally, part eight, coming home.
• 23:35
  SPEAKER_00: I want to bring this back to something really, really simple because I think at times we make, even I make with the podcast, right?
• 23:44
  SPEAKER_00: We make it more complicated than it really needs to be because at the center of all this, all of this stuff I've been talking about on today's episode, all of the rebuilding and the reclaiming and the choosing and the dreaming is something that is just the core of it all, the core of the work, right?
• 24:03
  SPEAKER_00: And the real gift, if you're willing to reframe it and see it that way, it is that you come home to yourself.
• 24:12
  SPEAKER_00: That's it.
• 24:14
  SPEAKER_00: As simple and as small as that sounds, that's it.
• 24:19
  SPEAKER_00: You come home to yourself, and that can be after years, maybe decades, maybe an even an entire lifetime of being oriented, of your life being oriented around and including someone else, or someone else's, you know, if you have kids, of building your life around a relationship, around a family structure, and an identity that was always partly someone else's idea, and someone else's idea of who you should be and how that life should look and what that life should be like for you, and you don't have to do that anymore.
• 25:01
  SPEAKER_00: So you come home, and that kind of homecoming, it isn't always easy, and it isn't always comfortable, and it isn't always what you expected.
• 25:12
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes you arrive home to yourself and you don't quite recognize anymore what you find, who you are, and you have to get to know yourself again, reacquainted with yourself.
• 25:24
  SPEAKER_00: You have to maybe rebuild trust with yourself, you have to maybe learn how to listen to yourself again.
• 25:32
  SPEAKER_00: But when you get there, you are home, and from that place, that grounded, really returned to yourself place, everything else becomes possible.
• 25:45
  SPEAKER_00: So if you're in the thick of it now and all of this, all of these words seem and feel impossible for you, impossibly far away.
• 25:55
  SPEAKER_00: I want you to really hear me.
• 25:58
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not promising that what you're going through and what you're about to go through won't be hard because it will be.
• 26:07
  SPEAKER_00: I can't say that it won't hurt and be hard and heartbreaking and painful.
• 26:12
  SPEAKER_00: It will be.
• 26:13
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm certainly not telling you to look on the bright side or that everything happens for a reason or that you should be grateful for this.
• 26:20
  SPEAKER_00: I'm certainly not saying that.
• 26:21
  SPEAKER_00: What I am telling you from everything I've seen and from my own life is that there is an after, and it is available to you, not to someone else, not to some other luckier, more put together version of you, to you, exactly as you are right now.
• 26:40
  SPEAKER_00: And if this is what you can you can feel for yourself, you can intuit that it's there, if this is what you're craving, if it's what you're quietly or even not so quietly dreaming of, wishing for, just know that you're exactly where you need to be.
• 26:57
  SPEAKER_00: You're ready, and it's it is coming for you.
• 27:01
  SPEAKER_00: And if you're ready to go deeper, if you want more than just the podcast, if you want to actually do this work with support around you, with scaffolding around you, with my support, there's a link in the bio, and that's where we start with a just a chat, a conversation about what that might look look like.
• 27:20
  SPEAKER_00: I would love to support you, I would love to have you if you want to go deeper.
• 27:26
  SPEAKER_00: As always, thank you for being here.
• 27:28
  SPEAKER_00: I hope you have taken something from today's episode that can support you to move forward and to accept the crazy plot twist that divorce is, but also the hope and the possibility that it can gift us.
• 27:47
  SPEAKER_00: If you know somebody who might benefit from listening to this, please share it.
• 27:53
  SPEAKER_00: Until next time, thank you for being here.
• 27:56
  SPEAKER_00: Bye for now.
• 27:58
  SPEAKER_00: I'm Sally Ann Hartnell, divorce coach and strategist, and you've been listening to Reflect, Reclaim and Liberate.
• 28:03
  SPEAKER_00: You can follow me on Instagram at Reflect Coaching, and if you can think of anyone who would love or benefit from listening to this episode, please share it with them.
• 28:12
  SPEAKER_00: I'd also be so grateful if you would follow and review the podcast so we can get it in the ears of a whole lot more people just like you who are ready to reclaim and liberate themselves in life and love.
• 28:23
  SPEAKER_00: I hope you'll join me next week for another episode of Reflect, Reclaim and Liberate.
• 28:28
  SPEAKER_00: Until then.