Latest / Reflect Reclaim & Liberate - with Sallyanne Hartnell / The Dark Side of the Post-Divorce Glow Up

Transcript

The Dark Side of the Post-Divorce Glow Up · 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.
• 0:18
  SPEAKER_00: 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, all about the dark side or the darker side of what we call that post-divorce glow-up.
• 1:04
  SPEAKER_00: There's a story that often gets told, shared on social media about what happens after a breakup or a divorce.
• 1:12
  SPEAKER_00: It's that we do the work and we emerge reinvigorated, reinvented, all shiny and put together.
• 1:19
  SPEAKER_00: And if I'm honest, it is something that I speak about across my platforms here on the podcast and social media, but I'm generally talking not about simply a physical change.
• 1:34
  SPEAKER_00: And for some people post-divorce, that is true, it happens.
• 1:37
  SPEAKER_00: There is this physical transformation, right?
• 1:40
  SPEAKER_00: And for others, the story is a little more complex and nuanced than that.
• 1:45
  SPEAKER_00: Since my conversation with Emma Wright, feminist health coach and author of Body Confident on the podcast recently, and if you haven't listened to that, I'll try and remember to link it in the show notes, or just go back and search for it.
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_00: It's a great conversation.
• 1:59
  SPEAKER_00: We talk about good girl conditioning and worthiness and what's really underneath this post-glow divorce glow-up narrative.
• 2:07
  SPEAKER_00: Since that podcast episode was released, I have been having more conversations in person, in my DMs, over email, with clients, with women for whom that episode really landed, really resonated.
• 2:23
  SPEAKER_00: Women messaging me, clients bringing it into sessions, and I keep hearing versions of the same thing.
• 2:31
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, that that is exactly it.
• 2:33
  SPEAKER_00: You know, that that episode, the content of that episode, that conversation with Emma really landed, and that people are feeling, yep, that's exactly my experience.
• 2:42
  SPEAKER_00: But can you go deeper?
• 2:44
  SPEAKER_00: Can you go the next step?
• 2:45
  SPEAKER_00: And so that's what I'm doing today.
• 2:47
  SPEAKER_00: We tend to value as humans or at least acknowledge the things that we can see, and post divorce, what people see is what you show them.
• 3:00
  SPEAKER_00: That external appearance, physically, yes, and also externally whether you are showing up in life, showing up at work, in your business, online, at the school concert, to the soccer match, whatever it is, whether you look okay, whether you're holding it together for your kids in front of your ex, maybe even in front of their new partner.
• 3:22
  SPEAKER_00: But underneath all of that, there's often this whole other layout happening, right?
• 3:26
  SPEAKER_00: And that's the part that really makes it into the wider story.
• 3:31
  SPEAKER_00: Definitely not into the publicly shared story.
• 3:35
  SPEAKER_00: It's the internal stuff, the internal work, that part that's unseen and silent and runs so much deeper.
• 3:42
  SPEAKER_00: And that's it's that deeper part that I'm referring to when I speak about reclamation after divorce.
• 3:50
  SPEAKER_00: The external can be something of a performance, right?
• 3:55
  SPEAKER_00: A role we play while working out what the hell is really going on for us, while finding footing in a new version of life, a new landscape, or that external kind of performative way of moving is just survival.
• 4:12
  SPEAKER_00: Often it's a bit of both, right?
• 4:15
  SPEAKER_00: Survival plus finding out who we are in this new version of life.
• 4:20
  SPEAKER_00: And so this concept, the post-divorce glow-up concept, one that's almost expected, especially of women, after a separation.
• 4:29
  SPEAKER_00: You know, the story goes, she gets her shit together, she loses kilos, she runs 10k fun run, chops her hair off, has a full makeover, whatever it is, and you know, there she is, all healed and happy.
• 4:42
  SPEAKER_00: And it's a bit like, and I'm not sure if I said this in conversation with Emma, but I think about it a bit like it's the bounce back after having a baby messaging that we're fed.
• 4:52
  SPEAKER_00: You know, we expect, or women are expected, to bounce back, to look amazing, to be like she was before she had a baby, you know, after and after something as transformative on so many levels as birthing a human, you don't just bounce back, you don't just go back to how you were, whether that's physically, mentally, emotionally, all the things, right?
• 5:14
  SPEAKER_00: And there's a similar narrative around life after divorce.
• 5:17
  SPEAKER_00: I think there's really so many parallels with that.
• 5:20
  SPEAKER_00: You know, you get the legal stuff done, the financial stuff done, you sort out the house and settle the kids, and then you just get on with life and make yourself look and supposedly feel amazing.
• 5:32
  SPEAKER_00: You've probably seen it, you know, it's shared on the internet.
• 5:36
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe you've even shared it yourself.
• 5:38
  SPEAKER_00: Women, because it is mostly women, posting side-by-side photos before and after pics, you know, during marriage or soon after the breakup, and then again after divorce, and the difference can actually be remarkable, startling.
• 5:51
  SPEAKER_00: She looks happier, brighter, lighter, more vibrant, more alive, and it gets labelled this glow-up thing.
• 5:59
  SPEAKER_00: And I understand why that framing is seductive because something real is happening in those photos, something real has shifted, but I want to offer you a different version of that story.
• 6:13
  SPEAKER_00: Look at it through a different lens because I think what we're actually witnessing in many of those side-by-side images is more than a physical transformation, it's more than you know a new gym routine, a new way of eating, a new wardrobe, even though it can be all of those things.
• 6:30
  SPEAKER_00: It is actually the liberating magic of being single, yes, and also it has almost everything to do with the nervous system.
• 6:42
  SPEAKER_00: And to help me explain that further to you, I want to tell you about a client, a woman that I worked with.
• 6:50
  SPEAKER_00: Her marriage ended really suddenly, brutally, without very much warning.
• 6:56
  SPEAKER_00: And in the weeks and probably months that followed, people, particularly those not especially close to her, people would comment on what they could see, offering up what they thought or assumed was a compliment without really understanding the nuance of what was really going on.
• 7:14
  SPEAKER_00: You know, wow, you look different, amazing.
• 7:17
  SPEAKER_00: Insert your descriptor of choice here.
• 7:19
  SPEAKER_00: What they were really commenting on was her body and that she had lost a lot of weight.
• 7:24
  SPEAKER_00: And she found it really difficult to know how to respond in that moment.
• 7:30
  SPEAKER_00: So she just sort of smile and say something benign, inane.
• 7:36
  SPEAKER_00: Because what else do you do when somebody pays you what they think is a compliment?
• 7:41
  SPEAKER_00: But here's what was actually happening.
• 7:44
  SPEAKER_00: Her nervous system was running the show.
• 7:48
  SPEAKER_00: She couldn't eat.
• 7:49
  SPEAKER_00: The stress had hit her digestion so hard that even when she did manage to get food down, her body wasn't even absorbing nutrients properly.
• 7:57
  SPEAKER_00: She couldn't sleep, she couldn't settle, so she walked kilometres every day just to have somewhere to put that energy, that anxiety that had taken up permanent residence in her body.
• 8:11
  SPEAKER_00: She wasn't glowing up, she was surviving.
• 8:14
  SPEAKER_00: And anyone who wasn't close to her, who didn't know what she was experiencing, would have assumed, jumped to the conclusion that this was her version of a post-separation, post-divorce glow-up.
• 8:26
  SPEAKER_00: It wasn't.
• 8:27
  SPEAKER_00: For her, her nervous system was tipped into survival mode, and for others, separation, divorce, and what comes after actually triggers a nervous system recalibration, a decompression.
• 8:42
  SPEAKER_00: For many women in the aftermath of separation, divorce, it is a nervous system decompression.
• 8:49
  SPEAKER_00: It might not happen immediately, it might come a bit later once you're through some of the hard stuff.
• 8:55
  SPEAKER_00: But often women, my clients, have spent years, sometimes decades, living in a state of chronic emotional stress in some version of fight, flight, fawn syndrome.
• 9:08
  SPEAKER_00: And many of them don't fully understand or realize that until they're out, they're out of the relationship.
• 9:16
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm not talking necessarily an abusive relationship, I'm just talking a challenging one, right?
• 9:23
  SPEAKER_00: Over time, that survival mode becomes normalized in your body.
• 9:28
  SPEAKER_00: If you're waiting for the next argument or you're waiting for the next thing to happen, you are actually functioning in fight-flight mode.
• 9:38
  SPEAKER_00: And when survival mode or that heightened nervous system activation mode becomes chronic, normal in inverted commas, our body adapts.
• 9:51
  SPEAKER_00: Your face might change, your posture changes, your energy changes, your nervous system starts organizing itself around that low-level or even high-level stress instead of calm and instead of safety.
• 10:05
  SPEAKER_00: And so someone who spent time, energy, often years, carrying everything, keeping all the balls in the air, managing a job or a business, a household, the kids, managing the relationship, often managing someone else's life, someone else's moods, maybe walking on eggshells and tiptoeing through her own life, holding a breath, waiting for that next thing, right?
• 10:28
  SPEAKER_00: If you've spent or she has spent her whole life organizing around everyone and everything else, keeping everything running smoothly, keeping the peace, keeping up appearances, that impacts her nervous system.
• 10:43
  SPEAKER_00: Or she's d done or doing all of that while also navigating, I was gonna say a high conflict or challenging divorce, any divorce, right?
• 10:54
  SPEAKER_00: There is an overload, an overwhelm that comes with separation and divorce, even if it is relatively amicable.
• 11:02
  SPEAKER_00: You're constantly on alert waiting for the next thing, the next bomb to drop, maybe from a lawyer or from a an ex-that is a nervous system on high alert.
• 11:12
  SPEAKER_00: And the average divorce takes 18 months.
• 11:17
  SPEAKER_00: There's data around that.
• 11:19
  SPEAKER_00: And if you're sitting in that high-level nervous system activation for at least 18 months, it becomes chronic.
• 11:25
  SPEAKER_00: And when that finally lifts, when that eases, when you can ease out of that, something does change, including how you look, how you carry yourself, how you move through the world.
• 11:38
  SPEAKER_00: But that is not a glow-up, that is decompression, that is a nervous system beginning slowly, slowly, tentatively to drop down and find safety again.
• 11:52
  SPEAKER_00: Because when you've spent months or years in chronic stress during the relationship, through the separation and divorce, managing, monitoring, bracing, your nervous system stops knowing what rest and calm and ease feels like.
• 12:06
  SPEAKER_00: It stops recognising calm as safe because it's been on on high learn on duty for so long that stillness can actually start to feel more unsettling, more threatening than that tension.
• 12:17
  SPEAKER_00: That tension becomes your normal.
• 12:19
  SPEAKER_00: So when all of that begins to shift, when the environment that was requiring all that vigilance is no longer your day-to-day life, it's no longer there, your body doesn't immediately exhale, it recalibrates slowly, sometimes uncomfortably, and sometimes in ways that look externally to others like a transformation, like a glow-up.
• 12:43
  SPEAKER_00: And Emma and I did discuss in our conversation that there's this other layer here, another layer of conditioning running through this, because we live in a culture that rewards women for being smaller, smaller in all the ways, right?
• 13:00
  SPEAKER_00: Thinner gets praised, smaller gets praised, thinner gets noticed, thinner gets you compliments, attention, reward.
• 13:08
  SPEAKER_00: Staying small is also at times rewarded, small in all of the ways.
• 13:14
  SPEAKER_00: But when a woman loses weight in the aftermath of divorce, whether that's from actively trying to drop kilos, whether it's from stress, from grief, from not being able to eat, from walking or running kilometres each day just to get away from whatever you whatever's chasing you, we celebrate it and we call it a reclamation of power.
• 13:38
  SPEAKER_00: We call it choosing herself, but sometimes it is her body in crisis, getting smaller under pressure, and we reward her for it.
• 13:48
  SPEAKER_00: That bit, that part is not reclamation, that is good girl conditioning with a wellness filter slapped over the top of it.
• 13:56
  SPEAKER_00: And so when I speak of reclamation after divorce, that is not what I'm talking about.
• 14:02
  SPEAKER_00: Now, some women, as I said, coming out of marriage during or after it, do lose weight, some do get fitter, stronger.
• 14:12
  SPEAKER_00: They go back to the gym, back to running, back to yoga or the ocean, cold water swimming at six o'clock in the morning, whatever.
• 14:19
  SPEAKER_00: And that part that is real, that is absolutely part of her reclamation.
• 14:24
  SPEAKER_00: But what we're celebrating there isn't body size, it's the reclamation of doing the thing that feels good, doing the thing that supports a regulated nervous system, the thing that she loves.
• 14:39
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe it's the thing she let go of somewhere in the middle of a marriage that no longer had room for it or for her, right?
• 14:46
  SPEAKER_00: That's great for her nervous system, her mental and emotional well-being, as well as for her physical body.
• 14:54
  SPEAKER_00: A short pause before we continue.
• 14:56
  SPEAKER_00: If this episode is resonating, there are two ways to step closer.
• 15:01
  SPEAKER_00: One, join my newsletter list for behind the scenes things I don't share anywhere else.
• 15:07
  SPEAKER_00: And two, if you're wondering what it would look like to work with me, book a free intro call.
• 15:13
  SPEAKER_00: I work closely with a small number of clients at any one time so you get bespoke high-touch support through it all.
• 15:20
  SPEAKER_00: The decisions, the separation, the divorce, and the life you create for yourself afterwards.
• 15:26
  SPEAKER_00: Links for both are in the show notes.
• 15:28
  SPEAKER_00: Now back to this week's episode.
• 15:31
  SPEAKER_00: But when we're talking about that, we're not talking about a number on a scale or a dress size.
• 15:36
  SPEAKER_00: That is a woman returning to something that was always part of her, and that's the part that we celebrate, right?
• 15:44
  SPEAKER_00: That is the glow-up, that is the reclamation.
• 15:47
  SPEAKER_00: But again, that comes down the track for many, right?
• 15:52
  SPEAKER_00: For many clients, or many of you who are deep in the thick of it, that feels a long, long way away.
• 15:58
  SPEAKER_00: You know, you're busy running busy lives, businesses, leading teams, trying to hold all the pieces of a life together and keep all the balls in the air, and this time you're doing it solo.
• 16:09
  SPEAKER_00: You know, you're supporting your kids, holding them and regulating, helping them regulate while also trying really hard to regulate your own nervous system, and it becomes a bit of fake it till you make it.
• 16:20
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I said before it comes a bit becomes a bit performative, like you're in the survival mode, but you've still got to show up, and moving through that can take a whole lot longer than you expect.
• 16:33
  SPEAKER_00: You know, it looks like this quiet persistence, appearing put together, like you're coping, doing all the things while also privately, silently hurting, carrying it alone, you become the absolute queen of looking okay from the outside while also deeply hurting privately and maybe not letting anyone into that part of the story.
• 16:52
  SPEAKER_00: And sometimes across time, your support team it doesn't totally disappear, but it gets smaller.
• 17:05
  SPEAKER_00: Some people who showed up in the early crisis and genuinely meant to offer support, they see the crisis past and slowly drift back to their own lives, right?
• 17:14
  SPEAKER_00: Their life goes back to normal for them, but not for you, not yet.
• 17:19
  SPEAKER_00: And then for some comes a time when the comments and the questions start, you know, are you dating yet?
• 17:28
  SPEAKER_00: You seem so much better, you're much happier, feeling stronger, you know, and sometimes two little almost semi-microcriticisms, you know, maybe it's time to move on.
• 17:39
  SPEAKER_00: Have you thought about getting back out there and dating?
• 17:41
  SPEAKER_00: And underneath all of that, the unspoken message there is that come on now, you've had enough time, you should be further along than this.
• 17:49
  SPEAKER_00: Even if it's not spoken, it can land like that, right?
• 17:53
  SPEAKER_00: As if your healing, your glow up if you want, has a timeline that is externally set, and it's set kind of for everybody else's comfort and expectations, not yours.
• 18:06
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes the expectation on us after a significant traumatic event is beyond what we're ready for, beyond what we can do, beyond what we can meet or give, right?
• 18:17
  SPEAKER_00: And sometimes we do show up and act in the ways that we're expected to, not necessarily because we are ready or healed or glowed up, but because it helps others feel more comfortable.
• 18:29
  SPEAKER_00: Again, good girl conditioning, right?
• 18:31
  SPEAKER_00: They need us to be okay so they can be okay with us again.
• 18:35
  SPEAKER_00: And it happens after any significant loss.
• 18:38
  SPEAKER_00: The death of a person, the death of a marriage, the death of the version of you that existed before.
• 18:44
  SPEAKER_00: And people, especially those who aren't kind of down in the trenches with us, who don't perhaps know us closely, tend to be way more comfortable with the polished end version of the story, the glowed up version, right?
• 18:57
  SPEAKER_00: The end result, not the messy middle part, not the parts where you actually don't have it together and you don't have the answers, that part where you're actually not okay, not yet.
• 19:09
  SPEAKER_00: And I want to share something here that might seem unrelated, but come with me and it will make sense.
• 19:15
  SPEAKER_00: At my mum's funeral last year, there were over 220 people in the room.
• 19:21
  SPEAKER_00: So many came up to me, and some I know very, very well, right?
• 19:26
  SPEAKER_00: And some who were there who knew mum but not me so much, and they'd offer their sympathies, and then so many of them would ask, So, how are you?
• 19:38
  SPEAKER_00: And after the third or fourth or fifth time, I don't know, my response changed from oh okay, I guess, to I have absolutely no idea how to answer that question today.
• 19:48
  SPEAKER_00: And it became my standard response across the day and for quite a while afterwards.
• 19:55
  SPEAKER_00: And it is something, if you think it will be useful to you, that I gift to you, if not that exact phrase, one similar of your own choosing because people will ask you how you are, and sometimes they're genuinely interested, and other times it's not much more than a social grace.
• 20:12
  SPEAKER_00: And if you don't feel okay after a heartbreak, a breakup, or you're in a challenging season, having your own version of I have absolutely no idea to answer that, how to answer that question ready to roll out can be really useful.
• 20:27
  SPEAKER_00: Anyway, back to the glow-up stuff.
• 20:30
  SPEAKER_00: Something else I wanted to touch on here, and it comes up for some of my clients.
• 20:35
  SPEAKER_00: Healing that doesn't look impressive from the outside can feel like a failure, can make them feel like they are a failure, they're not doing it right.
• 20:46
  SPEAKER_00: The story that runs in heads is that we're supposed to look or feel or behave a certain way after divorce, particularly after a certain amount of time has passed.
• 20:55
  SPEAKER_00: And if they don't feel that way, look that way or act that way, they feel like they've not done it right in inverter commas.
• 21:02
  SPEAKER_00: They feel like a failure.
• 21:04
  SPEAKER_00: And if the expectation or the aim is this glow-up, the external, then that deep internal, much harder and I think much more profound work of healing might get missed by others, but also by us.
• 21:20
  SPEAKER_00: The hidden parts might be overlooked.
• 21:23
  SPEAKER_00: Just because you're out in the world doing what needs to be done, showing up, functioning, getting on with the practicalities of life doesn't actually mean you're healed.
• 21:32
  SPEAKER_00: We know that, right?
• 21:34
  SPEAKER_00: Breakup, separation, divorce can absolutely be a powerful catalyst for all sorts of change.
• 21:41
  SPEAKER_00: I believe that, I know it, I've seen it, I've done it, I've coached people through it.
• 21:45
  SPEAKER_00: But for others, that narrative and expectation is an added pressure on top of what is already an incredibly stressful, challenging, sometimes traumatic life.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_00: Experience and it all gets tangled up in worthiness and good girl conditioning because there's this persistent cultural message that a woman's worth, resilience, recovery, whatever you want to call it, are reflected in how she looks and how quickly she appears to bounce back, to glow up.
• 22:20
  SPEAKER_00: Socially, divorce is framed as something to move through and overcome.
• 22:26
  SPEAKER_00: What that mess what that message misses is the grief.
• 22:29
  SPEAKER_00: And I've spoken about grief across the podcast because I think it's sometimes an underacknowledged part of this life experience.
• 22:38
  SPEAKER_00: You're grieving the loss of a relationship, sometimes one with roots that ran really, really deep.
• 22:43
  SPEAKER_00: You're grieving the loss of a partner who you thought was your forever person, the loss of the life you thought you'd live, the loss of the version of your kids' childhood you'd imagine for them.
• 22:53
  SPEAKER_00: You're even grieving the version of you that you were in that relationship and perhaps who you thought you'd be in your future.
• 23:00
  SPEAKER_00: And that's part of the internal work, the deeper work I do with my clients, and it isn't always pretty.
• 23:06
  SPEAKER_00: It doesn't look great from the outside, and it is often confronting and painful and hard, and it brings all up all the fears and all the big emotions, all the big feelings, and it asks a lot, and mostly it's invisible.
• 23:20
  SPEAKER_00: It isn't the pretty glow up, but it is important, necessary healing work.
• 23:26
  SPEAKER_00: So I just want you to know if you haven't done the glow up after your separation or divorce, you are not failing, you are not behind, you are not doing it wrong.
• 23:37
  SPEAKER_00: You are allowed to not be glowing, you are allowed to not feel liberated.
• 23:44
  SPEAKER_00: You are allowed to sit in the messy, hard, quiet, invisible parts of this.
• 23:50
  SPEAKER_00: And you don't have to perform recovery.
• 23:55
  SPEAKER_00: You don't have to be further along than where you are.
• 23:59
  SPEAKER_00: And also, I don't want you to sit and be stuck.
• 24:04
  SPEAKER_00: There is no finish line here.
• 24:06
  SPEAKER_00: There is no race to the finish line that everyone else gets to and you don't get to.
• 24:11
  SPEAKER_00: So if you're listening privately to this in a car with your earphones in while life goes on around you, just know wherever you are, you're not behind, you're not failing, you're in it, you're moving through it, and you will move through it.
• 24:28
  SPEAKER_00: And what I know through coaching so many through it is that when people talk about this glow-up effect, what people really are witnessing, I think, is a woman coming home to herself, not becoming someone new, it's about returning to someone she'd slowly, perhaps quietly left behind while she was busy organizing herself around someone else's needs, moods, emotional landscape, while she was busy navigating a messy, hard, challenging season of life like divorce.
• 25:07
  SPEAKER_00: And that that's not necessarily a transformation.
• 25:10
  SPEAKER_00: I think that can be a return.
• 25:12
  SPEAKER_00: Clients come to me whether still in a marriage, questioning everything at 2 a.m., in the messy middle of separation, even out the other side of a divorce, and wondering why they still don't feel like themselves.
• 25:27
  SPEAKER_00: They're not necessarily looking for a glow-up.
• 25:31
  SPEAKER_00: What they're really looking for is to settle that nervous system, recalibrate themselves and their nervous system.
• 25:39
  SPEAKER_00: They're looking to come home to themselves, even if they don't have that language yet.
• 25:46
  SPEAKER_00: What they're reaching for is a settled nervous system and a life that feels like it fits them, that they fit their life.
• 25:56
  SPEAKER_00: They're looking for emotional safety that lives inside them, that's not externalized, and that quiet, steady experience of finally being able to just be themselves, come home to themselves.
• 26:14
  SPEAKER_00: And it doesn't happen just in that photo, those side-by-side photos.
• 26:19
  SPEAKER_00: It doesn't happen in a performative way for everyone else who's watching.
• 26:23
  SPEAKER_00: It doesn't happen in that before and after glow-up or a switch that flips.
• 26:27
  SPEAKER_00: It happens slowly and it happens internally.
• 26:32
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes it is loud and obvious and fast, visible from the outside, right?
• 26:36
  SPEAKER_00: But other times, most times, it's a really quiet internal shift that no one else really sees.
• 26:43
  SPEAKER_00: And sometimes she doesn't see it herself or feel it herself straight away either.
• 26:47
  SPEAKER_00: It is a gentle, quiet coming home to herself, a settling into herself.
• 26:54
  SPEAKER_00: It can be slow, deliberate, consciously chosen reflection, reclamation that leads to liberation, right?
• 27:00
  SPEAKER_00: And it happens often in quiet moments where you do come back to yourself again and again and again until it becomes your normal, the most natural thing.
• 27:13
  SPEAKER_00: That reclamation that I speak of is really about choosing yourself over and over in the big moments and the small moments, and that's a glow-up.
• 27:23
  SPEAKER_00: That is a life-changing legacy that you can leave for yourself.
• 27:30
  SPEAKER_00: If this episode resonated, I would love you to share it with someone you think might be holding it together on the outside but quietly doing the hard, invisible work on the inside.
• 27:42
  SPEAKER_00: And if you haven't listened to my conversation with Emma Wright yet, go back and have a listen to that.
• 27:48
  SPEAKER_00: It sits really beautifully alongside this episode.
• 27:51
  SPEAKER_00: And if you want deeper support through your own reflection, reclamation, and liberation, your own healing to create whatever version of post-divorce glow-up is right for you, let's have a talk.
• 28:05
  SPEAKER_00: There's a link in the show notes and you can book your free intro call with me.
• 28:09
  SPEAKER_00: As always, thank you for being here.
• 28:12
  SPEAKER_00: Until next time, bye for now.
• 28:15
  SPEAKER_00: I'm Sally Ann Hartnell, divorce coach and strategist, and you've been listening to Reflect, Reclaim and Liberate.
• 28:21
  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.
• 28:29
  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.
• 28:40
  SPEAKER_00: I hope you'll join me next week for another episode of Reflect, Reclaim and Liberate.
• 28:45
  SPEAKER_00: Until then