Latest / Dear Divorce Diary: A Fresh Approach To Healing Grief & Building A Life Of Confidence After Divorce / 361. Three Core Ingredients of Letting Go, Moving On & Manifesting a Life You Love After Divorce

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361. Three Core Ingredients of Letting Go, Moving On & Manifesting a Life You Love After Divorce · Dear Divorce Diary: A Fresh Approach To Healing Grief & Building A Life Of Confidence After Divorce

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_01: Hi, love.
• 0:01
  SPEAKER_01: Any divorce coach or therapist worth their salt is gonna tell you that divorce recovery is about self-discovery and that this can be the season of your greatest manifestation.
• 0:13
  SPEAKER_01: But if your healing journey doesn't have these three elements, you are gonna struggle to manifest the life of your dreams after divorce.
• 0:28
  SPEAKER_01: Hi, love.
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_01: Welcome to Dear Divorce Diary, the podcast helping divorcees go beyond talk therapy to process your grief, find the healing you crave, and build back your confidence.
• 0:40
  SPEAKER_01: I'm your host, Don Wiggins, a therapist, coach, integrative healer, and divorcee.
• 0:46
  SPEAKER_01: Join me for a fresh approach to healing grief and building your confidence after divorce.
• 0:58
  SPEAKER_01: Through today's episode, you'll be able to identify specifically in your healing journey what's missing, right?
• 1:04
  SPEAKER_01: So that you can build in those missing pieces.
• 1:07
  SPEAKER_01: And you'll also hear from me about where people tend to get stuck the most, so that you can kind of be on the lookout for that in your own process.
• 1:14
  SPEAKER_01: You'll also learn about a very specific solution that has all three elements already built into it.
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_01: Very exciting.
• 1:23
  SPEAKER_01: And then you're gonna hear as part of Mary's story where she shares with us how she keeps getting these emotional hits from getting all this information about what her ex was up to before the fact, during the fact, after the fact, and how she feels stuck.
• 1:37
  SPEAKER_01: We're gonna be able to look at her story about where she feels stuck in this emotional mire and identify which of these three elements she has and which of the elements maybe she needs to beef up a bit.
• 1:49
  SPEAKER_01: So if you have been struggling with regret, resentment, anger, difficulty tapping into gratitude, if you've been impatient with your journey, if you're struggling to have faith that this season of your life really can be the best thing, then this is the episode for you.
• 2:09
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, element one is all things structure, stability, support, accountability.
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_01: It's this idea of going from being in kind of disrupted crisis and chaos to every day taking good right action in the direction of stabilization and healing, right?
• 2:34
  SPEAKER_01: It's moving out of fight or flight into a kind of stable capacity, working capacity, right?
• 2:42
  SPEAKER_01: To actually deal with the things that come at you every day without being completely underwater.
• 2:50
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, I said once, I heard once and repeated to joy, like you can't heal while the knife is still stuck in you.
• 2:57
  SPEAKER_01: And so this is the idea that, right, we gotta get you stabilized, we gotta get you ready to a working phase.
• 3:05
  SPEAKER_01: And that means, yes, structure, right?
• 3:08
  SPEAKER_01: Meaning kind of consistently taking good care of yourself, getting enough food, getting enough rest, getting enough support, right?
• 3:17
  SPEAKER_01: So the first element is about really making sure that there's enough of the things you need in order to grow, in order to thrive, in order to heal.
• 3:27
  SPEAKER_01: If you don't have enough bandwidth to tackle healing, then that's the first thing, right?
• 3:34
  SPEAKER_01: We can't keep trying to play catch up all the time.
• 3:37
  SPEAKER_01: It's not really a feasible place to heal from.
• 3:41
  SPEAKER_01: So a lot of times I hear people in this space struggle with sleep and also struggle with support.
• 3:49
  SPEAKER_01: I think that, and I'd be so curious to hear what your lived experience is of this, like where your stuck points are with regards to struggle, stability, support, accountability.
• 3:58
  SPEAKER_01: But I think a lot of women feel like the support piece is where they're lacking the most, right?
• 4:03
  SPEAKER_01: You can kind of hire a nutritionist, you can hire a fitness coach, you can hire a really exceptional healer or therapist, you can hire a chiropractor, but you kind of can't hire like a support system, a friend group, right?
• 4:17
  SPEAKER_01: That's like not a thing that is like so easy to resource.
• 4:22
  SPEAKER_01: And I think also when you're looking for support in this season, it's very common to lose friendships as a result of the divorce process.
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_01: It's very common to go through conflict in some of your friendships and with your family, right?
• 4:34
  SPEAKER_01: It's it's a stressor, not just for you, but then you experience also stress in your support system.
• 4:40
  SPEAKER_01: And then when you go to support groups, like for instance, I leaned heavily into Al-Anon and I joined group therapy and you know, was going to all of these places to find support.
• 4:51
  SPEAKER_01: But also, I didn't have kids at the time.
• 4:53
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that when you have young kids or children at home and you're juggling them, and maybe you're going to a support group, but not everybody is done the stabilization work.
• 5:03
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe not everybody is on the trajectory of healing.
• 5:05
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe there's some folks that are really stuck kind of in depression.
• 5:09
  SPEAKER_01: And, you know, it can be really hard to go to a support group that's not cohesive or doesn't feel like it's a real safe place to heal.
• 5:18
  SPEAKER_01: Support groups are often a tricky business because you want there to be a sense of safety and stability.
• 5:26
  SPEAKER_01: And oftentimes people who are going through crisis have pretty significant mental health issues, and it can be hard to heal alongside someone who has some really significant mental health stuff.
• 5:38
  SPEAKER_01: That doesn't necessarily feel like a safe place to heal in a support group.
• 5:42
  SPEAKER_01: So just know that uh if you feel particularly like the support piece is really hard, cohesive support is hard for you.
• 5:50
  SPEAKER_01: You're not alone, that's really, really normal, and we're gonna talk more about that later in this episode.
• 5:54
  SPEAKER_01: But the first element, right, of really being able to build a happy life post-divorce is tackling the structure and stability piece.
• 6:02
  SPEAKER_01: And I think one of the other places where people get stuck here is with accountability.
• 6:06
  SPEAKER_01: You know, a lot of times we have really good intentions about squaring away certain parts of our life, like with sleep and nutrition or whatever it is, but then we struggle with accountability and consistency.
• 6:18
  SPEAKER_01: And so, especially when you're so tired, your energy is so low, your motivation is low, you're struggling with depression, that's all very low vibe stuff.
• 6:26
  SPEAKER_01: And so a lot of times what you need there is some accountability to help keep you on track with building in that consistency until it becomes more habitual, right?
• 6:36
  SPEAKER_01: Until you're a little bit out of that divorce ditch in that really heavy, heavy dark place.
• 6:41
  SPEAKER_01: So first element: structure, stability, support, accountability.
• 6:47
  SPEAKER_01: The second element that has to be, this is one of the most essential pieces of creating a really happy, rich life post-divorce is processing the unprocessed pain in the recent, in your recent history, but also in your remote history, right?
• 7:06
  SPEAKER_01: So we have to process all the stuff that went on in your marriage and as a part of the divorce process.
• 7:12
  SPEAKER_01: And we also have to process the unprocessed stuff from your childhood because they're related, right?
• 7:18
  SPEAKER_01: They're we find when we do the subconscious work, when we identify the negative beliefs that you've been carrying around, that your reticular activating system, we talk about this in a different episode, but if your subconscious mind is programmed to believe that you're not worth it or you can't trust people, or you should have done something better, or you should have known better, or you know, any number you have to be perfect, you can't be yourself, right?
• 7:42
  SPEAKER_01: Then you built a life around those negative beliefs.
• 7:44
  SPEAKER_01: And those beliefs, typically for most people, got adopted somewhere between zero and seven years of age.
• 7:50
  SPEAKER_01: So a massive piece of creating a new life for yourself that where you don't repeat the past mistakes is processing the unprocessed from recent and remote past.
• 8:02
  SPEAKER_01: Now, this is a place where people really get hung up and where I feel like I shine as a healer.
• 8:08
  SPEAKER_01: Because very often when people think they're processing, they're really just rehearsing or looping on their pain.
• 8:14
  SPEAKER_01: And they're not getting deep enough into the emotional spaces or the soma in the body to actually process the unprocessed stuff.
• 8:24
  SPEAKER_01: So they end up repeating it or rehearsing it, but not actually metabolizing the pain.
• 8:29
  SPEAKER_01: And so why does that happen?
• 8:31
  SPEAKER_01: And why do people get hung up there?
• 8:33
  SPEAKER_01: Well, we are a very numb, distracted, dissociated, suppressed, repressed people anymore, right?
• 8:40
  SPEAKER_01: We are we are overworked, we are overstimulated, we are over-scrolled on our screens, right?
• 8:47
  SPEAKER_01: And we we have so many ways that we say dissociated from our true lived experience, right?
• 8:57
  SPEAKER_01: Our thoughts are separate from our emotions, and we are out of practice with regards to really dealing with the stockpiles of toxic emotion that that live inside of us.
• 9:08
  SPEAKER_01: And so this is where I really see people get very, very stuck and then they loop in places like regret, regret, resentment, a lack of empowerment, feeling like that this is, they just have to kind of this is as good as it gets, right?
• 9:24
  SPEAKER_01: And so if you feel like you're someone who relates to that, that you've done some good therapy, you've worked with some decent coaching, you've taken a lot of steps, but you still feel heavy or sad or anxious or depressed or griefy or regretful or doubting, right?
• 9:38
  SPEAKER_01: If you struggle to really have an embodied faith that life can be so much more magical than this, I want you to know that that's not because it's not possible.
• 9:47
  SPEAKER_01: It's probably because you haven't been able to get deep enough into processing.
• 9:51
  SPEAKER_01: Now, for me, some of those things were about the amount of dissociation that I experienced due to trauma or whatnot, right?
• 9:58
  SPEAKER_01: But also the tools that we are commonly taught in therapy don't go deep enough.
• 10:04
  SPEAKER_01: You hear me talk about this so much, right?
• 10:06
  SPEAKER_01: And this is why I am such a proponent of things like EMDR.
• 10:10
  SPEAKER_01: So, little story about producer Joy, right?
• 10:13
  SPEAKER_01: And our own little healing pod we have going on over here.
• 10:16
  SPEAKER_01: I started learning this really fantastic new kind of remote section of homeopathic practice over the last month.
• 10:22
  SPEAKER_01: And um, producer joy is someone who was on a lot of antibiotics when she was very, very young.
• 10:27
  SPEAKER_01: And so I gave her a remedy last week specifically to help heal her body mind from that excessive use of antibiotics when she was very, very young.
• 10:38
  SPEAKER_01: So we matched the dose and the potency so that it could reach back in her timeline.
• 10:42
  SPEAKER_01: And when she came into work today, she said, okay, I don't know what's happening, but I've been crying for the last five days.
• 10:49
  SPEAKER_01: And so when we started talking about what's shifted, it's not that there's any new issues on the table.
• 10:54
  SPEAKER_01: It's the same stuff that she's been so beautifully healing from over the years, but all of a sudden she was tearful.
• 10:59
  SPEAKER_01: And so it was like it was more on the surface, right?
• 11:02
  SPEAKER_01: And that's what a beautifully paired homeopathic remedy is gonna do.
• 11:05
  SPEAKER_01: It's gonna take that stuff that feels like you know it's there, you can sense it's there, but you can't get it out of you.
• 11:11
  SPEAKER_01: It feels beyond your reach.
• 11:12
  SPEAKER_01: It feels stuck, right?
• 11:14
  SPEAKER_01: So, what did we do?
• 11:15
  SPEAKER_01: We sat down on the floor, crisscrossed applesauce, and we just chatted a little bit.
• 11:20
  SPEAKER_01: We did a tiny bit of EMDR, right?
• 11:22
  SPEAKER_01: We just had a good girl chat, honestly, but a good girl chat with an EMDR therapist ends up that there's tapping happening.
• 11:29
  SPEAKER_01: So, and then, you know, we kind of lasered in on what still felt really stuck for her.
• 11:34
  SPEAKER_01: And there was some stuck regret was the word that she really kind of lasered in on.
• 11:38
  SPEAKER_01: Love that.
• 11:39
  SPEAKER_01: I found another really beautifully well-paired remedy for, gave it to her, and now she's sitting here producing this episode today feeling exhausted because the ang the remedy was for suppressed anger.
• 11:50
  SPEAKER_01: When I gave her the remedy, it's like all the anger wind came out of her sails, and now she's just tired and she needs a really good nap.
• 11:56
  SPEAKER_01: And guess what?
• 11:57
  SPEAKER_01: Tomorrow she's gonna feel like a completely different person.
• 12:00
  SPEAKER_01: And so, producer Joy, right, we do we heal in this pod together, and she it's her intention to be doing this work.
• 12:08
  SPEAKER_01: But even the fact that her best friend, cousin, boss lady, I don't know, whatever we call me, is a therapist and we do life together and we talk about these things, there was still stuff beyond her reach that homeopathy was able to reveal so that she could do the EMDR and get it out of her, right?
• 12:25
  SPEAKER_01: It's so brilliant.
• 12:26
  SPEAKER_01: So, again, if you have a great therapist or a coach and you're processing and it just feels like it's not going, like it's staying stuck, just know that that's because there are tools that go deeper than those tools we've been taught, and they're just not as popular.
• 12:41
  SPEAKER_01: And so the second element about processing the unprocessed that is both remote and recent, make sure the tools that you're using go deep enough.
• 12:51
  SPEAKER_01: And do not be in denial that you just have to, you know, accept a life of anxiety or depression or resentment or regret because that is not true.
• 13:01
  SPEAKER_01: It's a matter of finding the right tool, dialing it in, and going deep enough.
• 13:06
  SPEAKER_01: Now, the third piece, the third element of a happy life post-divorce is getting very, very clear about the life that you want for yourself in the near future.
• 13:21
  SPEAKER_01: What do you want that to look like specifically, vaguely, right?
• 13:26
  SPEAKER_01: Like, what do you want it to look like?
• 13:28
  SPEAKER_01: What is it you've you know, from all the lived experience you have, you certainly know what you don't want, but do you know what you do want?
• 13:38
  SPEAKER_01: Now I want to tell you a little bit about Mary, who writes in and talks about how she is in the middle of the divorce process right now.
• 13:47
  SPEAKER_01: She's just kind of going through, gathering the paperwork.
• 13:50
  SPEAKER_01: Her husband just moved out a couple of months ago, and she is really struggling and stuck because she keeps getting information through the community, through the Coconut Telegraph about what he was doing leading up to the divorce, what ultimately asked him to ask for a divorce, and what is going on with that other lady that he knows from work.
• 14:10
  SPEAKER_01: And these emotional hits keep rolling in for Mary.
• 14:15
  SPEAKER_01: And every time she is working on getting moving forward with the grief process, she finds out a new piece of information that feels like a gut punch.
• 14:24
  SPEAKER_01: And she is struggling with feeling angry and resentful and so much grief.
• 14:30
  SPEAKER_01: And so she feels like she's kind of stuck in this, can't get her focus off of the things that he has done to her and done to her family, meaning her two 20-something daughters.
• 14:42
  SPEAKER_01: And so, Nary, when I hear your story, I hear in your story that you've shared that you have been going to the gym, you've been talking to friends, you've been going for walks on the beach, you've been doing EMDR therapy, you have been working on manifestation, you've been taking a look at your astrology to look at what's going on for you and your chart and you know how how that may be influencing how you're feeling.
• 15:12
  SPEAKER_01: I hear you saying that you are aware of when you're kind of going into like poor me, self-pity or victim consciousness, and that you catch yourself doing that.
• 15:22
  SPEAKER_01: You know, the places where you've been oversharing a little bit, maybe with your adult daughters, but it doesn't sound like there's anything there that's not normal or human of you, right?
• 15:33
  SPEAKER_01: I would say two things here about the three elements, you know, when I kind of do a little health audit of your process there.
• 15:39
  SPEAKER_01: I would say, number one, I hear you doing a lot of appropriate processing, right?
• 15:46
  SPEAKER_01: A lot of appropriate processing that sometimes the processing just takes some time.
• 15:52
  SPEAKER_01: And when we're being thorough, when we're using tools where you are getting deep enough, when you have a great flower essence on board, when you're working with a really good EMDR therapist, sometimes those feelings, it's just a lot to work through.
• 16:06
  SPEAKER_01: And then the only other thing that I would have you do a little more intentional work on is how much time each day are you spending thinking about, fantasizing about what you want your future life to look like.
• 16:18
  SPEAKER_01: So sometimes when we're stuck in the present shit pile, right?
• 16:25
  SPEAKER_01: We have to remember that we have to do a little looking forward to fantasizing about what we want the future to look like.
• 16:33
  SPEAKER_01: I think it's really hard to do that when you're in that season of life where the blows keep coming.
• 16:38
  SPEAKER_01: And that's why sometimes we have to write it out, right?
• 16:40
  SPEAKER_01: Why I'm a big fan of immersive journaling, where you put on some classical music or some jazz music or some music that hypes you up, and you write about, you know, someday in the future, this is what I want my home to look like and feel like.
• 16:54
  SPEAKER_01: This is what I want it to feel like, this is what I want my day-to-day life to feel like, this is what I want my friendships to feel like, this is what I want my dating life or my love life to feel like somewhere in the near future.
• 17:05
  SPEAKER_01: And even if you can't get to those good feelings yet, just starting to outline it, the things that you fantasize about, and then making sure you spend a couple of moments each day touching face with that.
• 17:17
  SPEAKER_01: I am, even though this is hard right now, I am open to all these beautiful things manifesting in my life today, and I am grateful that they are already in process.
• 17:27
  SPEAKER_01: Right?
• 17:27
  SPEAKER_01: There's something about manifestation where it's like we have to also acknowledge that they're already in process.
• 17:35
  SPEAKER_01: We can't keep looking at, and I'm upset that it's not here yet.
• 17:38
  SPEAKER_01: That's coming from a place of scarcity, and we cannot intentionally manifest beauty from a place of scarcity.
• 17:44
  SPEAKER_01: So I would just say to Mary that the third element of a happy life post-divorce is taking daily, regular, or consistent, right?
• 17:53
  SPEAKER_01: Let's say consistent steps to intentionally manifesting that beautiful picture of what you're working towards.
• 18:01
  SPEAKER_01: So if you haven't built out the beautiful picture of what you're looking towards yet, then you're gonna have a little extra stuckness in the now moment, right?
• 18:09
  SPEAKER_01: Because what are you reaching for?
• 18:11
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know about you, but when I have an amazing vacation planned, right?
• 18:15
  SPEAKER_01: Anytime I'm having a harder day than than otherwise, I just sometimes find myself thinking about like, oh, I can't wait till I go on that thing that's gonna be feel that is gonna feel so much better than this.
• 18:26
  SPEAKER_01: And it's an immediate tiny little boost.
• 18:28
  SPEAKER_01: That's how intentional manifestation works, right?
• 18:31
  SPEAKER_01: It's having a clear picture of somewhere that I want to go and being, and and you know, when you have a vacation booked, it's not like, well, what if it doesn't come?
• 18:39
  SPEAKER_01: It might not come, it might not ever get here.
• 18:41
  SPEAKER_01: It's like it's already booked, you know you're going, right?
• 18:43
  SPEAKER_01: So it's like, I want you to think about intentionally manifesting your future life.
• 18:48
  SPEAKER_01: It's like it's already booked, it's done, it's coming.
• 18:51
  SPEAKER_01: You just got to do the footwork to get from A to B.
• 18:55
  SPEAKER_01: The trip is on its way, right?
• 18:56
  SPEAKER_01: So I think that's the difference, is when you have a lot of self-doubt and a lot of impatience and you struggle to have faith that you can do these things, right?
• 19:03
  SPEAKER_01: That's where we loop back to the first element.
• 19:07
  SPEAKER_01: And this is how it all ties together is that when you don't have enough structure, stability, support, and accountability, you fall back to old mental loops.
• 19:17
  SPEAKER_01: That's like, what if this isn't for me?
• 19:19
  SPEAKER_01: What if I can't actually have it?
• 19:20
  SPEAKER_01: And you start going back to like self-pity mental loops, and that's where the accountability and the support helps you get back on track so you don't spend as much time self-sabotaging your own intentional manifestation.
• 19:33
  SPEAKER_01: So these three elements, right?
• 19:35
  SPEAKER_01: Structure, support, accountability, processing the unprocessed, but really deeply enough to really get delicious results, and then intentionally manifesting consistently, having a clear picture of that future life you want and consistently taking steps for it.
• 19:49
  SPEAKER_01: If you're not consistently taking steps forward, then you're not headed for it, right?
• 19:53
  SPEAKER_01: Like that's not how it works.
• 19:54
  SPEAKER_01: You can't just like uh, well, I want it, but then never take any steps to get there and then expect it to just plop into your lap, right?
• 20:01
  SPEAKER_01: And so these three elements all work together to absolutely help you create this delicious, delicious life.
• 20:09
  SPEAKER_01: And no, it's not overnight.
• 20:11
  SPEAKER_01: It is a process, it happens in layers, but I don't know about you.
• 20:14
  SPEAKER_01: I spent decades like kind of um burning my life down, you know what I mean?
• 20:20
  SPEAKER_01: So yeah, it it took some time to build it back up to this epic place.
• 20:25
  SPEAKER_01: But I will tell you, this last Friday was my birthday, producer Joy, and my husband and my family threw me a party, and um, it was amazing.
• 20:34
  SPEAKER_01: We had a musician there and he was playing country music.
• 20:37
  SPEAKER_01: And at some point, I don't know, some song came on, right?
• 20:40
  SPEAKER_01: And my husband and I, we just started dancing in the grass, and I was like, dear Lord have mercy, honey, look what we've accomplished, right?
• 20:46
  SPEAKER_01: Look what we did.
• 20:47
  SPEAKER_01: And it's still there's still hard days, but wow, like no regrets, right?
• 20:54
  SPEAKER_01: It's all worth it.
• 20:55
  SPEAKER_01: It's all worth it when you keep going and you believe and have faith, and you get there and you're like, oh, it's so good, and that's what I want for you.
• 21:05
  SPEAKER_01: So today in this episode, you have been able to identify where which pieces are missing from your healing journey, from being able to build this kind of happy life post-divorce.
• 21:16
  SPEAKER_01: You have heard from me about the stuck spots where people tend to get stuck, specifically around support, specifically around not getting deep enough in their processing, and then not having enough accountability towards intentional manifestation.
• 21:30
  SPEAKER_01: And you have heard Mary's story where she just keeps getting these emotional hits, and we've heard where she needed to do maybe a little more practicing patience, actually, with the processing part, but then also maybe a little more specific building out what the future life is that she wants for herself and really revisiting that from a place of embodied faith.
• 21:50
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you so much, time, for spending time together today.
• 21:52
  SPEAKER_01: If you would please consider leaving a written review for the podcast, it truly makes a difference in our lives as content creators and also helps other women know what they can get from listening to the podcast and build trust with us before they dig in.
• 22:07
  SPEAKER_01: I love you so much.
• 22:08
  SPEAKER_01: Peace.