Latest / Dear Divorce Diary: A Fresh Approach To Healing Grief & Building A Life Of Confidence After Divorce / 116. Take Your Next Step Towards Acceptance and Forgiveness in your Life After Divorce

Transcript

116. Take Your Next Step Towards Acceptance and Forgiveness in your Life After Divorce · Dear Divorce Diary: A Fresh Approach To Healing Grief & Building A Life Of Confidence After Divorce

• 0:49
  Speaker 1: Hi love, it's still spring break, but here is another one of my favorite episodes.
• 0:54
  Speaker 1: Honestly, this is a topic that is so near and dear to my heart.
• 0:58
  Speaker 1: It is part of our brand's mission and vision.
• 1:01
  Speaker 1: It's about really being able to free yourself from, for instance, things like resentment and stuckness and the difficulty with forgiveness in general, this episode is all about how to move from disempowerment to empowerment.
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: It's like the magic secret sauce that you need in order to make the most out of this season of your life.
• 1:25
  Speaker 1: Let's dig in.
• 1:32
  Speaker 1: Hi love, 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.
• 1:43
  Speaker 1: I'm your host, dawn Wiggins, a therapist, coach, integrative healer and divorcee.
• 1:49
  Speaker 1: Join me for a fresh approach to healing grief and building your confidence after divorce.
• 1:54
  Speaker 1: We're going to talk about a lot of hows and a lot of whys today, but the thing I want you to hear in this deep and wide subject about how to heal is shed your resistance, love, and by resistance I mean your difficulty accepting that where you are and what is unfolding is perfect and beautiful and caterpillar.
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: To butterfly like that.
• 2:27
  Speaker 1: It's okay, even when it doesn't feel okay and you're certain that it's not okay.
• 2:32
  Speaker 1: It is, and the stories you're telling yourself in your mind about the not okayness of it all is what's creating the resistance, and the resistance is what's slowing you down, and the slowing down is what's killing your motivation and is what is making it all take longer.
• 2:52
  Speaker 1: So we're going to dig into all of the delicious solutions, but I want you to keep in mind that the goal is to shed resistance, to get more okay and accepting of what's coming than what's been Make sense Okay.
• 3:12
  Speaker 1: So, first things first, in healing after divorce is accepting that your marriage is over, and some of you just had your heart skip a beat.
• 3:23
  Speaker 1: Some of you are like done, moving on, and for some of you, when I just said the words, I know you're breath hitched and your heart skipped a beat and you were like but maybe Dawn, maybe, and and I know love, I hear you and I get it and I've felt that breath hitching.
• 3:44
  Speaker 1: Right, how did I, how was I able to call it so beautifully?
• 3:46
  Speaker 1: Because I've been there in your body.
• 3:48
  Speaker 1: Your beautifully rich, abundant future self is so clear that the time for looking back is not now, that everything you want is forward and it's okay for you to love him and move on.
• 4:11
  Speaker 1: It's okay if you love him forever.
• 4:13
  Speaker 1: I am totally okay with that.
• 4:15
  Speaker 1: I want you to be able to love him and believe in your future.
• 4:21
  Speaker 1: I want you to be able to love him and believe in yourself and that you don't need to build your life around him to be okay, because nothing could be further from the truth.
• 4:34
  Speaker 1: So how you accept that your marriage is over is finding a way to trust, believe and have faith that your future can absolutely be greater than your past and that the key indicator in the execution of that is actually your belief.
• 4:53
  Speaker 1: Indicator in the execution of that is actually your belief.
• 4:58
  Speaker 1: If you are invested in believing that him and your past is everything and your future is bleak, then that is what you will create.
• 5:04
  Speaker 1: But if you catch some fire inside of you and say this is where I would say in these moments, on my bathroom floor I spent a lot of time on my bathroom floor, loves, I did not come this far to only come this far that's what I would say to myself and that's how I would light that fire.
• 5:25
  Speaker 1: That's the lighter I used with the kindling to get reignited into transformation, I believe you did not come this far.
• 5:34
  Speaker 1: To come this far that there is so much more for you and that is, I believe, the key to accepting the overness of a thing is that this is simply a lily pad in your process of transformation.
• 5:51
  Speaker 1: And the more you are second guessing yourself, and the more you are second guessing yourself and the more you are doubting that you made the right decision, and the more you are fearful that you can't do it without him, and the more that you are insistent that he was your once and forever and only soulmate.
• 6:08
  Speaker 1: Those things are keeping you trapped in a prison.
• 6:12
  Speaker 1: When you have the keys and the keys are in your mind when we convince ourselves of thoughts that are flawed right, we remain trapped in a mental prison, and there are a lot of themes that have come at you in your life.
• 6:32
  Speaker 1: When I was preparing for this today, I literally said, okay, this is not actually Disney World and it's not, because there are many soulmates you're going to have in your life, and some of them are going to be your best friends, and some of them might be your children, and some of them might be a lover and some of them might be your husband.
• 6:50
  Speaker 1: There are so many places for you to be to have a richness of love in your life, and your past and the people in your past are not the only conduit to that, and so that's where I need you to start getting your juices flowing is around having this wider, more expansive view about what life has to offer you and what you are willing to consider as possible in your own life.
• 7:20
  Speaker 1: The forwardness of it all the solution, not the problem Focus Make sense.
• 7:30
  Speaker 1: Okay, sometimes, when we are trying to heal from something really major and massive and deep, we ask a lot of questions that, in the words of Brene Brown, are in an attempt to control and predict.
• 7:45
  Speaker 1: So there are a lot of you who are going to Google questions about stages and length of healing and, oh man, are you normal?
• 7:55
  Speaker 1: Because we don't like uncertainty and we don't like pain.
• 8:00
  Speaker 1: So when you find yourself Googling things like what are the stages of healing and what is the most difficult stage and how long is healing going to take, I want you to know a couple of things.
• 8:12
  Speaker 1: Those questions are holding you back because they have you focused on the wrong thing.
• 8:25
  Speaker 1: Those questions are focused on think about it when you're wanting to know where am I in the stages and how long is it going to take?
• 8:31
  Speaker 1: I want you to feel this inside You're really focused on it not being over.
• 8:37
  Speaker 1: I'm just leaving you with that for a moment.
• 8:44
  Speaker 1: When you want to know how much is left, you really are focused on how hard it is, how heavy it feels, right.
• 8:55
  Speaker 1: When I asked Colleen how many reps I have left, or I asked how many more minutes I have in my ice bath, it's because I'm focusing on how uncomfortable it is, and so I really want you to throw those questions about stages out and I want you to start asking yourself how can I fall more in love with the process of healing and of transforming?
• 9:22
  Speaker 1: How can I focus more on what my mind body is trying to communicate to me and what I need to shift in how I'm healing, rather than trying to be done with healing?
• 9:37
  Speaker 1: I know I've said this to you before that so many people come to session each week saying I told myself I wasn't going to cry today, and that always cracks me up when they do, because, love, if you've got tears in there, you've got tears in there and, trust you me, I want to get you through them as efficiently as possible, but when you're arguing with what's left in the tank like it just is, and I would rather you focus on how you can fall in love with the process of transforming, because it is the process of living.
• 10:11
  Speaker 1: If you're really living with intention, you're going to constantly be transforming, and I know that it's happening in a major, intense and overwhelming way right now because it's a lot at once, but it's okay, and I want you to abandon controlling and predicting and start appreciating the magic that is coming through you.
• 10:33
  Speaker 1: I want you to stop focusing on what's going wrong and start noticing what is working in your favor.
• 10:42
  Speaker 1: I want you to stop focusing on getting people on your side and focusing on finding joy instead.
• 10:54
  Speaker 1: I want you to notice each time you're tapped into resentment about all the things whether it's about him or his parents, or something to do with the kids, or the court or the thing right All the resentment, and I want you to turn that resentment into appreciation for what it is molding you into.
• 11:17
  Speaker 1: What is it about this journey, this transformative journey that is molding you into something so magical that it makes you so much more than you ever thought you could be Now?
• 11:35
  Speaker 1: I am not in any way minimizing what you're going through.
• 11:37
  Speaker 1: Let's just assume that I know that every nook and cranny of every excruciating moment you felt seems, seems absolutely unbearable, unbearable, unbearable.
• 11:54
  Speaker 1: The word unbearable is the word that leads people to things like suicide.
• 11:59
  Speaker 1: Right, I am very clear what unbearable feels like.
• 12:02
  Speaker 1: However, I know that when we focus on the unbearableness of something, we end up crossing that line right.
• 12:12
  Speaker 1: We cross the line into the dark, dark, heavy place.
• 12:15
  Speaker 1: So what may sometimes sound like I am minimizing your pain is actually me saying like hey, I'm calling you over here from the light because I know that you can't get to where you want to go when you're focused on the unbearableness of it.
• 12:29
  Speaker 1: So when you're tempted to Google stages and timelines, I want you to come back over here to the light.
• 12:37
  Speaker 1: I want you to switch your focus.
• 12:38
  Speaker 1: I want you to find some appreciation for the transformation and the journey that you're in, and I want you to get better at defining what you want your future to look at than being upset about the past that you're losing Now.
• 12:53
  Speaker 1: What you want your future to look at than being upset about the past that you're losing Now.
• 12:57
  Speaker 1: Don't get me wrong your therapists and your coaches and your healing guides are going to offer you opportunities to process that pain, and that's great.
• 13:06
  Speaker 1: But I don't want you to live there.
• 13:07
  Speaker 1: I don't want you to live focused on the pain.
• 13:09
  Speaker 1: I want you to say, okay, I am in a process that is happening for me and I'm going to find a way to love it a little bit more in my day-to-day life.
• 13:24
  Speaker 1: I was telling a story this week about how I had my kid at a Reiki session this weekend.
• 13:31
  Speaker 1: One of the things, one of the feedbacks that I was given, was so silly, but it helped me cue her differently.
• 13:38
  Speaker 1: When we were getting into power struggle, her and I, and so then I would say, okay, grace, think of this thing that the Reiki lady said, and it makes us laugh rather than fight.
• 13:49
  Speaker 1: And so people might think that some of my parenting tactics are ridiculous, and I might think that some of my parenting tactics are ridiculous, and I might think that some of my parenting tactics are ridiculous, but guess what?
• 13:58
  Speaker 1: It's a form of healing that brings a smile to my face and it makes me giggle more and it creates rituals that please me.
• 14:05
  Speaker 1: And so then the healing it doesn't hurt so bad, right, because it's fun.
• 14:11
  Speaker 1: Now do I sometimes in the healing process, especially with my kid, have to focus and attend to for a few minutes on what isn't working and what needs transformation Absolutely.
• 14:21
  Speaker 1: But we don't stay there.
• 14:23
  Speaker 1: We focus on it for the purpose of letting the emotion flow through and then finding a solution and enacting that solution and doing it in a way that's fun and lighthearted and playful, that we can live with, because we can't live when things are unbearable, because we cannot bear it.
• 14:42
  Speaker 1: So part of all of this finding appreciation in the healing journey is not taking it so seriously is finding ways to play through your healing.
• 14:53
  Speaker 1: When we're talking about healing after divorce, one of the most common things that comes up is how to heal after divorce, divorcing a narcissist and this is its own entire podcast.
• 15:56
  Speaker 1: So I do not aim to do this one topic nearly enough justice in these few minutes I'm going to give it.
• 16:05
  Speaker 1: But here's what I want to say about that Is, when you've been in a relationship with a narcissistically organized person and that could be more than one person it probably is more than one person in your life.
• 16:19
  Speaker 1: Just know that that when we choose narcissistic partners, we tend to have come from narcissistic environments.
• 16:23
  Speaker 1: So just know that that when we choose narcissistic partners, we tend to have come from narcissistic environments.
• 16:24
  Speaker 1: So just know that that your transformational journey that you're on is all about you finding your truth, finding your inner reality, validating it, celebrating it and honoring it.
• 16:46
  Speaker 1: So that starts with when you have to pee, go to the bathroom.
• 16:51
  Speaker 1: When you are hungry, eat a bite of food, because when you have been in a relationship in a narcissistically organized environment, you've been so organized around somebody else's reality that you have shoved down your thoughts, feelings, desires, urges, impulses, fascinations, and that has gone to such a place that you don't pee when you need to pee.
• 17:21
  Speaker 1: You don't you second guess so many of your thoughts, feelings and beliefs, and so so much of healing from that is about tapping into your own inner guidance and wisdom.
• 17:33
  Speaker 1: How do you do that?
• 17:35
  Speaker 1: When you feel joy, you are tapped in.
• 17:38
  Speaker 1: When you feel present and gleeful and inspired or clear or motivated, any of these words are the things that will help you know when you're tapped into your own inner guidance.
• 17:55
  Speaker 1: When you are feeling heavy and sad and angry and confused, you are not tapped into your inner guidance love.
• 18:04
  Speaker 1: And angry and confused, you are not tapped into your inner guidance love.
• 18:06
  Speaker 1: So I want you to notice when you have moments of clarity, moments of ambition, moments of inspiration, when that dance party hits, when you catch that spark, no-transcript.
• 18:25
  Speaker 1: So when that surfaces, I want you to run with it as long as that wave will carry you.
• 18:33
  Speaker 1: And that is a way oversimplified version of how to heal after divorcing a narcissist.
• 18:41
  Speaker 1: And again, I'm not minimizing.
• 18:45
  Speaker 1: There are so many nooks and crannies to that lived experience.
• 18:49
  Speaker 1: And I get it.
• 18:52
  Speaker 1: You have truth inside of you, you have everything inside of you.
• 18:55
  Speaker 1: Practice validating that, practice going with it, practice leaning into it, and when you think you might be tapped into it, write it down, write it down.
• 19:06
  Speaker 1: I'd love for you to have, like love's, little books of inner truths and knowings.
• 19:13
  Speaker 1: And maybe you're afraid to say them out loud, or maybe you're afraid to share them in therapy or to tell a friend because it's still too fresh and it still feels too wobbly, and maybe you're wrong and maybe you know, because that environment it's very mind fucking right, it's very, very pardon, the F-bomb.
• 19:29
  Speaker 1: And so I'd love for you to have a place where you just write them down, because just in the act of writing them down you are honoring the voice from where they come and so, even if you don't do anything with them, just write them down in their own little booklet and then you can always come back and be like I did know, and that will be such a rewarding and valuable process.
• 19:53
  Speaker 1: So, tapping into your inner guidance, your inner truth and I get how confusing that is when you've got anxiety in one ear and panic in another and depression and dissociation and I'm super clear that when you're healing from that level of trauma, dissociation, and I'm super clear that when you're healing from that level of trauma, that it's hard to know when it's the truth and, yes, all those other factors, those are happening, but you'll know by how it feels.
• 20:21
  Speaker 1: So follow that when you're trying to get to the bottom of how to heal after a divorce.
• 20:40
  Speaker 1: There's a lot of inquiry and dialogue about how this process of divorce changes a woman and I think that it's one of the most beautiful things we can consider, because I think that the knowing of the change that's unfolding is the beautiful part of it.
• 20:57
  Speaker 1: So much of what we talk about to do with divorce and healing is with our eyes on the darkness or the suffering that came about, or or the betrayal or the him of it or the them of it or the I don't know.
• 21:13
  Speaker 1: You know the power struggle and the wrongs and the injustices and right, and when we're looking at all of that, we're not really celebrating what's actually happening as a result of this and the way that divorce changes you.
• 21:30
  Speaker 1: Love is it transforms you into, if you let it.
• 21:36
  Speaker 1: It's not going to do divorce isn't going to do this for all women, but it will for you, because you're here and that tells me that you're looking deeper and you want to know more.
• 21:44
  Speaker 1: For you, love.
• 21:46
  Speaker 1: This divorce is going to change you into the most of yourself you've ever been, the most of yourself you've ever been, and not even that you ever could be, because you could be even more.
• 22:01
  Speaker 1: But you are coming through a process that is allowing you to shed layers that do not serve you and to build layers that do.
• 22:11
  Speaker 1: And so if you could imagine for a moment what you believe to be your most magnificent version of self, the things that you wish, you could turn the volume down on the things that you wish.
• 22:27
  Speaker 1: You could turn the volume up on the things that you wish.
• 22:31
  Speaker 1: You could turn the volume up on the most magnificent version of self.
• 22:38
  Speaker 1: Whatever that is for you.
• 22:38
  Speaker 1: That is precisely where this is taking you, so long as you don't get bogged down in the control and predictive at all.
• 22:41
  Speaker 1: Right, how long is it going to take?
• 22:43
  Speaker 1: And when are we going to be there?
• 22:44
  Speaker 1: And what stage am I on?
• 22:46
  Speaker 1: And does this stage suck or not?
• 22:47
  Speaker 1: If you go down that rabbit hole, love, you're not going to reach the most magnificent version that you envision.
• 22:53
  Speaker 1: However, if you find a way to fall in appreciation to fall in I don't want to say love, fall in appreciation with this process, your most magnificent self is the only outcome possible.
• 23:07
  Speaker 1: And that's why we come here, and that's why we talk, and that's why we talk, and that's why we share, and that's why we get.
• 23:12
  Speaker 1: We come here so that we can get recalibrated to that right.
• 23:18
  Speaker 1: Maybe you come here thinking like, oh, I've got this problem that I need to understand better, and sure, maybe that's true, but really think about how you feel after you've, after we've sat together.
• 23:29
  Speaker 1: How you really feel is like I can you feel a bit of inspiration, you feel a bit of confidence, you feel a bit of spark, and that's that inner guidance shining through.
• 23:45
  Speaker 1: Right, that's you getting recalibrated to your truth.
• 23:48
  Speaker 1: That's all I'm doing here is I'm telling you who you actually are versus who you're afraid that everybody else told you you were.
• 23:53
  Speaker 1: That's not really true, right?
• 23:54
  Speaker 1: I'm just here to remind you of the truth of who you are.
• 23:58
  Speaker 1: That how to heal after a divorce is all about you falling in love with you and then the rest just clicks into place.
• 24:09
  Speaker 1: And I know you're on your way to that.
• 24:13
  Speaker 1: And sometimes we talk about, but I don't see the results.
• 24:16
  Speaker 1: I don't see the results.
• 24:17
  Speaker 1: I don't see the results.
• 24:18
  Speaker 1: And you cannot get bogged down in that, because that's going to knock you out of the game.
• 24:22
  Speaker 1: Stick with the process, trust the process and know that all of a sudden you're going to be like look what happened, this is so amazing.
• 24:33
  Speaker 1: And and in the meantime, when you feel a little in the slog of it, just keep coming back.
• 24:38
  Speaker 1: Keep coming back and and just ask for your cheerleaders to cheer you a little bit.
• 24:45
  Speaker 1: Or be a little more gentle with yourself.
• 24:48
  Speaker 1: Be like okay, if I'm not seeing results, it's not because I'm not doing it right, maybe, right, like maybe, but it's probably because you're not being patient enough with yourself.
• 24:59
  Speaker 1: It's probably because you're focusing.
• 25:01
  Speaker 1: You're being too hard on yourself.
• 25:03
  Speaker 1: You're focusing too much on the problem, you're generating too much of your own pain rather than believing in yourself and moving forward in faith and hope and joy that you are a good person and you're here to do amazing things and that you are magnificent and that you're on your way to the fulfillment of that magnificence.
• 25:21
  Speaker 1: And that it's not all or nothing and that it doesn't happen all at once.
• 25:25
  Speaker 1: It happens in stages, and that everything about this divorce is delivering you to that.
• 25:29
  Speaker 1: And when you get tempted to feel like shit because it's not fair, because he hurt you, because he betrayed you, because he didn't uphold his vows and because he, he, he, he, he, he, he switch your focus.
• 25:43
  Speaker 1: Switch your focus, and that is how you will heal from this divorce.
• 25:47
  Speaker 1: That is how you will heal from this divorce.
• 25:49
  Speaker 1: Switch your focus from needing to heal from the divorce to stepping into your magnificence.
• 25:57
  Speaker 1: What if we even stopped calling it healing from divorce?
• 25:59
  Speaker 1: What if we just called it something else?
• 26:02
  Speaker 1: How do I stop focusing on divorce and realize that what I'm really here to do is to become more of myself?
• 26:09
  Speaker 1: Start Googling that.
• 26:10
  Speaker 1: To do is to become more of myself.
• 26:11
  Speaker 1: Start Googling that.
• 26:12
  Speaker 1: How do I become more of myself?
• 26:14
  Speaker 1: You've got this love Sending you a huge hug.
• 26:22
  Speaker 1: Talk soon, peace, dear.
• 26:40
  Speaker 1: Divorce Diary is a podcast by my coach Dawn.
• 26:43
  Speaker 1: You can find more at mycoachdawncom.