Latest / Dear Divorce Diary: A Fresh Approach To Healing Grief & Building A Life Of Confidence After Divorce / 215. Divorce Loneliness After a 24-Year Marriage: Finding Yourself Again

Transcript

215. Divorce Loneliness After a 24-Year Marriage: Finding Yourself Again · Dear Divorce Diary: A Fresh Approach To Healing Grief & Building A Life Of Confidence After Divorce

• 0:49
  Speaker 1: Divorce isn't just about splitting from a person.
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: It's about untangling your entire life, your identity, your sense of belonging.
• 0:57
  Speaker 1: And in today's episode we're sitting down with Kim, a teacher who found herself navigating the deep loneliness, loss and the unexpected challenges that came with ending a 24-year marriage From grief to growth, isolation to empowerment.
• 1:11
  Speaker 1: This conversation is raw, real and filled with the kind of wisdom that only comes from walking through the fire.
• 1:17
  Speaker 1: Stay with us, because what Kim shares might just change the way you see your own healing journey.
• 1:23
  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.
• 1:39
  Speaker 1: I'm your host, dawn Wiggins, a therapist, coach, integrative healer and divorcee.
• 1:46
  Speaker 1: Join me for a fresh approach to healing grief and building your confidence after divorce.
• 1:59
  Speaker 1: We are so lucky to have Kim with us today.
• 2:02
  Speaker 1: She is one of our longtime listeners and part of our community, and it was an absolute joy to be able to sit with her and have her share her story with you.
• 2:13
  Speaker 1: In this episode we talk about how loneliness after divorce can feel unbearable, but that is not a sign of failure.
• 2:20
  Speaker 1: It's actually an invitation to something deeper.
• 2:23
  Speaker 1: And so, in just a minute, kim is going to share how she moved through the hardest days, and still moves through those hard days, and what currently helps her feel less alone.
• 2:30
  Speaker 1: We're also going to take a look at the ways that the body holds onto the pain of the past, and Kim is going to share this jaw-dropping moment where her own health crisis revealed how much unprocessed grief she was carrying.
• 2:41
  Speaker 1: So stick around, because her story might help you rethink what your body is trying to tell you.
• 2:47
  Speaker 1: And finally, we know that healing isn't just about time passing.
• 2:51
  Speaker 1: It's about the tools that you use along the way.
• 2:53
  Speaker 1: Healing isn't just about time passing.
• 2:55
  Speaker 1: It's about the tools that you use along the way, and, from quantum healing to homeopathy, kim is going to share the powerful ways she has reconnected with herself and taken back her strength, and before we wrap up, you'll hear exactly how she did it and how you can too.
• 3:05
  Speaker 1: Let's dig in.
• 3:06
  Speaker 1: This feels like a lovely full circle thing for me with you, kim, because it's just.
• 3:15
  Speaker 1: You know, we chat all the time, right, and then here we are, all my people are in a room together.
• 3:21
  Speaker 1: Coach Tiffany is going to be our facilitator, our question asker, but also, like, don't feel like you have to stick to these questions.
• 3:28
  Speaker 1: Like let's riff right.
• 3:29
  Speaker 1: Like it's just the four of us in a room having a conversation.
• 3:32
  Speaker 1: Love, like truly right.
• 3:34
  Speaker 1: Like I want this to be more than anything.
• 3:37
  Speaker 1: I just want this to be time spent together, like that's to me like that's the most important thing, fair.
• 3:45
  Speaker 3: Sounds good.
• 3:46
  Speaker 1: Kim, how long have you been listening to the podcast, like when abouts did you find us?
• 3:56
  Speaker 3: I think it was the summer last summer but this past year I was I'm a teacher and I was on summer break and I was.
• 4:06
  Speaker 3: Can I tell you kind of how I found you?
• 4:10
  Speaker 3: yeah, I love that I've been on my own for about 18 months after being in a super long-term relationship.
• 4:18
  Speaker 3: We were married for almost 22 years together, for 24.
• 4:23
  Speaker 3: He was my best friend and I had decided I wanted a change in my life and it was very heartbreaking.
• 4:30
  Speaker 3: It took a lot of time for me to decide that that's what I wanted and for me to get off the fence and just say it.
• 4:38
  Speaker 3: And in fact, when I finally did say it was because he was like I know, you don't want this anymore, I want to work it out and you don't want it.
• 4:46
  Speaker 3: And so I wound up moving from Queens to Brooklyn.
• 4:51
  Speaker 3: We separated and then by the summer summer it was 18 months later, was past summer and I had moved for the second time, still in Brooklyn, but I had found an apartment that I really loved through a friend of mine and I was.
• 5:08
  Speaker 3: You know it's summertime when you're a teacher and you have all this time off.
• 5:11
  Speaker 3: All of a sudden you have a lot of time to think and process and I, the loneliness just called.
• 5:18
  Speaker 3: It was worse than it had ever been and I was like I know, like I'm talking to my friends about this and I have a close group of friends who have been very supportive and haven't judged me, and I'd also lost a lot of people who have been very supportive and haven't judged me, and I'd also lost a lot of people because of this and even had some you know stuff with family members who didn't agree with my choice, and I was like I need something more.
• 5:42
  Speaker 3: And my therapist had said to me you know, you should think about maybe some kind of support group for divorced people or divorced women.
• 5:48
  Speaker 3: I was like I don't really want that, but I do want to understand how this can be an empowering experience, because somewhere in my soul I know it's meant to be and I shouldn't be stuck.
• 6:02
  Speaker 1: How can I get aligned with what I know, on some level, is meant to be yeah?
• 6:06
  Speaker 3: And so what wound up happening is I just searched divorce podcast casts for women and yours was one of the first that came up and I I just I saw a list of subjects and topics that you'd covered and I was like, oh my god, this is so holistic.
• 6:24
  Speaker 3: This matches who I am, and I think one of the first ones I listened to was about homeopathy.
• 6:29
  Speaker 3: Okay, who would have ever thought like I?
• 6:33
  Speaker 3: It's something I've been interested that it could help me in this healing process, and so I listened to that one.
• 6:40
  Speaker 3: So I mean, since then, I kind of I joined the, the premium podcast when you started that and that's been super cool, and when I started to listen to that, then I was interested in the quantum stuff too.
• 6:54
  Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah.
• 6:56
  Speaker 3: And then there was something.
• 6:57
  Speaker 3: I think you and I had spoken quite a few times before you aired the one where you did quantum healing.
• 7:03
  Speaker 3: Something about that felt so much more personal because we'd spoken, I recognized your voice, there was something intuitive about it and I was like I feel like she's speaking to me.
• 7:17
  Speaker 3: And I remember reaching out after and going, oh my God, that was amazing.
• 7:25
  Speaker 3: And then I can't even explain it in the moment, but there was a lot of healing that happened right after that and I remember you saying to me you're going to feel this for quite a few days like keep track of what's going on, for you.
• 7:40
  Speaker 3: But that was, you know, one of the most.
• 7:42
  Speaker 3: All of the episodes have been great and that was a really powerful one for me.
• 7:47
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I love that, I remember, yeah, I remember us talking about that and your intuition is sort of like really opened up almost since that moment, right, what was your biggest struggle at the time that you found the podcast, and how did hearing the conversation start to shift things for you?
• 8:16
  Speaker 3: Like I said before, I have a group of close friends but I was self-isolating and I think I've done that through this journey.
• 8:21
  Speaker 3: I even did this over my winter break and the holidays.
• 8:23
  Speaker 3: I also lost my mom four months ago, which is hard, and she was in South Africa and I went to say goodbye and it's just been like I've had a lot I'd gotten.
• 8:35
  Speaker 3: This is kind of off the track, but I, soon after I separated like two months in, right before my spring break from school, I actually got very sick and I didn't know what was going on and I went into for the doctor because I tried to do a zoom call with the doctor and she was like I can't really diagnose you.
• 8:51
  Speaker 3: I think it's gastrointestinal and you might have a ruptured appendix.
• 8:54
  Speaker 3: I want you to go to one of our medical centers.
• 9:00
  Speaker 3: And I went in and they were like emergency room right now, to be sure, and I went up with a ruptured appendix and I was in the hospital and I had people checking in with me and I had a friend who came and was with me the next day and throughout the journey, for two were there but I did it on my own and it was really scary and it was like midnight when I found out that I had it and they were scared that I had cancer and it was so scary, wow, yeah.
• 9:29
  Speaker 3: And so you know, like I think a lot of this and then losing my mom, it was just a lot Like I was.
• 9:37
  Speaker 3: I had a lot that I was grieving, yeah, and I didn't need to isolate.
• 9:43
  Speaker 3: There were people who would be there and I just I just caught myself really just like not wanting to be around people.
• 9:51
  Speaker 3: I was diagnosed.
• 9:53
  Speaker 3: I've had anxiety for probably my whole life, but I sure um you know I, soon after being sick, I saw the, saw the doctor, and he was like I'm gonna put you on something.
• 10:04
  Speaker 3: But I don't think you just have anxiety.
• 10:06
  Speaker 3: I think you're depressed and I think it's situational like that was really like all of that just came.
• 10:13
  Speaker 3: I was like a pardon the expression like a real shit storm.
• 10:17
  Speaker 1: I was like I don't know, I don't know what to do anymore like this is just really hard you know you said that it was sort of off the track, but I don't think it is at all love.
• 10:27
  Speaker 1: I think that that the experiences that you had right, your own medical experiences, and then who's your emergency contact right, and then your mom passing away like this is life on life's terms.
• 10:40
  Speaker 1: And I think that when we're moving through divorce and the way we've related to our support system is not the same, and then we still have to deal with life's curveballs, it almost breaks us right.
• 10:54
  Speaker 1: I know that when I was getting divorced and I had cluster headaches, I was often calling people from my Al-Anon phone list to take me to the emergency room and and I think it's really scary to be single and have that kind of health issue my heart really breaks and I think, especially for women at this point.
• 11:15
  Speaker 1: Right, we have parents that are aging and anything could happen at this point.
• 11:18
  Speaker 1: I know we have a woman that was in the that's in the program now and her dad passed away a few months ago.
• 11:24
  Speaker 1: I think these are the realities that we don't talk about.
• 11:28
  Speaker 1: You mentioned or like it's just hard to feel support when there's that much crisis going on.
• 11:33
  Speaker 1: I think you know you said you lost people.
• 11:35
  Speaker 1: I'd love to hear more about that too, because it's like gosh there's just like crisis on top of crisis on top of crisis, and then I have half the support or quarter of the support that I had and, of course, you isolated right.
• 11:49
  Speaker 1: Your nervous system was shutting down.
• 11:50
  Speaker 1: It was just overburdened, completely overburdened, absolutely.
• 11:55
  Speaker 3: I mean I want to talk about, like the people I lost, because you mentioned that, but I something interesting came out of this, like I searched for, kind of what is the spiritual?
• 12:08
  Speaker 3: What's the spiritual meaning behind a ruptured appendix, not just a yeah, an appendicitis?
• 12:14
  Speaker 3: And it was fear of moving forward yeah, wow, and did it rupture?
• 12:20
  Speaker 3: Yeah it did, yeah, and the surgeon said to me if you had left this, she said we wouldn't be in conversation yeah, I mean, it was the same for me with cluster headaches, right.
• 12:36
  Speaker 1: Cluster headaches was it's HPA access dysfunction caused by a lifetime of trauma and suppressed rage Suppressed rage, right it's.
• 12:45
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I had this right, and the amount of health issues that I had from all of that.
• 12:49
  Speaker 1: So we're twinsies.
• 12:51
  Speaker 1: I'll take that yeah it's remarkable what you've, what you've been able to do for yourself, in terms of what you've reclaimed, in terms of your wellness you know, one of my closest friends names Alessia.
• 13:07
  Speaker 3: She and I teach together and she said to me recently she goes.
• 13:12
  Speaker 3: You know, do you realize how brave you are and how strong you are?
• 13:19
  Speaker 3: She goes.
• 13:19
  Speaker 3: I'm so proud of you.
• 13:20
  Speaker 3: You've just you've gone through so much and you've done it with so much grace.
• 13:25
  Speaker 1: Grace, yeah, yeah, you have been so gracious.
• 13:29
  Speaker 1: I mean, even in the relationship we've built Right there have been many times I've reached out to you and said hey, you know, can you give me your thoughts on this?
• 13:36
  Speaker 1: And I endorse her assessment you are one of the kindest, most empathetic people, deeply intuitive.
• 13:44
  Speaker 1: I cannot believe the appendix part that's was it a Louise Hay?
• 13:49
  Speaker 1: Like, how did you?
• 13:49
  Speaker 1: Yeah?
• 13:53
  Speaker 3: I mean, I knew about her and I have friends who've been recommending that I get her books.
• 13:58
  Speaker 3: And I finally do own one now and I used it all the time, but yeah.
• 14:04
  Speaker 1: Is it you Can Heal your Life?
• 14:05
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's got a great little appendix right where you can look up health issues.
• 14:12
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, it's pretty good.
• 14:19
  Speaker 3: You have worked through a lot love, yeah.
• 14:20
  Speaker 3: And I think when I finally come to the space of going, I'm not a villain because I made a different choice.
• 14:28
  Speaker 3: And I still battle with that because at my most vulnerable moments I'm like this is my fault.
• 14:33
  Speaker 3: I mean, you know, I had my younger brother actually said to me once he's like you know, it's all about you, so selfish he goes um, you chose this.
• 14:48
  Speaker 1: I'm not going to feel sorry for you.
• 14:50
  Speaker 1: Wow, like just flat out said like because you made a choice, you don't deserve compassion yeah.
• 14:55
  Speaker 3: He was like this is Satan's work in your life.
• 14:59
  Speaker 1: Satan's work.
• 15:00
  Speaker 3: Yeah, this is Satan's work.
• 15:02
  Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah.
• 15:04
  Speaker 1: And when those are the dominant voices, right, it's so hard yeah.
• 15:09
  Speaker 2: So, kim, beyond the podcast, I know you've also connected with our team at Dear Divorce Diary and other ways, so can you share how that's helped?
• 15:19
  Speaker 3: Yeah, so I have the Heartbeat app.
• 15:21
  Speaker 3: I belong to the cocoon community.
• 15:23
  Speaker 3: That's where I've connected with you, tiffany, is that I went through there.
• 15:30
  Speaker 3: It's been so great.
• 15:32
  Speaker 3: I know I was having a really intense time a few weeks ago and I had reached out to Dawn and I'd reached out to you and at one point Dawn said hi, love.
• 15:49
  Speaker 3: I haven't replied, but Tiffany and I were talking and she's got you and it just was so true.
• 15:53
  Speaker 3: I remember you recommending a meditation for me to try, and I've been doing it and really loving it.
• 16:10
  Speaker 3: And then I found some others and shared them with you and you are both expert in this work and but it doesn't feel like authority speaking down to me.
• 16:16
  Speaker 3: It's collaboration and us being vulnerable together, you know, and that's just really powerful.
• 16:25
  Speaker 3: I mean, I think my own wounding and my own trauma and life experience and conditioning always has me thinking somebody else has the answer.
• 16:36
  Speaker 3: You know, and I think I'm learning to trust my intuition to this work and I feel deeply held in a space where you're collaborating with me you're deeply gifted, right, like you, you are a joy to collaborate with because very, very often you come with your own solutions too.
• 17:02
  Speaker 1: right, the amount of meditations you found and shown me, like, right, when you were sick the other week and you had this cough in the lungs and you, you know we're on insight timer and you found was it EFT or meditation for lung, like, you're always learning and absorbing and you know, I know you have an interest in this work and I think you're just so well suited for it.
• 17:23
  Speaker 1: Right, and it's interesting I don't know if we've had this conversation, but sort of the clue about you being a twin and whatever like that, just that whole profile that you know, one day we'll talk about it in greater depth from a homeopathic perspective.
• 17:38
  Speaker 1: The same people who are left-handed or who have twins or who have all of that in their family system, tend to have deeper intuition and tend to abide closer to God.
• 17:51
  Speaker 1: The veil is thinner, and so that's of you, right, that's of you, it's in your ancestry and I know you already know that and I'm just confirming for you something you already know.
• 18:01
  Speaker 1: But, yeah, you are even more intuitive, I think, than you probably know and I think you know, I think you've been called to this work on some level.
• 18:09
  Speaker 1: You shared with me yesterday and and I love that for you I think you're already doing it as a teacher, but I know you have a sort of vision for how to do it even more.
• 18:20
  Speaker 1: I have no doubt you hold space for your students in a way that feels exhausting right, because you've mentioned that.
• 18:28
  Speaker 2: that it's just it's hard and too, kim, like as a coach, like I know that my clients are very whole and very capable.
• 18:37
  Speaker 2: There's just things that are buried underneath of there and so I enjoy kind of bringing it out, you know, and helping people kind of unbury the layers of themselves.
• 18:47
  Speaker 2: But, you know, I believe that everyone has the answers to their own self and everyone's got it in them.
• 18:52
  Speaker 2: They just have to.
• 18:53
  Speaker 2: Sometimes you have to have someone walk with you for a while to to allow you to trust what you, you know, are saying.
• 19:01
  Speaker 2: And I think that you know, in the cocoon community, what I love too is, you know, to be able to DM people that are in there.
• 19:06
  Speaker 2: It's very humanizing, you know, like when, when Don and I enjoy when we're working with people, they see us like we're sharing our vulnerabilities.
• 19:15
  Speaker 2: we're sharing, you know, our mistakes, things in life that we've tripped up on you know it's, it's a very humanizing experience and again, we're not on the other side of this saying that our lives are perfect, because they're not.
• 20:20
  Speaker 2: There's no such thing, and so we were very open with our clients, people in our community, about.
• 20:22
  Speaker 2: You know the things that we struggle with and and the ways that we move through and work through.
• 20:26
  Speaker 1: It's that paradox of vulnerability right, that we're always so afraid that our vulnerability is going to repel people, but it's the opposite.
• 20:33
  Speaker 4: It draws us all closer.
• 20:34
  Speaker 2: Yeah, there were things that I mean I'm going to be honest Like there were things like when I started doing the podcast with John that I'd initially said were off limits, that I didn't want to talk about, and now you know, same thing with you know everything else, and now, as we get further into it, I want to talk about it because it liberates.
• 20:51
  Speaker 2: Yeah, want to talk about it because it liberates.
• 20:55
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's gonna allow, it's gonna be the one thing that that woman's gonna say oh, okay, now I can really like come out with it because I know you understand.
• 20:58
  Speaker 2: So the more vulnerable we can all be together and share, I think you know, the deeper it helps everyone yeah, it's interesting even coming on.
• 21:07
  Speaker 3: I was so nervous about doing this and I like, I feel like I've even opened up more than I thought I would.
• 21:12
  Speaker 3: Just because it feels it's my truth right, A truth shared with people who can hold space for that.
• 21:26
  Speaker 1: No one's repelled by anything that I'm saying or thinking or feeling, Deliberating right the more we can own those fragments of ourselves.
• 21:32
  Speaker 1: It's such a good feeling Now.
• 21:34
  Speaker 1: That's not to say that we might not all have an emotional hangover, a vulnerability hangover, tomorrow.
• 21:39
  Speaker 1: Right, ask me tomorrow, maybe I might have a right.
• 21:41
  Speaker 1: We've said a lot of things today.
• 21:43
  Speaker 1: Talk a little bit about your experience with homeopathy in this last few weeks.
• 21:54
  Speaker 1: It's not an easy journey per se, right, like I think.
• 21:58
  Speaker 1: A lot of times I talk about homeopathy like it's so magical and it is.
• 22:01
  Speaker 1: It creates movement, right, but movement can be uncomfortable.
• 22:06
  Speaker 3: There's something very intuitive about it, but there's something counterintuitive.
• 22:12
  Speaker 3: If you haven't done it before, like I know, when I've asked you should I dose again?
• 22:19
  Speaker 3: And you're like, tell me about what you're going through.
• 22:21
  Speaker 3: Like when you think of modern medicine, you think of western medicine, you take a pill and you keep taking it till you get better.
• 22:28
  Speaker 3: With homeopathy, it's about taking a dose and letting that dose run its course.
• 22:32
  Speaker 3: And so much came up.
• 22:34
  Speaker 3: I cried about four times the other day, once before school, once at lunchtime, once after lunch.
• 22:43
  Speaker 3: I cried myself to sleep that night.
• 22:48
  Speaker 1: I felt like a sponge that had been wrung out and I've been tired all week.
• 22:51
  Speaker 3: The fact that I can doing this at 930 on a Friday night is and not feel like I'm depleted is a big deal.
• 22:59
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's what homeopathy does.
• 23:01
  Speaker 1: It strengthens vital force, right.
• 23:05
  Speaker 1: It clears out the mess that's been weighing down vital force and it does it strengthens, strengthens your whole, and then we navigate everything more robustly.
• 23:15
  Speaker 1: It's it's beautiful.
• 23:17
  Speaker 1: Yeah, we've had a lot of sort of beautiful homeopathy conversations.
• 23:21
  Speaker 1: It's one of the things that I love about what we do over here, because right in Western medicine there's a prescription, right, and you take the prescribed.
• 23:30
  Speaker 1: But me coaching someone through homeopathy, and I actually probably take an even more unique approach than some other homeopaths, because some homeopaths will also give very prescribed dosing regimen and I would much rather teach you how to be in tune with your energy and when to do something, because that gives you the power right To be able to say, to know, to trust yourself even more.
• 23:55
  Speaker 1: That's what I want for you is to have this deep, abiding trust and confidence that you know how to do it and what to do and how to take charge, that you could go to the health food store and it may be cumbersome but you could muscle test every dang remedy on that shelf and you'd be able to find a match and you'd know how to water dose and you'd know how to expand that energy.
• 24:17
  Speaker 1: If you needed to right, I'd much rather teach you to fish.
• 24:19
  Speaker 1: You know and you are especially capable.
• 24:22
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it's, it's cool and I want to do more of it.
• 24:26
  Speaker 3: Um, I mean, I know I also.
• 24:29
  Speaker 3: I had also asked you.
• 24:30
  Speaker 3: There was a time when I had a.
• 24:31
  Speaker 3: So I had also asked you.
• 24:34
  Speaker 3: There was a time when I had a cough.
• 24:35
  Speaker 4: before this cough, I had a cold and I asked you about a remedy.
• 24:42
  Speaker 3: I said I was thinking, you know you could get this on Amazon.
• 24:43
  Speaker 3: And you said, oh, that's a really good brand, go for it.
• 24:44
  Speaker 3: I sorted the cough out within days.
• 24:48
  Speaker 1: Oh, it was the tea, the mulling tea.
• 24:51
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 24:53
  Speaker 2: What do you feel like is one thing that you've learned from doing this work that you wish that every woman navigating divorce could hear right now?
• 25:01
  Speaker 3: I would say you're worth it.
• 25:02
  Speaker 3: It starts more like I did.
• 25:04
  Speaker 3: I've joined the community, I have the Loneliest Roadmap, I have the Poster's Divorce Roadmap.
• 25:10
  Speaker 3: I know, tiffany, you had said earlier that body scan is your go-to.
• 25:15
  Speaker 3: For a while that's what I just was doing.
• 25:20
  Speaker 3: I had, you know, gone back to you know the course, and I was like I'm just I'm going to pick a five minute thing and I'm going to do a body scan every night when I get home from work.
• 25:31
  Speaker 3: And so I came home for a solid week and I laid down on my bed and I did a body scan before I made dinner and it was good.
• 25:37
  Speaker 3: It was just very grounding for me.
• 25:40
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's the thing.
• 25:41
  Speaker 1: Start small, right, If it is start.
• 25:43
  Speaker 1: Do you have any questions for us?
• 25:45
  Speaker 1: Let's turn the tables.
• 25:49
  Speaker 3: If that last question, if I were to put it back to you, what would you say?
• 25:56
  Speaker 1: I hear producer joy say all the time you're worth it.
• 25:57
  Speaker 4: I would say this is kind of what I've been ruminating this week on is like you're stronger than you think you are.
• 26:03
  Speaker 4: You're more capable than you think you are because, in those moments where the kids are crying and you're by yourself and the water's leaking, you have to feel, it's well, like you can do it.
• 26:12
  Speaker 4: You can do hard things.
• 26:12
  Speaker 4: You yes, you're by yourself and the water's leaking.
• 26:13
  Speaker 4: You have to feel like you can do it.
• 26:14
  Speaker 4: You can do hard things.
• 26:15
  Speaker 4: Yes, you're worth it.
• 26:17
  Speaker 4: But also that resistance of I don't want to do it.
• 26:21
  Speaker 1: I don't want to have to do it.
• 26:22
  Speaker 1: It's too hard, you can't do it.
• 26:23
  Speaker 4: Yeah, you're stronger than you think you are.
• 26:26
  Speaker 1: I think the you're worth it piece.
• 26:28
  Speaker 1: I have a side take on that like that is.
• 26:32
  Speaker 1: The core issue often, I think, is women.
• 26:34
  Speaker 1: Is we doubt so much our own power?
• 26:37
  Speaker 1: But there's something in there about I wish I could have more women see how they are avoiding themselves, right like the thing you're avoiding is nine times out of 10.
• 26:55
  Speaker 1: It is the thing you need.
• 26:58
  Speaker 1: And that even goes down to a couple of months ago.
• 27:02
  Speaker 1: I had met with Kate one-on-one and I came out of there really like it had pulled up a lot of stuff, and so I was texting these two and I don't even remember all the details, probably because of the time of stuff.
• 27:13
  Speaker 1: And so I was texting these two and I don't even remember all the details, probably because of the time of night, and we've been talking and thinking so much.
• 27:17
  Speaker 1: But and Tiffany was like basically, like okay, so let's say it's the worst case scenario.
• 27:23
  Speaker 1: Oh, it was this idea that I'm the problem.
• 27:25
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I was like I can't be the problem.
• 27:29
  Speaker 1: I'm fine being a problem, but I can't be the problem.
• 27:33
  Speaker 1: And she was like so what if you're the problem?
• 27:35
  Speaker 1: Right, that thing I was resisting so hard.
• 27:38
  Speaker 1: I was like I couldn't sit with this idea that I was the problem.
• 27:41
  Speaker 1: And she was like, so what if you're the problem?
• 27:42
  Speaker 1: And I was like, well, that would be really liberating.
• 27:46
  Speaker 1: All right, I'm the problem, and just accepting that and like, maybe today I am and maybe today I'm not, but it's like that thing that we resist and avoid is the thing we need to move through.
• 27:55
  Speaker 1: And I wish that more women would have the faith in themselves that they can move through the thing and that it's worth it.
• 28:03
  Speaker 1: Right, we get so afraid of the unknown.
• 28:06
  Speaker 2: I mean, I think for me it's.
• 28:08
  Speaker 2: You know the time is now.
• 28:10
  Speaker 2: You know I'm a perfect example of somebody who literally dissociated and put myself in a bubble for a decade, not, you know, being afraid to have friendships, not really dating.
• 28:22
  Speaker 2: You know, focusing so much on raising my daughter and doing that.
• 28:28
  Speaker 2: And you know it wasn't until I got into my next relationship.
• 28:32
  Speaker 2: That was healthy and it felt scary that I realized I have so much more work to do and thankfully I have a partner who is very patient and who is also is committed to.
• 28:43
  Speaker 2: You know, my emotional healing Like not everyone's like that.
• 28:47
  Speaker 2: You know, like I could have saved a lot of time and headache if I just would have done the work you know prior to it.
• 28:53
  Speaker 2: Have saved a lot of time and headache if I just would have done the work you know prior to it.
• 28:56
  Speaker 2: And I, you know, especially with EMDR.
• 28:59
  Speaker 2: You know people had been recommending that I do EMDR since I've been 16 years old and I just never wanted to actually do it.
• 29:04
  Speaker 2: And so it's like when you finally face the thing and then you have a team of people and then you have a group of other women who are going through it with you and you can say the scary things out loud and you can say the vulnerable things out loud.
• 29:18
  Speaker 2: There's a lot of healing in that.
• 29:20
  Speaker 2: To say you know what today I might be the effing problem, you know and you're going to love me anyway, and it's okay, you know.
• 29:30
  Speaker 2: So I think what I would say is, especially as a mom like I was so conditioned to put my daughter first above everything and anything I ever did for myself, felt selfish and wrong and like I shouldn't be doing it.
• 29:41
  Speaker 2: And it's really not that way, because it's almost like when you're regulated, you set the tone for your kids and so you know when you're feeling at peace and you're taking that time for yourself to do the work.
• 29:53
  Speaker 2: They can see that and they receive you so much more.
• 29:56
  Speaker 2: You know differently and you know I was a more patient mom, I was more present, you know, with everybody and yeah, I guess also because you kind of you're mothering yourself in a new way, right?
• 30:09
  Speaker 1: Yeah, what else you got for us?
• 30:11
  Speaker 1: Give us one more.
• 30:13
  Speaker 3: I'd love to know a little bit more about EMDR.
• 30:22
  Speaker 1: So the loneliness roadmap basically is EMDR in a immersive coaching right Like that's.
• 30:24
  Speaker 1: I designed the loneliness roadmap to teach women how to use the tools of EMDR at home, at home.
• 30:29
  Speaker 1: So EMDR really is a combination of somatics, negative and positive beliefs and bilateral stimulation, by that meaning two sided stimulation, right, so we can use this butterfly tap as two sided simulation.
• 30:46
  Speaker 1: The way we initially learned EMDR is through eye movement, right when we're doing this track.
• 30:51
  Speaker 1: Track my fingers with your boy.
• 30:53
  Speaker 1: It's been a long time since I did EMDR.
• 30:55
  Speaker 1: It's just sort of fun just to do this, just as a throwback.
• 30:58
  Speaker 1: I used to do this in office all day long and people would say doesn't your arm get tired?
• 31:01
  Speaker 1: I'm doing the Lord's work.
• 31:04
  Speaker 1: So EMDR takes this sort of somatic reactivation of a part right, like a part of self that has a burden, and it activates this old, painful memory somatically.
• 31:19
  Speaker 1: What were you feeling, what was the smell, what was the sound, right?
• 31:23
  Speaker 1: What sensations do you have in your body?
• 31:25
  Speaker 1: Where is that held in your body?
• 31:26
  Speaker 1: What are the negative beliefs you've internalized associated with that memory?
• 31:31
  Speaker 1: Because that's what keeps it stuck?
• 31:34
  Speaker 1: And then we process bilaterally, whether that's using eye movement or tapping or tones in the ear and and what that bilateral stimulation does, when that's all beautifully activated, is it allows the brain to start to process through the memory networks, all the associated memories.
• 31:54
  Speaker 1: It's a free association model where you start at this target point and then you free associate as we tap and the mind just wanders and it's a subconscious driven technique.
• 32:05
  Speaker 1: So again, that old way of doing therapy, where the therapist is the expert and they say I think we need to process blah, blah, blah, like the subconscious mind is going to show us what needs to be processed in EMDR.
• 32:16
  Speaker 1: And eventually you start and you're touching these painful memories and it's if you're not completely dissociated which I often was, you know and they feel very, very intense and as you bilaterally simulate it gets less and less and less until it gets neutral or positive.
• 32:32
  Speaker 1: And then we go back and we say, okay, what's the positive belief you'd want to have associated with that rather than the negative belief you've been carrying around?
• 32:39
  Speaker 1: And I think that the positive side of EMDR is way underrated.
• 32:44
  Speaker 1: And then we go back and we pair that old painful memory that's not painful anymore with this positive belief.
• 32:50
  Speaker 1: We're almost like you know, people say you can't change the past, but, like man, we can change how you remember the past and what's the difference at that point, you know.
• 32:58
  Speaker 1: And then we sort of install that positive belief and now we've just sort of primed you to experience the world in a totally different way.
• 33:05
  Speaker 1: We've unburdened the exiled part, we've created parts, integration, we've reprocessed that negative belief, we've turned it into a positive belief, right.
• 33:13
  Speaker 1: And if you've done it using homeopathy, like, we've been able to get that much deeper.
• 33:18
  Speaker 1: If you tend to, I, when I was in EMDR as a patient, I often struggled to really connect.
• 33:26
  Speaker 1: There was so much dissociative process going on for me.
• 33:28
  Speaker 1: I could get a certain amount of benefit, I did get a lot of benefit from EMDR, but I've gotten so much more since adding homeopathy because I've been able to go so much deeper into those memories and unlock so many things.
• 33:40
  Speaker 1: So in the loneliness roadmap I just created like a worksheet right For you to sort of journal through, I very early on taught joy, like, if you can't go to EMDR today, because very often we're triggered and we need to work through things, not when we're conveniently sitting in our therapist's office, and so I, you know when you journal what you're feeling, what it feels like in your body.
• 34:03
  Speaker 1: Do a body scan right.
• 34:04
  Speaker 1: Emdr uses a lot of body scanning.
• 34:06
  Speaker 1: Do a body scan right.
• 34:09
  Speaker 1: What you're feeling, you know.
• 34:11
  Speaker 1: Butterfly tap, let the mind just wander with it, as long as you're welcoming in the feeling, right.
• 34:16
  Speaker 1: I think the where people go wrong or what I would often default to, is I was trying to distance myself from the emotion.
• 34:24
  Speaker 1: You've got to really lean in and welcome it and support those parts and then go back to journaling and then butterfly tap and journal.
• 34:31
  Speaker 1: And so that's how I designed the loneliness roadmap to be able to sort of lean into and process some of that.
• 34:35
  Speaker 1: Because there's just something the body was designed to heal itself, right, and so when you bilaterally simulate, it allows the mind to tap into what they whoever they are have called the adaptive information processing system in our minds.
• 34:49
  Speaker 1: So what I've seen anecdotally in my therapy practice is, let's say, you've read Mel Robbins book let them and you sort of understand it intellectually, but you can't sort of seem to get it to integrate or kick in automatically when you're actually triggered, right, and it's like and then you're three hours later and you're like, ah, why didn't I use the let them theory, right?
• 35:12
  Speaker 1: What I've seen with EMDR is, once we've processed something using all that, the elements of the technique, then all of a sudden the let them theory, it just like the brain is like oh, you know what we could have done there, we could have used the let them theory.
• 35:27
  Speaker 1: And then that all gets embedded in the mind, the adaptive information integrates.
• 35:32
  Speaker 1: And then the next time you get triggered it's like that seems far more on the menu.
• 35:38
  Speaker 1: It's like available, fascinating.
• 35:40
  Speaker 1: And then I'll add I'll take that even up a notch.
• 35:43
  Speaker 1: A couple of summers ago I microdosed psilocybin with a guide and I had been doing a lot of EMDR work and then all of a sudden, after that one microdose with the guide, it was like so much of what I had done in EMDR felt like it just like locked in in just such a more profound way.
• 36:06
  Speaker 1: So there are so many ways right to open the mind and allow it to be reprogrammed in a way that it's thriving.
• 36:13
  Speaker 1: You know, very cool amazing what a beautiful time together, ladies.
• 36:20
  Speaker 3: I just want to say that those three of you are so awesome and amazing and I'm so glad that I'm seeing you together now and I want to come see you, you know.
• 36:31
  Speaker 1: Yes, well, you could do that.
• 36:35
  Speaker 1: Our retreat is at the end of June.
• 36:37
  Speaker 1: Well, you know how to find us.
• 36:41
  Speaker 1: We're going to look forward to many more a conversation, sending you lots of love.
• 36:45
  Speaker 1: Have sweet dreams tonight, and I don't know.
• 36:49
  Speaker 1: Thank you for being the best part of what we do.
• 36:51
  Speaker 1: You know, without you, there is no Dear Divorce Diary podcast, you know, and the connection and the relationships is why we do what we do, and I know we're just beyond grateful.
• 37:01
  Speaker 1: All right, love.
• 37:03
  Speaker 1: Have a beautiful, beautiful evening, reach out if you need us.
• 37:06
  Speaker 1: Good night, friends.
• 37:08
  Speaker 1: Thank you for being here.
• 37:09
  Speaker 1: Thank you for being here.