Dear Divorce Diary: A Fresh Approach To Healing Grief & Building A Life Of Confidence After Divorce
We are on a journey to get into the nitty gritty of divorce recovery and reveal why your divorce healing journey is still not working for you–even after you’ve tried therapy and read all the books.
Let's transform your pain into strength and take charge of your own narrative. Now’s the time we reclaim your healing journey–and why exactly we struggle to not only heal from past traumas but move beyond them to the ultimate goal: inner peace. That is real self-empowerment, and this is Dear Divorce Diary.
I’m Dawn Wiggins, a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist and EMDR specialist. I draw on decades of experience to help women navigate the emotional rollercoaster after ending a marriage. Using a little bit of science, a few alternative remedies and emotional release techniques, a whole lot of love, and zero BS, we step out of the victim mindset and into building a new life after divorce.
We emphasize nuance because overcoming challenges after divorce means questioning everything that got us here and using your divorce as a springboard to a better, more resilient (and certainly happier!) you.
On Tuesday, we have our listener segment called: "Getting Unstuck," where we anonymously unpack a difficult situation a listener is going through in their divorce healing journey.
And, on Thursday, we explore a "Hidden Healing Gem," which is a healing product or process we've tried and tested personally and/or professionally and are sharing our results and observations with you!
We cover essential life after divorce topics like grief, anxiety, codependency, loneliness, boundaries, nervous system health, attachment styles, the Law of Attraction, and homeopathy.
Join us twice a week as we go beyond talk therapy to process your grief, find the healing you crave, and rebuild your confidence.
Dear Divorce Diary: A Fresh Approach To Healing Grief & Building A Life Of Confidence After Divorce
210. Get Moving, Ladies! How Somatics Can Transform Your Divorce Healing
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What's the Big Deal About Somatic Healing After Divorce?
Ever feel like you’re spinning your wheels trying to bounce back after a divorce? Imagine unlocking the secret to truly reconnecting with yourself and your body's needs—it's called somatics, and it's a game changer for divorce recovery.
Here’s what you’ll get from this episode:
- Tips on how to hear and respond to what your body really needs, making it easier to heal and feel good in your own skin.
- A whole new way to look at those annoying aches and pains as hidden messages from your body that can be decoded for better health.
- Encouragement to ignore all the noise about what you should be doing and start focusing on what your body is telling you to do.
Hit play on this episode and jumpstart your path to feeling more in tune and empowered post-divorce with the magic of somatic healing!
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A podcast exploring the journey of life after divorce, delving into topics like divorce grief, loneliness, anxiety, manifesting, the impact of different attachment styles and codependency, setting healthy boundaries, energy healing with homeopathy, managing the nervous system during divorce depression, understanding the stages of divorce grief, and using the Law of Attraction and EMDR therapy in the process of building your confidence, forgiveness and letting go.
If there were one tool that I felt like all divorced women definitely needed and if you're not using it, you cannot get fully well, it's this one. 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. I'm your host, dawn Wiggins, a therapist, coach, integrative healer and divorcee. Join me for a fresh approach to healing grief and building your confidence after divorce. I know that's a big statement. I just said because you've also heard me say that there is no one-size-fits-all approach. So, okay, but this is an essential. This tool we're going to talk about today is essential to all women reclaiming their power and being in touch with themselves, and that tool is somatics.
Speaker 1:Okay, but what are somatics? What does it mean? How does it apply to you specifically? How can you use it in a meaningful way? And what is it that they're all talking about on the tiki-taki and the Instagram about somatics, right? Is it complicated? I don't know. Let's dig in right. The Instagram about somatics, right? Is it complicated? I don't know, let's dig in, right.
Speaker 1:So somatics, in the way that I mean this and I think, in the way that most people mean it right is the practice of being in your body and processing energy in your body in a physical way. The soma is your physical self, right, the cells that comprise your body, and so what we know is that women are most powerful when they're in touch with their bodies, when the energy is able to flow expansively and clearly in and through the body. And because most of us sit most of the day and think most of the day. It's not true, moms? Don't just sit. I don't mean to say that all you do is sit around all day, right, but a lot of times we have jobs that involve us being not in touch with our bodies, right? So, whether you're a teacher, if you're a teacher, you don't sit all day. You move your butt. If you are a nurse or a doctor, you don't sit all day, right, but, like I, as a therapist, I sit most of the day. There are a lot of people who sit more than they need to, and even if you are a teacher or a medical practitioner, you are not sitting, but you're also not in touch with your body because you're having to defer your body awareness to do your job right. We are just not encouraged to be in touch with our bodies and their needs all day long.
Speaker 1:One of the most profound things I did in early divorce recovery was honoring and acknowledging that if I needed to pee, I stopped what I was doing to go pee, or if I was hungry, that I stopped what I was doing to eat something. As mothers, as women, as providers, as caregivers, we are not used to doing that. So the most basic thing I'm inviting you to do as a somatic technique is to know when you have to pee and to do something about it. To know when you are hungry and do something about it. That's somatics 101, right. So that's somatics 101, right.
Speaker 1:The second thing I want you to know about somatics is that when your body is presenting you with a sensation or a symptom, like a health symptom, that is wisdom Symptoms, this thing where we say that the body attacks itself, and autoimmunity, and all of that I call it hogwash. The body expressing itself is wisdom and as women in this hustle culture, hustle modern culture, we are not used to listening to the body and giving it what it needs. If you are someone who has chronic pain, your body has been telling you you have anger that needs to be felt and processed, and for whatever reason I know all the reasons because I had chronic pain for years via cluster headaches and then rheumatoid arthritis I was not honoring my body's need to express and process pain in a physical way, in an embodied way. So when your body gives you sensations and symptoms, it is telling you something and it needs you to listen. And if you don't listen and you don't attend, those symptoms are going to escalate, just like that little sweet child of yours that says mom, mom, mom, mom, that's what our bodies are doing. So to somatically process your pain at this stage in life may feel awkward, right, very, very often when I do this with clients in session, they're like I feel so self-conscious, I feel so silly, I feel so awkward, which just tells you how much, as women, we have gotten used to the status quo being not honoring our bodies and not listening to our bodies and not feeling good about expressing what our bodies are asking for. We have prioritized what people will think about what we're doing with our bodies rather than actually prioritizing our bodies, and so very often, what I mean by somatic processing is to stop what you're doing, to take a few cycles of deep breath and to listen to what your body is asking for.
Speaker 1:Now. If this sounds complicated or confusing, know that on the premium podcast side, there is going to be a track where I actually guide you through this step-by-step into actually doing somatic work, step-by-step. So that track may or may not have dropped by the time that this episode goes live, but know that that is. If this feels confusing, right, I will walk you through it on the premium side. But I want you to pause, I want you to stand up, I want you to put one hand on your heart and one hand on your stomach and I want you to listen. What does your body want to do Now? Here's a drop-down menu of options, right, that it may be asking for. It may ask to sway. It may ask to kick. It may ask to punch. It may ask to pace. It may ask to jump. It may ask to spin. It may ask to freeze. It may ask to lay down. It may ask to stand up. It may ask to sit. It may ask to scream, scream, scream. And you are going to worry about what people are going to think if you jump, punch, kick and scream. And that's what I'm saying.
Speaker 1:Love, self-abandonment, right. We have been abandoning ourselves for far too long, and the body cannot fully heal unless it fully processes in a very physical, raw way. We were never meant to be this disconnected from the wisdom of our bodies and you have been taught you have been taught love that your body and your symptoms is something to fear and something to shut up and something to suppress. You have been taught that you should suppress wrinkles and you should suppress hunger and you should suppress hunger and you should suppress rage and you should suppress screaming. You have been taught to suppress and it's killing you. One suppression choice at a time.
Speaker 1:So this is a call If you want to own your power, if you want peace, if you want the things you say you want, if you want to stop overthinking, if you want to quiet your mind, if you want to feel less pain, then this is a step you must take to get quiet in your body, to get still and then to hear what the urge is, the physical, raw urge to feel in the body. And, yes, that's going to mean feeling some things that are uncomfortable, and often, when we start doing somatics, we are in touch with our anger and then, once we have felt our anger, then what comes next is tears, is sobbing. And if I had a dollar for every time a woman said if I let myself go to that place, will I come out? Yes, actually, love. This is why you have, in the past, gone to these deep sad holes and not gotten out, because you didn't somatically process your pain, you didn't activate your body as a tool, you just got stuck in it in your mind, in the halls of your mind, and you went to dorsal vagal collapse and you couldn't mobilize enough to actually feel and process.
Speaker 1:And so this is a call to stand in your power to feel your feelings and to process them physically and you will feel better and you will feel more powerful and you will feel more in touch with yourself, and that is the greatest thing I could want you to have for yourself. I would love for you to send me a video of you somatically processing, right when you have those kitchen dance parties. That's somatic processing. I want to know what crazy self-conscious thing did you try this week in processing somatically? And then, if you want to do it with someone, if you want to do it with me, great, let's do it together over in a premium track in the premium podcast, and I will do it with you and that will feel a little safer, because everything we do in community does feel a little safer. I love you so much. Peace, dear Divorce. Diary is a podcast by MyCoachDawn. You can find more at mycoachjohncom.
