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
Premium: Revealing Your Revenge Body 🤸🏽 A Series On Immersive Manifestation For Weight Loss After Divorce
Current Subscribers - Click here to access
What's Stopping You from Manifesting Your Ideal Body After Divorce?
Ever find yourself yearning for that confident strut and feel-good factor in your body after a divorce?
You know how important it feels for a newly single woman to feel desirable, and achieving that revenge bod can be both empowering and healing.
Understand and heal metabolic dysfunction to kick-start your body's potential. Learn to overcome self-rejection by transforming self-critical thoughts into self-acceptance. Shift your emotional relationship with food, allowing you to control cravings and find healthier coping mechanisms.
Experience a transformative journey to achieving your post-divorce goals by tuning in to this episode and discovering the steps to manifesting your revenge body today!
Loneliness Roadmap on HeartBeat
Post Divorce Roadmap - 21 Days of Guided Journaling
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MyCoachDawn
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dawnwiggins/
On the Web: https://www.mycoachdawn.com
A podcast exploring the journey of life after divorce, delving into topics like divorce grief, loneliness, anxiety, 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 forgiveness and letting go.
There is something primal for a single woman who's just moved through divorce, who wants to be and feel desirable and desired so badly. That's the motivation for this immersive manifestation episode on RevengeBod. In this immersive manifestation episode, we are going to go over the three main issues that are blocking your manifestation for your RevengeBod or your weight loss goals or whatever that looks like, and then we are going to do specific manifestational exercises. So make sure you have your pen and your paper. I'm going to ask you to do some somatic work and use some music. So let's dig in the three main elements that are blocking your manifestation concretely. Right, these are the three things that you are doing or have been doing that have been blocking the desired outcome for your revenge body or your weight loss, and the first one is metabolic dysfunction.
Speaker 1:I don't think this is news to you. I think that you know tiki-taki is just a buzz, with conversations about metabolism and how to improve the metabolism, and everybody and their mother wants to sell you something that's going to improve your metabolism. Mother wants to sell you something that's going to improve your metabolism. Can I tell you that one of the most powerful and essential things that you must do to improve your metabolic health is take care of your nervous system. So what poor metabolic health means is that you've been in fight, flight, freeze or fawn for too long, and it has gone on so long and so much that it has started to affect your adrenals, your kidneys, your thyroid, your thalamus, like you name it right, your lymphatic system and your body is just not able to shift out of fight, flight, freeze, fawn for long enough periods of time that your nervous system can regulate and your metabolic function can become healthier. And so you know a lot of people are going to sell you adaptogenic products. You know we talked about, we talk about on the podcast essential oils are adaptogenic and like there are all these mushroom blends that can be adaptogenic, saffron. You know there are all these beautiful things, but you cannot out supplement good nervous system health. And so until you figure out how to get your nervous system more in the green than in the orange and the red, you're not going to get the benefits from all of the things people want to sell you as much as getting grounded, doing the somatic work, healing the trauma, shifting your belief system, cultivating a sense of safety, a felt sense of safety in your body. That is the way to truly manifest your revenge body, and there are a lot of fitness or weight loss gurus out there that are going to advocate for sauna and cold plunge and all these different you know HIIT workouts and all this stuff to get your revenge body right. And if you're a longtime listener, you know I'm a big fan of lifting heavy, but I don't do that much and I don't cold plunge often Like I've done it a half a dozen times, you know because those things are very taxing to the nervous system and when you are trying to rehabilitate your nervous system and your metabolic function, you don't want to be doing things that are constantly intentionally pushing you into the red. A lot of the fitness that is probably important to you is gentle sauna, gentle walking, yoga. You know things that are going to help bring water to the fire. So bear all that in mind.
Speaker 1:The next thing that is really interrupting your ability to manifest your revenge body is self-rejection right. Every time you approach a mirror, you have some critical thought. Again, if you're a longtime listener, you have heard me talk about singing silly songs and that's a tool I cultivated to really speak to self-rejection when I look in the mirror and I see a wrinkle and there's an automatic thought that pops in. Or I look in the mirror about how the band of my pants fits around my waist. Rather than nurture the automatic thought, I'm going to skip straight to a silly song to shift that self-rejection right. So I'm going to sing my song about aging in reverse. Or I'm going to sing silly song to shift that self-rejection right. So I'm going to sing my song about aging in reverse. Or I'm going to sing a song about how this cookie helps me lose weight and is really really good for my body, because that changes my relationship with my self-concept and with how I treat myself around delicious, yummy foods.
Speaker 1:And so self-rejection just increases cortisol and taxes our metabolic function even more, and then, energetically, it causes us to hold on to the weight, it causes us to attract critical people, and so self-rejection is something that really has to be massaged out of your energy field in order to call in that revenge body. And I know that this one in particular, self-rejection it's sort of a deep and wide thing. Let's be honest. All three of the things we're going to talk about today are deep and wide things, but I love encouraging you to just use things like the silly song as a pivot, and it might not feel true at first, but over time, as you do these exercises, it just starts to become a lifestyle and things start to shift so so, so quickly. So self-rejection has to become a top priority for something you catch yourself doing and shift. That's all it is. I don't want to make it more complicated than that. Will a well-paired homeopathic remedy absolutely supercharge your self-rejection behaviors and make it so much easier to not do it? Yes, but in the meantime, something you can do today is just create a replacement thought or a replacement response set.
Speaker 1:When you look in the mirror and you see something you don't like, the third thing that's really blocking your body image manifestations are your emotional relationship with food. So back when I had, like all things, metabolic dysfunction and untreated trauma, I spent more time underweight and really restricted my diet a whole, whole lot, and that was for a number of reasons. Number one I was trying to control, control, control my health right, because I didn't have any. I wasn't getting enough improvement in various health places that I knew I had to control inflammation from a food-based standpoint. Now my body can tolerate so many more foods without going into inflammation responses. So I had to control food. So my emotional relationship with food was that food was going to harm me, right. So I feared food and I think a lot of people can relate to that, especially around things like dairy gluten, like things that cause histamine responses right, we start to get afraid of food, and so I controlled it that way. But I also controlled how much I ate from a place of perfectionism, right, because I was trying to control my sense of worth as it tied to these unreasonable beauty standards, and so I had an emotional relationship with food where I found it scary, and controlling my intake was how I navigated or bypassed having to feel that fear or work through those underlying issues.
Speaker 1:Now, today, my relationship with food is more that when I feel stress and I don't have time to do nervous system work yet, I'll eat a square of dark chocolate to help regulate my nervous system or to help feel better, until I have time to really practice more self-caring techniques. So today my relationship with food is much more positive. I don't count calories anymore at all. I have no idea how many calories I eat in a day. I really largely eat based on my cravings and sort of trust that as long as I'm in the conversation with myself and I'm working through my feelings and I know where I'm at in terms of my negative beliefs, that and I'm moving my body right, I'm doing fitness, I'm taking good care of my body, then I'm going to work it out. I sit at a much higher body weight these days, but I think it's reasonable and I'm comfortable with it. It doesn't stress me out anymore and I can tell you that that has largely come from manifestational work and homeopathy and the pairing of those two things.
Speaker 1:And so your emotional relationship with food is an interesting thing to look at. Do you eat more when you're stressed or do you eat less when you're stressed and what are the sort of emotional ties to that? And so that emotional relationship needs your attention on it so that you can open up to having other tools to use to cope with emotion than food. And you know I'm sure you have others right, like some of my favorites also were shopping. I think a very, very common one is drinking. These are typically the things that we're doing when we're so far gone from a nervous system perspective fight, flight, freeze, fawn right that we feel stuck, nervous system stuck. We can't quite get out of dorsal vagal. We can't get from red down to orange and back to green, and so then we end up going to these things like tequila and cookies. Those would be my favorites. So once you start to change your relationship with your emotions, then your relationship with food automatically changes.
Speaker 1:All right, now let's move a bit into addressing all of this, right? So this is the part where I want us to start doing some experiential, manifestational work right here, in this now moment. So if you're driving, that's okay. If you're home, even better. Right? I want you to start by closing your eyes, taking a few cycles of beautiful slow breath. This is the moment where I, even by cuing you to slow down, am cuing myself to slow down and moving out of a sympathetic nervous system response into a more present space. Taking some beautiful slow breaths, perhaps allowing your exhale to be longer than your inhale that is called a vagal breath. We have an episode on that Really allowing your breaths to move deeper than your chest, breathing and starting to do a body scan just to notice what your body talk is saying. This is something that's so beautiful to practice. It's so beautiful to practice.
Speaker 1:And maybe adding some somatic Soma is Latin for the word body. Just adding some somatic Practice right now, maybe tickling your own hand and just feeling how that feels, maybe feeling the texture of the pillow mine has these really great loops on it just staying with that beautiful breath, just landing in your body, feeling where your body connects with the seat beneath you. And now comes the trickier part. Body connects with the seat beneath you and now comes the trickier part, which is welcoming in, actively welcoming in hey there, sweet, sweet body, hey there, sweet, sweet emotions Come on in In order to intentionally and immersively manifest. We must welcome in all the things we've been resisting and bypassing. So this is the moment where I want you, as best you can, as best you can, to feel into the places in your body you normally try to avoid. To feel into the places in your body you normally try to avoid. For me, that would definitely be my midsection and just welcoming in every emotion about that. Hello, sweet midsection, hello tension, hello anxiety, hello shame.
Speaker 1:Now the science tells us when we can really sit with and hold space for an emotion without trying to distance ourselves from it. It really only takes 90 seconds to shift it love. When it stays longer than that it's because of the story we're telling ourselves about it. It's because of our thoughts, not because of our reality, not because of the emotions. So while you are sitting with the discomfort in your body, I want you to call in a gentle hum, if that would feel good. Humming activates that vagus nerve. It's very soothing to the nervous system, physically grounding for the nervous system. So that's cueing your body that it's safe to feel these feelings. You could pair that hum with a beautiful ear massage. Your ears are directly connected to your vagus nerve. So the more you massage your ears, the more you are down-regulating, down-shifting your nervous system, healing that metabolic distress and dysfunction, cueing to your body that it is safe to feel the shame. It is safe to feel the anxiety, it is safe to feel the anger and the rage.
Speaker 1:If you can, I want you to name the sensations of the emotions. Do they feel? Hot, sticky, twisted, hard, soft, flabby, tight, sharp. Find the sensation words and speak them out loud and tell them they are welcome. And tell them they are welcome, massaging those ears, using that hum and staying in your body. Love, it is safe to be in your body. It is safe to feel these feelings. Taking a big, deep breath, letting all that go. Now, letting all that go.
Speaker 1:I want you to actually stand up and shake it out. This is just closing the loop on discharging all of that emotion that you just called in. We don't want to leave it sitting there, if there's any left. So I just want you to stand up, swivel your hips, shake out your feet, shake out your hands, spin around, bounce a little and just shake, shake, shake it out. This is all part of immersive manifestation and when that feels complete all of that moving and shaking I want you to come back and we're going to do a future self visualization. So just shake, shake, shaking the body out, really listening to what your body wants to do, trusting that this is a practice. This is a beautiful, important practice, somatic practice, maybe doing a little roar or a growl or a grunt, one more big, deep breath and then come back for our next segment.
Speaker 1:For this next segment, I want you to really get comfortable, super comfortable. You can sit, you can lay whatever feels good. You can do eyes open or eyes closed, whichever feels easier for you, but I want you to start visualizing your future self. She has that revenge body. She's met her weight loss goals. I'm not talking about supermodel status here. I'm not talking about perfect right. I'm talking about good enough Enough that you are proud of her.
Speaker 1:I want you to picture that future self and I want you to notice what she's wearing, where she is. Is she inside? Is she outside? Is she at a future home? Is she on a future vacation? Where is she? Where do you see her? What's her makeup look like? What's her hair look like? How is she carrying herself? What's her makeup look like? What's her hair look like? How is she carrying herself? What's her posture look like?
Speaker 1:And then I want you to notice some things about your future self. I want you to notice that everything you admire about her is because she's been open to healing her nervous system. She's been open to receiving support from all sorts of unexpected places, and all of that openness to receiving support and healing her nervous system is what allowed her to start to finally feel good and safe and secure in her body, to really take the next steps. She was open. I want you to notice how she got really good at feeling her suppressed emotions and letting them go. That was a practice. She used all these somatic tools and she got really good at that practice of feeling and letting go, feeling and letting go, and that's why she looks so free today when you see her there.
Speaker 1:She's been really open to getting her energy back, so she stopped complaining about how she didn't have any. She just really focused on singing silly songs about how she was getting her energy back and it helped open, open, open her up and that's why her skin looks so clear and she's glowing, because she's more vital and as you see your future self there, I want you to notice how she has this secret. She's got that little women who run with wolves glimmer in her eye and it's because she became open to seeing herself through the lens of a generous lover. So she let go of all those bullshit beauty standards and she started to see herself in the way that a man who desired her for all of these beautiful reasons would see her the curve of her hips, the way that she smiles, the fullness whatever that looks like of your breasts. It's like she sees herself through this lens of a generous lover and it changes her. She's got that glimmer in her eye and I want you to just take a deep breath and notice what it feels like to see her in this way your future self. She is you love, she's you, and you are her. I want you to take a big, deep breath, really taking in all the details, and I want you to come back to your journal.
Speaker 1:The last part of this immersive manifestation is to turn on some music, some music that would feel really good to you right now, so we can use music for all sorts of things. This isn't a time to use music to cry Nope. This is a time to use music to sort of create a little activation in your body, pump you up a little. Could be something like jazz or classical music, or it could be you know your favorite pop hit, or you know your favorite journey song? I don't know, you know, but something to create a little fire in you.
Speaker 1:And then I want you to write a letter to this future self that you just visualized.
Speaker 1:I want you to write about how proud and grateful you are to her and all of the specific things you have seen her do to handle her metabolic dysfunction, to shift her self-rejection, to shift her relationship with emotions and therefore her relationship with food. All the things she did to get her energy back and her swagger back. And I want you to write that letter. Don't make it just a handful of sentences, make it good and do it with that music. And when that letter feels complete, I want you to hang it up somewhere that feels good to you, somewhere that will keep your eyes on this future self that you are working to meet up with. This is your manifestational path right here. It's not one and done, it's a process, and this letter that you're writing to her is your accountability pact with her. You will get to her, you will connect with her. She is you, you are her. I am so proud of the work that you did in this session. I love you so much. Peace.
