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
235. Alone With it All: The Loneliness of Not Sharing Life With YOUR Person After Divorce
If you've been strong for everyone else and crave a space where your truth isn't too much - come exhale with us in our exclusive online community and receive the Loneliness Roadmap for free. Join here ✨
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Have you ever caught yourself reaching for the phone to share a big win or tough moment, only to realize the one person who always got it is no longer there?
If you’re navigating life after divorce, you know that the ache of losing not just your partner, but your most intimate witness to life’s highs and lows, can feel isolating and overwhelming. Maybe you’re wondering if you’ll ever find that deep sense of connection and belonging again, or if you’re stuck grieving the dream you thought you were living.
In this episode, you’ll learn how to break free from the fairy-tale illusion of what your relationships “should” have been, discover how to reclaim intimacy and meaningful connection after heartbreak, and use grief as a powerful portal to reconnect with your higher self and source energy.
Press play now to start healing the ache of loneliness and rediscover the deep, soul-nourishing connection you’re craving, even after loss.
Post Divorce Roadmap - 21 Days of Guided Journaling
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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.
Click HERE To Attend Somatic Workshop For Releasing 'What Could've Been'
You didn't just lose a partner. You lost that one person who used to celebrate your child's firsts, grieve the hard days with you and witness your becoming in life. What do you do with that ache when there's no one to turn to, who really gets it in that intimate way anymore? 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. In today's episode, we are going to shatter the concept of the fairy tale relationship that keeps this grief kind of stuck in a loop. We're also going to talk about the need for intimacy and belonging, because they don't die when your marriage ended, so we have to make sure we have a plan for that. And we're also going to talk about grief as a portal to refocus on source energy or a higher perspective, and how to actually do that. When the grief hits energy or a higher perspective, and how to actually do that when the grief hits.
Speaker 1:One of the most popular podcast episodes we've recorded in the history of the podcast is the one that's titled approximately. This wasn't supposed to be my life. There is something about the loss of a dream, the loss of how I thought it was going to go, the sort of vision I had for my life, my family, my marriage, what I thought was something about. All of that hits us at such a deep level. It seems very, very difficult for many of us to move past that moment and not be haunted by it for an extended period of time. The idea that my life isn't going the way I thought it was going to go. It is a very surreal, very dysregulating, disorienting experience, and I think very often we get stuck in this idea of how it was supposed to be, and I think that many of us have sort of fallen prey to this idea over the last couple of decades.
Speaker 1:I think there was this beautiful thing that came with the explosion of the mental health conversation over the last couple of decades. I think the more that we were learning about what it means to be emotionally mature, the more we were learning how attachment styles affected us as children, the more we were learning about somatics and mental wellness in general. I think we started to see how many things in our lives were maybe not in alignment, right? How many of us were raised by parents who were not as well-versed in mental health as we wish they would have been and we sort of gave in to the Disney version of what a relationship or a family is supposed to look like and it got in us in some way right and it let us start to believe that we are victims and that we're entitled to a better way of having marriage and family and relationships.
Speaker 1:And very, very, very often in therapy, people will say to me where would I be today? I think about if they had just done it this way, if my ex had just done X, y, z, or if my parents had just done this or that differently, where could I be today? I would be in a different place. And all of that love. I'm going to say something really hard right now. Right, all of that is an illusion and it's a fairy tale and we have to burn it down.
Speaker 1:When we tell ourselves that we would be in a better place if it weren't for hardship, we are lying to ourselves, because it literally is the hardship that allows us to be sanctified, to be purified, to be grown, to be matured. Now it is not just hardship alone that creates maturity. We know that because there are lots of people who experience hardships in life and they don't become mature as a result of it. But if we look at what are the primary ingredients we need in order to grow, in order to transform, in order to become more in our capacity, in order to become more of our pure selves, that involves a purification process, and so some of those very cliched sayings like no pain, no gain unfortunately they are true.
Speaker 1:Now, when we experience pain, we have a choice about how we integrate that pain or how we assimilate it right, and I think that what happened in some of the generations before is they didn't assimilate their pain, they didn't transmute their pain and they just kept handing it down. And now our job is to assimilate and transmute our pain right, and their pain too. Quite frankly I'm just kidding you can't really transmute somebody else's pain, and so we have to really look at there is such a deep pain in not being able to share not just our wins with the ex right, like there are so many times like, oh my goodness, like we have the coolest kids, like, can you believe how cool this thing is that our kid did right, or maybe even the harder thing. Oh, my goodness, my kid is really struggling and did something very disturbing today, and I am embarrassed or ashamed to talk about it with anybody else. Right, it's like with your partner, you could talk about these things at a level that maybe you've never been able to talk to anybody else about before. But the illusion that you can't recreate that in an equal, if not better, way outside of your marriage is not real or true, and that's the thing that we have to move through.
Speaker 1:Right Is it's deeply disorienting to not be able to go to your partner. It may even feel like a betrayal that you cannot go to your partner with the things about your kids or about your life, that you have to answer forms in medical offices about who your emergency contact is and you don't know who the crap to put down. That was one of the biggest pains for me post-divorce, because I was such a medically complex woman at the time, and I think that this also highlights right is that I also wasn't close to my family at the time. So it's like who do you put on a medical emergency? Like, who do you put as an emergency contact, right? And these are the things that are very, very painful, but they really invite us to look at where are we going to become willing to create intimacy and connection outside of what was so that we can create something new and beautiful in today was so that we can create something new and beautiful in today?
Speaker 1:Now, what I'm suggesting is not easy and it's not comfortable, and it would be a lot more enjoyable if you didn't have to do it, right? But we can't get stuck or bogged down in that part of it, and I think that when we have these moments where we want to share intimately, deeply, intimately with that person, I want you to hold on to that urge, that longing to share deeply right, I want you to break it down. Hold on to the urge and that longing to share deeply right, I want you to break it down. Hold on to the urge and the longing to share something intimately with someone and then go with that and cultivate that in other places. There's also an urge to grieve that loss. Great, go with that too. Give that moment. It's due, like, wow, I used to have this, I don't have it with this person anymore, and that is sad.
Speaker 1:But then notice, is it about that person, specifically that person? Think for a moment how did that person receive your intimate shares when you shared intimately with them at the time? How did those intimate moments go when you made those bids for connection, when you wanted to share something cool or something hard or you wanted, you know, you needed an emergency contact or whatever it was? Is it really about that person? Because I think if it was super about that person and what they brought to the table, you probably wouldn't be getting divorced or is it about the longing for connection and intimacy in general and wanting to have that in a place that feels good and delicious and close and safe and accepting?
Speaker 1:Right, I do understand there's a comfort with your spouse, right, there's a familiarity. That's what I mean. There's a familiarity with your spouse. That's easy.
Speaker 1:But more often than not for most of us that familiarity was actually pretty toxic and it wasn't actually deeply intimate, it was fraught, and then we probably ended up sharing these things in other places that also felt good, like with a teacher or a friend or a family member or something like that, right, or a colleague, and we're sort of bogged down in the moment with that. I can't share it with this person anymore, when they probably didn't receive it as well as you have fantasized that they did or that they would. So this is your time to pivot off of that right and trust that what's mattering in this moment is the urge for connection and for intimacy and I want you to really see that through which brings us to our next part of the conversation, which is intimacy is something that we're hardwired for, right, neurobiologically. We are hardwired for connection, for belonging, for intimacy, to feel seen, understood, to share our emotional experiences, to connect with other people, and I want you to notice that you have a number of people in your life that you can share these things with. It's one of the reasons that I lean so hard into places like group therapy and Al-Anon, like places where it was culturally appropriate to share deeply and intimately, right, because that's what I needed to do so badly and wanted to be able to do that in places without feeling like I was burdening people or, you know, like I needed to filter myself. And so we're all hardwired for this need for intimacy and I want you to notice how the people you do have in life that you can share intimately or in a really meaningful way that feels good.
Speaker 1:I want you to notice that now that you're getting divorced, or you've made this decision, or your ex is your ex right? Did relationships that you used to take pride in sharing with, do they now suddenly feel less rewarding? Is there something about getting divorced that has caused you to appreciate your current relationships less, because you're judging your loss of your ex, because you're feeling victimized by what you're losing, by what your ex didn't fight for, didn't bring to the table? Is it affecting how you're seeing your other relationships as well? Is it causing you to judge them as less valuable, right? So I want you to take a deep breath and really feel into what I'm saying. So, let's say, you have a dear friend, a sister, a colleague, a family member, someone whom you love sharing with, whom you have always loved sharing with Maybe the people that heard you when you were talking about I think I'm going to get a divorce right those people who have been the places where you've taken these things, those people who have celebrated with you, who have grieved with you.
Speaker 1:Now that you're getting divorced or have gotten divorced and you don't have your ex to go to anymore, do these relationships really feel into this? Are they suddenly looking less valuable? Are they suddenly feeling less rewarding? Because when we're judging right, when we're in a vibration of judging or self-pity, it's like we can't isolate it to just one place. It leeches into other places. So if you are feeling self-pity about what's going on with your ex and grieving all of this stuff that you can't share with your ex anymore your wins, your losses, your griefs, your things with your kiddos, whatever it is that's going on at work I want you to notice that it's affecting how much you're getting from, how much you're enjoying, how much you're valuating, valuing, how much you're feeling grateful for your other relationships.
Speaker 1:It's tainting everything your bitterness, your resentment, your sadness, your grief. It's tainting everything, even the things that are actually good and grounded for you, even the people who are there for you with an open heart. No, they're not perfect, but they're there and they show up. I want you to just notice that there are these other places where you can lean in vulnerably. Maybe you still need more. Maybe it's not enough. Maybe you know you do need to do some work to develop and cultivate some other safe places for yourself. But I want you to notice that also, what's happening is your pain is coloring your safe spaces and that it's the pain that needs to be released from inside of you, as well as cultivating intimacy, connection and closeness. Very often connection is what is the most soothing and regulating to our nervous systems, when we talk about co-regulating with people who we feel close to right, and so this is like an essential part of recovering, and so it's a nuance.
Speaker 1:It's tricky to learn how to grieve the loss of an idea or a fantasy or a fairy tale, to grieve the loss of a role, of a spouse or a partner, and not let that grief turn into bitterness that starts to sabotage your other close, meaningful relationships. And I know this is something I have had to tackle very much as I worked through any number of relationships where I've carried resentment around that I don't carry that resentment into other relationships that, for all intents and purposes, could be healthy, right, but that I carry the bitterness or resentment into relationships period, because it lives inside of me. So just notice that when could you start to shed bitterness and resentment so that you could just feel better about the co-regulating spaces you already have? And then next let's talk about grief in general as a portal or as a pointer, as a laser to source energy to your higher power, to a higher perspective.
Speaker 1:Okay, so very, very often, right, grief hits us in waves, often when it's least expected, and it's like getting that phone call about a promotion, or getting that phone call that your mortgage is getting reassessed and all of a sudden you have to put more in escrow and shit. Where am I going to come up with that money? Or, right, it's like the wins and the losses that you want to immediately have, that person that you pick up the phone and you go to and you say you know, susie aced her spelling test today, and isn't she so smart. You just are used to having that person, that quick dial right that you want to make that immediate, automatic outreach to. And so very often the grief it comes in waves when you least expect it, when a song pops on or this or that, and you would normally have that first call or that last call right when you would share the things.
Speaker 1:But once we feel that wave of grief, we have an opportunity then to either lament right, like, to either spiral down and to pity ourselves and to, like, just count the things that are missing in our lives rather than the things that are present and listen. That's a choice and we all often make that right Is to spiral, to just like, start to focus on the negative. Or in that moment, we have the opportunity and you're going to like want to just like, start to focus on the negative. Or in that moment, we have the opportunity and you're going to like want to shoot like nerf darts at me around these next few things. I'm going to say right, or we have the opportunity to refocus our attention on source energy, god, inner being, higher power, higher perspective, whatever you want to call it.
Speaker 1:Right now, why is this important and why am I pointing this out in this moment? Now? I never want to redirect you to God as a way to bypass your painful emotion. That's bullshit. Don't do it, it's toxic. Okay, I am not sending you to refocus on God or source energy as an emotional bypass or an emotional suppression. That is not aligned. It is not good for your health, your mental health or your overall well-being. I want to point you to God because we cannot become vibrational matches for the things that we want without raising our vibration, and we can't.
Speaker 1:It is very, very difficult to raise our vibration in a world where we're constantly surrounded by grief, pain and shit falling apart. So when we are going through divorce or, quite frankly, when we're just surrounded by grief, pain and shit falling apart, so when we are going through divorce or, quite frankly, when we're just alive as humans, all we have to do is open our Instagram and see like whoever's on trial this week for whatever heinous crime they're doing right, or whatever political things are going on, or whatever our ex is doing, or whatever email we have from our lawyer, whatever the crap is going on at work I don't know right, it's a lot. And when we're looking at those things and we're constantly calibrating our vibration to those things that are happening in very real time in life, we will stay stuck in a low vibe state. And so how can we get refocused and take our pain to something that is higher vibe and work our vibration up? I cannot expect to become a vibrational match for a magical love match or a promotion at work or a weekend where I just finally feel good about myself and not burdened by the responsibilities of life. I can't become a vibrational match for those things by continuing to focus on what the world would say about me. If I look at what the world would say about me and my circumstance. They are going to point out my wrinkles, they're gonna point out the few pounds I have to lose, they're gonna point out right where I am feeling like a victim and they're gonna tell me all the reasons why my plans are not going to succeed right, and everything is going to feel heavier when I take the things that I desire to become, the things that I desire to manifest, when I take the future I desire to lean into to God. God says to me you are my perfect creation and I will help you get there. Period, those are my promises. Now, no matter right, like how you call God, source, higher self, inner being, god, jesus, whatever it is right, there are promises, spiritual promises that are yours to claim.
Speaker 1:And when we feel grief, too often we take that grief and we look at it through our selfish, entitled lens and we pity ourselves, rather than taking that grief and those tears and that anger and that resentment and that pain to God and grieving with God and asking God to be our source of comfort and support and intimacy. And so when I wake up feeling like life is a burden, I stop myself and I say God, what is your perspective on this? What is your perspective on this? And it is this person you are mad at is also perfect in my eyes, child. You are perfect in my eyes, child, and you can have whatever you want if you could get out of your own way and hold my hand and let's go. And so when you feel the grief of losing a partner to talk to about your wins, your losses, your kids, your things, I want you to practice going to a higher perspective with that pain. So the idea is shatter the illusion of a fairytale relationship and the story you've been telling yourself. This isn't how it was supposed to be. This is how it was supposed to be because this is how it is right. I love you so much. And number two continue to connect with and value the people who are willing to be intimate and connected and love you well. And the third thing is have an intimate, close relationship with source, because that is where everything high vibe exists Now.
Speaker 1:We tried something new today when we were recording, and that is because we are moving in the direction of having a TikTok. I have never TikTok. Do you TikTok? I would love for you. Can you send me TikToks and Instagram? Is that a thing?
Speaker 1:Producer Joy is shaking her head. No, so in order to TikTok, I have to look in the camera while I am recording this episode, and that is hard for me because the camera is not a person and the camera is a camera and so. But for me to connect with you, we had to come up with a trick, right? And so you can't see this. But behind the camera is a cork board, right, where we have so many names of so many of you beautiful listeners who have signed up for something or joined something, or submitted a form for a different D word or gotten on a wait list for something. Right?
Speaker 1:We have your names on these beautiful little heart cards hanging on a cork board, because you are a part of us and we are part of you, and like this is how we keep you close to us all week long, every day, every day, I walk in and out past this board, and so today we pulled one card off and stuck it right on the camera, and today this episode is inspired by Jamie. Jamie, I do not know your last name off the top of my head, but, love, I have been staring at your name this entire time I have been recording this episode. If you are, jamie J-A-M-I, I love you so much. Thank you for being part of our community and send me a DM. I'd love to know that I've been talking with you all morning recording this. All right, peace, peace.
