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
237. The In-Laws Aftershock: How to Rebuild When Half Your Family Tree Falls to Divorce
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How do you heal when your divorce means saying goodbye—not just to a spouse, but to an entire family you once called your own?
If you’re navigating a separation, you already know the grief isn’t just about losing a partner. It’s about losing traditions, a sense of belonging, or even support systems that felt like home. The fallout can hit unexpectedly, even years later, complicating your healing and making it tough to truly move on.
In this episode, you’ll discover why grieving the loss of your ex’s family can be as profound as grieving the marriage itself, how to actually process and move through that particular pain rather than dismissing or avoiding it, and actionable tools for building an even stronger, healthier support network that is uniquely yours.
Grief Flower Remedy With Star of Bethlehem
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.
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Divorce isn't just losing a spouse. It's losing a family, the in-laws, the traditions, the sense of belonging gone overnight. And in this episode we're unpacking the grief of losing your ex's family how to heal, rebuild and find your own sense of belonging again. 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.
Speaker 1:Bad and ugly right About the things that drew us to them, the things that were so heartbreaking to lose, the things that were maybe a relief to lose, but that's all to say. There is so much about letting go of not just your ex but their family that shifts for years after a separation and divorce. It's part of the divorce process that I think trickles down for a very long time, and I know even myself I had something related to this. I am like 15 years post-divorce, right, and I had something related to this sort of hit me between the eyes in the last year Really, really interesting. So we felt like it was time to tackle this topic of family grief. So today in the episode, we're going to take a look at the ways in which you often tell yourself to just move on, but the truth is, grief doesn't disappear just because you ignore it, and when you suppress it, it only makes it linger longer. So we will be talking about why fully feeling the loss is the key to moving forward, and how to do that without getting stuck in the pain, and then we will talk about how losing your ex's family actually makes you question your own worth and internalize some negative beliefs, wondering if you were ever truly loved or if you belonged in the first place. But what if I told you that those painful thoughts aren't facts and we really need to take a look at what those thoughts are saying? So stay with me, because in a moment, we're going to unravel those beliefs and replace them with truths that will set you free. And, finally, we're going to look at the gaping hole where your old support system used to be. But the good news is is that loss can create space for something new, something that you can own, and before this episode ends, I will walk you through how to start building a support system that's not just a replacement, but something even stronger. Let's dig in.
Speaker 1:One of the things that I absolutely loved about being married to my ex was his family. There were so many things that that family did that my family didn't. That felt like medicine for many, many years. You know the way they did, especially the holidays like all the holidays honestly felt really magical to me and there was something very even though of course, there was drama and conflict and whatever, like any family there was just something really family-ish about it and I grew up kind of really separated geographically from my larger family and so when it was just like my parents and I, holidays often felt flat, or you know, the police were called, I don't know. You know what I mean. There were things, and so that particular medicine was something that was very, very hard to lose. Also, I was introduced to my ex by one of his family members and she said in the beginning, like if you break his heart, I will break your legs, and it was funny and we laughed about it at the time, but like, in the end it didn't work out and then my I lost that friend and it was like it was non-negotiable, like that was it. We just never spoke again and that was super heartbreaking. And I found out recently that she passed away and we never spoke again after the divorce and it really hit me literally in the gut. I was shocked, I was devastated and it's so interesting that so many years later that that grief would still crop up in that way and I actually ended up texting my ex and just letting him know that I was thinking of him and his family. And you know, I just think this whole family piece it's an element to the grief that is can be certainly for many of us deep and wide, and were there things about, you know, his family that stressed me out or frustrated me? Like, of course, right, nothing is all good or all bad, but it definitely felt for me like a massive loss of a support system and I don't even know that I was really dialed into that grief early on. I'm curious if you are.
Speaker 1:This episode, this topic, came up because several people sort of in our community and even in my personal life have mentioned this, and so we knew it was time to record it. But I think that when you're in the process of getting divorced, there are so many other things that need your attention that grieving that maybe gets backburnered a lot, and I just want to really encourage you that it's an important thing to dedicate some time and space to, right To when you feel it come up. This is the key piece is to not just swipe it aside and say I'll deal with that later or I don't want to feel that right now and maybe in that moment it's not the time and space. But as often as possible when you feel this grief to do with his family come up, I want you to tap into it, even if it's only for two minutes. And I say two minutes for a very important reason because there is data that says that if you let an emotion fully come in and fully experience it and sit with it, that in two minutes or less it will pass and move on. But we are so used to being dissociative, disembodied, just really numb or avoidant of our painful emotions that very, very often we get stuck in emotional loops, we get lost in the stories we tell ourselves about those emotions and then they just pile on and pile on and pile on. But if you could tap into that pain, if you could take a deep breath, if you could let it know that it belongs, if you could identify where you felt it in your body, and if you could, in some physical or embodied way, express that pain and feel into it, it would shift and you would feel lighter. Now there are some tools that you know that I love to do with shifting energy in the body and making space for it to fully process. There are two remedies in particular that are great for this in the homeopathic realm One is Ignatia and one is Natrum. You can get both of these on Amazon and I will put the links in the show notes, and there's also a flower essence that I absolutely love for grief. There are blends, there are so many beautiful flower essences, but there are a couple Bach flower essences for neutralizing grief that are absolutely invaluable as well. So I will stick those in the show notes. I think that what these remedies, these essences and remedies do to help us process our grief is to allow it to come in and go out, because we tend to, as I mentioned, dissociate or loop on the thoughts.
Speaker 1:In my experience, most of us collapse thoughts with feelings, and we don't realize that if we just felt, purely felt, and let go of the story we were telling ourselves about the feelings, that we would feel better. But we really like to tell ourselves stories about those feelings because it's how we try to justify the pain, it's how we try to distance ourselves from the pain, it's how we try to feel better about ourselves in the midst of the pain and it actually makes us feel worse. So the next time it floats in, maybe you've, you know, added to cart so that you have these tools handy in your purse and maybe you grab a pillow and you do some pillow throwing. Or maybe you know we talk about pillow throwing sometimes to discharge anger, right. But you know, what else I love to do with a pillow to embody something like grief is hold that pillow like a baby or like a little child right, cuddle that pillow as though it is your grieving self and really connect with that pillow as though it's a younger version of yourself that's really struggling to feel safe enough to feel these big, big, big sad feelings. Man, pillows have like this kind of star role over here in the podcast. But I want you to really practice physically embodying these emotions and energetically pushing them through your body, not so much your mind, that's. Let give yourself permission to cry, right, and if, if, crying comes very, very easy for you and it's hard to stop crying. That's ignatia. And if crying feels unavailable to you and it feels like I can't do that, I need to keep this pushed down because I might not ever stop. That's natrium and the flower essences. You can layer right in there and it is just going to help be a create a safe space in your body to go ahead and feel.
Speaker 1:Now the next thing we're going to dig into is how we internalize negative beliefs associated with grief. Now, I asked a handful of people to share some of theirs, because I got to tell you we run our lives based on what is in our subconscious mind, what we believe about ourselves negative or positive and if you're not aware of the negative beliefs that are running your show, you think you're making decisions from a conscious place, but your subconscious is always going to take priority. And if you, for instance, right, make a decision that you're gonna get up and you're gonna go to the gym every day this week and then, when it comes time to do it, you don't actually go to the gym, that's because somewhere in your subconscious mind there's a negative belief that is blocking you from the conscious decision you made. So when we are grieving and we internalize negative beliefs about ourselves. Love, it makes it so much harder to move forward and have our hearts open to new support, to new love, to new friendships, to new experiences, to new friendships, to new experiences, to new connections, because we're protecting ourselves in some way. So some of the negative beliefs that have become associated.
Speaker 1:I want you to listen, for your body, right, I'm going to read some to you and I want to listen. I want you to listen to what your body says when you hear me saying some of these. I don't deserve love. I should have done something. I am a failure. I'm insignificant or unimportant, I don't matter. I cannot stand up for myself. I should have known better. I am helpless or powerless Big deep breath or powerless, big deep breath. Now, if your mind said, nope, none of those Dawn, none of those are me, I want you to know that is a very strong sign that you are dissociating your mind from your body, that you're not super dialed in to your emotions, your subconscious, your body awareness. That that's a flag for you, right, when we have an absence of resonance, it's not because there's nothing there, because all humans live subconsciously by their belief systems and people who are getting divorced definitely have negative beliefs activated, and so if you're someone who's like nope, none of those resonated, there's some wires disconnected that we have to start by connecting up right Then I want you to notice the ones that did resonate. Those are your stories that you probably picked up from such a long time ago and it's just playing out again and again in this particular context.
Speaker 1:Have you ever heard of something called a repetition compulsion? It was a Sigmund Freud idea, right that we all have these woundings and then we subconsciously repeat the same behavior set or pattern, behavioral pattern, over and over again, trying to resolve it until it feels good or we feel like we've completed it or we've fixed the problem right. So, for instance, let's say your negative belief about this is I'm a failure. Then it's like the repetition compulsion. Is that somewhere in your childhood maybe you felt like a failure about something. Maybe something happened and you felt like somebody judged you harshly or, you know, somebody really made you feel like you were a failure and then you carried that with you, this idea that you're a failure, and then you'll subconsciously keep picking circumstances that are a setup for you to fail, things that you just like can't possibly achieve, and you'll keep doing that over and over again, a subconscious pattern trying to feel like you succeeded, even in circumstances that are relatively impossible to do so. So it's like until we start to realize like, oh, I've been setting this up this way. Subconsciously we keep repeating this same sort of unattainable pattern that leaves us feeling horrible about ourselves. And once we can become really conscious about the things that are actually happening at a subconscious level, then we can shift the pattern. We can say oh right, which is honestly what you're doing by.
Speaker 1:Very often is honestly what divorce is doing is it's saying I no longer want to do this repetition compulsion. But the reality is is most people leave it there. They get divorced and they do some good therapy and they focus on grief, but they never tackle truly at a subconscious level, those negative beliefs, grief, but they never tackle truly at a subconscious level those negative beliefs. And then they get remarried from that same place and end up experiencing it all over again because of the way the subconscious mind works. So if you notice which one resonated there, I strongly encourage you to really make sure you're doing some healing work.
Speaker 1:That involves shifting those negative beliefs into its positive partner right. So if you have this, I should have done something. It's like, oh, I did the best I could. So, until you can claim for yourself I did the best I could and there's no resistance there, like you really feel that, like you believe it up and down and in and out, you believe that you are worthy of love, you did your best, that you don't have to be perfect, whatever the positive partner statement is to that internalized negative belief, right. Until you can own that for yourself so completely that it doesn't have resistance on it, then you've still got some subconscious work to do. So that's the really important thing to look at around losing your ex's family, because that is what's going to give you the cleanest, best opportunity to move forward building a new support system that is yours right, that is even stronger than the last one, that feels truly supportive in a way that you've maybe never even experienced before. But in order to do that, the support system that you're going to attract, we want it to come from this place of ooh, these positive beliefs about self, that you do deserve love, that you don't have to be perfect, that you can stand up for yourself, that you did the best you can, that you're doing the best you can, that you're strong and you have choices right. We want you to attract a support system from those places, which means doing that subconscious work is key. Now to do with a support system. I cannot say enough about how much leaning into these uncomfortable spaces is going to be for you feeling and healing faster than you are now.
Speaker 1:Very much of what I did in my post-divorce life was leaning into a new support system and I know you've heard me talk about this a lot. I joined Al-Anon. I joined a personal development workshop. I joined a therapy group, and these are just some of the things right. I joined a yoga community, and these are just some of the things right. I joined a yoga community and a meditation community, and I couldn't do all those things all the time right, but I was a part of these healing spaces where I knew people were genuinely working hard on healing and rising and believing that there was so much better for themselves out there. And having those people was so crucial to when I was having a cluster headache cycle and I needed to go to the hospital or I needed help hanging curtains in my house or I just needed somebody to snuggle with because I was so, so, so lonely, or I needed someone to make plans with because I felt like such a loser or whatever, or I needed somebody to help me. I don't know. Fill in the blank right.
Speaker 1:It was only by really claiming that support system and leaning into it and being willing to be a burden from time to time. That, but a joyful burden. I've recently started calling it with producer joy, like I know this is a burden, but I hope it's a joyful burden. I've recently started calling it with producer joy, like, I know this is a burden, but I hope it's a joyful burden. You know, this was really how I got from A to B faster was leaning into these spaces and there's something really magical about being able to talk about your pain and to feel your feelings and to get honest feedback and to have hugs and love and all of this vulnerable support in that season, Because those relationships often end up being more intimate, they end up being deeper, they end up involving more unconditional love and those are all the things that are medicine to your attachment style, to your grief, to your internalized negative beliefs.
Speaker 1:But most of us loves resist vulnerability and certainly in groups of people. We resist vulnerability and very often we try to find an alternative to those things that we're like, ah, maybe I can do it on my own, maybe there's a way to get through this without having to do that. And I'm here to tell you that the things that you are avoiding, that you hear people talking about and touting as really, really powerful solutions, the things that you are avoiding or that you are afraid of, often hold clues to the thing you need the most Right Now. I'm not going to give you something as general as you know. Feel the fear and do it anyway, and just ignore what you're feeling and just do the thing. I'm telling you to take a look at it. If there's something you're resisting there, there is definitely something you need to better understand about yourself and see if you're just avoiding the pain of vulnerability in some way when that's actually the thing that you need.
Speaker 1:And remember what I said earlier in the episode we can say we want something on a conscious level, but if we have a subconscious belief blocking us, we will always self-sabotage. So if you say you want to have a lover in the future that you can trust and rest in, if you say you want a healthy attachment style. If you say you want to feel truly worthy and good enough without having to talk yourself into it or get a ton of external validation, then probably there are a number of things that you're going to have to do, that are going to feel very, very uncomfortable and vulnerable, in order to get to the root of those issues and to reprogram them subconsciously, totally available, totally possible, and it's probably not going to be just doing the things that are part of your sort of desire to do it individually or with minimal pain. Right, it doesn't even have to take that long. I think there are so many ways that we make our healing take so much longer than it needs to because we're just afraid. You know a small example like I showed Producer Joy one of my new exciting superfoods that I'm into right now, which is copper as a supplement, and I said, okay, but the first time you do it, take half the recommended dose. And she was like, oh God, I'm afraid now, right, I think that's the thing it's like when we, when we say here's what to expect discomfort, it's like, oh, do I really want to do it? You know, but here's your sign. Yes, we, we want to, if something is truly going to change our lives for the better, we do want to do the short term uncomfortable thing for the long term gain, all right.
Speaker 1:In today's episode we talked about the pain of losing your ex's family and the importance of feeling into the grief and how to do that without getting stuck in it. We also talked about the importance of reprogramming the negative beliefs that you are probably associating with losing his family, because love you are pure magic and those negative beliefs that you're bought into they're just habits of thought. And finally, we talked about building a new support system that's even stronger, that's based on vulnerability, transparency and letting people love you well and accept you in your pain not in spite of your pain, because of your pain, because you are beautifully human and you are worthy of that kind of love and support. If you haven't followed me on Instagram yet, I want to encourage you to do that. It's where I hang out most often and I absolutely love being able to get your DMMS and, you know, send you a DM and like it's just my favorite thing to do, right? So my handle is at Dawn Wiggins Check it out. Love you so much. Peace.
Speaker 1:Dear Divorce Diary is a podcast by my coach Dawn. You can find more at mycoachdawncom.
