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
242. Doing the Work to Build a New Life After Divorce—But The Progress Feels Slow and Lonely (And Then I Doubt Myself)
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Are you doing all the right things to heal after divorce—journaling, breathwork, therapy—yet still feel stuck in a painfully slow and lonely waiting room?
So many of us yearn for real progress after heartbreak, but no one warns us about the messiness and isolation of the “middle” stage. It can feel like you’re invisible, wondering if you’re actually moving forward or just spinning in circles, all while you’re quietly reconstructing your life from the ground up.
Listening to this episode will help you:
• Discover the three critical questions that serve as a “real-time report card” to assess your true healing progress and clarity.
• Learn a somatic grounding practice you can use anytime to reconnect with your body, shift heavy energy, and settle your nervous system when hope feels far away.
• Understand why the “slow and lonely” middle doesn’t mean you’re failing—but that you’re becoming—and how to surround yourself with energy and support that truly align with your goals.
Treat yourself to real, tangible guidance—and get the company and validation you crave—by pressing play on this episode right now.
Post Divorce Roadmap - 21 Days of Guided Journaling
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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.
Click HERE To Attend Somatic Workshop For Releasing 'What Could've Been'
you're journaling, you're crying in the shower, you're having brave conversations, trying EMDR, maybe even homeopathy, you've YouTubed breathwork, and yet it still feels slow, it still feels lonely, like you're in some invisible waiting room no one warned you about. If this is you, you're not failing. You're just in the sacred, silent middle, my friend, and you don't have to go through it alone. 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:You know, just this weekend I was with my family in an Airbnb in North Carolina. We were hiking Grandfather Mountain. It was an amazing 36 hours, it was a whirlwind trip. But I stopped one morning to do a little bit of work with the hubs and I said turned to him and I said you know what honey, it turns out, greatness requires great action. And he sort of chuckled. And it's true, right, Because we often think about the powerful, amazing life we want to manifest for ourselves. But in order to reach for those things, we have to expand our capacity. We have to grow, we have to shift, and that means letting go of the old comfortable things that were familiar and easy and maybe they weren't easy, but they were familiar and I think that is something that is key in this concept of I'm doing the work but it still feels slow, it still feels lonely. I'm building these foundations but I haven't gotten sort of the really feel good experiences of some result I'm aiming for right, and so this is the episode where we're going to unpack what's happening in the middle how to know if you're off track, how to get yourself back on track if you've fallen off. Later in the episode, I'm going to share the moment where I realized I wasn't behind, I was just becoming, and I'm going to give you three specific questions. I ask myself when the silence gets too loud and I've gotten concerned, that I'm in some sort of dark rabbit hole. And then later on in the episode I don't want you to miss the ending because I'm going to walk you through a somatic practice that I use that will reconnect you to your nervous system when the progress just feels too quiet for you to trust and you're not sure if you're on the right track anymore. So building a new life for yourself. I don't have to tell you this. You could tell me.
Speaker 1:We could record umpteen podcast episodes on how the process of deconstructing an old life and an old dream and building a new one, while being a single parent or a single earner or a whatever single, whatever right, is. It's an enormous undertaking and very, very often, when we're in the middle of that undertaking, we have had a recalibration of our friends, of our beliefs, of our habits and our patterns. Maybe you've moved, maybe you've gotten a new job, and at some points it's like am I even making progress? How do I know I'm making progress? How do I know if I'm healing? Am I even making progress? How do I know I'm making progress? How do I know if I'm healing? How do I know if I'm not just gaslighting myself? And this episode is for that reminder. Right, not only are you in the process of building this new, beautiful life, but you're catching yourself looping back or falling into the old life that didn't serve you right, or falling into the old life that didn't serve you right and that can just feel so sometimes overwhelming, confusing and to not know who to talk to or turn to in the meantime, you know, and so there are three questions that I often revisit when I am trying to figure out okay, I'm feeling lonely, I'm feeling like this is slow and I'm feeling like I'm feeling lonely, I'm feeling like this is slow and I'm feeling like I'm not sure if I'm on the right track or if I'm working towards the goals that I have for myself. Right, and those three questions we are going to unpack here, because I feel like they do help you recalibrate, clarify and refine your mission and your journey when you're feeling lonely or lost, yeah, okay.
Speaker 1:So the first question I ask myself is am I dissociated, like, am I out of body? Have I gotten triggered? Am I distancing myself from myself or from my lived experience right now? Or, like, am I grounded? Am I in my body? Am I actually present and moving forward? Or am I integrated? Am I in my body? Am I operating from a place in IFS theory, right From self? Am I really sort of in touch with what's true? Or have I floated off with the fairies into some traumatized wounded part, right? Am I stuck in a wounded part? And I don't even realize it?
Speaker 1:And let me tell you, so often, early, early in my healing journey. That is very, very much what was happening for me, right, I was certainly working and using the tools and gathering my toolkit, and I was getting better and better and better, but I would very often get sidetracked, being stuck in a disintegrated, wounded part, experiencing higher levels of dissociation than normal and not realizing it. And then from that place, right, I'm not making as much progress and I can't trust myself. I can't trust my thoughts and my feelings and my nudges from the universe as well, when I'm in that disintegrated place. So if you haven't listened to our premium episode on dissociation, you'll definitely want to check that one out so that you can catch yourself when it's happening, because this whole experience is very much traumatic and that is the first thing I want to check out Am I dissociated or am I integrated? And then from there, right, I know, okay, I need to use some tools to get back into an integrated place, and the somatic practice I'm going to share at the end of the episode is definitely going to be helpful for that. You know, do I need to use a somatic practice? Use a tool, phone, a friend, book, a session, take a remedy Like what do I need to do to get back into my body and to get back to like good, right thought, yeah.
Speaker 1:And then the second question I ask myself is am I operating from a negative belief right now, in this very, very now moment? Am I operating? Are the tasks that I'm completing, the thoughts that I'm thinking, the words that are coming out of my mouth, the behaviors I'm doing? Are they coming from a negative belief or a positive belief? So what do I mean by that?
Speaker 1:When I get bogged down and I'm triggered or I'm lonely or I'm feeling lost or confused, am I literally operating from a place of positive beliefs, like? I can get what I want. God's promises are meant for me. I can learn how to build a life that I love. I can learn how to trust. I can learn to trust myself and other people. I am built for abundance. I am worthy of everything that I want and need, everything I want and need right.
Speaker 1:Are you doing behaviors that are coming from that place or are you right now, in this now moment, doing behaviors that are coming from a place of? There's not enough. I can't have what I want. Somebody's going to take something from me. I'm not safe. I can't control my life. I'm in danger. You know I'm not worthy of the things, right? So I just want you to look at the last hour of your life and the behaviors you've done. Which things, which belief systems are they coming from? The negative beliefs or the positive beliefs? And so, right there, you'll be able to see, like, okay, in this now moment, am I making progress? Because that's the deal. Right, I'm doing all the things, but it feels lonely and it feels slow and I'm not sure if I can trust my progress. But when we do these little spot checks and we see like, okay, am I dissociated or am I integrated? Am I making choices that are rooted in negative beliefs or positive beliefs? Now we have like a real-time report card that says, nope, I'm on track or I'm not on track. And I think those real-time report cards are so important because so much of what we're doing in this recovery process is learning how to trust ourselves and learning whether or not we are listening to our intuition or our anxiety, right, okay, the third question that I ask myself, just so that I can get this real-time report card thing going on right, is who have I been spending time with lately and are they a positive influence on my goals or not, and that one's really important In life, it is inevitable that we have to spend time with people who are not a positive influence on our goals.
Speaker 1:Energy is very, very, very contagious. You may if you follow me on Instagram, you may have seen the story I reposted recently where they did a study where they put two different groups of people through vigorous exercise that caused them to sweat. One was like a treadmill group and they sweat a crap load right, and they collected and gathered that sweat. And the other group was like a bungee jumping group and they sweat for a very different reason right. And then they took those two different types of sweat the sweat from the bungee jumpers or skydivers, and the sweat from the treadmillers and they let two different groups of people smell the two different sweats. And the people who smelled the bungee jumping sweat started to have activation in their nervous system. They started to show signs of fear just from smelling the sweat from the bungee jumpers. That's crazy, right.
Speaker 1:So energy vibes sweat is contagious, and so the more we're spending time with people who are not a positive influence on our goals, then we have to make sure we counterbalance that by putting ourselves more in the company of people who are supportive of our goals, and when you take a look at, okay, just in the last 24 hours, who have you been spending your time with and what are their vibes like and how influential are they on your vibration, that could be the thing that caused you to dissociate. That could be the thing that knocked you back into your negative beliefs. So then, once you can really take a look at, okay, what is my real-time report card here, you can get back on track and I think the more that you build this into your days, the more you will feel efficiency in terms of being able to trust yourself and whether or not your progress is going slow or fast, you know. So these are three questions I use all the time. Of course, it goes without saying that these questions alone are not going to be the thing that make the progress. You have to be doing the healing things that we talked about. Right, crying in the shower, journaling, emdr, homeopathy, somatics, breathwork, eft right, you have to be doing the things. But if you're doing the things and you're feeling your feelings and you are checking in on these three things, am I dissociated or integrated? Am I operating right now in real time, from a positive belief or a negative one, and who have I been spending my time with and in what ways are they influencing me? Like man, there's your rapport curve right there, and you know that you are on the right track. Okay, when I've asked myself these three questions right and I've got whatever the version of that report card is, and I know I need to do some recalibrating, let's talk about what I often do. And it doesn't matter if I am like where I am or what time of day it is, it just doesn't stinking matter. It doesn't matter what part of the country stinking matter. It doesn't matter what part of the country I'm in, it doesn't matter if it's hotter, if it's colder, if it's morning or it's night.
Speaker 1:Some version of what I'm about to tell you, the somatic practice, is what I would do to recalibrate if I felt like I was lonely and I was in the messy middle and it was taking too long and I was feeling sort of lost or confused or not sure if I could trust myself right. So I would go outside. I would go outside and, no matter the temperature, I would put my bare feet on the earth. That doesn't mean asphalt, that means earth, that means grass, that means dirt, that means earth. Just yesterday I was riding in the car and I was getting motion sick and it's because we were having elevation changes and it was because we were winding and all of the things, and so we pulled over in a dollar general and I walked across the parking lot to the grass that, yes, had litter in it, friends, but it wasn't terrible. Actually it had been raining, not in that moment, but so the ground was kind of soft and the grass was kind of clean and I took my shoes off and I walked on the grass so that I could get grounded back into my body and to the earth, so that I could clear that feeling of motion sickness.
Speaker 1:I took a remedy for motion sickness called coculus, very effective. I took it in a fibonacci homochord. I had it. That's a potency range, right, so you can't just buy it like that off of amazon, but I carry it in a Fibonacci homochord. I had it. That's a potency range, right, so you can't just buy it like that off of Amazon, but I carry it with me in my homeopathic travel kit, which will soon be available to you when our site launches. Stay tuned. And I got grounded with the earth, okay.
Speaker 1:So I would then stretch high, stretch low, I would bounce and I would hum. Right, I would shake, bounce, stretch and hum. I would be getting into my body. I would be clearing dissociation, I would be stimulating that vagus nerve. I would be asking my nervous system to realize where it is in time and space. Because when we are feeling lonely, when we are feeling lonely, when we are feeling lost, when we are feeling self-doubt, we are not grounded in the present moment because all that exists is this now moment. And so when we are feeling lonely and lost and we are sad and we are saying, where the heck is my companion? This is hard. We are not in the present moment. We are either, you know, triggered somewhere in the past or in a not yet existent future, right? So I would be doing all of this somatic work bouncing, humming, stretching barefoot on the ground to get back into real present moment, time and back into my body.
Speaker 1:Then I would go back inside, wherever inside is, and I would put on either some classical music or some 8D music or some 528 hertz music. You could use one of our premium tracks. Those are optimized for you to be in a balanced brain, right. By a balanced brain I mean left and right hemispheres, top, smart brain and bottom, emotional, lizard brain. So I would be playing some music that helps balance my brain vibrationally and then I would create an opening for that helps balance my brain vibrationally, and then I would create an opening for myself to connect with source energy. Okay, and I might use a journal to do that, and I might use a prompt. I'm going to give you a prompt here. Right, I might hum while I'm creating that opening for source. I might use a visualization to create that opening for source. Right, this will not work if you do not first get somatically grounded in your body.
Speaker 1:Okay, but I would want to connect with source. The source of all creation created sunsets, chocolate and music. Friend, that same source energy created you. You are no less magical than a sunset. You are no less magical than the perfect margarita. You are no less magical than the most amazing chord of music.
Speaker 1:And so, from that awareness, I would ask this is the journal prompt, right? And I want you to take a moment to pause and focus on the space between thoughts to hear source's response, and focus on the space between thoughts to hear Source's response, the Source of all creation, who also created me, wants me to remember this about myself in this now moment. What does the Source of all creation, who also created me, want me to remember? About me and this journey in this now moment? I may then hum, I may visualize that sunset, I may think about what chocolate tastes like. I may eat a square of chocolate, because that also helps get grounded, and it feels like love, friend, and I would wait for the answer. Here's the prompt one more time what is the source of all creation, who also created me, want me to remember about this journey in this specific moment in time, when you are feeling like you are doing the work and you are tired and sad and lonely and it feels heavy?
Speaker 1:If you do these steps, love, you will be back on track. When you're done with this journal prompt and this somatic piece, send me a DM on Instagram. My handle is at Dawn Wiggins. Right Then, ps. You're actually connecting with a human who back to question number three is a positive influence on your goals and you are just closing that loop right. Do not underestimate the power of taking these steps. It will shift your vibration, it will raise your vibration, it will connect you to someone who is also in a vibrationally high place. It would allow me to hold a very specific moment of reinforcing energy right then and therefore, and with you and boom, you will be more efficiently and effectively moving towards your goals and not wait for your DM. I love you so much. Peace.
