Dear Divorce Diary: A Fresh Approach To Healing Grief & Building A Life Of Confidence After Divorce
This isn’t a breakup pep talk. It’s a full-body recalibration.
Welcome to Dear Divorce Diary—the only podcast for women navigating the messy aftermath of divorce who are done with quick fixes and spiritual fluff.
I’m Dawn Wiggins, therapist and homeopath, and I’m here to give you something the divorce advice space rarely does: real healing.
Through somatic therapy, EMDR, IFS, and homeopathy, we go deeper—into your nervous system, your unspoken grief, and your buried rage.
Every week, we hold the tension: the body-based anxiety you can’t shake; the hormonal upheaval no one warned you about; the unresolved longing for identity.
You’ll hear raw solo episodes, real voice notes from women in the trenches, and intimate interviews with experts who do more than perform healing.
Here, you won’t be asked to “just move on.”
You’ll be asked to feel.
If you’re tired of tutorials that leave your nervous system humming and your heart disconnected, hit subscribe.
Your nervous system already knows the truth—it just wants a safe space to embody it.
Dear Divorce Diary: A Fresh Approach To Healing Grief & Building A Life Of Confidence After Divorce
256. Sacred Spaces or Shackles: Women’s Stories of Religious Trauma in Marriage & Divorce
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Is your body still carrying the guilt and shame handed to you by your faith community, long after your marriage ended?
If you grew up believing that devotion meant self-sacrifice, or were told that leaving an unhealthy marriage was a sign of spiritual failure, you’re not alone—millions of women wrestle with layers of religious and spiritual trauma on top of divorce, questioning their worthiness, their intuition, and their very place in their community.
The pressure to stay, to submit, and to survive in silence can trap women in cycles of self-gaslighting and keep them isolated in their pain, even as they’re desperate for validation, support, and a path back to a faith that doesn’t demand their suffering as proof of their devotion.
In this eye-opening episode, you’ll hear how spiritual trauma has shown up in real women's bodies, discover practical ways to untangle blind obedience from real healing, and witness courage-filled stories from women who found their voices and reclaimed a loving, authentic relationship with faith after religious harm.
If you’re ready to shed church-induced shame and hear how others have found freedom, strength, and self-compassion, press play now—your story matters, and true acceptance starts here.
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.
Post Divorce Road Map : 21 Days of Journaling
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Maybe it wasn't the yelling, the isolation or the fear that finally broke you. Maybe it was being told you were the problem for wanting to leave. In this week's premium episode, we're breaking down what the spiritual trauma actually looks like in the body and why so many Christian women gaslight themselves before anyone else does. We're talking about how bypassing becomes bondage, how trauma gets confused with obedience, and how to finally reclaim a faith that doesn't ask you to bleed to be believed. If your body is still carrying the guilt the church gave you, come join us. You are not too sensitive. You're awake. Hi love, 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. All right loves.
Speaker 1:In today's episode, we are going to read six stories from listeners who have experienced trauma on top of trauma right, marital breakdown, potentially traumatic marriages, and then the layer of spiritual or religious trauma that happens on top of that right. So this could be a potentially very intense episode where you may very well hear your story if you're a Christian woman who's experienced any of this, and Coach Tiffany and Producer Joy and I are going to discuss some of these stories and how they land with us and just our lived. Our first share is the wife of a youth pastor. She says I was the wife of a youth pastor. I didn't just believe in marriage, I taught other girls how to be God-honoring wives. So when things got bad like really bad I didn't know how to ask for help. He was yelling, punching walls, going days without speaking to me, but he never hit me. So I thought maybe I was the problem. When I finally sat down with our lead pastor, I was shaking and he said Satan always attacks the strongest couples. You're a light. Don't let the enemy win, man. I wish you could see producer Joy's face right now. I remember nodding.
Speaker 1:I went home, opened my Bible and cried harder than I ever have because I realized my pain had just been weaponized. I don't know about y'all, but I get angry, which I don't know that that helps anyone, or maybe it does help right, because maybe that's what's needed is more appropriate anger in these spaces. Why does this happen? Why is the answer? And then we question why I have questioned my whole life. If I'm the problem, and of course I'm the problem, we're human right. I am. If I'm the problem, and of course I'm the problem, like we're human right, I am always part of the problem. But there are so many things this woman said that I have experienced personally and I can't imagine being any sort of pastor's wife or preacher's kid and having even a semblance of a thought that there's actually honest help, unless there's like a scar or blood or you know what are your?
Speaker 1:what are your body saying?
Speaker 2:I get tense, my neck starts hurting when I hear stories like this, because I'm so passionate about women and what I believe God holds for right, but also holds for women the space he holds for women, the love and respect he holds for women.
Speaker 2:And when someone in authority or someone who we are supposed to be able to lean in and trust and be feminine with and be able to bear our truth to, and they weaponize it and they gaslight and they dismiss and they cause trauma and damage, in the name of the Lord, I, I, I ruffle up. You're having a visceral, yeah, yes, so that neck pain is often right Like.
Speaker 1:This is just a little little tidbit. Neck pain is, for our listeners, almost always suppressed speech. If you could say anything without there being a consequence, what would you say right now that might relieve that neck pain?
Speaker 2:He is not a true leader. He is not a true man of God, leader, for him to be able to sit in front of you and say that to you. That is not I. That is not what God intended church leadership to do in these situations. I will die on that hill.
Speaker 1:And now, what is your body saying?
Speaker 2:Now my foot is shaking because I'm like Righteous anger.
Speaker 3:Yeah, tiffanyiffany, your, your head is bobbing. Jump in my leg is going to my limit. If you could see it right now like I'm just bouncing my leg, because when you're telling that story I get pissed, like I get ragey, I feel hot. Has nothing to do with the cute sweatshirt I had on today. I am hot.
Speaker 2:You are so cute today.
Speaker 3:I get really pissed when I hear things like this because I feel like as a coach I do so much damage control to reprogram women from the shit they have been told by quote unquote religious leaders. That is just, it's just not accurate. It's not accurate and it's not okay.
Speaker 1:Do you think our anger helps? Do you think it helps this woman? Our listeners feel seen, validated, backed. Do you think it is wind beneath their wings or do you think it feels like an extra burden?
Speaker 3:I think it feels like validation.
Speaker 2:I hope. I hope it feels like to them and their bodies. I hope it feels like they're being seen, they're being held, they're being witnessed, they're being validated, they're being like, justified, like there's a space in there for them to to.
Speaker 1:I'm not crazy, I'm worthy of being seen and and this is not okay- I think the lack of accountability, the lack of confronting I it's, it's wild right that satan attacks the strongest couples, yeah it's, it's wild, right that's.
Speaker 2:Satan attacks the strongest couples.
Speaker 3:Yeah, that's bullshit yeah, I think that's why our women are listening.
Speaker 3:I think that's why they're here, because yeah we quote unquote have knowledge right of like all of our experience collectively together, and then the things that we have experienced in practice with clients, and so it's the same woman that goes to that person that's looking for something, that is looking to be seen and heard, and the fact that he handles her that way pisses me off, and so I hope that, to the woman that wrote this in, or the women that are feeling unseen by their own religious leaders or dismissed, that they feel better about the fact that we are all ruffled in this conversation.
Speaker 1:I grew up being told to guard my heart and submit to my future husband. I didn't know how to date. I went from purity ring to wedding ring with no clue what I needed, just what I was supposed to be, and when the marriage started unraveling, I couldn't even name the harm. He belittled me, shamed me, isolated me, but I still made excuses because he prayed with me at dinner. When I finally asked my Bible study leader if I should leave, she said well, he hasn't cheated, right. That was the moment I realized the bar for Christian women wasn't love, it was survival in silence.
Speaker 3:I don't know why women feel like that's the end, all be all. And I feel like when you're dating, everyone goes through this little dance with the potential partner of well, these are my deal breakers If you cheat on me. And then everyone has their different meanings of what that looks like. Is it a message? Is it physical cheating? Like what is it? But why is that the bar Like? Why can't we just say he's getting angry at me and punching holes in walls? Why do we have to stay through that Like? Why does there have to be this line of well, if he's doing X, y and Z, but he's not doing this?
Speaker 1:I was an ardent Catholic and we volunteered in the youth group and he ultimately got our marriage annulled because we didn't get married in the Catholic church.
Speaker 1:But at the end of the day, like he is still profoundly entrenched in said addictions and while he would quote scripture at me about how much I did or didn't perform sexually, shirt at me about how much I did or didn't perform sexually, in no way was he living in alignment with the actual intended design by God right Like to provide and protect. Right To provide and protect. Yes, and I think this is a real issue that has layers to it. When we grow up in homes that are so conservative, religiously conservative, and then we don't know how to be in touch with our truth, our intuition, boundaries, self-advocacy, because we never learned it, it's so scary, I mean, it would be so interesting. I wish there was a way to measure how many divorces obviously we talk a lot about around here, about how trauma and attachment trauma leads to divorce, long-term right Addiction, these types of things but how much religion contributes to the experience of marriages failing? Mm-hmm and I Because we picked from a place of dogma picked.
Speaker 3:For those who don't know me yeah, go, yeah. Like for those that don't know me, I'm a huge reality show junkie. Okay, like that's my, it's my binge, right. So like I'm thinking about you know, the Duggars that I watched.
Speaker 2:They grew up Right. Oh my gosh Tiffany, All right.
Speaker 3:Okay, well, I'm just saying, right, like how the oldest one, Joshosh, like let's look at that situation, right. And then you know even sister wives, which I know is magnified, right. But there is a lot of like just hearing their experiences as women about how they were conditioned and groomed and taught, and the level of abuse that these women are willing to take on in silence is shocking to me.
Speaker 2:I read an article and we don't need to get into specifics, but I read an article recently about the oldest wife, the oldest Duggar's son, wife Anna. Right, I was trying to think, sorry, this is behind a paywall, we can probably say names, but Anna and how she is being coached and being conditioned to stay with this convicted pedophile. So, yeah, they can say, well, if Anna can stay beside Josh, why can't you stay with your husband? If Anna can support Josh and his sin and redemption, then how can you walk away? You know what I mean. Their church as a whole has put this pressure on Anna that to to stay, because it sets the bar of the whole what's possible human.
Speaker 1:Because it supports a brand, a brand.
Speaker 2:Because it sorts.
Speaker 1:Not actual. An opinion Sanctification yes, not doctrine.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I remember why and the reason. I kind of got like, oh hell, because when I was going through everything I went through, I had someone basically tell me if I get divorced it's my fault. Actually, there is no. Basically my mother-in-law came to me, came to my home and told me that if we got divorced it would be my fault. And she is very much an image, she's very much a very, very, very conservative Christian and that it is my duty to forgive and it's my duty to move on. And I don't know if I have ever felt that feeling before, because you have all the shame that comes with the broken.
Speaker 2:You know, like the, the life that you weren't expecting and having to explain to your daughters that he's not coming home, like this is what's going to be a new normal. You know, like you have all of this society shame, and then you have all of this pressure and you have all of this uncertainty and all this scared um, this fear that is happening. And then you were told by religious people that it's my fault and while I do have a role to play in this, like divorce should never be weaponized as a way to get you compliant women right Compliant and to be small and to be submissive.
Speaker 2:Like I, have an incredible small group in my church and we do life very deeply and submission is our favorite subject because as a whole we're told to submit and this is a different subject but, like, as a whole we're told to submit but in reality, what does submission actually?
Speaker 3:it biblically stand for and so, and does it mean martyrdom?
Speaker 1:right. No when no when it comes to no, because it breeds codependency. Right, martyrdom breeds codependency. That's not true submission. Yeah right it's not true submission and that's not what god intended submission is meant to be something that is vulnerable in a safe environment. When there is provision and protection, then a woman can submit safely and she can give you everything. Submission is not meant to be in a place where there is harm being done.
Speaker 2:Right. So when you use it as a weapon to control a woman, it is blasphemous, it is against doctrine.
Speaker 1:so I, I just want to hold these women that are saying this, because they are us, we are them I have literally been there, yes, ready for his leg it's still going yeah
Speaker 1:it's going yeah well, and you know, the sad thing is, is all of this, and this is just going to keep shining through more and more, is then we end up having to make the hardest choices. Right? Like my church, or my faith, or my mother-in-law, or my truth or my, you know what I mean. Like this whole thing, right it? There's so many layers of grief, so many layers of what has to be shed, grieved, let go of, redefined, rebuilt. It's profound. Okay, here's our next one.
Speaker 1:I didn't want to raise my kids without a dad. That was always my biggest fear, so I stayed. I stayed through the mood swings, the guilt trips, the spiritual superiority. He'd say things like God appointed me to lead this family. Right after degrading me in front of our children, when I confided in our church counselor, she told me to pray a hedge of protection over my marriage. I remember thinking I don't need a hedge, I need a damn exit. But I stayed another three years after that because I thought leaving meant I didn't trust God enough.
Speaker 1:I think what stands out to me here so much is how we confuse conviction and anxiety with intuition or faith. Right? We don't know how to discern. What is this idea of conviction, spiritual conviction right. There's something I am needing to clean up in my life or be accountable for right Versus intuition and God whispering in our ears like how much he loves us and what he wants for us and what that path towards alignment looks like. And anxiety and codependency Like we can't as a collective, we do not know how to tease those things out.
Speaker 3:I remember when I was trying to figure out whether to stay or go, my mom asked me a very simple question and she was just like would you ever want your daughter to grow up and choose a man like him? And that was it for me, clearly, the answer was no, not in his current state, absolutely not. And so everything that we were modeling as a couple was not okay, and I didn't want her to feel like this was normal. I didn't want her to feel like she had to stay and endure and go through things and experience things. You know she had to stay and endure and go through things and experience things, and I think when your relationship to as a mother, it starts taking away your capacity to be a good and present parent.
Speaker 3:That's a huge red flag that you need to figure out an exit. And if you have somebody that's not emotionally like, ready to do their own work, that's a thing I tell women that all the time in dating like nobody's perfect the healing continues long after the journey. So if you're with a man who clearly has faults and he's not willing to go to therapy, he's not willing to talk about it.
Speaker 1:That's the piece right, Not willing.
Speaker 2:Yes, not willing to be accountable. You got to come to the table, yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, this next one is one of my favorites. This next one is one of my favorites. I wasn't even that religious, but when my husband's drinking got worse, I started going to church for hope, stability, answers. Instead, I found this weird unspoken pressure to stay sweet when I said I was considering divorce. One of the women told me sometimes God calls us to hard seasons for our sanctification. I didn't even know what that meant, but it made me feel guilty for wanting peace, like God was testing me and I was failing and I was failing.
Speaker 1:I have heard so many people talk about God testing them in my practice over the years and I understand that that's true. I tell that story about the biodome. And you can't grow trees without wind and expect them to grow strong. Right, we do. We need wind, right, to help us grow strong, for our roots to grow deep and for our trunks to grow high. You know we need a whole number of things, right, so? But I think we confuse the problems we create for ourselves in life by, like you know, we make choices that are not, like, healthy or aligned. Or, you know, we have traumas. We make choices based on trauma or lived experiences that are painful. Right, and we live and we learn and we confuse that with like being actively tested by a God that punishes. But I relate very much to.
Speaker 1:I grew up in a church. I did a lot of church going in my younger years but then and then a decent amount of church going in my marriage, but not always consistently. But then when I was making the decision to get divorced, I did go back to church. Similarly, looking for hope, stability, answers, comfort, familiarity, structure, like you know, good orderly direction, all those things right. And I think it's so painful to watch people look for answers in what I would call the right places and then not get authenticity and not get real direction or guidance that's meaningful, not get a deep enough look, not get a true answer. I don't know. I relate to this so much. God calls us to hard seasons for sanctification. That line I have heard that line said to me so many times by my own loved ones.
Speaker 3:I think I had a lot of family pressure on his side to stay in the marriage. I think I had a lot of like family pressure on his side to stay in the marriage. You know and I remember, you know I grew up again and I was. I grew up in a very small town and we had like I'm talking 4,000 people.
Speaker 1:That is a very small town.
Speaker 3:Yeah, there were less than 200 in my graduating class, but I had this amazing best friend named Erin and so we would go and hang out at this place in my hometown called the Cosmic Sage. And she was a very eclectic woman and she had very witchy things and crystals and all kinds of things that you could kind of explore Clearly sage yeah, right, and like it was just a place that we loved hanging out.
Speaker 3:I remember having a Celtic altar in my room when I was younger. One of the rules in the house was we were not allowed to have Ouija boards in the house. I wasn't allowed to practice any magic in the house, but I did a lot of religious exploring when I was younger, so at 20, when I decided to get married.
Speaker 3:His mother in particular, was very religious, and so there was me being forced to go through marital counseling. I'm not going to say forced, I'm going to use heavily suggested. So I hated it. It was at her church. I went through the pastor and then come to find out a couple of years later that the pastor was actually having an affair with the secretary, and so everything was skewed for me at that point that I had taken religious counsel from someone who clearly in his own life was not responsible or could stay in his own marriage. So I had a lot of conflicting feelings. I remember being shamed because we didn't get married in a church we eloped. I remember being told that my daughter was a bastard child not recognized by God because we had not been married in a church.
Speaker 2:And so, in the eyes of God, we were not married your mother-in-law. Is she Catholic?
Speaker 3:No, fascinating. So there was a lot of shame, religiously obviously, around exiting my marriage and the things that I needed to deal with and endure and be okay with. And I feel like because he was raised, submersed in the church, he kind of turned away like big time. So we went from going to Bible studies together to towards the end of our marriage, he proclaimed himself to be an atheist.
Speaker 2:Wow.
Speaker 1:Wow.
Speaker 3:Yeah, that's remarkable. And just kind of lost all faith in anything right. And so when you try to be with somebody too that has no higher power, even universal law like nothing, they just no longer believe in anything.
Speaker 1:No, I think one of the most profound things I've heard was very recently, in the last couple of years, that a man cannot fully trust her husband until her husband can fully trust God. Oh, I, okay. And when my now husband and I got married, he was really grappling with not atheism or agnosticism and the like, right, like, sort of, but honestly, like in the vein of this episode, right Like this is what you get when you go to church, like how is this? Godly, he's not wrong. You know. Godly, he's not wrong, you know.
Speaker 1:And then over the years, and I really think, I think over the years, I think becoming a dad, I think becoming a husband, I think you know therapy, homeopathy, all the things I think he would say today that he has a profound faith in a higher power and appreciates church and you know for what it, what it is good at. And, um, yeah, went the opposite direction that your ex went. I would say even that my ex went right, like my ex when we were dating was reading all these religious texts and studying and you know, just had this really robust process for how he landed at Catholicism and why that was so because he didn't grow up. He grew up with more Baptist influence and then chose catholicism. But like in the end, right, it's like just living in this full-blown addictive way.
Speaker 3:That's not, uh, that's not a faith walk and I don't necessarily believe that like partners have to be the same. I don't feel like they have to be. If someone is catholic, someone is method like whatever, right, sure, right, like even now my current partner. He's agnostic and we can still have very, very healthy spiritual conversations about our faith and beliefs and it never turns ugly because we're very respectful of each other's right. Yeah, yeah but I think the difference is when someone has nothing that they're holding onto and no anchor. That creates huge issues.
Speaker 1:Absolutely. Yeah, this one is really relatable. Also, they all are. As a pastor's kid, I was raised to perform, strength, perform being the keyword right. Perform strength, smile, dress modestly, speak, kindly, forgive fast. So when I found myself married to a man who used God as a weapon, telling me things like your rebellion opens doors to the enemy, I still blamed myself. I remember being six months postpartum in the bathroom stall at church, quietly crying while holding my baby, and one of the women walked in and looked at me and said motherhood's hard huh. No one knew. I was actually terrified to go home. I think this speaks to growing up in a culture of suppression and repression, where there's just no space for authenticity, and that frightens me, quite frankly, to even raise my daughter in religious communities. How can we become women who go to church and run with wolves? That's what I want, that's my dream for our community. Right Like our listenership.
Speaker 2:That's my life message, right yeah.
Speaker 1:It's like be disciples discipled, be discipled and run with wolves and howl. I want to howl at church.
Speaker 3:I want to be able to share, that I'm a Christian and have women still feel safe with me, that and I don't know if this day and age, if that's a thing I don't think you can. I don't think so Because I think there is a and I'm very, I'm very cognizant with my clients. I don't share my religion unless I feel like I'm in a safe space for them to receive me, because I automatically feel like it comes with a stigma of well, I'm going to say the thing, but she's going to judge me.
Speaker 2:Right, judgment and condemnation and shaming, and yes and what you just spoke out loud, tiffany.
Speaker 1:Our listeners don't know this, but what you just spoke out loud, joy and I have been behind the scenes grappling with for the first three, four seasons of this podcast, because joy has been sort of like profoundly steeped in the Christian church. Well, I have done this very like, you know, here, there and everywhere path, trying on all sorts of spiritual behaviors and trying to find a way where she and I can both, where we can be producing a podcast that is faith-based and that we both feel comfortable in, that doesn't alienate people. Right, that has been a razor's edge. We have been attempting to walk from the inception of this podcast, and now we're talking about it out loud. Right, praise, but like, what people don't know went into the crafting of every single episode. Yeah, trying not to alienate anyone, because over here we love everyone, yeah, and all of this programming was in our background.
Speaker 3:And I don't know that clients I work with now would necessarily work with me and then identify me as a traditional Christian. You know, I can still say fuck and guess what God loves me you know what I mean and fuck's my favorite word in the entire world, and it's a word and that's okay. And God still loves me and it's okay.
Speaker 3:And so that is what I deal with too, is when I identify as a Christian or tell someone I'm Christian, there's almost like this ooh, like now I have to go back in a box. Now I can't really say the thing, because what is she going to think?
Speaker 3:And that's what's always turned me away from church. That's what it is, because I have just never been around a group of people in a church setting that I truly feel like I can say. Hey, me and my husband got in a huge fight this morning and he punched a fucking wall. Can you imagine saying that in a Bible group?
Speaker 1:I cannot. Maybe Joy can, but I cannot.
Speaker 2:I was like I can, but I do think.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, but that's what we would recommend. Right Is go find you a group where you can Right, Right. Well, that's what we would recommend. Right is go find you a group where you can Right.
Speaker 3:Well, that's what this whole religious thing for me would be to keep telling women. If you feel like you're in a spiritual place where you are not being heard and seen, keep going, Keep going Because you are to find your people. Don't stop, that's right, and don't feel like this person that's dismissing you, is all Christians Like. Stop, that's right and don't feel like this person that's dismissing you, is all.
Speaker 2:Christians Like. That is not how all of us think. No, that's right.
Speaker 3:No, like to that woman that's being abused or is being, you know, in a terrible situation. As a Christian life coach, I'm going to tell you to fucking leave, in those words and get safe.
Speaker 2:Fucking leave. That's right. Get safe. Yes, yeah, fucking leave. I'm not going to hide it behind. Yeah, I'm not going to hide it behind this cute little.
Speaker 3:well, God might want. No, no, God does not want that for you. That's not part of the plan.
Speaker 1:No no.
Speaker 3:And here's my thing, when women are like, yeah, but he came into my life for a reason.
Speaker 1:Okay, yeah.
Speaker 3:Okay. Were you in a healed state when you chose your partner? Were you thinking clearly when you chose this person or were you attracted to their trauma? Was it trauma, bonding trauma, and now you're in this marriage. That doesn't feel authentically you where you feel like you can't be present, you can't mother your children, you're not loved and seen and understood. Is that really what God intended out of marriage? I don't think so.
Speaker 1:One day I'm going to have my daughter listen to this episode. It's not today, but one day. Yeah, this is the brand of Christianity I am for.
Speaker 2:Yeah, one thousand percent. All right, I believe this is the brand of Christianity that got intended.
Speaker 1:Intended yeah.
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 1:Yeah, last one loves the wife of the worship leader. He sang on stage every Sunday. Everyone thought we were the dream couple, but the version of him I lived with was cold, controlling and cruel. He said things like oh, your emotions are why I can't lead this family right? When I left, people stopped talking to me. Family right. When I left, people stopped talking to me. I was told I had fallen away. And the truth is I didn't fall away. I fell apart and God met me there, not in a pew, not in a prayer circle, but on the floor of my tiny apartment where I finally chose myself.
Speaker 1:Amazing, I am so proud, so proud, but also understand the insane amount of courage probably disassociation that she had to use in order to get to that tiny apartment, and then the amount of rebuilding and the loneliness that she is feeling now, because when you leave your community that you've been steeped in since, you know from the cradle right and like the amount of loss, that that is the amount of emptiness, the amount of questioning, the amount of self-doubt, the amount of what even matters anymore. What is real. What is real Maybe that's what I'm trying to reach for, right that you then have to work for is profound and I relate, I relate, I relate, I relate. And the women who, so many of the women who helped me rebuild from that exact place, on the tiny apartment floor right With no church and no real close family and no, you know what I mean, like having to start over were of all walks of life and all faiths and all types of spiritual practices that showed me the love of Christ, you know.
Speaker 3:Yeah, To me I feel like it's very similar to leaving the military community and having this safe place where I could feel like I knew I belonged there. You know, everything was routine. We had our own grocery stores for God's sake, you know we had our own commissaries, like everything was this bubble of safety. And then you, you leave that and no one supports you in that.
Speaker 1:You're either all in or you're out. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3:Yeah there was nothing. And when I tell you people stop calling like, literally that's how it was. And so when you're sitting in this space with your child like feeling like you made the right decision, there are so many things that are telling you you didn't and you should have stayed. That is faith.
Speaker 1:That's faith right there, that's faith.
Speaker 2:I believe we were designed for community. So when you have to walk away, when you are choosing to walk away and you're choosing yourself and you're choosing your children, you're choosing breaking of these patterns and you're walking away from your community. It's a level of grief and pain that's on top of all the other trauma. Yeah, right so it's just so layered and it's a real phoenix rising from the ashes moment.
Speaker 1:right when there's nothing left to lose, you have everything to gain, and I know that sounds so like cliche, right, but I believe it.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:I think there's a lot with women who are married to men who are on a stage, whether they're a pastor you know, a decorated member of the military the.
Speaker 1:CEO of a company that gets caught at a concert. Right. Social media, a social media stage.
Speaker 3:Yes, because when we leave, people don't understand because they're not living in our homes.
Speaker 3:And for me, I stayed because I didn't want his reputation of who he was in the military to be tainted by our divorce. And so I stayed, know I stayed. I took the blame, I blamed it on myself. I never talked about the real reasons why, like anything like that. And I remember, a couple of years later, there was a moment when everything blew up and people were like, ah, that's what you know and. And I just sat there because at that moment it was like okay, well, now everybody kind of sees what I was dealing with, but I didn't feel the need to prove that or show that. But I feel like women who are in a position where they have men who are in performative roles and you need to be the obedient wife.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:It's like how do you explain to the people that are closest in your life that this man that they are seeing in front of them?
Speaker 1:Right. What goes on off stage to the people that are closest in your life, that this man that they are seeing in front of them, that?
Speaker 3:they idolize is not who they are with you, which is why on this stage?
Speaker 1:because we're on a stage right now. The three of us are on a stage right now and it's why I have felt so passionately about saying all the awkward things from the beginning, right, and there was an entire season even where I was like, okay, I'm going to bring it even realer this season and I think we've done this season after season, right, but it's why you'll hear me talk about the fights I get into with my husband or why I've talked about having herpes or you name it, right. I don't want there to be this onstage, offstage difference, because I think that that is one of the fundamental flaws in our society currently. The fabric of our society, right, that's like two different personas. And then we have comparitis, right, where we are comparing ourselves to people on a stage, and it's performative and it's not real and that's really problematic, because I don't want you following codependently, following us, right. I want you integrating your own truths and your own shadows and your own right. I just want you to be learning how to you here, not how to me here, right? Not how to Tiffany here, how to joy here. I want you learning how to you here, and I think that comes from modeling, authenticity and radical transparency.
Speaker 1:If you are ready to bring all of this to your healing journey right the spiritual trauma, the marital trauma, the childhood trauma, the layers of it right and you are ready to integrate all of these wounds and transform them in an authentic way, we are your people. Find the link in the show notes where you can book a call with me and we can talk about what our 12 month personalized healing journey could look like for you. Because loves it touches all of this, it touches every corner, and if you could just imagine being with us in Myrtle Beach next year doing our spiritual ritual in the sea all together, oh man, it was like one of my favorite moments of this last right this year to date, like I mean, walking with you and peeling back all of these layers that we have talked about today is such an honor and we can't wait to do it with you. So hit us back. We love you so much. Peace, dear Divorce Diary is a podcast by MyCoachDawn. You can find more at mycoachdawncom.
