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
268. Divorce, Codependency, and the Part of You That Still Craves Approval (A Somatic Meditation)
This episode is only available to subscribers.
Dear Divorce Diary: Dedicated to Healing
Exclusive access to premium content!If Tuesday’s episode on addiction and codependency stirred something inside you, this one is here to help you actually shift it.
Some episodes are for learning, and some are for recovering. This is your chance to drop in, breathe deeper, and reconnect with the part of you that’s been carrying so much.
Inside this guided somatic + IFS meditation, you’ll:
- Regulate your nervous system through breath and body release
- Meet the part of you that aches for approval or love
- Feel safer giving yourself permission to actually feel
- Start loosening the grip of codependency, one moment at a time
This is about more than insight—it’s about embodiment. So if you’re ready to let your body lead the way back to safety and healing, press play and join me.
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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.
If Tuesday's episode on addiction and codependency got you a little riled up, this episode is the thing that will help you grow, expand, become more resilient and feel a little bit safer to feel 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 Loves. Some episodes are for learning and some episodes are for recovering or actually healing or doing the thing right, because it's helpful to understand the thing and learn the thing, but sometimes we need to do the thing. So in this episode, we're going to call it a treatment episode and I want to invite you to drop into your body and experience this guided, somatic IFS meditation for codependency right. So wherever you are, if you can close your eyes, if you are driving, do not close your eyes. Take a deep breath and sigh it out. If that feels weird, good, that's. The mission here in this episode is to allow yourself to feel, even if it's weird or uncomfortable. So a couple of more rounds where you're taking a deep breath down into your belly and you're sighing it out in some way. That is like sort of dramatic and loud and weird. Here we go and another Now that's how mine sounded. Yours can sound however they sound, as long as they're sounding like something, as long as they're big and sighing and vocalizing, all right.
Speaker 1:Next, we're going to do a little progressive relaxation, right, because we have to. In order to be able to feel, in order to be able to break the cycle of codependency and addiction, your nervous system has to feel downshifted enough, has to feel safe enough to feel a feeling. So we have to take some steps in order to facilitate that. So let's start by engaging in the body in a way that is going to create some relaxation. Okay, so I want you to really drop into your body, create some awareness, do a body scan here. Ooh, those breaths worked, because I'm yawning now, which means my nervous system downshifted, right, beautiful, okay. So Feeling into your body, okay, noticing where you're holding, where you're tensing, where you're feeling. And now I want you to tense your entire body. I want you to make fists. I want you to squeeze your buttocks. I want you to tighten your shoulders. I want you to tighten your abs, I want you to tighten your toes, I want you to squeeze everything tight, tight, tight, tight, tight, tight, tight, tight. And then I want you to release and take a breath. What this is doing is it's helping you discharge some of the tension that your nervous system is currently holding. So, never fear, we're going to do it a couple more times, okay. So I want you to gather everything up Tension, tension, tension, tension, tension, tension everywhere you can find.
Speaker 1:Gather up every space in the muscles in your body and find a way to squeeze, squeeze, squeeze, squeeze, squeeze, squeeze, squeeze. See if you could squeeze your don't squeeze your eyebrows, squeeze everything, but your eyebrows. Squeeze, squeeze, squeeze, squeeze, squeeze, squeeze, squeeze, tighten, tighten, tighten and let it go. Tighten, tighten, tighten and let it go. This is such a beautiful nervous system regulating tool. Okay, finding a nice deep breath. All right, last cycle, here we go. Tension, tension, tension, tension, tension. See if you can reach for some muscle group you weren't able to get last time. Really feel into your body, notice what's calling. Why am I always squeezing my butt so tight? All right, that says something Tightening, tightening, tightening. A little more, a little more, a little more. Okay, let it all go All right. So with all of that tightening and releasing, we are reducing the resistance in your nervous system to dropping in and feeling.
Speaker 1:So now let's go back to the breath. I want you to put one hand on your chest and one hand either around your solar plexus or your abdomen, wherever that is. We're just going to do a little vagal breathing. Gentle reminder, we have an entire episode on vagal breathing. The idea is that the exhale is a little longer than the inhale.
Speaker 1:Now, everybody's going to come from a different place in their breath and their breath capacity. So let's say, for instance, we're going in for four, holding for four and out for six. You can find your version of that right, but I just need your exhale to be somewhat longer than your inhale. We're going to do a few rounds of that. Here we go. Now my breath is probably different than your breath, that's okay. Find a rhythm that works for you where you inhale, hold. Find a rhythm that works for you where you inhale, hold and exhale longer. Now I'm exhaling through my lips so that you can hear it in the mic, not because that's how I want you to do it. Right, but let's do two more rounds of inhale, hold and a nice long exhale. Please don't rush this part. It's so important. Last breath, beautiful.
Speaker 1:Now we're going to do a little visualizing, okay, so I want you to close your eyes, or, if closing your eyes is too challenging for whatever reason, I want you to stare down the bridge of your nose, just in sort of like a little trancy state. Either one, whichever one, feels safer to you, is the best choice. Now that your body feels a little more grounded, a little steadier. And now that your body feels a little more grounded, a little steadier, I want you to visualize yourself in a really safe, delicious place, somewhere you feel good, somewhere where you feel sort of magical, somewhere that feels just like content or happy to be there. It could be real or it could be imagined, it doesn't matter. And once you see yourself there, I want you to notice that, joining you in this safe place, there is a part of you that comes into the place and this part of you lives with this sort of urge or desire or feeling of feeling pulled, really pulled, aching for someone else's approval, for someone else's love, for someone else's attention. I just want you to see her there for a moment, let her become clear in your mind and just notice the pain she carries. There's nothing to do with it right now. Maybe she has a flutter in her chest or a knot in her stomach, and maybe what you're experiencing right now is you don't see her as separate from you. You see her as you. That's just something to notice. If you don't sense a big difference between you as the breather, as the watcher, as the facilitator of this visualization, if you and her feel blended together, just notice that. Just notice that.
Speaker 1:But, doing your best to see her there in the safe space, I want you to really get a sense of her. What does she really long for right now? How overwhelmed does she feel? How is she dressed? How does she carry herself? And what would give her a little bit of relief? Would give her a little bit of relief?
Speaker 1:I want you to let her feel that you and I are here with her now and notice how she would feel if I sat next to her. No pressure, just let our shoulders touch. How would that feel for her? Would she welcome it? Would it frighten her? Would it overwhelm her? Would she like a hug? Would she like me to say to her I see you, I see how hard you try. I see how much hurt you carry. I see how you have not gotten the love you crave and need and desire.
Speaker 1:Does she have rage? She needs to rage. Does she need to throw things or punch or kick or hit because it has just been so painful in her life? What does she need? You just be with that. You just be with that. She feels so much and you, as the visualizer, just notice that you don't always feel a lot of permission or safety to feel all those feelings she feels. She is not all of you, she is part of you. Notice that you are also here, breathing, steady, experiencing, visualizing, and she is just one part.
Speaker 1:I want you to get in the habit of meeting with her here, of connecting with her, of giving her permission to feel all that she's carried, the burdens she's been walking with. I want you to tell her, now that you know the burdens she's been carrying and I want you to share with her that, a little at a time, you're going to help her unburden by and a pen or crayon, whichever she would prefer, and I want you to let her write a couple of things down. She's going to pass you this note and you're going to keep this note. You're going to work with this note over time. Take your time with this process. Whatever she needs to express or slide to you Some of us have an easier time writing than we do expressing in language or in touch right, so just be with that.
Speaker 1:Let her write whatever she needs to write, and if she can't think of anything, that's okay too. She could doodle, she could fold that paper into something. There's no wrong answer. And when that feels complete, I just want you to hold her gaze for a moment. If it's just a flicker, if that's all the two of you can manage, that's fine. If you can hold her gaze for a moment longer, that's beautiful too. Release this visualization whichever way would feel complete and good to you. Taking one last big deep breath, letting it all out, coming back to this time and space that you're in now, knowing that I am damn proud of you that was hard, which you just did Knowing that you just broke the cycle of codependency and addiction, that much more, you just created a beautiful, or reinforced a beautiful connection between you and a part of you that has been craving love, belonging, and to release this pain that she's been coping with Until next time next week. Peace, dear Divorce Diary is a podcast by MyCoachDawn. You can find more at Mycoachdawncom.
