282. The Missing Link in Perimenopause & Divorce Recovery

When your hormones and your heartbreak start tag-teaming your sanity, it can feel like your body and your emotions are working against you. You’re exhausted, irritable, sleepless, and half the time you can’t tell if you’re healing or falling apart.

In this episode, Dawn, Tiffini, and Joy unpack the missing link that brings your body and emotions back onto the same team. Together, they break down:

✨ Why somatics matter — and how real healing starts when you stop trying to “think” your way better and start working through the body.
🔥 The hormone connection — what perimenopause does to your nervous system, mood, and energy, and how to gently support balance again.
💧 The homeopathic solutions we swear by — including the Hot Flash Support blend that changed Joy’s life in under a week and the exclusive Divorce Recovery Blend designed just for Premium listeners.
💗 How to ground your grief — and move through divorce without staying stuck in survival mode.

If you’ve ever wondered why you can be doing “all the right things” and still feel off—this is the conversation that finally connects the dots.

Mentioned in this episode:
– The Divorce Recovery Nervous System Quiz
– Destined Homeopathics Hot Flash Support Blend
– Premium Divorce Recovery Blend (available only to Premium members)

**To order either Hot Flash Support or Divorce Recovery Blend, email hello@mycoachdawn.com and tell us your order!**

💫 Take the next step: Discover your unique nervous system type and how it’s shaping your hormones, emotions, and healing journey after divorce.
👉 Take the Divorce Recovery Nervous System Quiz
— it only takes a few minutes and can change how you understand your body forever.

✨ Subscribe to Dear Divorce Diary Premium for $5/month to access the EFT session, monthly live workshops, and exclusive product launches.

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MyCoachDawn

Instagram: (@dawnwiggins)

Instagram: (@coachtiffini)

On the Web: https://www.mycoachdawn.com

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.

Chapters

• 0:00 Hormones, Grief, And Divorce Collide
• 1:33 Our Approach And What’s New
• 1:56 Somatics, Nervous System, And The Quiz
• 6:31 Why Body Work Moves The Needle
• 12:01 Personal Stories Of Somatic Relief
• 15:38 Overstimulation, Suppression, And Listening In
• 16:58 Introducing Hot Flash Support
• 18:56 Joy’s Hot Flash Turnaround
• 20:39 What’s Inside The Blend
• 21:57 Premium-Only Divorce Recovery Remedy
• 24:08 Homeopathy Plus Workshops = Momentum
• 26:08 Community, Next Steps, And Closing

Transcript

Hormones, Grief, And Divorce Collide

SPEAKER_01 0:02

Tuesday, we talked with the Menopause Love Lounge about what happens when your hormones and your emotions during divorce feel like they're collaboratively ganging up on you. You're tired, you're snappy, you're bloated, you're sleepless, and half the time you cannot tell if you're healing or falling apart. And so today we're gonna bring in some solutions. Tiffany, Joy, and I are gonna walk you through the practical tools that we recommend that bring relief, the same ones we use inside of our community, inside of our families and our own lives to help women get their bodies and their emotions back on the same team. 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, Don Wiggins, a therapist, coach, integrative healer, and divorce. Join me for a fresh approach to healing grief and building your confidence after divorce. We are really excited about today's episode because it's featuring things that we have been working on behind the scenes like so hard, and they're such game changers in the world of healing. Solutions that you're not gonna find just around the corner everywhere. And we really believe we're filling a gap here where women are lacking certain answers and access to resources. So so excited. The first thing we're gonna talk about is the nervous system, somatics, and the divorce recovery nervous system quiz that we have women complete. So we're gonna explain what are somatics, what does that have to do with my nervous system, and how is it gonna help my hormones? We're gonna explain all of that because we've realized that we talk about somatics a lot, but not everybody knows what it is. And then we are gonna talk about the way we like to support hormones and specifically hot flashes around here. Um, because when you are in the weeds of divorce and all the things, like hot flashes are often that thing that literally can push you over the edge to feel like a total crazy person. So we're gonna talk about we what we do over here to gently support hormones and um clear up those pesky hot flashes. And then finally, at the end of the episode, you are gonna wanna stay because there is an exclusive tool that only premium listeners get access to. And we are going to unpack the tool we use to help women get grounded in their grief during divorce. And this one, like I said, completely exclusive to our premium listeners. So you're gonna want to hear that to the end. All right, let's dig in. Ladies. How are you this morning? Good morning. I'm feeling good. I feel like we're coming in. Yeah, we're coming in again.

SPEAKER_02 2:51

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 2:55

Tiffany's Tiffany's being our grounding force this morning. I am. I'm feeling super um today.

SPEAKER_00 3:04

Super um today. Super um.

SPEAKER_01 3:06

Yeah. I love it. I love it. Okay, let's talk a bit about our divorce recovery nervous system quiz and how it focuses on grief, nervous system hormones, and somatics. I think there are a lot of things we talk about over here that we name, we put words to things that women have been experiencing and feeling or sensing, and maybe and helping them connect the dots between why all of this feels like such a mess and so hard to manage. So we developed this quiz, this divorce recovery nervous system quiz, because when we're going through divorce, there's a whole list of painful experiences we have associated with that. But there is a high incidence of divorce during especially perimenopause and menopause. And so there's typically this whole other thing that women are having to tackle and deal with that is also really, really complex. And then we have the nervous system element of all of that, right? What grief, what being single mom, what being a stressed-out woman in general, what having all these hormone things going on does to a woman's nervous system? And so we really just wanted to help women uh see themselves in their patterns and have a better grip on what's going on for them and how that pairs with all the information we hear in the world of mental health, attachment styles, you know, coping strategies. It's a lot. Like, it's a lot. Can you ladies remember and sort of relate to like when you're in the weeds of healing, trying to keep track of all the ways that we talk about healing anymore? It's so overwhelming.

SPEAKER_02 4:45

So you could be doing all the things right, but you're not doing somatics. So, like, is it actually moving out of your body? So it's just like it keeps on. I feel like that healing space where I was so in the weeds and um nose down, and you know, I I no drinking, no uh eating bad things, no like every choice I made, I was like, is this intentional best? Right, is this the best version of myself? Because I everything else is falling apart. I can only control me. And but it's like it it gets overwhelming. And then you have a health issue on top of it, which say hot flashes, like you just can't, you cannot handle one more thing.

SPEAKER_01 5:35

Mm-hmm. Hot flashes or migraines or whatever. And I think to your point, right, you could be doing all the right things like journaling and therapy and reading the books and listening to the podcast, but if you're not doing somatics, are you moving the needle? And then I would add to that, and if your hormones are not balanced, can you make a dent in any of it? Because hormone health is mental health. And so, like if your testosterone is in the toilet or your progesterone is in the toilet or you're having really extreme hot flashes, it's a sign your hormones aren't balanced. And then wow, like it's really hard to move the needle on your mental health when your hormones are off.

SPEAKER_02 6:06

So fun fact when you go through a trauma or a situation in which your world collapsed, all of those things get aggravated. Like everything goes to shit because, yes, because you're so depleted and you're so in survival mode and your quarter's all shot and you're like everything just goes to shit.

Why Body Work Moves The Needle

SPEAKER_01 6:24

And so, in a little bit, we're gonna talk about one of the things we use for hormone support, but let's talk a little bit about somatics and the nervous system and what does that mean. So, I'm just going to first explain what do we mean when we say somatics over here? So the word somatic just really means the body. I believe it's Greek for soma, right? Which is just means the body. And so somatic work means working with the body to heal, not just the mind. So it's noticing what's happening in your body, the tight chest, the knot in your stomach, the way your shoulders live up by your ears, and helping those patterns unwind in the body rather always trying to unwind them from the mind. Because stress, grief, heartbreak, they don't just live in your thoughts, right? They live in your muscles, your breath, your posture, your nervous system. So when we talk about somatic healing, we're talking about reconnecting with your body, releasing tension you've been carrying, feeling grounded and safe again, rebuilding trust from the body awareness up through the mind. I think most of the times when we conceptualize healing, we think of it happening like from things like divorce, we think of it happening in the mind. But really, what we've learned over here, and you know, we hear talked about around, you know, research done by Gabor Mate and Bessel van der Kock and all those people we always reference, that really healing is profoundly happening in the body more than the mind. And so very often, especially when we're incredibly stressed or disassociated, the mind is not a helpful tool. We want to go in. Yeah, we want to go in through the body. So when we're talking about somatics, it's a lot of where do you feel that in your body? Slow down, take a breath, do a body scan, a body scan, and tell me what you're sensing in your body. What do you each of you remember about in your healing journey when you started really attending to what you were feeling in your body? How did that change your healing journey?

SPEAKER_00 8:17

I think one of the most impactful things that I've ever heard you say that was so simple, but it was this big aha moment for me was that we have a million ways that we express happiness. We have one way that we express sadness, which is through crying. And crying does not expel that energy from the body, right, in a way that is impactful, that's gonna move the stress out. And so I remember just feeling like, wow, like that's huge. And I take that and I tell my clients that now all the time. Like there is now you have to figure out all the ways that you can release grief and stress, just because crying's not gonna do it. It's just not gonna do it. So when you tell me you've been crying, it does it does a certain amount of it, right?

SPEAKER_01 8:58

A little bit, yeah, yeah, yeah. It does a certain amount of it. Mm-hmm. It is lubricating, it does det crying is detoxifying, it is lubricating, it is releasing, right, but it's like not the whole picture. Yeah.

unknown 10:08

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 10:09

I didn't have the awareness back then, though, in my healing journey early on, to know that everything that I was experiencing physically had to do with my mental health. And I know that sounds really silly, but I really didn't. Um, I had all these health issues, you know, and then during extreme times of stress when I developed the autoimmune disease and the breasts and things like that, that's when I started trying to connect like autoimmune disease relationship to storing of stress and trauma in the body and how it was manifesting in my body. And then even when I started taking certain homeopathic remedies and I would present with different symptoms, everything would present around bladder, kidney. Like, so that's where I know that I hold stress, which is was wild to me to make that connection.

Personal Stories Of Somatic Relief

SPEAKER_02 10:51

Yeah, along with Tiffany, I didn't really connect. I just knew I got really into running, and I just and um Pilates, I did so I just knew that I like it was a way to manage my anxiety outside of, and so I did a lot of um, like I bought a treadmill and and I would run, I haven't got a lawn driveway, and I would run up and down my driveway because I have three small kids, so it's not like I could go places, but I would do so oh I still when I get stressed, you'll swing me up going up and down my driveway. And so I didn't really understand what I was doing at the time. But knowing that if I put my shoes on and I went outside, I didn't have wireless earbuds back then. I didn't have any type of um way.

SPEAKER_01 11:41

Good. Everybody kill your wireless earbuds.

SPEAKER_02 11:43

Right. I really kind of was able, not not knowing it intentionally. So I am telling you to do this because it helps so much. Like without music, without um, if you go outside and you're and you're thinking about your situation and you're doing a somatic like a jog or a Pilates or some kind of discharge where you have a physical release, release, it helps you so, so deeply to process all of that. And again, I didn't have the wherewithal to know what I was doing, but now looking back and understanding somatics better and understanding the need to not be so inundated with information and um over-stimulated. So, like when you're running, yes, music is wonderful and it helps you keep pace and all these things, but it doesn't help you clear your mind or your body.

SPEAKER_01 12:36

Process, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 12:37

Right.

SPEAKER_01 12:37

So um and it's doing more stimulation, right?

SPEAKER_02 12:42

And so going for walks, going to a run without anything going on, um, a book or music or or anything like that, it really does just clear and make way for you to be able to process and and kind of discharge some of that anxiety. And and I did, I did my journey without, and I'm not saying this is right for any for everybody, but I did my journey without pharmaceuticals. I didn't, um I had a prescription for an anti-anxiety that I took as needed, but I tried very, very hard not to get on anxiety medicine or depression medicine because of the statistics and the things. And so I'm not saying that that's right for everybody, and I'm not shaming you because I do think it's a beautiful tool when needed. But if you can make these choices and do it without it, like always try, right?

SPEAKER_00 13:36

Like strive to do it without pharmaceuticals. I think that we all have the awareness too. Like when people hear somatics, I feel like they get very in the weeds about, okay, well, what is that though, and how do I do it? And there's so much like questions. When, like Joy said, your body instinctively will tell you what you need. The problem is we're not listening to it. So I always ask my clients, like, what do you feel like you need in this moment? And a lot of them will say, I feel like I need to go walk or I need to throw something. Curl up in a ball, or like you know it, right? But I think too, what what the mind gonna say it, I feel like what the mind fuck is in this generation, is that we have so many opportunities for stimulation that when we become aware of what we need, we don't take the action because there's so many things that we could be doing other than the things that we need to be doing.

Overstimulation, Suppression, And Listening In

Introducing Hot Flash Support

SPEAKER_01 14:28

Well, but it's it's it's two-pronged. It's stimulation. We're overstimulated and we're also oversuppressed. So A, there is so much noise in our systems, we often can't discern the thing that we need most, and then we are so suppressed or numb via our pharmaceuticals or our what Brene Brown said so many years ago: a beer and a banana nut muffin, right? Like we use food, we use screens, we use pharmaceuticals, we use alcohol, we use coffee until wine, we use all these things to suppress. So we can't hear our inner wisdom, right? So yeah. Okay, awesome. So for any woman who feels like, wow, this is an interesting conversation, the intersection of grief, modern living, maybe perimenopause, menopausal issues, nervous system somatics, right? Please, if you haven't checked out our divorce recovery nervous system quiz, please, please, please do that because it's going to help identify some patterns and put some words to things that you maybe haven't yet connected the dots about, right? And then once we understand something better, then we can tackle it better. All right, let's dig into what we do around here for things like hot flashes and hormone support. So we have been behind the scenes, um, of course, treating all of the folks that we work with, um, you know, in therapy and coaching and in our program at Different D Word using homeopathics, but we've also been developing our very own product line that is coming to market in the next few months. And so, in the meantime, I know it's like ridiculously exciting. So, one of the things we have been working on is a hot flash support remedy, and it is ready to go. And recently, actually, we put Joy on a hot flash uh support blend and it changed her life within, I don't know, what, five days time, six days time?

SPEAKER_02 16:09

Yeah, it was when I tell you I had gotten to the point where I'm I so I I have a um performance-based acceptance, um, you know, a seed apart, right? That um I am very, very good at just being like, uh, you know, like putting pushing it down. I'm fine, I'm fine, I'm fine, I'm fine, I'm fine. It's not a big deal, it's not on fire. It's just here and there. It's a little, it's a little hot flash here and there. I had gotten to the point where I could not function. Like it was on my head.

SPEAKER_01 16:41

Touch the top of my head, touch the top of my head, you took my head, touch the top of my head, and it was on fire. And hot flashes can manifest in a lot of different parts in the body, but there are a lot of people that experience them at the top of the head like that. Yeah.

Joy’s Hot Flash Turnaround

SPEAKER_02 16:51

It was intense. And so I finally was just like, Don, I just like I I just need help. I just need support. And I felt like a burden and I had to work through all my parts and everything. And when she put me on it, uh oh, and she was just like, duh, like this is a product, just try this, right? So she put me on it. I um was just like, it's it just it just doesn't work. It doesn't work. And she was like, Joy, like take a breath and do the breath. Yeah, yeah, give a time. And so, and then I haven't had one since. And when I tell you the relief that I feel that I can function on a regular talking to someone face to face and not feeling this the bead sweats start on the face, like it's embarrassing where it's like 40 degrees outside and you're sweating. Um, have you guys has anybody seen that that uh clip on social media that went viral about this beautiful black woman in a um like a like a bleacher scene and literally smoke or steam was billowing from her and she was in a scarf. It was like no it was like a literal hot flash. That is me every day, all day. And so I uh will I will die on the hill that this changed my life. That is amazing.

SPEAKER_01 18:11

Can we use a handful of a follow-up question? Tell me.

SPEAKER_00 18:14

Yeah, yeah, tell me. So the follow-up question is because your hot flashes have gone away, are you gonna turn into a summer beach girl now?

SPEAKER_02 18:21

Probably not because I live I do. I live my best life in the cold. Like go outside and you fill your your breath, you fill your lungs with cold air and a fire pit. I can't really see myself being a summer beach girl, but maybe I can handle it. Maybe I won't be. My husband says all the time, Joy, nobody likes you when you're hot. And so I felt like the last I felt the last few months have been nobody, I've just not been, not been my uh living my best life. Um, I didn't, I didn't suffer for months, but like it had gotten to the point where I was I was really struggling. And so knowing that we have a product that can do that can move the needle and give a woman such relief, like, why aren't we screaming it from the rooftops?

SPEAKER_01 19:13

You know, like well, we're getting ready to get ready.

SPEAKER_02 19:15

Let's put this on let's put this on glass, ladies.

What’s Inside The Blend

SPEAKER_01 19:19

Yeah, so our hot flash remedy blend, it has a lot of different remedies in it, right? A handful of like stars of the show homeopathically, where it comes to hormones and hot flashes in general. One of um Coach Tiffany's favorite remedies, sepia, has a little sepia in it along with some others, but then it also has some hormone supplementation in there in, you know, homeopathic potency. So we definitely are gently um supporting the estrogen and um the progesterone and a handful of other things. We're also supporting the part of the br parts of the brain that regulate um hormones and hot flashes and all of those things. So it's a multifaceted approach to um, you know, really hormone support and nervous system support. So we would like to see women like have less hot flashes, sleep better, less mood swings, you know, um, less cortisol spikes, like all these things that would just help smooth all of that out. So we are really, really excited. So if this is something you're interested in, go ahead.

SPEAKER_02 20:13

Yeah, I was gonna say, I just really love, um, I really love that you added the regulate sleep and wake cycles um remedy because you know, you heal your best, your body does its best work when you're asleep. And so for you to be able to regulate your sleep and your wake cycles of hormone production, um, it's just like it's a next level. There's not another product on the market that does such a well-rounded support of your adrenals and your sleep and your hormones, and like just it's just such a beautiful product.

Premium-Only Divorce Recovery Remedy

SPEAKER_01 20:47

Hoorays! So if this is something you're interested in, uh there will be a link in the show notes where you can shoot us an order form uh and you know, try it for yourself. Super exciting. So, ladies, we have this final thing we're gonna talk about that's completely exclusive for our premium listeners. And that's because we are really moving in the direction of premium listenership, is it's a lifestyle, right? And there's an exclusivity to it, right? We are wanting to build community. That is one of our top line goals here is that divorce is one of the most isolating experiences. It's devastating, and we're wanting to build, build, build community. And so in our premium listenership community, you are now having access to monthly workshops, and you get access to all of these great healing tools, and you get exclusive access to our divorce recovery homeopathic blend. Nobody else gets to purchase this product, only premium listeners or people who are in our paid community. So we developed this divorce recovery blend to specifically address the type of grief that divorce is, because grief is multifaceted, and there are a lot of grief products out there to help you support moving through grief, but it's not nuanced for divorce. Divorce has an incredible amount of anger, an incredible amount of identity-related pain and suffering, incredible amount of betrayal. Um, you know, there are just so many facets of divorce that are unique to the way that women grieve. And so this is a homeopathic blend that we designed very, very specifically with some very cool niche homeopathic remedies that really help women move through the stuckness of divorce recovery, move through the grief, move through the anger and the resentment, sleep better, rest better, process better. And it's really exciting.

Homeopathy Plus Workshops = Momentum

SPEAKER_02 22:38

I love this bespoke product for our listeners who are going through divorce because it's so tailored to their moment in time and their journey. One of the one of the quotes that comes with this is that we can all relate to in this moment was um, I've been rejected so deeply, I'm not sure I'm human anymore. I'm unworthy, tainted, and outside the circle of life. Right. Like that's such a quote from a listener that we were just like, Don used all of her knowledge on homeopathy, all of her hours and hours and hours, and I'm not being dramatic, like hours of reading and learning and school and everything to create this product that is so bespoke to this moment for our listeners that I just feel so proud. I'm proud of Dawn, I'm proud of this product, I'm proud to be a part of it. Like it's just it would be such a warm hug for you at this moment in time.

SPEAKER_01 23:42

That was amazing. Okay, so Coach Tiffany, you have used homeopathy, your family is using homeopathy, your clients are using homeopathy, right? Talk about what our premium listeners could anticipate pairing something like this exclusive divorce recovery blend and attending your monthly workshops inside of our Heartbeat community. What do you think would be the difference for a woman who attends the workshop, takes a homeopathic remedy versus a woman who doesn't? What's your sort of before and after observation from your life, your family's life, your clients' lives, you know, life before, life after?

Community, Next Steps, And Closing

SPEAKER_00 24:16

I would tell you that before I met Don, I was not familiar with homeopathy at all. It wasn't that I didn't believe in it, but it was kind of one of those woo-woo things that was out there that I was like, okay, I've heard of it, right? Does it work? I don't know. I was somebody that was on antidepressants for over a decade, you know, and I also, my daughter, um, she also has some mental health struggles, you know, she's about to be 21 years old. They had tried her on different medications and pharmaceuticals. Nothing has pushed the needle further than homeopathy for her, period. I swear by it, I recommend it to all of my friends. It's literally like I want to shout it from the rooftop. And I can tell you that I had a divorce client who at the time was not taking homeopathic remedies. We got her pretty far with IFS, but once the remedy started and she finally said, I want to try it, the amount of healing and relief that she has gotten, there is no comparison to what homeopathy can do to transcend your healing when you're pairing it with IFS, EMDR. The first workshop that we have coming up, I'm so excited. So all of our premium listeners get, yeah, they get access to a free workshop, free live workshop with me every month. The first one we're doing, we've already got women RSVP and I'm so excited. We're gonna talk about nervous system 101 and how your anxiety is actually your bestie, what you can learn from it, how to be able to control it, different tools. Like we are on fire, and every month we have these incredible workshops to help take you further and further through your healing journey. Obsessed.

SPEAKER_01 25:50

Amazing. So there are a lot of ways for you to get involved, to be a part of our community, to really supercharge at this moment in your life. If any of these things appeal to you today, just reach out and ask us like, how can I get more connected? How can I, you know, become a premium subscriber? How can I access, you know, the divorce recovery blend or the hot flash blend? PS, we have so many other amazing products coming to market. Um, and and we just can't wait to tell you all about all of them. But these are the first two, and you're the first to hear about it, honestly. Like, so uh we're just really excited to share all these things with you and want to encourage you to just get involved, be a part of something. Um, because you could dramatically shortcut how long you are in sort of the weeds of recovery by using these tools that we have just seen shortcut people's healing processes, smooth out the edges of people's healing processes, get deeper than anything else we've seen. These are the tools we wish we had back then, right? And that's sort of, yeah, that's sort of the whole deal. We we did it without these tools. Do not recommend it. Do not recommend zero stars, zero stars. Yeah. Awesome. Thanks, ladies. We love you so much. Peace.