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 for women navigating life after divorce. Dear Divorce Diary is a podcast for women dealing with grief, loneliness, anxiety, anxious or avoidant attachment, and identity loss after divorce — especially when quick fixes, positivity, and spiritual fluff no longer work.
I’m Dawn Wiggins, therapist, coach, and homeopath, and this show goes where most divorce advice won’t: into your nervous system, your unspoken grief, your buried rage, and the parts of you that shut down just to survive.
Through honest conversation, somatic tools, EMDR- and IFS-informed work, and nervous-system support, each episode helps you feel instead of perform healing — and rebuild safety, confidence, and self-trust from the inside out.
You’ll hear raw solo episodes, real voice notes from women in the trenches, and intimate conversations with experts who don’t just talk about healing — they embody it.
If you’re tired of being told to “move on” while your body is still bracing, this podcast is your place to land. Your nervous system already knows the truth — it just needs a space that can hold it.
Dear Divorce Diary: A Fresh Approach To Healing Grief & Building A Life Of Confidence After Divorce
299. Day 5: Missing My Kids During the Holidays After Divorce
This episode is only available to subscribers.
Dear Divorce Diary: Dedicated to Healing
Exclusive access to premium content!If you’re here today, it means your kids aren’t with you...and that absence lands in the body, not just the heart.
This episode is for the moms navigating holidays, weekends, or long stretches without their children after divorce. The quiet. The ache. The way your nervous system doesn’t know where to settle when the people you’re bonded to aren’t home.
Joy shares from lived experience what it’s like to be deeply, trauma-bonded to your children — through pregnancy, birth, illness, caregiving, and survival — and then suddenly have to function without them physically present.
In this conversation, we talk about:
- Why missing your kids after divorce can feel physically destabilizing
- How maternal bonding and trauma bonding affect the nervous system
- The urge to stay busy, numb out, or dissociate — and why that makes sense
- What actually helped during the hardest hours (movement, EFT tapping, nature, structure)
- Why “doing nothing” can feel unbearable — and what to do instead
- A simple candle ritual to honor the bond when your kids aren’t with you
- How to stay connected without collapsing or abandoning yourself
This episode is not about fixing the grief or rushing you through it.
It’s about staying present with the truth that their bodies may be absent — but their love is not.
If you’re missing your kids today, you don’t have to disappear to survive it.
You’re allowed to grieve and stay with yourself.
🎄 About the 12 Days of Divorce Christmas
The 12 Days of Divorce Christmas is a daily, nervous-system-first series created to support women through the holidays after divorce.
✨ Days 1, 2, and 9 are available on the public feed.
✨ The remaining days — including deeper support for grief, loneliness, and identity after divorce — are available inside Dear Divorce Diary Premium.
If this episode helped you feel less alone, the rest of the series is there to hold you through the days that follow.
Join Dear Divorce Diary Premium to access the full 12 Days of Divorce Christmas.
Their love is not absent.
And neither are you.
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Instagram: (@dawnwiggins)
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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, 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.
Welcome to day five of the 12 days of divorce Christmas. If you are here with us on day five, like congratulations, girl. You are getting it this holiday season and you are doing better than most because this is the 12 days of becoming her again. I guarantee that anyone who does these 12 days and really does them, full out, no dress rehearsal, is going to have a transformation at the end of these 12 days. You are going to feel better, stronger, more grounded, more embodied, less anxious, less insecure, amazing. Today we're talking about when your kids aren't with you. And producer Joy is going to carry us for this one because this was a very real challenge for her then, and maybe even to an extent, still sometimes now. And I think that when we can speak from the heart of our truth, right, that's where we connect and we break through most. So joyous. For the woman whose kids aren't with her every day this holiday season. I think this is one of the deepest, hardest, rawest things to deal with. 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 day. Join me for a fresh approach to healing grief and building your confidence after divorce.
SPEAKER_01:I just want to start off with saying, Mama, I am hugging you because it's hard. And while there are some beautiful moments that are coming and in this moment with you, it's still so hard. I am trauma bonded to my children, all three of them. They were all had very traumatic births. Um, a lot of NICU, a lot of health problems, a lot of specialists. There's so many times it was just the four of us. I have three daughters, and so it was just the four of us because my husband was out doing XYZ, right? So like um, and then it was the four of us when he left. And he left the four of us, and he left the family that we had built and the home that we had created, and he left me standing there answering the questions and trying to explain to a two four-year-olds where daddy is. I don't know if daddy's coming home. I don't know, I can't answer these questions, but you know what I mean? Like it was we are so trauma bonded together that now at 13 and 11 we struggle with functioning away from each other. There's, you know, we went out of town to a friend's house and they're lovely friends, and there was my 13-year-old struggled with falling asleep across the hall because I was across the hall, and she struggled with it because it was out of routine and it was away from us, you know. At home, we have a wall that separates our beds, so she knocks on the wall and I can knock on the it's very, it's very uh a little bit too much, and we we recognize that and we are doing homeopathy and tools to address it, but in the interim, we still struggle with so when they are not right, so when they are not with me, what are things that I do did back then and what are things that I do now? Did back then, I did a lot of cleaning. My house had never been cleaner. I did a lot of scrubbing baseboards. I did a lot of I did a lot of list writing. I would problem solve with list writing. So I was sitting down. I did not do I did not drink during this time. I did so I was I was making very intentional choices on staying clear-headed processing. I did a lot of EFT tapping. There's a a phenomenal one on YouTube that's free that I would win in the really hard moments. I would do Brad Yates. Right. Brad Yates emotional tapping, emotional pain tapping. I did a lot of exercise. I did a lot of um Pilates. I did a lot of Pilates. I did a lot of running running up and down my driveway. I had a pretty sick, I have a pretty six um substantial driveway, so I did a lot of running up and down my driveway. I did a lot of things to keep me moving. Um because when I didn't Which is probably what you do when you're mothering, right?
SPEAKER_00:You're always moving when you're mothering. Moving in your nervous system. Oh, that's a good connection.
unknown:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Your nervous system is like, keep it moving. I can't, I can't, right? And I found when I didn't have tasks to do or things to kind of help me process, I wound up um bedrotting, doom scrolling. And that is something I intentionally did not want to do. I did not want to do scroll, I did not want to dissociate my pain away. I wanted to be very intentional. And so, like, I I made conscious choices to do these. I went for a lot of walks in nature by myself, um, a lot of woods. You've heard me talk about it. I would scream into the woods, you know. So making choices that served me in the big picture, not just in this moment. It's easy to dissociate, it's easy to get on your phone or to take a drink, but like making big picture choices. Someone asked me very early on in my journey, what do I want my story to be? And that was like a grounding question for me. So finding a grounding question for you that can help you kind of big picture at what back to moving forward, yes. Like, how do I answer why intentionally? Yes. Now we use homeopathy. Now, if the I can't even imagine them being gone for multiple days because it just doesn't happen. We struggle so much in that now. I would very much do similar similar things. I would do tapping videos, I would do journaling, I would do exercise and walking because they're so somatic. And at the time I didn't have the vocabulary or the knowledge, I just knew it felt better to do that. I think I would really enjoy the first few.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, the first few hours would be amazing.
SPEAKER_01:I think I would really enjoy the first few hours of them not being home because it'd be quiet, but then the quiet would get very heavy and very loud.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, let's talk about hours like 12 through 36. And this is all hypothetical, right? But the neurobiology is interesting because as women of childbearing age, so if you're already postmenopausal, this is less applicable and will be a little actually easier to navigate. But if you're not in menopause, if you're still childbearing or you're in perimenopause, women's hormones are run on bonding and adapting to the people we're in relationship with. So our hormonal cycles literally we thrive and run on oxytocin, progesterone, things that are by our very nature are driven by relationship. And so we're constantly seeking being in relationship and adapting to the people that we are in relationship with and the children we are raising, right? It's like in us, of us to facilitate life with them, for them. And so when they're absent, it's like there's something about our neurobiology that is off, right? It's like, oh, the people I'm so I've adapted myself to, they're not here. And the reality is women do lose themselves in motherhood and in wifeness, right? We literally do lose ourselves, and that's why so many divorces happen in perimenopause and menopause, because as those hormones leave the building, we're less invested in adapting to the people around us, and so we put up with less bullshit, right? And so, what are the things that you have lost track of remembering you love? Like, there's a type of thinking we don't do when we are raising children about what would I love to do right now because I absolutely can. So I would encourage if your kids aren't with you and it's for more than one night, the sky's the limit. Get curious about what would you want to do because you're not used to being able to think like that.
SPEAKER_01:I actually just had a kind of revelation when you were talking about that. I really love to paint. I would put on light jazz and paint.
SPEAKER_00:I absolutely believe because I don't really have time and space to do that typically. Yeah, yeah. Would you do it in any different way? Because you do right, like you painted these beautiful watercolor cards for the women in our coaching program. Like, so it's like maybe small scale. Like, how would you paint? Like every now and then you do sit down and paint a little bit, right? Like, how would you do it differently?
SPEAKER_01:How would you paint and I would do like a project, like a um like a canvas for my mantle or um something more than a little bit more than a little bit more than a beginning, middle, and an end, yeah. Right than just a little doodle. Yeah, I would hope that I would embrace that time and and um pour into myself. Immerse. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Okay. We talked about this beautiful little ritual, this idea of the candle ritual, right? And sort of separating out, even though they're absent, their love isn't absent. So I love that, yes. For anyone, yeah, yeah, yeah. So for anyone who, you know, your kids aren't with you, and it is during these 12 days of Christmas, we want you to throw yourself into being you, right? Get curious, explore, immerse yourself in the you of it all because it honestly is gonna help your big picture healing process in general. It's gonna make you a better mother when they return. Of course, there's grief to grieve, but if you throw yourself into being you and not to escape in your pain, you're gonna grieve along the way. You're gonna do it beautifully. And then we would love for you to find a candle that represents each of your kiddos and light that candle. Create some ritual in some portion of your day and light that candle or candles that represent your kids and either write out or speak out loud. Their love is not absent, right? Their little glowing flames and souls are always around. Just maybe not their physical bodies, but their love is not absent, their flame is still burning, and they're always connected with you in spirit, and so don't act as though it's not, right? Act as though it is, send messages down that energetic line to them, receive messages from them and get really, really open and curious to receiving those things. So create a little candle ritual for yourself. Their love is not absent. Immerse yourself in being you.
SPEAKER_01:I think it's so beautiful. The idea of the little candle ritual and stepping into being able to have space to be you and to explore and to maybe learn a new craft or you know, like a new hobby or a new um something you've always wanted to do. Like take piano lessons, everything's free on YouTube right now.
SPEAKER_00:Like everything's free on YouTube. Like and it's not gonna feel as rewarding at first, right? At first, it's not gonna feel as rewarding. It's gonna feel awkward, it's gonna feel other, it's gonna feel foreign. Yeah, but you can only get there by doing it. Yeah. Choosing you every day. Amazing. Send us a picture of what you create. We love you so much. Peace.
