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
301. Day 7: Loneliness After Divorce | When the Wave Hits
This episode is only available to subscribers.
Dear Divorce Diary: Dedicated to Healing
Exclusive access to premium content!How ya doing babe? We're on day 7 of "The 12 Days of Becoming HER Again" and it's all pretty raw.
Today we’re talking about loneliness after divorce...not as something to fix or outrun, but as something that moves in waves.
For many women, loneliness doesn’t stay constant.
It rises.
It crests.
And when it hits, it can feel overwhelming.
In this episode, Joy and I talk about:
- Why loneliness after divorce often comes in waves
- How many women try to drown it out instead of ride it
- The difference between feeling lonely and being unsafe
- What actually helps when the wave rises
- Why resisting loneliness often makes it stronger
- How to stay present without collapsing into it
This conversation is about learning how to ride the loneliness wave — letting it move through you without letting it take you under.
You don’t have to force yourself to feel better.
You don’t have to make it mean something about your worth.
You just need a way to stay with yourself when it shows up.
If loneliness has been hitting hard this holiday season, this episode is for you.
🎄 About the 12 Days of Divorce Christmas
The 12 Days of Divorce Christmas is a daily series supporting your nervous system and your heart through the holidays after divorce.
✨ Days 1, 2, and 9 are available on the public feed.
✨ The full series is available inside Dear Divorce Diary Premium.
If today’s episode helped you feel less afraid of the loneliness — or less alone inside it — the rest of the series is there to keep supporting you.
Join Dear Divorce Diary Premium to access the full 12 Days of Divorce Christmas.
Or stay with us here today — and come back tomorrow.
Capacity builds in connection. Hugs ❤️
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.
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. Welcome to day seven of the 12 Days of Divorce Christmas, aka the 12 Days of Becoming Her again. Today we are talking about the loneliness wave. We want you to ride it and not drown in it. Most of us drown in it. I don't know about you. What do you think, Joy? Especially when we link it together, right, with not having your kids or the loss of friends. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:That's like the like the the I I wish you could see me, like the air quotes, like the magic of Christmas and the all of the hallmark movies and all of the window displays and all of the like it's like right. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:So we're throwing you a lifeline so you don't drown in your loneliness, and instead you write it. And the first thing I want to really address here is that loneliness, the sensation of being disconnected outside, not a part of alone, is truly, truly, truly a symptom of being disconnected from yourself for a very long time. This is typically a byproduct of a very long period of time that you have been disassociated from your true self and you've been sort of living into little miniature avatars of yourself. And so loneliness is 100% a symptom or a byproduct of being separated from your spiritual self, your true self. It means you've been suppressing or repressing your emotions for a very long time, your needs for a very long time. And that's what loneliness is, because there are opportunities for connection all around us. I promise you, love, loneliness is a symptom. That can be very hard to accept or believe or want to hear or know or understand because we often end up trying to move through loneliness by feeling like we just need a companion. And then we get into a pity party. And if we could just have someone to solve our loneliness for us, but it just perpetuates the problem and means you are more likely to repeat the same relationship patterns in future relationships. Yikes! We don't want that. So one of the things we want to call out that you can do in this moment is use a tool that we created once upon a time called the Loneliness Roadmap. Now, if you've ever heard of EMDR therapy or you've done it or you've wanted to try it or you were curious about it, the Loneliness Roadmap is an immersive journaling tool. We created it is completely free and you can access it in our cocoon community. You do usually need to either sign up for it or request access, but all you have to do is send a DM either on Instagram, an email to hello at my coach Don, or a DM inside of Heartbeat asked to be granted access to it. The Loneliness Roadmap is an immersive journaling tool where we teach you how to drop in and use bilateral simulation, much like what happens in EMDR therapy. The reason it was so important to us to develop this tool is because EMDR can be difficult to access, it can be expensive. It typically you only access it during business hours in your therapist's office. And the reality is bilateral simulation is a tool that you can use all the time, especially when the things come up. And I think loneliness is often felt most intensely at night. What are your thoughts, Joy?
SPEAKER_00:Absolutely. I feel like when the world is quiet, that's when it's the heaviest, the loudest. Yeah. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:So we know from years of doing EMDR and watching women heal that very often what we try to do when we use these healing techniques is we try to use them to distance from our feelings. Like, oh, let me learn how to butterfly tap so that I can feel less. But here's the trick: if you're not doing EFT tapping and bilateral stimulation and whatever these tools are, journaling, to feel more, to lean into your feelings, you're literally doing it wrong. And it's not gonna work the way you want it to. And so I was literally texting with somebody today who is having horrible trouble sleeping despite taking all of the sleeping supplements. And I suggested that she change her sleeping supplement meditation routine to a journaling EFT tapping gentle yoga routine. And she was like, Well, my problem with journaling is then I feel worse than when I started. And I'm like, aha, because you've been disassociating and the journaling puts you in touch with what you're feeling. Right. That has to be the way, right? You have to call in the feelings, feel them, process them, and then use tools to move them out and through. We love activating feelings using journaling or EFT, yoga and somatics to move them out and through. And so too often women are too still in their feelings. Yeah. Like we gotta tap it out, scream it out, move it out, flow it out, grunt it out, squat it out. And this is what we want to invite you to do with loneliness. If you haven't checked out the loneliness roadmap, reach out. We will grant it to you. If you need help getting into our community, do that. But loneliness is very much a symptom. And when as long as you're feeling loneliness, know that there is healing work to do.
SPEAKER_00:It's so powerful. I really do encourage everybody to jump in there and check it out.
SPEAKER_01:I think a lot of people sometimes get intimidated by like therapeutic techniques. Joy, what are your thoughts about that, right? Like you and I do life together, so we would be sitting at family dinner and I would just start bilaterally stimulating someone in my family. Like it's what do you think? What would you say to the woman that maybe feels intimidated to try something new or like the idea of like self bilateral?
SPEAKER_00:So like empowering yourself to heal yourself and not rely on a time. Yeah, right. So I think it's very this I think it's very programmed. We are very programmed. A if you if you are open to therapy, then you're to go to a talk therapist and talk about your problems and then be healed and walk away a new person.
SPEAKER_01:And that's just programmed to access the expert and not see ourselves, not develop ourselves into experts. Uh-huh. We are we are programmed to defer our agency, our sovereignty, our capacity to an expert. And then when we're anxious because we can't access it, it feels inaccessible because it's timely, it's expensive, it's whatever. Ooh. Mic drop. Right.
SPEAKER_00:So I think educating and equipping women to take the power back.
SPEAKER_01:That's my that's my teaching, yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Right. Teaching them processing practices, somatic exercises, somatic practices, EFT tapping. We have so many incredible EFT on premium that help process a specific emotion out. I do encourage you to check those out because I do EFT with my children, you know, like it is it is such a powerful tool that I don't have to rely on someone else to do to get into an appointment to tell to be right about it. And that's not bashing talk therapists, but like, how many years and years and years did I go to talk therapy only to have the same issues repeat? They're just because I wasn't addressing the core issue. I wasn't addressing the attachment. I wasn't addressing, I was just talking about my problems and then going on my way, you know? And by taking my power back and my story back, that that's when I really finally started getting movement and becoming the person that I wanted to be.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, but I think there is a little unspoken piece in there that we sort of like outsourcing our power to an extent because then we don't have to take on the mantle of responsibility, right? So, like it's a two-edged sword. Like on the one hand, we're so distressed over our healthcare system and how inaccessible or unaffordable or inhumane the systems are. But on the other hand, we sort of like it if someone else is in charge. How many times have I said on the podcast when I went to my therapist post-divorce, I was like, thank God, you're in charge now.
SPEAKER_00:Right, right, right. You make decisions, simple as do. And I also think that there needs to be something said of women going through divorce, um, either either in the middle of a you're for dis decision fatigued, you're you're burnt out. There's so many things. So to have the lift of taking your healing on yourself, we understand that that is a big lift in terms of like deciding to do it. But once you start doing it, the the decision fatigue is gone just because you get so empowered by being able to help yourself, right?
SPEAKER_01:It's like when you have to rely on something. Yeah, love it. Okay, so lean into what you're feeling, not lean out, access the loneliness roadmap, and start to really interpret loneliness as a clue that you are disconnected from some part of yourself. And until those wires get reconnected, loneliness will persist and you run the risk of making the same old mistakes over again. So this holiday season, when you have extra time on your hands, is the perfect time. You know, like if the kids are away or you have time, right? Or you're out of work, you're in that post, you know, that season between Christmas and New Year's where everything's a blur, right? This is a great, great, great time to start digging in and using some of these tools. We love you so much. Peace.
