56: When You Don’t Know What’s Next, Ask This

This episode is a love letter to all of us standing at the edge of the unknown.

With the school year ending and the summer holding more questions than answers, I share from my own life the real, raw process of navigating uncertainty post-divorce. From ex-husband drama to nursing school limbo, from ICE raid trainings to food rescue volunteering, I talk about the tools I’m using to show up on purpose, no matter what chaos is swirling.

You’ll hear:

• The core question that’s guiding me right now: “Who do I want to be no matter what happens?”
• Why I hired a coach to help with emotional eating, and how that simple act reflects who I’m becoming.
• How volunteering, tarot, and saying YES to late-night concerts (with naps) are part of my spiritual path.
• What it means to hold space for worry without letting it run the show.
• The role of silence, stillness, and story in shaping a powerful, meaningful life.

I also share a deeply personal story about the loss of my son Jacob—and why it taught me everything I need to know about control, fear, and being fully present.

You’ll leave this episode with:

• Practices to anchor yourself when life feels in flux
• Ideas to define your values through action, not prediction
• Permission to not know and still live with intention, strength, and joy

🔔 Heads-up: Summer is coming, and with it, some irregular podcasting. I’m still here—just shifting with the seasons of solo parenting and sacred rest.

📧 Need support? Email me at quinn@postdivorceglowup.com

PostDivorceGlowUp.com

Email: quinn@postdivorceglowup.com

Transcript

0:49

Welcome back to the podcast my friends. This is the last week of school for my kiddos, so I'm in this place of transition. So much is happening and it feels like so much is on hold. It's one of those hurry up and wait kind of moments, and as I was contemplating what's happening in my life I wanted to talk about facing an unknown future So much of what kept us in our marriages was. The unknown and being afraid of how would everything work out? What was going to happen to our kids or to our property or joint assets in our job, whatever that looked like for you and facing that unknown future with courage and energy is an ongoing challenge for many of us. I know it is for me and when I sit with the truth that we never know the future. We have ideas. We have these brains that love to find patterns and predict what's going to happen, but at the very base level, other than the sun is going to rise. It will set and the stars are in the places that they are for now. it seems like there is so much in flux in my life. For instance, My husband is moving back to the state, We had a little bit of an interaction over the weekend, which ended with him threatening me again, so I'm not sure what's gonna happen there. as far as my own educational journey goes. I don't know if I'm going to get into nursing school in this next round, or if I do get in, I'm not even sure when it's going to start. I have heard different dates from different people of authority. I'm not sure what my kids are going to be involved with this summer since their dad's coming back and they'll spend some time. With him, but he seems unsure about whether he's going to be doing that. In my country, there is so much that is feeling unstable. the reality is, for many of us, we are in this state of finding our footing again, in our marriage there were. Patterns that we were able to kind of count on our spouse showing up a certain way, our reactions being a certain way, and we had certain expectations about the way life was. And so after divorce, we face a lot of these unknowns and how am I gonna figure this out? So I wanted to talk about some tools that I have been leaning into recently because This has all kind of come to a head for me in the last week, and I'm seeing it in a couple of my clients. Those who have children and those who don't have children are kind of facing the same energy of. What's the next step? How do I show up in a world where I don't know what's going to happen? Because we love to be able to prepare. Right. Okay. I wanna suggest a question that has been helpful for me, and the question is, who do I want to be no matter what happens? sitting with that question is what allowed me to start to distill what's important to me. if there are projects that I want to have done, no matter when I start school, no matter if my kids are with their dad or not, whether we turn into a crazy police state in the next couple of months or not. Those things are true no matter what. Then I'm going to put those on the forefront of my life. Then I start to talk to myself in such a way that I begin to embody that person. Now, the phrase I like to use is I'm a person who. I am a person who likes to hike. I'm a person who says yes to invitations, to connect with other people. I am a person who reads inspiring novels or nonfiction works, and I start living into the person that I want to be. Last week I decided to hire my own coach. Over this past year of the additional challenges of doing school, and most of my classes have been online, so I've been home a lot and sitting a lot, and I started snacking. A lot, and I was finding it difficult to stop those behaviors, and so I hired a coach to help with daily accountability and education. She's fabulous. I love the program. I'm going to be working with her for six months because I know myself well enough to know that no matter what happens in the future. I want to stop snacking. I will feel better. I will have more energy to go towards the things that I actually care about because I'm not snacking because I'm hungry. I'm snacking because I'm bored, or I'm stressed, or I'm happy or I'm sad. You know, not because of physical hunger. And so I want that for me no matter what happens in the future. Another thing that I've chosen to do is to become more involved in my community. And what this looks like initially was saying yes to invitations, asked out on a date. As long as I feel safe, I say yes. a girlfriend that I had met at the gym, decided to host a little happy hour at her house over the weekend, but it conflicted with a couple of birthday parties for my kids. as in my, my little girls were having birthday parties, so I was hosting, but my adult children said, we're gonna cover that. And so I was able to attend my event. We were able to gang up and host all of the parties that needed to happen, get everyone where they needed to go. But it came from me being a person that. First decided I want to connect more in my community. I am going to find a way to say, yes, I have invitations to concerts. I am saying yes, it will mean I have to take a nap because I usually go to bed pretty early and get up really early. So on those evenings when I'm going to be at a concert, and it doesn't start until eight or nine at night. God, why don't they do matinee? Ugh. but I'm saying yes, I'm in a place where I want to say yes to connection. I want to say yes to being supportive in my community. I love volunteering. That's another way that I stay involved in my community and I want to be doing that no matter what. Happens. No matter when I start school, no matter what happens with my husband, no matter what happens with my country, I want to be a person who is invested in her community. So what this looks like for me is that I spend time at a food rescue on Saturday mornings. I volunteer for a couple shifts at our local hospital, and just yesterday I went to a training with a couple of people to become an observer for ICE raids. for those that you, of you who may not know, ICE stands for Immigration and Customs Enforcement. They work with border patrol. It's a federal organization and they come in contact a lot with the immigrant population. And I live very close to the Mexican border and border crossings. So we have a lot of that kind of enforcement. So all that means is that I will go, I will film, I will interact with the policeman or law enforcement or whoever's there, and that's a way that. I can support my neighbors, the people I care about by making sure that whatever happens to them, there is a video recording of whatever kind of detention or interaction they have with law enforcement. And so that's really important to me because no matter what happens in the world, I wanna be the kind of person who shows up as using my privilege as a conventionally attractive white woman for good. Another way that I got involved in my community recently is joining a local group within my neighborhood. Someone sent out a message saying, does anyone here like to play with tarot and Oracle cards? And I raised my hand. I was not able to attend to the first meeting, but I was like, in the future, I really wanna be there and I'm going to be able to get to know other women who like to play in mystical arts and, and I wanna do that no matter what happens. the next thing that I'm doing is that I've increased my time reading as in. Physical books. I have a stack of books. I always have a stack of books that I'm reading, but I am choosing books, not so much self-help books or how to improve my life books, but I'm reading true stories of people that I find inspiring or novels that. Have a female protagonist that is overcoming things so that I have more stories in my head about what might be possible. I am currently reading a book called The Bastard Brigade about these scientists and spies who are trying to keep the Nazis from getting the atomic bomb. It is such a great book. I want to be the kind of person who reads about. Human possibility, human audacity, because that's what I want to embody and embolden in my own life. So I find stories, I find messaging that resonates with the person I want to be. Even if there are days where fighting the Nazis just sounds too hard and I want to curl up on the couch, instead I am choosing a different path. The next thing I'm doing that I think has made a huge difference in my life is spending time in silence. There is this part of my brain that constantly wants to know the future, wants to know that my children will be safe, wants to know that I will be safe, and none of that is guaranteed. Back in 2003, my oldest son woke up. Snuggled with me. We talked and then I put him in a bathtub, went and got food for my other kids, and this son Jacob, he was four, almost five years old at the time. The next time I saw him, he was dead. We have no guarantees that we will live through the day. Not even the next hour, but there is a part of my mind that really wants to believe that everything's gonna be safe and defined in a very narrow definition of what that looks like. Sitting in silence and noticing that part of myself that wants reassurance that my children are gonna live another day, that my husband is not going to attack me today, that my country is not going to go over the edge to full, full-blown fascism today. There are no guarantees, so the best I can do is to witness that part of myself. to not grab hold of it. I don't like to center that part, but I am going to notice it because I find when I resist that part that wants to know that is furious, that there is so much that is unknown or up in the air that wants control. As I notice that part of myself and I'm able to just sit with it and notice it as if it's just a cloud passing across the sun, like the sun is still there. As this shadow is created by these dark thoughts of what's going to happen and all of the worry and anxiety, allowing it to pass, noticing what happens in my body because there is this physical reaction in me that wants to grab hold and feels like it's, it's important to worry. Like if I don't worry, who will? And the truth is nobody needs to worry. It doesn't do us any good, but I know telling you that probably doesn't help. So one of the things that is important to me is to simply practice. Allowing. Allowing the vibrations in my body, allowing the queasy feelings that are happening along with that time in silence. I have found it imperative that I practice feeling into my body because no matter what happens, I want to be connected to my body and the intuition and the. Signals that my body is giving me about the path that I'm following. This also means getting serious about my exercise, continuing to get strong. So that no matter what happens, I have strength, I have energy, I'm getting the rest that I need.'cause it's not all about push, push, push, right? We've got to prioritize our recovery as well for those of us that have that opportunity to rest and rest deeply. Dialing that in is very important at this time as well. And then. As a final note, I would suggest some kind of spiritual practice. And what I find interesting is that a lot of the women that I coach, they don't consider themselves religious. So when I talk to them about their spiritual lives, they usually say they have no spiritual life. So I want to explain to you what I mean by a spiritual life because I'm, I'm also not religious, but I consider myself. To have an incredibly rich spiritual life. So time and silence is part of my spiritual life because my spiritual life is that part of my life that connects me deeply to me, as well as to the transcendent experience of being a human. I have no idea what we as humans are doing here on this planet. I came from a religious background where we were told what you're doing here, what happened before this earth, and what's gonna happen when you die? Just very, very specifically. I no longer believe that, and I also don't believe that anyone actually knows. I get to decide for myself what I believe and the way I measure what I believe is, does it create more peace in my life? Does it give me more strength? Does it hurt other people? That's also part of my spiritual path. I consider my volunteer work, me saying yes to opportunities. All of that is part of my spiritual path. In fact, there's probably no part of my life that I don't consider somewhat spiritual. So when I talk about spirituality, it's that core of you that has been here from the beginning of your life and will be here to the very end. this consciousness that is embodied in your body and will continue until your body is no longer functional. And the more that I can. Explore my body. So the way I move, the way I speak, the way I hold myself, that's all part of my spirituality. Sitting outside under a full moon or a new moon, that's also part of my spirituality. Handing out food at the food rescue. That's also part of my spiritual path. Singing, singing in choir, singing in the car. Like there's so much my, my interaction with nature, playing with divination cards, all of that is part of my spiritual practice. It is foundationally this place in me that. Desires to experience the delight and awe of being alive, and I want to be that person no matter what, no matter what happens in the future. I want to be a person that can have a sense of awe and delight in life. So again, just to recap, I want you to consider who is it that you want to be, no matter what happens, and if you're not already that person or if you need to shore up who that person is, consider taking some of the steps. That I've been taking recently, consider hiring a coach or getting some kind of daily accountability in areas that you're struggling. Consider saying yes more to opportunities to connect to others, or maybe you are making the invitations and other people have the opportunity to say yes to you. Consider reading more stories or watching more movies or podcasts that are uplifting to you, that are inspiring. Aspiring to you that show you what's possible. Consider spending time in silence, noticing the thoughts, noticing that they are not you. Noticing the incessant, habitual thoughts and the fact that you don't have to grab hold of them. You can just let them pass like a cloud across the sun. And then consider developing your own spiritual practices that can bring you more foundationally into this experience of being alive and being human. At this time, I wanted to give you a heads up. I don't know if I'll be podcasting over the summer because there is so much that is unknown. I do wanna be spending more time with my kids coming off of this school year, so I'm not sure it's going to be as regular. if you don't see me for a little while, nothing has happened to me. It's not unexpected. It's just the rhythm of life that happens as a single mom. Alright. If you need me, I'm here for you. Reach out at Quinn Q-U-I-N-N at post-divorce glow up.com and I will talk to you maybe next week.