Uprooted by Breakup

In this episode, Kiran Prasad engages with Nancy Nelson to explore the emotional turmoil caused by breakups and the journey of healing. They discuss the importance of self-care including self-compassion and honoring our losses, and the grief process, in navigating grief and acceptance. The conversation highlights personal stories of resilience and the lessons learned from adversity, culminating in the creation of programs aimed at empowering others facing similar challenges.

Takeaways

• Emotional upheaval from breakups can feel devastating.
• Engaging in holistic self-care practices is crucial for healing.
• Acceptance is a key part of the healing process after a breakup.
• Self-compassion can significantly aid in recovery from emotional pain.
• Community support plays a vital role in overcoming adversity.
• Grief can manifest in various stages, and it's important to honor them.
• Finding purpose in adversity can lead to personal growth.
• It's essential to take time before dating again after a breakup.
• Creating resilience programs can empower others facing similar challenges.

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Transcript

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Meet Nancy Nelson. I was head over heels in love with this man. Like never before, like I had never experienced it before. I felt as if I had finally found my soul mate. to my surprise, he broke up with me. And I just kept thinking, I need this pain to be over. It felt so excruciating. The pain was far worse than both divorces that I had put together. I just laid on the floor on my back, palms facing up, and I just prayed to God for help. So then how did you cope and move forward from there? What kind of things did you find helped you? I engaged in a daily, holistic, self-care practice. You truly are a strong, resilient woman and it's great that you're now helping other women become resilient too. This podcast may contain sensitive material that may not be suitable for everyone. Information shared is based on personal experiences and not meant to replace medical or other professional help. What do you do when it feels like the rug's been pulled from underneath your feet? In fact, the whole floor. Welcome to the Uprooted by Unwanted Change podcast about managing life transitions. I'm Kiran Prasad, teacher, speaker, and author of A Mindful Move, Feel at Home Again, based on my 29 house moves. On each episode, we'll focus on a topic of unwanted change with guests sharing stories of resilience and insights into how they navigated their journeys. Together, we'll discover a community of inspiring individuals and create a system of support for one another. One such individual is Nancy Nelson. Welcome, Nancy! Hi, Kiran. Hi, everyone. And welcome listeners. Today, our episode is about being uprooted by breakup. Meet Nancy Nelson. Nancy has worked in the nursing field for 36 years and has a master's degree in nursing from Wagner College in 2001. In addition to clinical nursing, she has worked as a nursing professor and facilitated stress reduction workshops and support groups for nursing students. She currently works as a Behavioral Health Nurse in an outpatient clinic. Nancy is also a certified Mindful Health and Wellness Coach and runs programs for women through her Resilient Women business. Her passion for developing Resilient Women comes from her own, personal experience with anxiety, perfectionism, loss, divorce, and single parenting. Using her faith in God and a body, mind, spirit approach in dealing with these challenges, has allowed her to build the resilience needed to thrive as well as empower other women going through similar challenges in their lives. Firstly, thanks for your service as a nurse, Nancy. It's such an amazing, rewarding, yet very demanding career. Um we know something about your professional life now, but how about if you share a little bit about who you are as a person? Sure, Kiran. Well, I was born and raised in New York City. You probably tell by my accent as we go along the podcast. I got married for the first time when I was 23 years old and was divorced about five years later. I relocated to California in 2004, and I got married in 2009 for the second time, and gave birth to my son at 45 years of age. Um, I was divorced for the second time in 2000 and 22 and within four months of my divorce being finalized, I went through a devastating breakup. So I currently live in California with my active 13 year old son who I co-parent with his Dad. And I'm passionate about being a supportive Mom, developing a sense of spirituality, living a healthy lifestyle, creating healthy relationships with the people I care about. And also empowering other women to face life's challenges with confidence, strength, and resilience. Those are really great passions to have! You've obviously faced many challenges and changes in your own life, including a devastating breakup. But I wonder, what's your relationship with change like? Do you like change? Do you actually actively seek it out? And you think you bounce back easily from it? Yeah, I see change as kind of bittersweet. So on the one hand, there's often grief associated with change. That's really, really tough and challenging, but there's also excitement and hope when there's change. And I like to think of myself as resilient in that I do think I bounce back relatively easily from adversity. Oh I'm so glad to hear that, that you're able to easily bounce back from change. One change that was devastating for you was your breakup, of course. Please tell us about that, but only as much as you feel comfortable sharing. Sure. Well, a few years ago, just as my divorce was finalizing, I met this wonderful man while I was out on the town with a bunch of friends. And we dated for a total of four months. And I was head over heels in love with this man. Like never before, like I had never experienced it before. He told me he loved me first, and I told him I loved him. And this was the first time in my life that I felt a really strong connection to a man. Even our physical connection felt different than it had ever before. I felt as if I had finally found my soul mate. And I really thought we would eventually get married. But after four months of dating, to my surprise, he broke up with me. The night of the breakup, I remember like it was yesterday, we hugged at his front door, a really, really tight hug. And it felt like this was the longest minute I had ever experienced in my life. And I just kept thinking, I need this pain to be over. It felt so excruciating. I felt like I needed to get out of there or I was gonna start bawling. I was in total shock at that moment. And I just didn't think the night would end up like this. I thought whatever was going on, we would talk it out. It was like a deep, crushing pain that I had never experienced before. The pain was far worse than both divorces that I had put together. I felt totally uprooted emotionally. Because there I was thinking I had found my soul mate who I had an amazing connection with and saw a future with. And unexpectedly, life as I knew it was gone. I knew that I needed God to get through this terrible emotional pain that I was going through. And when I got home that night after the breakup, I had so much anxiety and uncontrollable crying. I just, I didn't know what to do in the moment. I didn't know, should I call somebody? Should I just be by myself? So not knowing what to do, I just laid on the floor on my back, palms facing up, and I just prayed to God for help. That really does sound excruciating. I'm so sorry you went through that. So then how did you cope and move forward from there? What kind of things did you find helped you? Well, when I was going through the worst part of the breakup, I engaged in a daily, holistic, self-care practice. So I had, I had coping mechanisms up to this point that I had used in the past. It's like I activated that, you know, those, those things that helped me in the past, I just activated them full force at this point, because I was in so much pain, I really needed to have that. regular self -care practice. So what I did was I engaged in exercise for my body. I used meditation and journaling for my mind, to clear my mind. And I used prayer for my spirit. That's kind of how I engaged in a holistic practice. And I prayed daily for the strength to get me through this deep, emotional pain that I was experiencing. I meditated each night for 20 minutes, and then I journaled every morning for 20 minutes as well. And I also got really good at setting personal boundaries during that time. Um, so I had remained friends with my ex-boyfriend for about a year until I started realizing, myself, and with the help of friends that seeing him was really taking an emotional toll on me. So I eventually set a boundary to limit my exposure to him so that I could fully heal. Yes, it seems like you did a lot of self-reflection as well as part of that. These are all great coping mechanisms. And was there anything you used from your own wellness coaching toolkit? Yes, absolutely. The first one was self-compassion. What prompted me to discover self-compassion was what I like to call The Perfect Storm. So the definition of a perfect storm is a particularly violent storm arising from a rare combination of adverse meteorological factors. But my perfect storm was that I was going through a divorce, a breakup, somebody that I deeply loved. I also had a health condition at the time that I was dealing with a chronic health condition. I was a single parent. I was having financial issues, changes in my job. And I remember a specific time sitting in my living room, talking to a co-worker on the phone about a new program or a new course that we were creating at work. And I just remember in that moment feeling so deeply overwhelmed, like I could, my mind could barely function. I felt tired and I just really couldn't think straight. So I said to her, said, look, I think we're going to have to postpone this meeting. I'm just feeling completely overwhelmed. And she said, "Oh, absolutely. Just go take care of yourself. We'll do this another time." So I said,"Okay." So I got off the phone with her and I the first thing that came to my mind was, use your meditation. Meditation's helped you in the past. Just meditate. Just relax, right? So I started meditating and I just received some wisdom.

And the wisdom was: 11:23

you need to have self-compassion. You are going through so much right now and you need to be compassionate with yourself. So I began to study self-compassion. And what I found was I found some scientific data and research on self-compassion that I didn't think I would find. Scientific data shows that self-criticism makes us weaker in the face of failure, more emotional, and less likely to assimilate lessons from our failures. But studies were showing that there's a far better alternative to self-criticism and that's self-compassion. And that comes from Dr. Emma Seppala and her research at Stanford University. So what is that? what is, I thought to myself, what does self-compassion look like? And as I started looking at what that meant, I realized it could be something just really simple as asking yourself if your friend, your best friend was in a situation like this, how would you respond to that friend? Right? And when you do that, you're responding at a higher level of self-compassion or compassion than you normally would. And so that was a great strategy that I used. How can I be my own best friend in this situation? And another thing, another really easy thing or an easy way to elicit self-compassion is just by when you're feeling very stressed, it's placing your hand over your heart and just saying, I choose self-compassion. Another thing that I learned that I use in my wellness coaching toolbox is uh honoring the grief process that's associated with loss. It's part of having compassion, is just honoring your own self and what you're going through in a sense of grieving. So at the time I re-learned Elizabeth Kubler-Ross's Stages of Grief. The first one is denial, which we often experience as shock and disbelief. And I definitely went through that. There's anger, bargaining, depression, and lastly, acceptance. And we need to be able to name each stage that we're going through, even if we're not naming it exactly as those stages of grief, but what are we experiencing in our inner selves? And we need to be able to honor those feelings within each stage as it comes up. And this helped me take care of myself greatly. And I believe that it was one of the greatest things in terms of my own healing process that I was able to heal completely because I did honor all those stages of grief and what I was going through. I love that oh self-compassion and honoring your grief process. These are all excellent ways to take care of yourself. And Nancy, I hope you also received support from others during this time as well. Yes, I did. You know, as part of my self -care routine, I made sure that I surrounded myself with supportive and encouraging family, friends, and community. And I think I had a good, really great balance of alone time to process the heavy emotions I was going through. But I also spent time again, like I said, with supportive friends and community. And I also attended a divorce support group called DivorceCare, and that was very helpful because I found that just being around people who are also going through something similar that I was going through kind of normalized it and helped me to feel validated in terms of what I was going through. That's great. What would you say was your greatest challenge during the breakup and how did you overcome it? I would have to say the greatest challenge that I went through was letting go of the hope that my ex-boyfriend was coming back to me. And it was really tough. What helped me to overcome this challenge was that I saw this as part of the grief process, this letting go. And I realized that I had gotten to the stage of acceptance where I knew that I needed to accept that he wasn't coming back. And I knew I needed to do this for my healing process to be complete. How long into ..How after the breakup would you say you got to that point of acceptance and healing? I would say it was about a year. It took about a year to get to that level of acceptance and to complete the healing process. That's really interesting because often we're told after divorce or anything it takes a year to get over any unwanted change. Yes, I find that's valuable in terms of any loss, whether it be loss through losing someone through death or a breakup or a divorce, definitely, at least a year, and everybody's different. Exactly. Yeah, we do have to mention that everybody's different. It's good to hear you were able to come to an acceptance and heal. Often it's only with hindsight that we gain certain insights. Were there any insights you gained through hindsight about what you went through? Absolutely, Kiran! Yes, firstly, um wait a year, I call it wait a while. That's my general term here, wait a while. So wait at least a year after a divorce finalizes before dating. And this is something I learned in my DivorceCare support group. I wish I had listened to the advice that was given to me. I did not. However, just on a side note, we do learn from our failures as well. Waiting before dating, um, it allows you to process the heavy emotions that accompany a divorce. That's a, that's really key. Secondly, once you are dating, I like to say, wait a while. Wait a while to engage in any physical intimacy. So according to research, women generally produce more oxytocin during physical intimacy than men. Which is why they often experience a stronger emotional bond due to release of this oxytocin, otherwise known as "The Love Hormone." Just a little bit of science in there. I did learn a valuable lesson though from the mistake that I made. And I realized that it's okay to wait a while before being physically intimate, even if you feel like you love someone. And so now what I do is I set these personal boundaries in relationships. And I feel like I have a higher level of respect for my body, my mind, and my spirit in doing this. Those are great insights you've gained from your breakup. And I just learned something too. I didn't know about oxytocin. Women producing more. I had no idea. So once we reach some kind of acceptance of what happened to us, we might find ourselves looking for the purpose or meaning in it all. Because world renowned grief expert, David Kessler, calls this the Sixth Stage of Grief. Would you say that happened to you? Yes, absolutely, Kiran! There are three specific areas where I found purpose from the breakup. The first aspect of finding purpose in the breakup was that it drew me even closer to God. From this experience, I developed a much higher level of faith and trust in God that I feel can never be taken away from me. I also learned that I could pray for peace and joy in the midst of my circumstances and that I would have moments of peace and joy naturally and they would increase, those moments would increase as I began to heal. And this doesn't mean that we don't feel emotional pain. We still have to process that pain, but we can still have comfort and relief in the midst of the circumstances and the pain. The second aspect of finding purpose was the realization that some people come into our lives for a season and a reason. My ex-boyfriend was that person. He has a gentle, supportive, and empathetic nature. And this helped me to heal while I was going through the grief from my divorce, as well as the challenge of helping my son with his grief. And lastly, the third aspect of finding purpose was that I developed more resilience as a result of this challenge. And it led me to create my Resilient Women business. So this fall, I'll be offering an online program called The Resilience and Empowerment After Loss program. And it's designed to build resilience and empowerment in women experiencing a divorce or a breakup. So I'm really excited about that. And Nancy, do you offer this, is this online or is it in person? Yes, uh it's online. I may have some groups in person at some point, but we'll start out online. It's great that you've created a program for those going through breakup after loss. I often find that after overcoming adversity, people want to help others going through the same thing. Now, if our listeners want to connect with you or learn more about your work, where would they find you? That would be on my website, and it's called resilientwomen.life. Nancy, it's been a pleasure having you on the show today. You truly are a strong, resilient woman and it's great that you're now helping other women become resilient too. Thank you so much, Kiran, for the encouragement and thank you for having me on the podcast. Oh you're welcome! And thank you listeners for joining us! Now, if you enjoyed listening to today's episode and found it helpful, please subscribe, share, and join our Uprooted by Unwanted Change Facebook group. Just so you know, new episodes will be brought to you every Tuesday, wherever you get your podcast, including a YouTube version with captions. In the midst of chaos and uncertainty, may you find peace and rootedness.