Divorce with Carolyn

Your divorce doesn't have to become trauma — Rage, healing, and what sets you free

• Season 1 • Episode 12

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Your divorce doesn't have to become trauma. That's not a platitude – it's something somatic therapist Natalia Rachel can explain precisely, and it changes everything about how you approach recovery.

Natalia draws a clear line between distress – what's happening to you right now – and trauma, which is what happens when a past experience of threat keeps living in you long after it's over. The difference comes down to one thing: whether you had safe, supportive people around you while you were going through it.

In this episode, we cover:

  • Why rage is not your enemy – and how expressing it safely transforms it into power
  • What somatic therapy actually is, and how to start gently without it feeling overwhelming
  • Why your nervous system is wiser than you think about the timing of your own healing
  • How to date again after divorce without falling into the traps that keep women stuck

Natalia speaks from both clinical expertise and lived experience – she went through her own divorce nearly nine years ago while living as an expat in Singapore with a company to run and two young children. She knows this territory from the inside.

LINKS MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE

About Natalia Rachel

Resources mentioned

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SPEAKER_01

Here's a question I get asked a lot in Women's Divorce Academy. Will I ever stop feeling like this? Today's guest has a really useful answer to that. Natalia Rachel is a somatic therapist and author who has dedicated her career to helping people heal, not just understand their patterns, but actually shift them in the body where it counts. She's also divorced, so she knows this territory very well. One of the first things Natalia said to me completely reframed how I think about this. Distress and trauma are not the same thing. And whether your divorce becomes trauma has less to do with how bad it was and everything to do with one specific factor. We get into that and a whole lot more in this episode. Let's get started. Natalia, thanks for joining us today. I know that apart from being a trauma counsellor and an expert on especially on women's trauma, you've been through your own divorce. Can you tell us a little bit about that to start with?

SPEAKER_00

Sure. I've been divorced nearly nine years after being with my ex 17 and married for 12 of those. I met my ex when I was very young. And through the marriage, we had two beautiful children as well, and we sort of divorced when they were quite young. I think on the whole, it was an incredibly loving and conscious process of uncoupling and redesigning our relationship to become conscious co-parents. But of course, it came with a lot of pain, a lot of fear, a lot of unknown, and a lot of holding space for the new dynamic to emerge. So we were actually living overseas as expats in Singapore when it happened. And in some way, it was a bit of a shock to everybody and to ourselves because everybody kind of knew us as this beautiful, loving couple that were totally perfect, which of course was, you know, in some ways true, but in other ways totally not true. Because I think in order for the marriage to work, it's almost like we've had to become certain versions of ourselves and deny certain aspects of ourselves in order to create that experience. I don't know if that makes sense. But now, nearly nine years on, we have this beautiful, beautiful co-parenting dynamic. So we're still partners and he's still one of the biggest supports in my life. Um, but it but it's as a father and as someone that I'm raising children with and not romantically involved with.

SPEAKER_01

That's the dream, really, isn't it? I know that um poor old Gwyneth Poultrow copped a lot at the time when she talked about conscious uncoupling, but I think we're people are really coming around to it now and going, oh no, hang on, she had a point.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, I think um there are always those that are ahead of the curve. I think I've been one of those two, maybe not as famous as Gwyneth Baltrow. Um but people tend to fear the unknown and fear, fear the cycle breaker that says, actually, this isn't working, or what I've been taught is right or wrong doesn't feel that way. So I'm gonna go with what feels right for me. And I think more and more of us, collectively, both women and men, are leaning into choosing well-being, choosing peace, choosing joy in front of what we've been taught is the right way to be married or go through a divorce.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, and isn't it incredible that really the status quo is everyone has to be mad at each other? And it's so revolutionary to think that you could have a peaceful, loving divorce that that respect I mean, these this is somebody that you, you know, have loved and have shared so much of yourself with, and then suddenly it has to become so adversarial, and sometimes it does still. I know mine is still very adversarial nine years on. Um that's of yeah, I think that's the gold standard. That's what we'd all like to aspire to. And but given that, I think, and given your experience with trauma, um, which I'd love you to tell us about in a moment, but every every divorce comes with some trauma, right? Or some distress.

SPEAKER_00

I think it's really important for us to delineate what is stress and what is trauma, because they're two very different things. So I think many divorces can be distressing or we can experience them as traumatic, but whether they become trauma is a different story. And I think even getting clear on that can be super helpful for us in our own journeys. So, what trauma is is actually when a past experience of threat or harm that's over is still living and breathing in us now. So we're altered by it, we're affected, we're adapted because of it. But if we go through that same traumatic or distressing experience and we take time to recover and heal and thrive, we're no longer experiencing trauma. So we're not holding trauma. We've just gone through something really difficult. And at the other end, uh, there's peace again and there's resilience again. So not all divorces end in trauma, even if they're traumatic. And the biggest differentiator as to whether something will become trauma or not is the presence or absence of safe and supportive relationships during that difficult or distressing experience. So if we are surrounded by friends or family or even, you know, some other sort of support system where we're able to share what we're going through and feel validated and supported through that time, we're less likely to experience trauma post-divorce. But if we are without support, if we don't have anyone to help us, or if we're holding in our experiences and we're not able to authentically share them, we'll be more likely uh to develop post-divorce trauma.

SPEAKER_01

Oh, that's really interesting. Because it gives it puts the power back in our hands, right?

SPEAKER_00

100%. I mean, to a degree, but I guess it allows us to A, make sense of what we're going through and B, reach for the resource that we know is going to help us through this, uh, which uh in essence is relationship. So the presence or absence of these relationships is usually the highest determining factor as to whether we'll move through that experience and and grow, or move through that experience and be traumatized.

SPEAKER_01

And does you know, I speak to a lot of women going through divorce, and some are very set on sitting in that damage and sitting in, you know, what my ex did and all that sort of stuff, which is completely understandable, especially if you have a terrible ex. Um, and then you have other ones who um, you know, frame it really differently as how do I recover? How can I move forward? You know, what do I do now? And you know, both of them are understandable. And I think when you are in that situation of I've just been through something really terrible, especially if there are, you know, extra factors like abuse, coercive control, um, that kind of thing. What can women do to move from that space to besides you know that obviously that the relationships are important, but is there something in the way they frame it as well?

SPEAKER_00

I think this is less about framing and more the ownership and expression of our rage, which we have been taught is wrong and not very palatable, like we shouldn't have this. And nor have we been taught, or nor have we been offered safe ways or safe places to put that rage. And quite often, as women, particularly in this day and age, the rage isn't just for the ex, it's for the patriarchy, it's for our fathers, it's so much bigger, and often coming out of a marriage where you have felt disempowered or harmed or denied or unseen or neglected, it when you exit it, it's not just that relationship that requires processing, it is divine rage of the feminine. And so I think it's more about understanding this, naming this, owning this, and finding a way to channel it. Because when we channel that experience of rage, what actually it transforms into is to is the purest power. So once we clear out all of that rage, we we find our power again. And I think there are so many people that say, oh, it's a it's a mindset shift, you need to reframe. And that's a very cognitive and like non-emotional way to look at it, a non-existential way to look at it. And I really just think anytime we tell someone you should just think about it differently, if that person is holding this untapped rage or grief or all of these experiences that are so much bigger than this one thing, it kind of feels impossible. And it can also make us feel shamed, like there's something wrong with us. Why can't we just flick a button or shift our mindset and get over it? But we can't. It needs to be felt, it needs to be transmuted, it needs to be put into greater context. That's what I think.

SPEAKER_01

That's really interesting. I know when I was going through my divorce, I my my kids, my family will tell you I don't do rage, I don't do anger. I I was always, you know, really tamping it down and um terrified to feel that out of control kind of feeling. And having ways to safely channel that. I think what I hated about it was that I I was having all these negative feelings, but I I I they weren't making a difference to anyone. I wasn't affecting any change. What's an effective way to channel that rage? How can women do that?

SPEAKER_00

There are so many different ways. Um kickboxing is amazing. So to be able to like punch and kick in a really safe, controlled environment can be a very great physical way to release. Some people will do like an intentional run and run. So rage is a very um physical energy or physical emotion. It needs that expression. Some people want to punch a pillow, some people want to go and stand on top of a mountain and just scream and scream until they burst into tears. Uh, quite often, in order to access our rage, we might need to move through feelings of powerlessness or disempowerment, or we might need to access grief first. Uh, but if the rage is really palatable and present, it might be that when we finally express that rage, we drop into grief. So there's this thing that I call the trauma triangle, which is this sort of interplay of emotions that become repressed inside us, and they are grief, anger, and powerlessness. And quite often, as we're healing, we end up traversing all the corners of this triangle to find integration, and and what we get at the other end is a greater sense of peace and power and I guess some centeredness.

SPEAKER_01

Mmm, I love that. So what would you say to a woman who, you know, has always been a people pleaser, who keeps things nice, who, you know, maybe doesn't raise her voice, you know, is and rage is a scary thing to try. How can you just dip your toe in that a little bit and start to feel more comfortable with that?

SPEAKER_00

I think if we are someone who is completely disconnected from our anger and is very really we become disconnected from our anger either because we've been taught it's wrong and shameful or because we've taught it's aggressive and causes harm. So we're afraid of it. And the gentlest way that we can start practicing is with our no, our very gentle no. And when we start saying no to small things, um we will start to feel these sort of like um stirrings in our body, and it might be of that fear and it might be of that shame. And actually, it's gonna be the pushback or the feedback from others that allows us to then feel our anger. So if we set a boundary and someone doesn't respect it, then we'll start to feel the anger. Uh, does that make sense? Yeah, absolutely. So we have to start in a subtle place and understand that our experience of anger uh is relational. Another really interesting thing to consider is I believe that all emotions exist on a spectrum. So if we're talking about the spectrum of anger, that's sort of in the middle, on the intense end is rage, which is what a lot of us are holding and don't really have a name for. But on the milder end of the spectrum is irritation or frustration. And so many people that are a bit disconnected from their healthy anger and fall into that people please category might be able to clock first, oh, that irritated me or that frustrated me. And again, to be able to clock that and hold that and say, oh, actually, this is me feeling angry. And can I allow that emotion to expand? Can I welcome that a little more so that we're not compressing it or minimizing it or making it palatable to ourselves or to the world? So those little words are really great, tells irritation and frustration.

SPEAKER_01

I have a couple of questions about that. Well, one is around naming feelings because I know that sometimes I have a friend who talks about that she even naming feelings for her was really challenging. And so she downloaded a feelings wheel off the internet and you know, um, with the the uh ostensibly uh to teach her children about the names of feelings, but actually it was for her as well. And she would keep it on the fridge, and you know, when she was having, I mean, she was she grew up in a in a house where there were only two acceptable feelings, one was happy and one was angry, because they were both sort of powerful feelings, you couldn't be weak in any way, you know. And um and so it took her a really long time to be able to name those feelings. Um is that something that you see a lot in women?

SPEAKER_00

I see that in women and men. Um, many of us were not taught how to connect to our feelings, and we're also shamed if we started to have feelings that weren't easy to deal with or simple or had a need attached to them. So there are many of us that are really disconnected from our feelings, and it might be because we've been trained away from them, but it also might be because we're not somatized, we're not sitting inside our bodies, and our feelings are sensory first. So we actually learn them through sensations in the body. Um, and so if we're not connected and we're not sort of sitting inside our own body, we won't be able to connect to that sensory experience and name it. Um, because the naming of feelings is a response to the experience of feelings, and that's why somatic work can be very, very, very powerful in reconnecting us to our entire spectrum of feelings and also to our impulses and instincts towards or away from healthy or unhealthy relationships. So a lot of us that um get divorced, we're finally connecting to this impulse uh away from a relationship, which for many of us we've not been able to connect to for a very, very long time.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah. And when it comes to those feelings too, we are, you know, especially these days as a society, taught to anaesthetise ourselves against those feelings, you know, we scroll, we doom scroll, we have a pour ourselves a rose, we, you know, do whatever we do to distract our brains. And it sounds hard, right? Like it sounds like hard work, but what's the payoff for sitting with those feelings, feeling it in your body, doing all of those things? What is the benefit to doing that?

SPEAKER_00

Once you are able to process your feelings, you're able to a not be as reactive or as dissociative. So we don't go and explode a situation further or bury our head in the sand and let it get worse. We're able to move into coherent action. So our feelings are giving us a lot of information about what's going on in our dynamic world and what we really need to do in order to reorder it, to create greater peace, greater power, greater joy, greater receptivity. Uh so there's a massive, massive payoff to being with our feelings. I think the main reason a lot of people, particularly those going through divorce or post-divorce, don't do it is because sometimes when we become really coherent, we realize that there's an action that's going to be taken that will create a series of side effects that will be maybe very, very difficult to navigate. And we might not have the capacity uh or the resources to actively and consciously be with all that's going to unfold uh if if we do become that self-connected and take those actions that are for our well-being.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, especially I think, you know, when you're already going through divorce and you and you know, things are hard as it is, and it feels it could feel a little bit, I guess, like, oh my gosh, am I gonna add this now when I've already got this huge, you know, full plate of solo parenting and you know, all the admin that goes with divorce and the heartbreak and all of that sort of thing. Um can you put it off?

SPEAKER_00

Absolutely. I mean, we're inherently very wise. So if it's if we don't have the capacity, uh, whether that's the resource, the time, um, to be with the feelings and all that happens when we sit with it, we will put it off until such a time as there's space to surrender. Uh so many people, when they're in the intensity of a of post-divorce, particularly if it's a very difficult or challenging or, you know, unpleasant one, there's not the ability to break down, to surrender, to be a crying mess or to experience that rage because we've got to look after the kids or pay the rent or deal with the lawyers. And so it will usually be not until there's this pocket of space where there's a little bit of ground beneath our feet or there's a little bit of support that's come into our world that we can uh finally process. So I think honoring what our capacity levels are is probably more important than trying to process at any specific time. Um we can hold it. Uh, many of us hold it until we know it's safe. Uh and it's interesting. Quite often I see with women that are going through divorce, it's not until many years later, or perhaps when they then re-enter a relationship that is actually safe that a lot of the past comes up.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, I think that was my experience. I when I was going through divorce, I uh was m running marathons because that was a way to get all of that energy out of my body. And um it really helped me to cope at the time, but I also, you know, I did not know how I was going to pay rent every week. It was, I was living hand to mouth and it was very, very tough. And that white knuckle experience, you know, maybe I maybe I had capacity to deal with it then and maybe I didn't, but it certainly didn't go away until, you know, a few years later when I really stopped to deal with all of it and let it and sit with those feelings. I mean, they just they keep knocking on your door until you deal with them, don't they?

SPEAKER_00

Absolutely. I mean, I'm the same. I think when it was for me, I was living in a foreign country, I I had visa issues, I needed to keep up my fancy expat life in Singapore, I had a company to run. So I worked really hard, trained really hard, and got into a really awful relationship because that's another way we hide from it by burying ourselves in the next relationship. Um, so we all do it. Doesn't matter if we're a practitioner or an expert, you know what I mean? We all will cope in our own ways. And I think there's a more important sort of overarching idea here is that we need to be compassionate of ourselves and others. Um, because it's easy to be quite cruel to ourselves for the way we cope with a divorce. And it's also really easy to judge other people or look at them, they're off in a new relationship, or they're just burying themselves in work or exercise. And that judgment that we hold uh over ourselves and over women, that is incredibly toxic. So that's probably one of the first things we need to work on shifting is just being far more compassionate about the journey that is often many years of healing after a divorce.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, for sure. I remember being at the school gate one day. I was um I had a job, uh I was a journalist at the time, and I was writing the morning news. So I would get up at four o'clock in the morning, write the morning news until eight o'clock, take my kids to school, then go for a run, and then work the rest of the day while they were at school. And I was at school in my gym clothes, holding a coffee, and I heard a mum walk past me, you know, who was going to work, and and I heard her say, Oh, it must be nice to be able to just, you know, work out after drop off. And you know, it is, it's that, you know, we're all doing the best we can, and I think we need we definitely need to be kinder. I I do find the people that are not kind to others are the ones that also are not being kind to themselves. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_00

And what that woman said to you, that's her repressive. Rage being projected onto you. So it links that to kind of where we started. Um until we address that, uh, not much is going to change.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah. But of course, all we can control is ourselves. And I know that the, you know, you're you're very into the somatic work. Can you talk us through a little bit about what that is and how it helps?

SPEAKER_00

So somatic, or the word soma means the body, and somatic means of the body. And somatic work is largely the process of returning to our body. Uh, and in the process of returning to our body and repairing the connection between the body and mind, uh, what will often arise is a lot of feelings of distress, of feeling unsafe, um, maybe repressed emotions and stories and origin wounds, child childhood experiences. And as we do the work, it usually happens very subtly and in layers, but we come home to our bodies and we learn to listen and decode everything that our body has been holding and become more in touch with what our nervous system is saying to us, with our perceptions and responses or reactions to the world. So as we do uh do this somatic work, uh, we reorient to a much deeper and compassionate understanding of ourselves and not only ourselves, but the way we um connect or belong in dynamic and in the world at large. So it is a profoundly beautiful process.

SPEAKER_01

Just taking a quick moment here because I want to tell you about something. I started Women's Divorce Academy because when I was going through my own divorce, I couldn't find one place that had everything I needed. The practical information, the emotional support, and a community of women who actually got it. That's what Women's Divorce Academy is. A membership community with resources, scripts, templates, and expert guidance designed to reduce your mental load, not add to it. Because you've got enough on your plate, right? If you want to find out more, come and have a look. Women's Divorce Academy.com. Okay, let's get back to it. And so if someone wanted to try that, well, like how do what does that look like in a practical sense? If someone said, yes, I want to do that kind of work, how do you begin?

SPEAKER_00

There are so many different ways to get started. Uh, there's a lot of free somatic meditations online that you can try, which are mostly about tracking sensation in the body. And this is a really nice, gentle, safe way to start. I have a series on my Spotify called The Felt Sense, which you can access for free. But there are many, many other sort of therapists or practitioners that have series as well. So that's a really nice way to taste it. Um, also in my first book, Why am I like this? Every chapter has a somatic exercise at the end. And so these are about allowing the body to come into poses and bring gentle awareness and attention to what's happening in the body. Um, so this is another way. And then there is somatic therapy. So that's working with a practitioner such as myself or others that will help you tune into the body and explore what's coming up, not only internally, but dynamically. And some somatic practitioners just use their voice to support that, and others will also use their hands, uh, which is something that I believe is very, very powerful as well. So there are all these different ways to get started, depending on your readiness, your capacity, and your resource.

SPEAKER_01

Um, I'll pop a link to the to your Spotify in the show notes so people can try it out. But um I think it's uh there's something also less confronting, I think, you know, with with feeling things in the body. If you are going through something really complex, feeling something in the body doesn't sound as challenging as let's like talk about your childhood and delve into your deepest, darkest, you know, fears. So there's something quite lovely about that too.

SPEAKER_00

Well, that's that's nice to hear. I think somatic work is a doorway. It's a doorway to allowing those more difficult conversations or experiences to emerge rather than plunging ourselves in. Uh, so essentially the body is a bridge. The body is a bridge to everything that we've been feeling that has been left unprocessed. And when it's done in safe, trauma-informed, responsive ways, it can make healing feel way more accessible or way more real, embodied, felt.

SPEAKER_01

Which is great because when you feel progress, you want to keep going, right?

SPEAKER_00

Absolutely. And sometimes when you've been doing like a lot of processing work, it can feel like, yeah, I get it. I've I I know my childhood, I know my tendencies, but nothing's changing. I kind of understand the story, but nothing's really shifted. And that experience, which is really common, is quite a clear sign that somatic work may unlock something new because it's all about the felt experience.

SPEAKER_01

Okay. Um, now I know that you know a lot of women going through divorce uh they they're the peacemakers, they don't like to rock the boat, um, they like to keep things nice, and and and also there's a lot of pressure, whether it we put it on ourselves or we feel it externally, to just move on, to just, you know, get on with it. As we talked about, you've got a lot going on. Um what do you think about that framing? Are we putting too much pressure on ourselves? Can you function in your daily life while also dealing with that rage and dealing with those feelings and and all of that sort of thing? Is there is there a way to find that balance?

SPEAKER_00

Well, I think a lot of us have to compartmentalize. You know, we have to zip ourselves up and suck it down in order to go to work or feed the kids or whatever. Uh, but we can, if we choose, make space for it, whether that's uh an hour to ourselves in the morning or after the kids go to bed or a 20-minute sort of mindful self-connection at lunch, we can allow our healing to be a slow bur. And there's something pretty powerful about doing that because we learn that we can hold more than we believe we can, that we can function this world, that we can move on, and that also we can be healing slowly and sustainably. And I really love the sentiment of not rushing our healing. We actually can't rush our healing. It will happen in layers and spirals. And what would it be like to allow it to be that slow process that continues to emerge at the right time? It can sometimes be the most interesting and unexpected things that will sort of elicit a new wave of our own healing. Um, and it might be say we start dating again and we meet someone that triggers something in us, or it might be that we find ourselves experiencing the deep care of a female friend and it brings up all the care we didn't have. There are these little moments, and if we're looking for them and if we're welcoming them, and again, with these, we do need to be in the body because it's a felt experience. But if we can welcome these waves of healing slowly, you know, we could be healing for a really long time and it might not need to be so destabilizing. So the slower we go and the more sustainable we are with our healing, uh, the less it has to threaten our survival or our reorganization of our world.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, and I think that's a really lovely way of looking at it too, because I know a lot of people I think when we feel triggered or when some when it you know something is brought up for us, it feels like a negative. It feels like, oh no, I'm having these feelings about something. But actually it's part of the healing process.

SPEAKER_00

It's part of the healing. The only thing that we kind of want to be mindful of is when we're triggered, is not to project that onto the thing or the person who's triggered us, our kids, our new partner, our friend, our boss, whatever. But there will be triggers. So triggers are basically saying, hey, something that's happening right now reminds me of a time when dot, dot, dot, feeling that past distressing or threatening experience. And if we can welcome them and hold space for them for ourselves and disconnect them from whatever or whoever the stimulus is in the present, that's when healing's actually happening. That's when we're unlinking the past from the present. That's when we're healing our trauma and moving on.

SPEAKER_01

Which is beautiful. I think, you know, sometimes I spoke to someone just recently who I think was triggered in a new relationship. And so, and she was dealing in those absolutes that we tend to do when we're feeling not great, you know. Well, clearly I can never be in a in a in a relationship because I'm just set off every time, you know. And um what would you say to someone like that?

SPEAKER_00

Well, I guess there's that shame cycle again, and that's the first piece we want to catch when we're speaking to ourselves, like, excuse my language, the shit on the floor. We we need to learn to catch that and to stop that and move to compassion and validation. Of course I'm triggered. Of course I've got more healing to do. And I'm gonna keep doing it slowly and surely. Something that I do say to many women who are dating post-divorce and going through these triggers is please learn to have a slow burn relationship because we do need to have space for all of the triggers that come up, all of those past relational tendencies or patterns that have potentially fed the disconnect or drama in our marriage or the difficult dynamics in the divorce. So a lot of healing will happen as we date again if we allow the space for it. So not going too quickly, having a good few days between dates initially and being able to sit with what comes up, process it, and then move differently, relate differently, date differently with intention uh to date beyond trauma.

SPEAKER_01

And how if somebody is, you know, starting to date again and those feelings are coming up, what do you recommend as far as how much should they share? How much and how much should they sit with themselves?

SPEAKER_00

That is such a great question. For myself, I'm mindful of oversharing in early stages of dating because I think it sets up a dynamic of the wounded and the unwounded. So it creates this polarity and it can create a power differential uh in the dynamic. And then what that other person does with that power, we don't know. Um, and it can also create the early stages of trauma bonding, expecting that our new partner is going to be this perfect, perfect person that comes in and accepts us wholly for who we are and heals it or becomes responsible for our safety and our joy. And so I think it can set up really funky dynamics. So I think there's a lot of um, a lot of juice in being able to say, hey, I'm still healing, some things are coming up for me, but I'm not gonna bring them in right now. I'm gonna let you know when I need some space to move through that. So that's sort of the way I would approach it. But there are other schools of thought that say, please let this person heal your heart. And so I guess each to their own, but I'm quite mindful of setting up power dynamics and um walking slowly into relationship, uh, learning to co-regulate and self-regulate, learning to be whole outside of the relationship and slowly, slowly yield into a new relationship if it's the right thing. So both in our own healing and in dating again, I just think it's all about the slow burn.

SPEAKER_01

I remember sitting in a um a therapy session with my teenage son years ago, where he was having trouble with friendships at school, I think it was. And the therapist said something that has always stayed with me, which was, you know, when you make friends, you don't tell them your life story the first on the first day. You know, you give them a little bit of yourself and you see what they do with it. And if they give you a little bit of themselves and you build that trust, then you go to the next level and you, you know, you kind of work your way up to things and you see how they deal with those little bits. And I think that's really good advice all round. I carry that with me.

SPEAKER_00

That's great advice. I guess it's let people show you who they are. And I think one of the reasons we tend not to do this in dating, particularly post-divorce dating, is because we may be unconsciously or consciously using this new potential partner as a way to soothe and a way to avoid. Um, and so we're trying to plug the holes of our own heart with somebody else. And when we go slow, if this is the case for us, when we start going slow and trying to relate in this really healthy way of building intimacy, building vulnerability, often a lot of our past trauma will come up, not necessarily only from the divorce or the marriage, but potentially from our childhood as well. So there's a lot that will come up to process when we learn to go slowly and when we learn not to use each other as human pacifiers.

SPEAKER_01

That's good advice. And I think I I like what you're saying about the slowness too, because I think it stops us thinking about getting to a destination. And it's just about how you live with it day to day and finding the joy in your day and finding the growth in every day as well.

SPEAKER_00

I think there's something else about becoming stable and somewhat independent, not hyper-independent, but for many, not all of us that go through divorce, we leave and we're totally not able to manage, you know, maybe practically with the children or financially, um, or to get to get the chores done, or whatever it is. And there's something about finding our own equilibrium before jumping in too quickly that allows us to move into relationship from a very stable and contained place rather than from a frenetic or messy or needy place. So we're not using a relationship to help us heal. Uh, we're leaning into it from a healthier place.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, great advice. I imagine that in that situation, if you if you do go into that situation where you're you're partnering up because you can't afford to live or because you can't cope with the day-to-day admin, then the fear can't, then there's fear, right? And there is a power differential already of, you know, how can I lead this person? I don't, I can't get all my everything done every week, or you know, I can't pay the rent. So you're sort of, yeah, it takes away your power and it makes you feel stuck.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah. The moment we need a relationship to survive on a very practical level, uh, there is the potential for power play. Uh and love dies in that moment because that's not love, that's survival. That's you know, strange power dynamics. And it's interesting. Uh, many of us do enter relationship from that, and maybe we have to, depending on what we're going through. But even just kind of knowing that that's there can stop us feeling a bit crazy.

SPEAKER_01

Um and so if you could go back to to Natalia when she was going through divorce in those early days, what would you say to her? What advice would you give her?

SPEAKER_00

So do not get into a relationship with that next asshole. Because that was probably the worst relationship of my life. My marriage was actually, there was so much good in it. It was never awful. Um, but the relationship after was terrible. And I definitely did use that person to soothe, to survive, because I didn't have the capacity um to be alone. So I would say don't do that, girl. Take some time, take some time to heal.

SPEAKER_01

That's very good advice. And what about, you know, for women going through it right now on a day-to-day basis? If they can do nothing else, what are some little things they can do to just get through and start to heal?

SPEAKER_00

I think self-validation and self-compassion is the biggest daily thing we can do. Of course, this is hard. Of course, this is scary. Of course, we feel like a hot mess. Of course, that in itself that's like a balm to the spirit. So we need to do that for ourselves and we need to do that for our female friends that are going through it. Rather than we can be very hard in ourselves or we can try to offer our friends all these tips, that is super unhelpful. Just validation is the first thing. And then the next thing that I would suggest would be to ask ourselves, what can I do to make myself feel a little safer today? And do that. Just a small thing. And the other thing that I would say every day is what can I do to access a sense of agency or power today? And it might be as small as going for that walk after drop-off, you know, or sitting for that hour at lunch and having something delicious. What is this? What are these small ways where I can feel a sense of power, like I'm regaining control? Um, to be my three T's.

SPEAKER_01

I love that. Thank you. Natalia, thank you so much for sharing your tips today. I think there's so much value in what you do, and I'm a big fan of somatic work. I'm sure that will help a lot of people today. Thank you. Thank you for having me. If doing this alone feels heavy, Women's Divorce Academy offers clear guidance, practical tools, and a supportive community for the legal, financial, and emotional realities of divorce. Whether you're considering separation in the middle of it or rebuilding afterwards, there's something here for you. Find us at Women's DivorceAcademy.com.