Moving On - Page 5

I wish I’d known it so much sooner. 

When am I going to feel better?

Usually, this is the question front and centre of everyone’s mind after they have experienced a separation or divorce.

Like every part of life, ups and downs happen. The challenge we face right after a divorce is that when life throws you one of its inevitably shitty times, it’s all magnified by the pain and the fact that your marriage didn’t work out.

You’re left struggling as you’re forced to leave behind every part of what you imagined your life was going to look like when you made your marriage vows. It can skew the way you view life’s unavoidable hardships.

The uncomfortable truth is that you never really get OVER your divorce. Just like you never get OVER the death of someone you loved.

It’s essential to understand this when you’re in the first year or so of trying to recover from the shock of separation.

Divorce is grieving. Once you understand that you are going through grief, you can start to make sense of what is happening to you and develop some realistic timelines to anchor to.

How long are we talking?

I’m in the process of planning a solo trip to Yosemite National Park in the United States this coming September, and I needed to buy some hiking gear.

In December, it will be ten years since my divorce. Ten years since the night that my ex-husband and I looked across at each other in absolute shock as the realisation dawned that our marriage was over.

I’m browsing the outdoor store on my own, and in comes a gorgeous little family of four. Dad, mom, 4-year-old son, and 2-year-old daughter. Both as cute as buttons.

They point to things and ask questions in their little chipmunk voices. Their parents are guiding them and chatting with them. They are choosing the colours they like for the clothes they are being bought. They all look super happy.

I am instantly transported back to the day that my ex-husband and I took the kids to buy puffer jackets for our first family trip to the snow. We let them choose the colours they liked the most, and they were so excited about it.

I recall standing there with my ex and discussing what we were going to buy, both of us keeping an eye on the kids as we shopped. As the memories came, words flashed through my head:

• Teamwork
• Family
• Companionship
• Excitement

I felt the familiar stab of grief hit my abdomen. Just a light touch now, but still there. These days though, instead of the old strategy I used of burying it down and denying the pain, I allowed it in.

This is what I said to myself:

“Yeah, it does hurt to remember that. I miss the kids being so little. Sometimes I miss the feeling of having someone to make decisions with. That’s ok. I accept that we are not together anymore. The kids are teenagers now, and my life is changing and evolving in other fulfilling and exciting ways”.

The little stab passed pretty quickly.

After a hugely traumatic and life-altering loss like divorce, understanding grief helps you to integrate rather than deny your pain and heartache.

Integrating vs Enduring.

Integrating our loss means accepting it as part of our life journey. One of the many important pieces of the puzzle that make up the unique person you are. It’s part of your story, and your story matters.

Integrating our pain means understanding that it’s not a case of waiting for it to be over or thinking that the memories won’t make us feel sad or regretful at times.

There is a new(ish) way of viewing grief and loss in the clinical world these days. Rather than coming to an endpoint and being ‘over’ grief as we used to understand it, the new model is called ‘growing around grief’.

The grief doesn’t get smaller or go away as we may have once believed. What actually happens is that over time, and with intentional healing and recovery work, your life gets bigger and fuller around the grief.

Here is an image that portrays this concept in a visual diagram:

As you move through the different stages of divorce, you will begin to notice that even as you heal and start to feel better overall, there will always be little things that remind you of times past or things you miss.

You don’t need to fear those feelings.

There was a time when those sorts of thoughts would arise, and I would almost panic. Up would come the anxiety that I’d made a huge mistake by divorcing. I’d fixate, ruminate on regrets, and want to change things that could never be changed.

What I didn’t realise back then was that I was stuck in the ‘bargaining’ part of the grief cycle. Still living in a form of denial that I could go back and change the past.

If I had known back then what I know today, I would have spoken to myself the way I did in the outdoor store.

I would’ve been able to say to myself:

‘This is called bargaining. It’s a natural and normal part of divorce and the grief cycle. It will pass’.

That would’ve lessened my anxiety, fear and pain. It wouldn’t have taken it away completely, but minimised the impact so it didn’t send me into a tailspin and cause me to think that my entire future was ruined.

The ability to understand what you’re feeling and why you’re feeling that way is critical to recovery. It helps you to absorb the shock waves when they come and calm yourself down to a more logical and rational outlook instead of being swept away in the painful emotions that wash over you.

Once grief has been integrated, you can start to imagine a life that involves joy, happiness, and optimism again. However, there can still be momentary periods when the acute grief can return.

Without knowing this, you can feel as though you haven’t made any progress or recovery. However, it’s perfectly normal and does not mean that you have gone backwards in your healing. Quite the opposite; it shows that you are healing and recovering just the way you should be.

I’m passionate about helping people understand the grief cycle as they work through their loss after divorce because I know what a huge turning point it was in my recovery.

I know that if I had understood it a lot better, my recovery time would’ve been cut short by several years.

Time is your greatest asset, and grief can keep you stuck in inertia.

Working through it is vital to regaining your energy and motivation to rebuild a new, fulfilling life and ‘grow around’ your grief.

Read more articles by Carol Madden.

About Carol Madden

I’m Carol Madden, a Post-Divorce Life Coach working with women around the world from my online practice.

I work with women who have been divorced for two years or more and thought they’d feel better by now. They’re functioning and getting on with life, but still struggling to let go, heal and move forward in their new post-divorce lives.

I’ve been through divorce myself, and that experience led me to this work. I know what it’s like to look fine on the outside while still carrying grief, guilt, confusion and all the unanswered questions underneath, even several years later.

I also know what it takes to come out the other side and build a life that feels good again.

I help women get to the heart of what’s holding them back, stop looking backwards and find the strength to move forward, even when it feels hard.

Discover me on social media:

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There is no better time to be your own life coach than when going through separation and divorce. This is about taking responsibility and embracing new approaches to your future because being single means your choices are your own.

With the following tips you can start to reclaim your life and make the future the best it can possibly be.

Where do you start?

During the chaos, we have felt when our lives are upended by the end of a marriage, life coaching yourself is a path toward the future. You have experienced every emotion over the recent months. Feeling overwhelmed, angry, helpless, and abandoned are just a few of them. Taking charge of your life through the principles of life coaching will help you find that future you deserve.

The Journal

Life coaching yourself is a practical way to effect change and requires commitment and a personal conviction you can and will get to a better place. Start with very basic priorities. Where do you feel the most change is needed? List a few in a journal dedicated to this journey.

We often get overwhelmed by expecting too much too fast so make your list short. This is a process and takes time. Being realistic about your initial priorities will help you focus on manageable steps to improving your life. As the future unfolds so too will new goals.

Just the very act of making the decision to coach yourself will be empowering. You are going to create strategies and techniques to improve your life including the way you act toward yourself and others. You will focus on reactions to the way you feel and take control of your thoughts.

It all starts with a plan. You plan school runs, meals, and work schedules so there is every reason to believe you can plan your way to a better life. Believe you can and that is the first step to achievement.

Perhaps worth mentioning is that you need achievable goals in this process. This gives you a better chance at success. Be realistic but bold and above all kind to yourself.

Your overall goal is change. You want to change your life and adapt to the new life that has presented itself. Your first step is to give yourself permission to want that change. Too often we pine for what we thought we had in the marriage. Realistically, was it more about tolerating a situation to maintain the status quo? Should we spend time wanting someone who didn’t want us? Change is opportunity.

No doubt your self-confidence has been shattered. The person left behind often has a sense of failure. If you weren’t reminded of it by the leaving partner, then you impose that way of thinking on yourself because blaming yourself is part of the divorce process.

Now it is time to look in the mirror, like what you see, and find the determination and motivation to take the next steps. Know that all this steely determination will lead to a brighter future for you.

Getting started

Time to start digging a bit deeper. You know you need to change but that means you need to begin to think differently. This is where we leave the victim behind and become the victor. You have been given a unique opportunity to reinvent yourself with all the secret hopes and dreams you harboured over the years. Perhaps those dreams were scorned by your former partner. I, for one, wouldn’t be writing this article for The Divorce Magazine if I had listened to being told I had no ability to write.

The Journal

Now is the time to believe in yourself. Start with five goals you would like to achieve. Write them down in a journal dedicated to your new age of discovery. Examples might be wanting to be less reactive when dealing with your former partner or building your self-confidence.

Beside each goal list a few steps to achieve it. This will be a dynamic list so give yourself space in the journal. As you think about your goals over the coming weeks and months, you will think of new ways to achieve them. Think of two or three ways you know you can implement each goal.

If your former partner makes you anxious or angry with each encounter, find ways to alleviate those feelings and calm yourself with some mindfulness tactics as you prepare for each meeting or encounter.

If your self-confidence has been diminished, make a list of things you do well. We all have skills and abilities so remind yourself of what you can do well. Do you have good friends and consider yourself a good friend? We live all our lives in the skin we are in and because our longest relationship is with ourselves, we can forget what we do well. It is what we’ve always done, and its significance can diminish in our own estimation. Time to embrace you that might have got lost through separation and divorce.

Remember to say yes to people. Life can become very insular through the divorce process, and we can talk ourselves out of doing things. If invitations are presented, say yes. In your journal, reflect on all the benefits that yes brought to your life.

What does happiness look like to you?

The preceding months and years have probably given you ample opportunity to know what unhappiness looks like. Now it is time to determine what happiness looks like in your life.

In lives that can be anything from busy to positively whirlwind, we can often lose sight of what moments were genuinely happy.

Reflect on those times in your journal. Recall the details of those happy times. Where were you? What were you doing? Who were you with or were you alone? These happy times were unencumbered by worries and fears. You could well have been alone and felt utter contentment and peace. Wherever it was and whatever it was will give you a framework for happy times.

You want to get to a place where you can make happy times a regular occurrence. After all the stress and strain of the recent past, your brain will thank you for feeling happy again.

Next time: Reassess, reset and reaffirm.