Divorce Healing
Me and my son, 2004
I want to share a quick story from my own divorce journey that I think will help you recalibrate your own more than a checklist of what-to-do next or strategy can provide. Why is that? Because story is so powerful. It is a beautiful thread that connects us to our collective humanity and experiences. It makes us feel less alone.
When we share our stories in all their realness, messiness and glory — we also allow another to find a piece of themselves in our journey and to feel inspired by what is possible for them.
When I was in the throes of my divorce drama, life felt bleak. Despite my usual glass-half-full disposition, I took its hand and followed it down a dark hallway. When I looked around it appeared like EVERYONE else was in a happy, loving marriage and I had surely picked a bad hand at the poker table.
It was the story I told myself and it felt like there was evidence everywhere I looked to back it up.
I was up in the middle of the night tossing and turning, worrying about everything. I had lost a lot — my marriage, my money, my home — and didn’t see an end in sight.
But then one weekend at the nudging of a good friend, I grabbed my adorable little boy, strapped him into his car seat and headed out of the city to a small town in the mountains upstate where my friend lived.
She immediately took me under her loving wing upon arrival. I could breathe. Her very presence calmed my nervous system, and I just went with the flow. I left the divorce and its drama in the truck of the car.
That afternoon, she led us up a path in the woods behind her house surrounded by dense trees and a sea of lush summer ferns, to a glorious stream. I instantly felt my body, mind and spirit exhale. They don’t make meditation recordings with the sound of water in the background for nothing!
And then I witnessed its effects on my little guy. It seriously stopped me in my tracks.
He was giddy, curious, playful. Everything delighted him. There were no toys or electronics involved, just my little guy in nature. He didn’t know what to do first, skim stones, swim, or just sit quietly dangling his city toes in the rushing water below. The smoothed rock ledges that we sat upon were hot to the touch and seemed to embrace us in its warmth.
It was THAT moment — a seemingly insignificant one that is forever imprinted in my mind — that shook me from my sad story.
We may never know what will shake us from the story we’re stuck in, but this was it for me. That afternoon, I recognized that I had to do something differently.
My sweet little boy didn’t deserve to have his life put on hold.
We didn’t have to put our lives on hold because we were navigating change in our lives.
In fact, living was medicine.
Stillness is medicine.
Quiet is medicine.
Mother Nature is medicine.
Why?
Because it is in this state that we stop reacting and running in circles, chasing our tails, and endlessly banging our heads on closed doors. Instead, we hear the voice of our intuition that we likely abandoned along the way.
This is where we gain perspective, we reach for alternatives, we lean on faith and trust in self. And we begin to walk through open doors, suddenly cross paths with the right helpers, begin to see new solutions and start shifting from the sad story to the new one we are authoring.
This is where we begin to feel the rumblings of curiosity, inspiration and even aliveness.
This is where we declare that we are tired of not feeling like ourselves.
This is where healing takes root and pulls us along.
Recently in one of our coaching classes, a mama used an incredible metaphor for perspective. She talked about focusing on the target, not the arrows. Boom!
It’s easy to see all that is wrong when you are experiencing life adversity, like divorce. You could gather the evidence to support all the ‘bad’ things OR you could focus on what you want.
I know that doesn’t make you immune to discomfort, it just allows you to refrain from taking up permanent residency there.
And that day sitting streamside with my little boy (who, btw, is now 25 years old!), I found a new target. I chose to find a new path, to find a way to come alive again, to be the mother I always wanted to be and the woman I desired to become.
Divorce is hard but staying stuck in an unhealthy marriage, fighting off incoming arrows continuously, is harder.
There is a better path to a better divorce mama...it’s called an Intuitive Divorce, and it puts you and your intuition back in the driver’s seat of your life, right where you should be.
And the mothers who are leaning into this are divorcing smarter, healing faster, protecting their kids and reclaiming their lives. Best yet, their new stories and chapters are unfolding — and they are glorious.
P.S. 20 years ago I found a new way to see my life through a new lens, and I packed up my car with my little boy in the backseat, left the city, headed for those mountains again and never turned back. I live in a sweet little farmhouse with THAT very same stream in the backyard. And every day I walk by it with my dog I am reminded of that little boy and that summer day and how that story cracked open all that was to come.
Find your stream, mama. Write a new chapter. Trust that there is so much more to become — and it starts with declaring HOW you are going to get through your divorce.