What I Wish I Knew on My Wedding Day

I’ll be attending a wedding this month of a young woman I’ve known most of her life. I’ve witnessed her grow up before my eyes and soon, my heart will be beaming as I watch her walk down the aisle into a new life chapter.

Yes, a divorce coach can still be very excited about love and celebrating healthy relationships!

I even wrote about that once in a blog, A Divorce Coach Walks Into a Wedding (which you can listen to the audio version or read here if you missed it).

But that’s not what I want to talk to you about today. I want to share how I was asked to participate in creating a surprise gift for the bride.

All the women who love her were asked to write a letter to the bride with this prompt:

What I wish I knew on my wedding day... 

Oh boy...where do I start!

Trust me, I’ve lived long enough to have a mountain of regrets. There were times I would’ve said, I wish someone had told me (x,y & z), I wish I had know (x,y&z), I wish I hadn’t (x,y&z) but the truth is that none of that mattered.

I’ve walked through many difficult life challenges, been up, down and all-around and still, I see it all very differently now.

Would I have listened if someone tried to tell me something?

The truth is...probably not.

We see what we are ready to see.

We feel what we are ready to feel.

We act upon what we are ready to act upon.

And that’s it. And that’s OK. And that’s your timing.

So, lamenting our past missteps, beating ourselves up, becoming consumed with regret and shame doesn’t change anything. It only keeps us stuck exactly where we don’t want to be.

My advice for the bride is simple and profound and transformative and a gamechanger and more valuable than any wedding gift imaginable...

Align with your intuition.

Honor your intuition.

Nurture your intuition.

Create space for your intuition.

Trust your intuition.

Never doubt, question, suppress, or deny your intuition.

Then honor, nurture and fill your own cup.

Self-care is not selfish. The most loving thing you can do as a wife, mother, daughter, friend, employee, human being is to fill your pitcher, so you have something to share. You cannot give away what you do not give to yourself first.

And you cannot pour from an empty pitcher.

What I wish I had known more than anything on my wedding day was to trust myself, my feelings and my greatest ally, my fiercest advocate, my internal GPS...my intuition (even when I didn’t like what she was saying).

Had I known how to access her then — perhaps I wouldn’t have continued on down that wedding aisle, perhaps I wouldn’t have ended up in a painful divorce, perhaps I could’ve avoided a lot of unnecessary suffering?

Oh, and btw, don’t beat yourself up when you wobble, when you question or second guess yourself. The more you lean into your intuition as authority, the easier it will become — the quicker you will see things, avoid conflict and chaos — and the sooner you will pivot. And before you know it, it will become second nature.

Normalizing feelings, learning to regulate your nervous system, and listening to your intuition are the strategic elements that are often bypassed in the conventional narrative of divorce. 

But they change everything for you, your kids and your future. They determine the condition you will be in during the divorce. They determine the experience and outcomes of the process. They save time, money and heartache — and they model emotional health to your children.

What I really wish I knew was that...

I didn’t have to lose pieces and parts of myself

I didn’t have to forget my dreams

I didn’t have to become unrecognizable to myself in the name of being a ‘good’ wife or mother

I have an internal GPS always accessible

My voice matters

I am worthy and my feelings are valid

If it doesn’t feel right, it isn’t

Living an untruth is harder than telling the truth

Yes, relationships require a degree of give and take and compromise, however, healthy relationships don’t require losing self. You may not have been in a healthy marriage, but you can have a healthy subsequent chapter. And it starts with taking the reins of your divorce.

There is a better path through divorce. It’s called an Intuitive Divorce and it’s for mothers who want to divorce smarter, heal faster, protect their kids and reclaim their lives.