Ep 195: Embracing Divorce Grief: Rebuilding Your Life and Self Throwback Episode

As the year comes to a close, many people find themselves in a reflective state, especially those who have been experiencing the emotional journey of divorce. Have you ever wondered how grief from a divorce can reshape your life? Join me, Karin Nelson, where I offer insights into understanding divorce grief beyond the traditional stages. By the end of this episode you will see how grief emerges not just as an emotion within us, but as a profound response to the loss of a relationship and the future we once envisioned.

This episode explores the often-overlooked aspect of grief during and after a divorce, emphasizing the validity of each individual's emotional experience and the non-linear nature of grief.

What you'll get out of this episode:

• Understanding divorce grief as a complex emotional response

• Discussing the common misconception of the five stages of grief

• Embracing the idea that grief is not a linear process

• Acknowledging the emotional trauma tied to the end of a marriage

• Providing tools to allow grief to coexist with healing

• Encouraging personal reflection and understanding of one’s unique grief journey

• Recognition that it’s okay to feel sad and mourn losses associated with divorce

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List to the full episode:

Grief and trauma are the two biggest struggles women deal with as they go through their divorce. It's highly likely that you are experiencing both and don't even realize what you're feeling. I'm here to tell you that it's okay for you to grieve your marriage (even if it was shitty) and it's normal to be experiencing some kind of trauma (which is essentially a disconnection from yourself - your mind, body and soul). I can help guide you through the grief in all of the forms it shows up so you can heal. I can also teach you how to ground yourself in healing so you can ease through the trauma. Schedule your free consult by clicking here.

Featured on this episode:

1. Interested in the Divorce Betrayal Transformation? Learn more here.

2. Are you lost and confused about who you are after divorce? Don't worry. I've got 51 Ways to Get to Know Yourself Again. Click here to download.

3. Want to work first hand with Karin so you can stop worrying about what your life will be like after divorce, and instead begin making it amazing today? Click here to schedule a consult to find out more about working 1:1 with Karin as your coach.

4. Haven't left a review yet? No problem. Click here to leave one.

Full Episode Transcript:

When you're going through a divorce, sometimes what you want most is a giant hug from somebody who's been through it and knows exactly what you're going through. And that hug can be a lot of different things. It can be support, a listening ear, somebody to tell you how to do things, somebody just to tell you you're not going crazy and that you're going to be okay. And guess what? This podcast, becoming you Again, is all of that. Welcome to Becoming you Again, the podcast to help you with your mental and emotional well-being during and after divorce. This is where you learn to overcome the grief and trauma of your divorce. We're going to do that by reconnecting with yourself, creating lasting emotional resilience and living a truly independent life, so that your life can be even better than when you were married. I'm your host, karin Nelson. Welcome back to the podcast. My lovely ladies, happy holidays. I know that we are heading into the final parts of the year, the last two weeks of the year, and if you are anything like me, you may be looking back on this past year and feeling a lot of grief. I know for me, these last few weeks especially have been filled with grief, with sadness, with a sense of closing a chapter, but also some hope as we move into the new year, and I want you to know that if you're feeling any of that, it's okay. Grief is normal and natural and I'm going to be doing a podcast throwback episode for you where I talk about honoring that grief and allowing it to be a part of you, allowing it to expand within you so that you grow and expand with your grief. In this episode, you are going to learn that grief doesn't necessarily follow those stages that everyone talks about, that you can feel grief around a loss of what is around, a loss of what was around, a loss of something that you're never going to have, that you thought maybe you would have. You could feel grief over something that was like a marriage, something that never was, like how you pictured your future, and now that's not possible because you're going through a divorce. Or just how you pictured your future, and now that's not possible because you're going through a divorce. Or just how you imagined your life would be, growing into old age, and so many other possibilities. So I hope that you take away some tools, some help, some comfort, some alignment and some reflection as you listen to this podcast episode, all about grief. I love you, I am here with you and I hope that you enjoy this episode. I wanted to talk about divorce grief to offer you kind of a better understanding of what is happening when you go through a divorce and the loss of what was.

The majority of my clients I have worked with one-on-one have felt grief around the divorce and we have worked through it and processed through it. And I myself have gone through my own grieving process and felt grief because of my divorce. And normally when I'm coaching my clients, we talk about grief as a feeling inside our body that shows up when we have specific thoughts about our divorce, about life before divorce, about what they have missed out on, about the loss of what their life was going to be or could have possibly been. I think it's important to recognize that grief is a feeling that we feel inside our body, but it's also kind of more than that, because it encompasses so much more than what we're feeling inside of our body right Now. Don't misunderstand me here. That feeling inside your body, that feeling of grief, it is really important to recognize and to make space for it to be present. But grief isn't just that feeling, because there are so many other factors that contribute to grief and our response to it, and so I'm going to talk about some of those things today. It's important to know that grief, like I just said, isn't just a feeling, but what it is is. It's a natural human response to a perceived loss. You can feel grief and experience the grief process for so many things in your life. Now, most people attribute grief and experience the grieving process with the loss of a loved one, but if we go by the definition that I just gave, it's very clear that grief is a natural human response to a perceived loss, and knowing that is going to allow us to open ourselves up and give ourselves permission to feel the grief that shows up when we experience a divorce, divorce.

Grief can show up in many different forms. You may feel grief at the loss of being with your partner. You may feel grief over the loss of what your life was before the divorce, or the loss of what you thought your life was going to look like in the future. You may feel grief over the loss of spending a certain amount of time with your kids, or grief over the loss of the amount of money in your bank account. Maybe you shared a pet in your marriage and your ex got the pet in the divorce, you may be feeling grief over not having that pet in your life. What I hope that you are recognizing and understanding is that grief comes in many forms and it is natural and it is normal to feel it and to process through it, and grief is going to look different for every human being.

Now we've all heard of the five stages of grief denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. These stages are a theory that was developed by Elizabeth Kubler-Ross, and she released this theory in her book on death and dying. It came out in 1969. These were stages that she observed while studying people with terminal illness facing their own death, which I think is really interesting, because these five stages have since been adopted by mainstream society as the capital t-h-e.

The way to grieve, and if you aren't doing it this way, then you're doing something wrong. But that is a misconception. There is no wrong way to do grief and there is no right way to do grief. Kubler-ross's stages were a theory of what some people might go through and they didn't necessarily go in any certain order. And again, recognizing that that's a theory will maybe help you understand that your way doesn't have to look that way. It's an idea and these things might happen, but it's not necessarily going to happen or going to happen in that way. As you process through your own grief, you may go through all of these stages, one or two of these stages, none, and instead it might look something more like barely surviving, surviving and then thriving. There's a lot of different theories out there on what the grief process might look like for you, but again, it's such a personal thing that I want you to start trying to wrap your mind around the idea that your grief process is going to be unique and particular to you. It doesn't have to look a certain way and you are not doing grief wrong. Whatever it looks like for you, grief doesn't move through us and through our life in a linear way. It is much more complex, much more fluid, much more fluctuant than that. You've probably seen those memes where there's a straight line and then it's captioned under the straight line and it says something like how you think achieving your goal will be, and then underneath the straight line is a squiggly jumbled mess of twists and turns eventually leading to the same place. The straight line ends with the caption that says something like how actually achieving your goal will be, and I want you to use this visual when it comes to grief as well.

We think, and we have kind of been taught by society, that grief is going to be linear, or it should be linear. First you're going to feel denial, and then you're going to feel anger, and then you'll start to bargain, etc, etc. Right, but grief isn't linear at all. It's much more a process of the jumbled, twisty, back and forth, up and down, all around, all over the place kind of process. And that's okay, there's nothing wrong with that, it is part of the process. And again, your jumbled back and forth, up and down, all over the place process is going to look different than mine or your neighbor's or your friend who got divorced two years ago and so often.

We believe that with grief, the goal is to be able to move past it. This might sound something like once I can finally get through this stage, then I'll have moved past my grief and I can get on with my life. But I personally believe that the goal is more in line with instead being able to expand ourself and adjust and integrate that grief into our life, because we as humans, with those human brains that are amazing are constantly getting thoughts that are being offered to us about all kinds of things. We can't turn off our thoughts, and so that means that you could be 15 years out from your divorce, having expanded and adjusted and moved forward in your life. Maybe you're remarried with a partner that you love, in a home that you love, with your kids surrounding you, and life is going really great, and then your brain will offer you some thoughts about the past and what might have been if you had stayed or if there was no divorce, and you will probably feel some grief about that. This is a natural thing to have happen.

I'm six years out from my divorce and there are still moments, every once in a while, where I will feel that flare of grief from the loss of my marriage and being able to be with my kids all the time, and when this happens, I open myself up to feeling and allowing that grief to be present inside of me. I don't try and run away from it, I don't try and pretend like it's not there. I don't even try and make it mean that I made the wrong decision or that I shouldn't have asked for the divorce or I made a mistake in my decision. Instead, I open up the door, I invite the grief in and it stays with me for a little bit and then, after a little while's gone and it will come back to visit again in the future and it's okay.

Now, many of you listening to this podcast are probably not to that phase where grief only comes to visit every so often. Many of you are probably in the phase of grief where it feels very heavy and hard and raw and constant, and this is where I would invite you to open yourself up to allowing the grief to be with you. This is where processing what you're feeling is going to be very useful. And I'm not really going to go into the process of how to process an emotion in this podcast. I've covered that in several other podcasts. So if you're not sure what I'm talking about when I say processing and allowing your grief to be with you, then go listen to one of those episodes. Off the top of my head, I know episode number 30, I'm pretty sure, is processing emotions. I just did one a few episodes ago called emotional intelligence. You can check that one out and I know there are a few others sprinkled in there where I really talk about this idea of opening yourself up to and processing the emotions, becoming friends with it. But learning to be open to it and learning to understand and accept what you're feeling and letting the grief be with you is what's going to help you expand and grow with your grief and allow it to integrate into your life, instead of trying to get to that point where you've moved past it.

Divorce grief is real. You are allowed to feel sad about the many losses that are attached to divorce. You are allowed to mourn those losses in whatever way works for you. Your grief process doesn't have to look like anyone else's. It's yours. Remember, there is no right or wrong way to process grief. There's just your way. That's what I have for you today. My friends, I love you. I am so grateful to you for being here and listening and for showing up for yourself, which is the most important part of all of this.

I will be back next week. Hi, friend, I'm so glad you're here and thanks for listening. I wanted to let you know that if you're wanting more, a way to make deeper, more lasting change, then working one-on-one with me as your coach may be exactly what you need. Together, we'll take everything you're learning in the podcast and implement it in your life, with weekly coaching, real-life practice and practical guidance. To learn more about how to work with me one-on-one, go to KarinNelsonCoachingcom. That's W-W-W dot K-A-R-I-N-N-E-L-S-O-N coaching dot com. Thanks for listening. If this podcast agreed with you in any way, please take a minute to follow and give me a rating. Wherever you listen to podcasts and for more details about how I can help you live an even better life than when you were married. Make sure and check out the full show notes by clicking the link in the description.