Find Yourself After Divorce: Navigating Emotional Turmoil

Today, I am interviewing someone who will help you to find yourself after a divorce, Laurie James. She is a mother, divorced woman, a recovering caregiver of her elderly parents, and now an author. She wrote the book Sandwiched. I read it. I loved it. It was such an easy, powerful read. She is a relationship coach and she also has a podcast, Confessions of a Free Bird.

The Limits of Traditional Therapy: Finding Deeper Healing

I’ll chat with Laurie about how being adopted impacted her relationship choices and ultimately the end of her marriage. She’ll speak about how being a caregiver for her elderly parents really impacted her understanding of responsibility for herself and for others, and how she lost herself and eventually found herself again. Finally, we will discuss somatic healing, which helped Laurie discover her ultimate healing path.

Laurie James:

Thank you so much for having me, Dawn. I’m so excited to be here with you today.

Dawn Wiggins:

When we met virtually, it clicked for us.

Laurie James:

Absolutely. Now, there’s a connection here and just in terms of the work that we’re doing out in the world and helping women after divorce. And although it’s different, it’s also very similar.

Why Emotional Healing Isn’t Enough

Dawn Wiggins:

Very similar. Yes, I think that our lived experiences have similarities. We worked really hard to reclaim ourselves, but then there was still this missing piece about health and wellness. Even after you worked so hard to heal your traumas, the question of how to find yourself can linger.

Finding yourself often involves uncovering these deeper layers. I’m so proud of your journey and that you never gave up grit around healing.

So tell me a little bit about your story.

From Crisis to Growth: A Story of Resilience

Laurie James:

I’m a life learner. I look at life as: What am I supposed to learn from this experience?

Sometimes, it’s about finding yourself in unexpected ways that don’t come out until later, but that’s what hindsight is all about

When I was raising my four daughters, my mother fell ill at the age of 75. She had a minor heart attack, and she started to need care. My dad was always another child, to put it very simply. And about a year after my mother fell ill, my marriage began to fall apart. That was my awakening – when I had to ask myself, “How do you find yourself amidst the chaos?” I’m in my mid-forties and I’m thinking, “Okay, my forties are awesome. My kids are getting older. I’m going to have more freedom.” Oh, no, it was the opposite.

Unmasking the Layers of Identity

Laurie James:

It was the first time I went into therapy on my own. I had done some yoga, and I had been reading some spiritual books at that point, but that kind of catapulted me into therapy, which has been a 10-year journey.

So my book is about parenting, it’s about marriage, it’s about adoption – it’s an introspective journey from feeling alone most of my life to finding belonging.

I’m the third of three children. We were all adopted from separate families, so there was no blood relationship. Growing up, I never really felt like I belonged to my family. I didn’t look like my parents. I didn’t look like my siblings.

Dawn Wiggins:

There was also some abuse and you didn’t feel a sense of safety – let alone connection or belongingness.

Generational Trauma and Its Silent Toll

Laurie James:

My dad wasn’t a very strong boundary setter – that was more my mom. But here’s the advice that I’ll share:

Find yourself by understanding your family’s hidden struggles.

My mom had a stillborn baby, she was eight months pregnant and she lost her first little girl between my two older brothers. The umbilical cord was wrapped around her neck. My parents adopted a little girl and named her Julie. They had her for six months and then Julie’s birth mother wanted her back.

I did not know that until I was in my forties. I was driving my dad home from a doctor’s appointment because I took care of my parents for 14 and a half years, and he said, “Thank you so much. I don’t know what I would do without you. And, you know, we almost didn’t have you.” And I said, “What do you mean by that?”

I had seen some things when I was a kid, we were curious and going through drawers, but I could never put the pieces together, and it all made so much sense. It was a very healing moment for me because I was always closest to my mom, but I always felt this emotional distance from her – and I could not understand it. She was a lovely grandmother to my children, she was a teacher, and she loved children, but there was always something.

Dawn Wiggins:

There was a layer of heartbreak that she never processed, and it just kept a wall. She really wasn’t even conscious of it.

Laurie James:

Yes.

Forgiveness: A Two-Way Street

Dawn Wiggins:

There are moments throughout the book where you do amazing therapy – inner child work and what we would call “empty chair” or experiential role play work.

Forgiveness is critical when you’re learning how to find yourself after trauma. In the book, some people in your story own their part and they say, “Thank you” or “I’m sorry.” And then there are people in your story who don’t.

It is easier to forgive when people join us in the recovery work. When they don’t, it is such a challenging process to uncover the roots of those things and release them.

When someone doesn’t join us in that healing process, you feel resentment and anger.

Traumatic Responses in the Body

Laurie James:

My oldest brother, who has addiction issues and was my abuser when I was a child, came back into our lives. And so there were times when I was driving out and every bone in my body was like, “I want to turn around.” It was a somatic response. I realized several years later that healing this was part of finding myself and moving forward.

Dawn Wiggins:

You were having flashbacks and you were dissociating.

Overcoming Trauma Through Somatic Practices

Laurie James:

To breathe and unfreeze my nervous system took time, it only became possible once I started working with a somatic experiencing practitioner. That journey helped me truly find myself again.

The whole somatic healing process needs to be slow and gentle. Otherwise, we’re just re-traumatizing.

The Impact of Family Dynamics on Relationships

Dawn Wiggins:

Let’s connect the dots. You’re adopted, and your mom always had this unconscious emotional distance. Your dad’s not a good boundary-setter. How did that contribute to picking your particular partner?

Laurie James:

I didn’t want to marry my dad. I was married 26 years and had four kids with the same husband. I married parts of my father and parts of my mother, because that’s why my nervous system equated to love.

I thought that if I created the ideal, perfect-fit family, I would be safe.

But safety is an illusion unless you can first find yourself and truly trust yourself.

I just want to take a breath with that for a moment. Often, women don’t anticipate that when the divorce is final, we feel a lack of safety and we think it has to do with the marriage, but it doesn’t. It has to do with our subconscious patterns, our nervous system cues, and our unhealed stuff.

Because anyone who doesn’t feel safe consistently in their body has unhealed trauma. And most of the time, it comes from experiences from zero to seven years old.

A lack of security or well-being in yourself, in the world, or in your relationships often leads to persistent, low-level anxiety.

Breaking Free from Generational Trauma

Laurie James:

I didn’t know I had low-level chronic anxiety until I didn’t have it.

Dawn Wiggins:

I think that’s true for a lot of people.

Laurie James:

You don’t know what you don’t know, and if you’ve lived with that all your life, it feels normal.

My boyfriend had a traumatic past too, and he’s doing some work and I am very proud of him. He said, “I’ve always been anxious. That’s just the way I am.”

Dawn Wiggins:

I have learned from studying and applying constitutional homeopathy in my practice that we can be born with inherited energetic patterns that are often generational.

Laurie James:

Trauma can be passed down to us.

Dawn Wiggins:

But that doesn’t mean we women have to live with it.

The Paradox of Anxiety-Driven Motivation

Laurie James:

I don’t know if you’ve ever heard it but I have clients and friends who say, “No, I like my anxiety. It motivates me.” But what if you could still be motivated without it? It’s coupled or layered, depending on how you interpret it, with other factors.

Dawn Wiggins:

We women have symptoms and we have negative emotions. To be human is to feel – both positivity and pain. I still feel pain, but from this largely healed place.

I will say that what healing has provided me is this radical capacity for presence. Presence without anxiety. And in this place of being fully present, I can trust my higher power. I can trust that I am safe.

My gifts and my calling motivate me. I have so much more energy and so much less stress in completing them. It’s just as easy. The phrase “peace that passes all understanding” comes from the Bible. It’s just this presence and ease. I don’t need to be motivated by anxiety.

Beyond Fear: Embracing Uncertainty

Laurie James:

When we get rid of that anxiety, we can be more in touch with our higher self and our intuition. And if you haven’t done the healing, it can be hard to know the difference between your nervous system and fear-based decisions, and your true intuition.

It doesn’t mean that you don’t listen to that anxiety in that moment, because we do need to feel safe to be able to take our next step. We have to heal, which is key for us to be more creative, trust ourselves, and try different things.

Have the confidence to say, “Okay, I’m going to throw this out there, but it’s not a reflection of who I am. It simply means that might not be the right path, so I’ll try something else.”

Dawn Wiggins:

Yeah, but you’re going to play and try and explore, with childlike creativeness.

Laurie James:

And learn to be okay with failures.

The Search for Belonging

Dawn Wiggins:

I’m hearing you say that your adoption and early childhood experiences made you want to create a perfect family to feel safe. You were also deeply afraid of being alone, a fear you’ve gradually healed, which was likely rooted in your adoption experience.

The Long-Term Effects of Early Childhood Trauma

Laurie James:

I met my birth mother and she didn’t want to give me away. I was adopted in the sixties. I was left in the hospital for three days as a newborn. Where was the initial bonding? Where was the skin-to-skin contact?

The Intergenerational Impact of Trauma on Attachment

Laurie James:

First, I entered a family with a mother who wanted me but carried her own trauma. She had an emotional shield, but I still knew I was loved.

Dawn Wiggins:

But it’s like her heart was under saran wrap. You couldn’t quite penetrate.

Laurie James:

I felt that as a child.

The Hidden Costs of Superficial Connection

Dawn Wiggins:

You can have great, loving parents, but that doesn’t mean that a depth of connection was there to create that intimacy that helps us feel that unshakable bond or sense of well-being or security.

You can know something intellectually, but not feel the match energetically. And it’s so hard to put your finger on. And we don’t want to blame parents, because being resentful or angry serves no one.

Laurie James:

There is healthy aggression. I don’t want people to think that if you are feeling anger and resentment, you should just suppress that and push it down. We do need to address that and there are healthy ways to do it.

We don’t project anger and take it out onto others.

Dawn Wiggins:

We women need to learn how to discharge it from our somatic bodies.

The Power of Somatic Release

Laurie James:

I’ve taken a pillow and hit my bed.

Dawn Wiggins:

I was on a call with somebody recently who asked for a remedy for stress.

And I said, “No, we don’t need a remedy, because we women need to get it out.”

The remedy is to excavate it. It doesn’t make it just go away magically.

Rewiring Your Nervous System Through Mind-Body Connection

Laurie James:

When we feel it in our bodies and we feel the tightness in our chest, we want to stay with that and feel that and discharge it.

Ask your body, “What do I need right now to release this tension, this resentment, this anger that I’m feeling?”

Dawn Wiggins:

Whether it’s punching a pillow, screaming in the woods, or stomping your feet.

Laurie James:

What I often tell my clients – and I do myself is to come back – is to take five minutes to sit or lie down, notice, and stay with the sensations in your body.

Dawn Wiggins:

Developing that intimate body awareness.

Laurie James:

If you’re not in touch with your body, start with simple observations – feel the chair beneath you, your feet on the floor, and the support of the chair against your back.

Basic things help to bring us back to the present moment and it signals to our nervous system that we are safe and that we’re not experiencing what is triggering us in the moment.

The Impact of Caregiving on Identity

Dawn Wiggins:

So tell us about being a caregiver for your elderly parents. We’re seeing more and more aging folks have massive health issues earlier in life. But tell us about how that influenced your loss of self and finding of self. You shared about the amount of responsibility you had, and I think that so many of our readers relate to feeling overburdened with responsibility.

Laurie James:

There were a couple of things that led to the loss of my sense of self. Firstly, I’m not sure I ever truly had a strong sense of self with my adoption, and then I had an anxious attachment style.

So when I married, I wasn’t necessarily looking for somebody who was going to love me – it was to provide security. I found financial security, but emotional security was absent.

Dawn Wiggins:

I loved reading how you had an affluent experience. You all traveled to these beautiful places, and the finances were taken care of, but it did not change your sense of well-being in yourself or in the world. You still experience the hardship of having sick parents, sick children, and sick yourself. And it didn’t spare your marriage.

People often think that money creates security. We women falsely equate money with security and well-being.

The Power of Self-Compassion

Laurie James:

Throughout my marriage, I was giving and I had very little emotional needs. So when I did get into therapy and started expressing them, he got angry at me, because now, all of a sudden, almost twenty years into our marriage, he’s thinking, “What, you have needs? You’re asking me to do something?” He could rest on the couch with a cold, avoiding responsibilities, while even with strep throat, I still had to take care of my duties.

As I was healing myself, I was speaking up for myself. I was asking for my own needs to be met.

I stopped accepting what I once tolerated, ultimately leading to the end of my marriage. There were times when I thought, “I’m ready to leave my marriage,” because my ex was never going to leave the relationship. He was never going to do it. I knew I had to do it. But then my mom would fall ill.

Trusting Your Gut: The Importance of Intuition

Dawn Wiggins:

Throughout the book, you can hear how, as you got healthier and healthier, your standards would increase. The kind of behavior you would tolerate and wouldn’t tolerate changed. It’s like your vibe was constantly shifting and you were constantly rising – even with the caregivers.

Laurie James:

Yes…Thank you for noticing that.

Dawn Wiggins:

Little gut feelings that you would have in the beginning that you would just gloss over.

Laurie James:

I would just immediately shut it down. And that was part of also trusting myself more.

Dawn Wiggins:

Feeling like you could say no. Feeling that you don’t have permission to say, “This doesn’t work for me.”

Laurie James:

Finding my voice because I didn’t have a voice.

And look at me now!

The Transformative Power of Sharing Your Story

Dawn Wiggins:

Look at you now! Speaking to us, with a book in the world. A book full of your voice. There’s so much to learn from your book, even in how you did the experiential therapy work and that kind of thing. But it’s written in a way where you’re telling your story.

So in the book’s epilogue, you get sick, which I relate to. And here you had done all of this spiritual work and all this deep therapy, but you got sick, and then you found somatic processing.

Walk us through that.

Finding Your Tribe: Building Meaningful Connections

Laurie James:

So I leave my marriage, and I say yes to a lot of things. I’m writing my book. I started doing some coaching. I’m dating. I say yes to all my girlfriends because it’s so important to develop a strong female tribe. To this day, they are my core group of friends.

Finding yourself is also about finding your community.

It doesn’t matter whether it’s in a church, a synagogue, or a spiritual group, but you need to find other women who have your back.

Dawn Wiggins:

Who also have goals of alignment.

Laurie James:

And are on the same journey as you are healing.

The Power of Self-Preservation

Laurie James:

Two weeks before I landed in the hospital, I was walking with a friend. I said, “Everything is going well, but I’m stressed.” I didn’t know how to back out of everything that I had on my plate, but my body forced me to.

I received my divorce papers stamped by the court on a Tuesday. Two days later, I closed escrow on my house. Two days after that, I ended up in the hospital.

I had passed out. I developed vertigo. I had extreme, severe pain in my lower back so bad that they were giving me a drug that was five times stronger than morphine. I ended up in the hospital for four days. As my oxygen and blood pressure levels dropped, they continued to give me more medication. I left the hospital that first time with a walker, looking six months pregnant because I had retained so much water.

The Body’s Wisdom: Uncovering the Root Cause of Illness

Dawn Wiggins:

When we administer medications, we’re suppressing vital force.

It’s taking that anger and resentment that we referenced earlier and then numbing it with an antidepressant or a benzodiazepine – rather than processing it out of the body, rather than expressing it.

So it’s the same thing when the body is having symptoms, it’s trying to express something. (But, of course, there are times when medication is appropriate.)

From Crisis to Transformation

Laurie James:

I could not move. After my first visit, I couldn’t eat. I continued to pass out. I was throwing up. It took them two weeks to finally diagnose me. And this is where my friends, my tribe came in. I couldn’t do anything for myself, but they were there 24/7. My girlfriends took shifts, bringing food and providing support.

The second time I landed in the hospital, my friend who is a doctor came. I had fluid around my lungs, they eventually diagnosed me with a virus with migrating arthritis. I had these hotspots, it was on one knee and then it would move to my ankle, and then I had an air bubble on my chest and moved to my upper back. I believe it was my body’s energy trying to process and release the tension and trauma.

Integrating Mind-Body Practices for Optimal Health

Laurie James:

It took six months for my body to process the trauma and for me to fully recover.

In hindsight, rediscovering yourself often requires embracing your physical, emotional, and spiritual needs.

And I wasn’t in therapy at that time.

When I was healthy enough, my therapist friends recommended Bob. He has a PhD, he’s a SCP somatic experiencing practitioner, and he has a bioenergetics certificate, so he’s all about the body. While I had done experiential and inner child work, most of my sessions were traditional talk therapy. That’s why I eventually stopped – I felt I was repeating the same topics without progress.

It wasn’t until I began somatic work – addressing my body’s fight, flight, and freeze responses – that I started to truly heal. I was so inspired by it and he encouraged me to take the training.

When people think somatic, they ask: What does that mean? It sounds scary but it’s very gentle, and they’re very often easy exercises. But just like yoga, homeopathy, and EMDR, it’s a practice. It’s integrating these things slowly into our lives.

Dawn Wiggins:

One layer at a time. I was just having a conversation with my chiropractor today. We have this tendency to label diagnoses. For example, ADHD. We think of ADHD as a layer of something that needs to be healed but actually, there are so many facets to it. There are probably many, many, many layers within ADHD that need healing.

Laurie James:

We have to try it multiple times. I’ve been doing yoga for over 15 years, and the first time I went to yoga, I hated it, but I felt something. I felt different, and I had a sense of focus. That kept bringing me back.

And that’s the way I feel with the somatic experience, it’s another level. It takes me to a place where I can just be present. The more we can be present, the more we can enjoy the journey that we’re on.

The Art of Conscious Living

Dawn Wiggins:

For some people, anxiety motivates them to chase after this thing that they believe is going to bring joy rather than having the capacity to feel at ease now.

Laurie James:

That’s what all these somatic practices do, they help us build more capacity. We don’t live in the past or look at the future. We can just be here. That’s how you find yourself in the present moment.

Overcoming Adversity and Finding Purpose

Dawn Wiggins:

You were called to this. Considering everything you’ve been through, you embody the entire journey. You’re now in charge of your health and well-being and you know how to get the results. And you’re not a prisoner to it. You’re not trapped by it.

Resources for Further Exploration

Dawn Wiggins:

How can people find out more from you, Laurie?

Laurie James: You can find me on Instagram, where I share my beginner’s guide to somatic healing. It’s short and it gives you some practical exercises.

Dawn Wiggins:

Thank you so much for living in your gifts and sharing them with us and the world. It’s amazing. Keep going. I am so proud of you. And it has been just such a joy to get to know you.

Laurie James:

Thank you. Thank you so much for having me. I enjoyed being here with you today, Dawn.