Finding Herself in the Divorce Grief & Loneliness After a 24-Year Marriage

Takeaways from the Podcast

1. Rediscovering identity is key — divorce is not just an ending, it’s an invitation to find yourself again. It might not feel this way right now, especially when you look in the mirror and barely recognize the person staring back at you. The woman you were within your marriage may feel like a stranger, and the woman you’re becoming may feel uncertain and unfamiliar. This is not only normal—it’s necessary for finding yourself after divorce. Your identity was likely so intertwined with being part of a couple that separating those threads feels impossible, but this untangling is actually the beginning of your most authentic self emerging. Give yourself permission to explore who you are outside of that relationship. Try new things, reconnect with old interests you may have set aside, and be curious about the parts of yourself that were dormant during your marriage. This rediscovery process isn’t selfish, it’s essential for your healing and growth
2. Loneliness can deepen grief — isolation makes recovery harder, but community support helps break the cycle. The silence in your home might feel deafening, and the absence of shared routines can make even simple tasks feel like a lot. You may find yourself withdrawing from friends and family, partly because you’re exhausted by having to explain your situation repeatedly. You may even feel like a burden. But isolation, while it feels protective, actually amplifies your pain. When we’re alone with our thoughts, divorce grief can spiral into depression, and sadness can turn into despair. Reaching out feels vulnerable and scary, but connection is medicine and key to finding yourself after divorce. Whether it’s joining a support group, staying close to understanding friends, or even listening to podcasts like this one, remember that community doesn’t have to be overwhelming—it just has to be consistent and safe. You don’t have to carry this weight alone
3. Holistic healing empowers growth — tools like EMDR, meditation, and homeopathy provide emotional release and build resilience, both of which are important for coping with loneliness after divorce. Your body has been holding the stress, trauma, and sadness of your divorce in ways you may not even realize. Traditional talk therapy has its benefits, but sometimes we need approaches that address the whole person—mind, body, and spirit. EMDR can help you reprocess traumatic memories so they no longer trigger you the same way. Meditation can teach you how to sit with difficult emotions without being overwhelmed by them. Homeopathy can support your body’s natural healing processes and help release stuck emotional energy. These aren’t “alternative” treatments—they’re additional tools in your healing toolkit for finding yourself after divorce. You don’t have to choose just one approach; divorce healing is deeply personal, and what works for one person may not work for another. Trust your intuition about what your body and soul need right now.
4. Self-worth must be reclaimed — divorce doesn’t make you selfish. When finding yourself after divorce, choosing yourself is an act of courage and compassion. The voices telling you that you’re selfish for leaving, that you should have tried harder, or that you’ve failed somehow are not speaking truth—they’re speaking fear. Society, family members, and even parts of yourself may have been conditioned to believe that a woman’s worth is tied to her ability to maintain a marriage at any cost. But choosing to leave a marriage that no longer serves you, that perhaps was harming you or preventing your growth, is not selfish—it’s self-preserving. You are not responsible for maintaining a relationship that requires you to abandon yourself. Reclaiming your self-worth means recognizing that you deserve happiness, fulfillment, and authentic love. It means understanding that sometimes the most loving thing you can do for everyone involved is to have the courage to say, “This isn’t working, and I choose something different.”
5. Vulnerability creates connection — sharing openly in safe spaces fosters healing and belonging. You might feel like you need to have it all together before you can connect with others, or that your pain is too messy to share. The truth is, your vulnerability is not a weakness—it’s a bridge to authentic connection. When you share your real experience, not the polished version but the raw, honest truth, you give others permission to do the same. This creates bonds that go far deeper than surface-level friendships. Safe spaces—whether that’s with a trusted friend, a support group, or a therapeutic community—are places where you can let your guard down without fear of judgment. Here, your tears are welcome, your anger is understood, and your healing is celebrated. Finding yourself after divorce often happens in these moments of shared vulnerability. Remember, the goal isn’t to be perfect; it’s to be real. And in that realness, you’ll find that you’re not as alone as you thought

Highlights

• 00:00 Seeking Empowerment Post-Divorce
• 03:45 Transformative Quantum Healing Experience
• 08:00 Navigating Aging and Loss
• 12:20 Supportive Meditation Experience
• 13:43 Intuitive and Gifted Collaborator<
• 18:05 Homeopathy’s Intuition and Emotion
• 19:20 Empowerment Through Personalized Homeopathy
• 24:05 Embracing Healing and Growth
• 26:57 EMDR Therapy Explained
• 30:15 “Embrace Emotions for Healing”
• 32:31 Gratitude and Connection Acknowledgment

Full Transcript

Dawn Wiggins [00:00:00]:

This feels like a lovely full circle thing for me with you, Kim, because it’s just, you know, you. We chat all the time, right. And then here we are. All my people are in a room together. Coach Tiffany is going to be our facilitator, our question asker. But also, like, don’t feel like you have to stick to these questions. Like, let’s riff. Right? Like it’s just the four of us in a room having a conversation.

Dawn Wiggins [00:00:21]:

Love, like, truly. Right. Like, I want this to be more. More than anything, I just want this to be time spent together. Like, that’s, to me, like, that’s the most important thing. Fair.

Kim [00:00:34]:

Sounds good.

Dawn Wiggins [00:00:35]:

Kim, how long have you been listening to the podcast? Like when. When abouts did you find us?

Kim [00:00:42]:

Oh, I. I think it was the summer.

Dawn Wiggins [00:00:47]:

Last summer.

Kim [00:00:48]:

This past summer. Yeah. I was. I’m a teacher and I was on summer break and I was. Can I tell you kind of how I found you?

Dawn Wiggins [00:00:59]:

Yeah. Love that.

Kim [00:01:01]:

I’ve been on my own for about 18 months after being in a super long term relationship. We were married for almost 22 years, together for 24. He was my best friend. And I had decided I wanted a change in my life. And it was very heartbreaking. It took a lot of time for me to decide that that’s what I wanted and for me to get off fence and just say it. And in fact, when I finally did say it was because he was like, I know you don’t want to say anymore. I want to work it out and you don’t want it.

Kim [00:01:35]:

And so I wound up moving from Queens to Brooklyn. We separated. And then by the summer, it was 18 months later, was pessimist. And I had moved for the second time, still in Brooklyn, but I had found an apartment that I really loved through a friend of mine. And I was, you know, it’s summertime when you’re a teacher and you have all this time off, all of a sudden, you have a lot of time to think and process. And I. The loneliness, just cold. It was worse than it had ever been.

Kim [00:02:11]:

And I was like, I know, like, I’m talking to my friends about this and I have a close group of friends who have been very supportive and haven’t judged me. And I’d also lost a lot of people because of this and even had some, you know, stuff with family members who didn’t agree with my choice. And I was like, I need something more. And my therapist had said to me, you know, you should think about maybe some kind of support group for divorced people. Or divorced women. I was like, I don’t really want that, but I do want to understand how this can be an empowering experience, because somewhere in my soul, I know it, it’s meant to be. And I. I shouldn’t be stuck.

Dawn Wiggins [00:02:50]:

How can I get aligned with what I know on some level is meant to be? Yeah.

Kim [00:02:55]:

Yeah. And so what wound up happening is I just searched divorce podcast casts for women, and yours was one of the first that came up. And I, I just, I saw a list of subjects and topics that you’d cover, and I was like, oh, my God, this is so holistic. This matches who I am. And I think one of the first ones I listened to was about homeopathy.

Dawn Wiggins [00:03:19]:

Okay.

Kim [00:03:20]:

Who would ever thought, like, I. It’s something. I’ve been interested, that it could help me in this healing process. And so I listened to that one. So, I mean, since then I kind of. I joined the premium podcast when you started that, and that’s been super cool. And when I started to listen to that, then the. I was interested in the quantum stuff too.

Dawn Wiggins [00:03:43]:

Yeah, yeah.

Kim [00:03:45]:

And then there was something, I think you and I had spoken quite a few times before you aired the one where you did quantum healing. Something about that felt so much more personal because we’d spoken. I recognized your voice. There was this something intuitive about it, and I was like, feel like she’s speaking to me. And I remember reaching out after and going, oh, God, that was amazing. And then I can’t even explain it in the moment, but there was a lot of healing that happened right after that. And I remember you saying to me, you’re going to feel this for quite a few days, like, keep track of what’s going on for you. But that was, you know, one of the most.

Kim [00:04:32]:

All of the episodes have been great, and that was a really powerful one for me.

Dawn Wiggins [00:04:36]:

Yeah, I love that. I remember, Yeah, I remember us talking about that. And your intuition is sort of like really opened up almost since that moment. Right.

Tiffini [00:04:45]:

What was your biggest struggle at the time that you found the podcast? And how did hearing the conversation start to shift things for you?

Kim [00:04:54]:

I mean, definitely the loneliness. I think, like I said before, I have a group of close friends and I was. But I was self isolating and I think I’ve done that through this journey. I even did this over my winter break and the holidays. I also lost my mom four months ago, which is hard. And she was in South Africa and I went to say goodbye and it’s just been like, I’ve had a lot I’d gotten. This is kind of off the track. But I.

Kim [00:05:25]:

Soon after I separated, like, two months in, right before my spring break from school, I actually got very sick, and I didn’t know what was going on. And I went into the doctor because I tried to do a zoom call with the doctor, and she was like, I can’t really diagnose you. I think it’s gastrointestinal and you might have a ruptured appendix. I want you to go and to go to one of our medical centers. And I went in and they were like, emergency room right now, to be sure. And I wound up with erupted appendix. And I was in the hospital, and I was. I.

Kim [00:06:01]:

I had people checking in with me, and I had a friend who came and was with me the next day and throughout the journey who were there, but I did it on my own, and it was really scary. And it was like midnight when I found out that I had it. And they were scared that I had cancer, and it was so scary. Wow. Yeah. And so, you know, like, I think a lot of this and then losing my mom, and it was just a lot. Like, I was. I had a lot that I was grieving.

Kim [00:06:28]:

Yeah. And I. I didn’t need to isolate. There were people who would be there. And I just. I just caught myself really just, like, not wanting to be around people. I was diagnosed. I’ve had anxiety for probably my whole life.

Dawn Wiggins [00:06:45]:

But I sure.

Kim [00:06:48]:

After being sick, I saw the. Saw the doctor, and he was like, I’m gonna put you on something. But I don’t think you just have anxiety. I think you’re depressed, and I think it’s situational. So, like, that was really, like. All of that just came. I was like a. Pardon the expression, like a real shitstorm.

Kim [00:07:06]:

I was like, I. I don’t know. I don’t know what to do anymore. Like, this is just really hard.

Dawn Wiggins [00:07:12]:

You know, you said that it was sort of off the track, but I don’t think it is at all, love. I think that. That the experiences that you had. Right. Your own medical experiences, and then who’s your emergency contact? Right. And then your mom passing away. Like, this is life on life’s terms. And I think that when we’re moving through divorce and the way we’ve related to our support system is not the same.

Dawn Wiggins [00:07:37]:

And then we still have to deal with life’s curveballs. It. It almost breaks us. Right. I know that when I was getting divorced and I had cluster headaches, I was often calling people from my Al Anon Phone list to take me to the emergency room. And. And I think it’s really scary to be single and have that kind of health issue. My heart really breaks.

Dawn Wiggins [00:08:00]:

And I think, especially for women at this point. Right. We have parents that are aging, and anything could happen at this point. I know we have a woman that was in the. That’s in the program now, and her dad passed away a few months ago. I think these are the realities that we don’t talk about. You mentioned or, like, it’s just hard to feel support when there’s not much crisis going on, I think. You know, you said you lost people.

Dawn Wiggins [00:08:25]:

I’d love to hear more about that, too, because it’s like, gosh, there’s just, like, crisis on top of crisis on top of crisis, and then I have half the support or quarter of the support that I had. And, of course, you isolated. Right. Your nervous system was shutting down. It was just overburdened. Completely overburdened.

Kim [00:08:43]:

Absolutely. I mean, I want to talk about, like, the people I lost, because you mentioned that, but I. Something interesting came out of this. Like, I searched for kind of, what is the spiritual. What’s the spiritual meaning behind a ruptured appendix, not just an appendicitis. And it was fear of moving forward.

Dawn Wiggins [00:09:06]:

Yeah.

Kim [00:09:07]:

Wow.

Dawn Wiggins [00:09:08]:

And did it rupture? Yep, it did.

Kim [00:09:12]:

Yeah. And the surgeon said to me, if you had left this. She said, we wouldn’t be having a conversation. Right.

Dawn Wiggins [00:09:21]:

Yeah. I mean, it was the same for me with cluster headaches. Right. Cluster headaches was. It’s HPA access dysfunction caused by a lifetime of trauma and suppressed rage. Suppressed rage. Right. It’s.

Dawn Wiggins [00:09:34]:

Yeah. I had this. Right. And the amount of health issues that I had from all of that. So we’re twinsies.

Kim [00:09:43]:

I’ll take that.

Dawn Wiggins [00:09:45]:

Yeah. Um, it’s remarkable what you’ve. What you’ve been able to do for yourself in terms of what you’ve reclaimed in terms of your wellness, you know?

Kim [00:09:53]:

One of my closest friends, name’s Alessia. She and I teach together. And she said to me recently, she goes, you know, do you realize how brave you are and how strong you are? She goes, I’m so proud of you. You’ve just. You’ve gone through so much, and you’ve done it with so much Grace Rice.

Dawn Wiggins [00:10:15]:

Yeah. Yeah. You have been so gracious. I mean, even in the relationship we’ve built. Right. There have been many times I’ve reached out to you and said, hey, you know, can you give me your thoughts on this? And I. I endorse her assessment. You are one of the kindest, most empathetic people, deeply intuitive.

Dawn Wiggins [00:10:33]:

I cannot believe the appendix part, that’s. Was it a Louise Hay, like, how to do what? Yeah, yeah.

Kim [00:10:41]:

I mean, I knew about her, and I have friends who’ve been recommending that I get her her books. I finally do own one now, and I used it all the time, but. Yeah.

Dawn Wiggins [00:10:53]:

Is it. You can heal your life.

Kim [00:10:55]:

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Dawn Wiggins [00:10:58]:

It’s got a great little appendix right. Where you can look up health issues and.

Kim [00:11:01]:

Yeah. Yeah, it’s pretty good.

Dawn Wiggins [00:11:05]:

You have worked through a lot, love.

Kim [00:11:08]:

Yeah. And I think when I. I’m finally come to the space of going, I’m not a villain because I made a different choice. And I. I still battle with that because at my most vulnerable moments, I’m like, this is my fault. I’m. You know, I had my younger brother actually said to me once. He’s like, you know, it’s all about you.

Kim [00:11:29]:

So selfish. He goes, you chose this. I’m not gonna feel sorry for you.

Dawn Wiggins [00:11:38]:

Wow. Like, just flat out said, like, because you made a choice, you don’t deserve compassion. Yeah.

Kim [00:11:44]:

He was like, this is Satan’s work in your life. Exactly.

Dawn Wiggins [00:11:48]:

Satan’s work. Yeah.

Kim [00:11:50]:

So Satan’s work and.

Dawn Wiggins [00:11:51]:

Yeah, yeah. And when. Those are the dominant voices. Right. It’s so hard.

Kim [00:11:56]:

Yeah.

Tiffini [00:11:57]:

So, Kim, beyond the podcast, I know you’ve also connected with our team at Dear Divorce Diary and other ways. So can you share how that’s helped deepen your healing?

Dawn Wiggins [00:12:08]:

Yeah.

Kim [00:12:08]:

So I have the Heartbeat app. I belong to the Cocoon community. That’s where I’ve connected with you, Tiffany, is that I. Through there.

Dawn Wiggins [00:12:19]:

I.

Kim [00:12:20]:

It’s been so great. I know I was having a, like, a really intense time a few weeks ago, and I had reached out to dawn, and I’d reached out to you. And at one point, dawn said, hi, love. I haven’t replied, but Tiffany and I were talking, and she’s got you, and it just was so true. And I remember you recommending a meditation for me to try, and I’ve been doing it and really loving it. And then I found some others and shared them with you. And you are both expert in this work, and. But it doesn’t feel like authority speaking down to me.

Kim [00:13:04]:

It’s collaboration and us being vulnerable together, you know, and that’s just really powerful. I mean, I think my own wounding and my own trauma and life experience and conditioning always has me thinking somebody else has the answer, you know? And I think I’m learning to trust My intuition to this work. And I feel deeply held in a space where you’re collaborating with me.

Dawn Wiggins [00:13:43]:

You’re deeply gifted, right? Like you. You are a joy to collaborate with because very, very often you come with your own solutions too of meditations you found and shown me. Like right when you were sick the other week and you had this cough in the lungs and you, you know, we’re on insight timer and you found was it eft or meditation for lung. Like you’re always learning and absorbing and you know, I know you have an interest in this work and I think you’re just so well suited for it. Right. And it’s interesting. I don’t know if we’ve had this conversation, but sort of the clue about you being a twin and whatever like that, just that whole profile that, you know, one day we’ll talk about it in greater depth from a homeopathic perspective. The same people who are left handed or who have twins or who have all of that in their family system tend to have deeper intuition and tend to abide closer to God.

Dawn Wiggins [00:14:40]:

The veil is thinner. And so that’s of you. Right? That’s of you. It’s in your ancestry. And I know you already know that and I’m just confirming for you something you already know. But yeah, you are even more intuitive, I think, than you probably know. And I think, you know, I think you’ve been called to this work on some level you shared with me yesterday. And I love that for you.

Dawn Wiggins [00:15:03]:

I think you’re already doing it as a teacher, but I know you have a sort of vision for how to do it even more. I have no doubt you hold space for your students in a way that feels exhausting. Right. Because you’ve mentioned that, that it’s just, just it’s hard.

Tiffini [00:15:19]:

And too, Kim, like, as a coach, like I know that my clients are very whole and very capable. There’s just things that are buried underneath of there. And so I enjoy kind of bringing it out, you know, and helping people kind of unbury the layers of themselves. But you know, I believe that everyone has the answers to their own self and everyone’s got it in them. They just have to. Sometimes you have to have someone walk with you for a while to.

Dawn Wiggins [00:15:46]:

Yeah.

Tiffini [00:15:46]:

To allow you to trust what you, you know, are saying. And I think that, you know, in the cocoon community, what I love too is, you know, to be able to DM people that are in there. It’s, it’s very humanizing, you know, like when, when Don and I enjoy when we’re working with people. They see us like, we’re sharing our vulnerabilities. We’re sharing, you know, our mistakes, things in life that we’ve tripped up on. You know, it’s. It’s a very humanizing experience. And again, we’re not on the other side of this saying that our lives are perfect because they’re not.

Dawn Wiggins [00:16:15]:

There’s no such thing. Y.

Tiffini [00:16:16]:

And so we. We’re very open with our clients, people in our community, about, you know, the things that we struggle with and. And the ways that we move through and work through.

Dawn Wiggins [00:16:25]:

It’s that paradox of vulnerability. Right. That we’re always so afraid that our vulnerability is going to repel people, but it’s the opposite. It draws us all closer.

Tiffini [00:16:33]:

Yeah. There were things that. I mean, I’m gonna be honest. Like, there were things like when I started doing the podcast with John that I’d initially said were off limits that I didn’t want to talk about. And now, you know, same thing with, you know, everything else. And now as we get further into it, I want to talk about it because it liberates.

Dawn Wiggins [00:16:50]:

Yeah.

Tiffini [00:16:51]:

It’s going to allow. It’s going to be the one thing that that woman’s going to say, oh, okay. Now I can really, like, come out with it because I know you understand. So the more vulnerable we can all be together and share, I think, you know, the deeper it helps everyone.

Kim [00:17:04]:

It’s interesting even coming on. I was nervous about doing this, and I feel like I’ve even opened up more than I thought I would, just because it feels. It’s my truth. Right, right. I. Truth shared with people who can hold space for that. Like, no one’s repelled by anything that I’m saying or thinking or feeling.

Dawn Wiggins [00:17:26]:

Deliberating. Right. The more we can own those. Those fragments of ourselves, it’s such a good feeling.

Kim [00:17:32]:

Yeah.

Dawn Wiggins [00:17:33]:

Now, that’s not to say that we might not all have an emotional hangover to vulnerability. Hangover tomorrow. Right. Ask me tomorrow. Maybe I might have a. Right. We’ve said a lot of things today in this. Talk a little bit about your experience with homeopathy in this last few weeks.

Dawn Wiggins [00:17:54]:

It’s not an easy journey, per se. Right. Like. Like, I think a lot of times I talk about homeopathy, like, so magical. And it is. It creates movement. Right. But movement can be uncomfortable.

Kim [00:18:05]:

There’s something very intuitive about it. But there’s something counterintuitive if you haven’t done it before. Like, I know when I’ve asked you, should I dose Again and you’re like, tell me about what you’re going through. Like when you think of modern medicine, you think of western medicine, you take a pull and you keep taking it till you get better. With homeopathy, it’s by taking a dose and letting that dose run its course. And so much came up. I cried about four times the other day. Once before school, once at lunchtime, after lunch.

Kim [00:18:42]:

I cried myself to sleep that night. I was like, I felt like, like a sponge that had been rung out.

Dawn Wiggins [00:18:47]:

Yes.

Kim [00:18:48]:

And I’ve been tired all week. The fact that I can doing this at 9:30 on a Friday night is, and not feel like I’m depleted is a big deal.</>

Dawn Wiggins [00:18:58]:

Yeah, that’s what homeopathy does. It strengthens vital force. Right. It clears out the mess that’s been weighing down vital force. And it does, it strengthens, strengthens your whole. And then we navigate everything more robustly. It’s, it’s beautiful. Yeah, we’ve had a lot of sort of beautiful homeopathy conversations.

Dawn Wiggins [00:19:20]:

It’s one of the things that I love about what we do over here because right. In western medicine there’s a prescription, right. And you take the prescribed. But me coaching someone through homeopathy and I actually probably take an even more unique approach than some other homeopaths because some homeopaths will also give very prescribed dosing regimen. And I would much rather teach you how to be in tune with your energy and when to dose because that gives you the power, right, to be able to say, to know, to trust yourself even more. That’s what I want for you, is to have this deep abiding trust and confidence that you know how to do it and what to do and, and how to take charge. That you could go to the health food store and it may be cumbersome, but you could muscle test every dang remedy on that shelf and you’d be able to find a match and you’d know how to water dose and you’d know how to expand that energy if you needed to. Right.

Dawn Wiggins [00:20:16]:

I’d much rather teach you to fish, you know, and you are especially capable.

Kim [00:20:21]:

Yeah, it’s, it’s cool. And I want to do more of it. I mean, I know I also, I had also asked you, there was a time when I had a, a cough before this cough and a cold and I asked you about a remedy. I said, I was thinking, you know, I could get this on Amazon. And you said, oh, that’s a really good brand. Go for it. It. So did the cough Add in within days.

Dawn Wiggins [00:20:47]:

Oh, the. It was the tea. The Moline tea.

Kim [00:20:50]:

Yeah.

Tiffini [00:20:52]:

What do you feel like is one thing that you’ve learned from doing this work that you wish that every woman navigating divorce could hear right now?

Kim [00:21:00]:

I would say you’re worth it. Start small, like I did. I’ve joined the community. I have the loneliest roadmap. I have the poster’s divorce roadmap. You know, I know. Tiffany, you had said earlier that body scan is your go to for a while. That’s what I just was doing.

Kim [00:21:19]:

I had, you know, gone back to, you know, the course. And I was like, I’m just, I’m gonna take a five minute thing and I’m gonna do a body scan every night when I get home from work. And so I came home for a solid week and I laid down on my bed and I did a body scan before I made dinner. And it was good. It was just very grounding for me.

Dawn Wiggins [00:21:39]:

Yeah, that’s the thing. Start small, right. If it is start. Do you have any questions for us? Let’s. Let’s turn the tables.

Kim [00:21:48]:

If that last question, if I were to put it back to you, what would you say?

Dawn Wiggins [00:21:53]:

I hear producer Joyce say all the time, you’re worth it.

Joy [00:21:56]:

I would say this is kind of what I’ve been ruminating this week on is like, you’re stronger than you think you are. You’re more capable than you think you are. Because in those moments where the kids are crying and you’re by yourself and the water’s leaking, you have to feel like you can do it, you can do hard things. You, yes, you’re worth it. But also that, that resistance of I.

Dawn Wiggins [00:22:19]:

Don’T want to do it, I don’t want to have to do it. It’s too hard.

Joy [00:22:21]:

You can’t do it. Yeah, you’re stronger than you think you are.

Dawn Wiggins [00:22:25]:

I think that you’re worth it. Piece. I have like a side take on that. Like, that is the core issue often, I think as women is we doubt so much our own power, but there’s something in there about, I wish I could have more women see how they are avoiding themselves. Right. Like the thing you’re avoiding is nine times out of 10, it is the thing you need. And that even goes down to a couple of months ago. I had met with Kate one on one, and I came out of there really like it had pulled up a lot of stuff.

Dawn Wiggins [00:23:09]:

And so I was texting these two and I don’t even remember all the details, probably because of the time of night. And we’ve been talking and thinking so much, but. And Tiffany was like, basically like, okay, so let’s say it’s the worst case scenario. Oh, it was this idea that I’m the problem. Yeah. I was like, I can’t be the problem. I’m fine being a problem, but I can’t be the problem. And she was like, so what if you’re the problem? Right? That thing I was resisting so hard.

Dawn Wiggins [00:23:37]:

I was like, I couldn’t sit with this idea that I was the problem. And she was like, so what if you’re the problem? And I was like, well, that would be really liberating. All right, I’m the problem and just accepting that. And like, maybe today I am, and maybe today I’m not, but it’s like that thing that we resist and avoid is the thing we need to move through. And I wish that more women would have the faith in themselves that they can move through the thing and that it’s worth it. Right? We get so afraid of the unknown.

Tiffini [00:24:05]:

I mean, I think for me, it’s, you know, the time is now. You know, I’m a perfect example of somebody who literally dissociated and put myself in a bubble for a decade. Not, you know, being afraid to have friendships, not really dating, you know, focusing so much on raising my daughter and doing that. And, you know, it wasn’t until I got into my next relationship that was healthy and it felt scary that I realized I have so much more work to do. And thankfully, I have a partner who was very patient and who is also as committed to, you know, my emotional healing. Like, not everyone’s like that, you know, like, I could have saved a lot of time and headache if I just would have done the work, you know, prior to it. And I. You know, especially with EMDR, you know, people had been recommending that I do EMDR since I’ve been 16 years old, and I just never wanted to actually do it.

Tiffini [00:25:03]:

And so it’s like when you finally face the thing and then you have a team of people and then you have a group of other women who are going through it with you, and you can say the scary things out loud, and you can say the vulnerable things out loud. There’s a lot of healing in that. To say, you know what? Today I might be the effing problem.

Dawn Wiggins [00:25:23]:

You know, and you’re gonna love me anyway. Yeah.

Tiffini [00:25:27]:

And it’s okay, you know, So I think what I would say is, especially as a mom, like, I was so conditioned to put My daughter first, above everything and anything I ever did for myself felt selfish and wrong and like I shouldn’t be doing it. And it’s really not that way because it’s almost like when you’re regulated, you set the tone for your kids. And so, you know, when you’re feeling at peace and you’re taking that time for yourself to do the work, they can see that and they receive you so much more, you know, differently. And, you know, I was a more patient mom. I was more present, you know, with everybody.

And yeah, I guess also because you kind of. You’re mothering yourself in a new way, right?

Dawn Wiggins [00:26:08]:

Yep. What else you got for us? Give us one more.

Kim [00:26:12]:

I’d love to know a little bit more about emdr.

Dawn Wiggins [00:26:15]:

So the loneliness roadmap basically is EMDR in a immersive coaching, right? Like that’s. I designed the loneliness roadmap to teach women how to use the tools of EMDR at home. So EMDR really is a combination of somatics, negative and positive beliefs and bilateral stimulation. By that meaning two sided stimulation, right? So we can use this butterfly tap as two sided stimulation. The way we initially learn EMDR is through eye movement, right. Where we’re doing this track, track my fingers with your boy. It’s been a long time since I did emdr. It’s just sort of fun just to do this, just as a throwback.

Dawn Wiggins [00:26:57]:

I used to do this in office all day long and people would say, doesn’t your arm get tired? I’m doing the Lord’s work. So EMDR takes this sort of somatic reactivation of a part, right? Like a part of self that has a burden and it activates this old painful memory somatically. What were you feeling? What was the smell? What was the sound? Right? What sensations do you have in your body? Where is that held in your body? What are the negative beliefs you’ve internalized associated with that memory? Because that’s what keeps it stuck. And then we process bilaterally, whether that’s using eye movement or tapping or tones in the ear. And what that bilateral stimulation does, when that’s all beautifully activated, is it allows the brain to start to process through the memory networks, all the associated memories. It’s a free association model where you start at this target point and then you free associate as we tap and the mind just wanders. And it’s a subconscious driven technique. So again, that old way of doing therapy where the therapist is the expert and they say, I think we need to process, blah, blah, blah, like the subconscious mind is going to show us what needs to be processed in emdr.

Dawn Wiggins [00:28:15]:

And eventually you start and you’re touching these painful memories, and it, it’s. If you’re not completely dissociated, which I often was, and they feel very, very intense. And as you bilaterally stimulate, it gets less and less and less until it gets neutral or positive. And then we go back and we say, okay, what’s the positive belief you’d want to have associated with that rather than the negative belief you’ve been carrying around? And I think that the positive side of EMDR is way underrated. And then we go back and we pair that old painful memory that’s not painful anymore with this positive belief. We’re almost like, you know, people say you can’t change the past, but like, man, we can change how you remember the past. And what’s the difference at that point, you know? And then we sort of install that positive belief. And now we’ve just sort of primed you to experience the world in a totally different way.

Dawn Wiggins [00:29:04]:

We’ve unburdened the exiled part, We’ve created parts integration. We’ve reprocessed that negative belief. We’ve turned it into a positive belief. Right. And if you’ve done it using homeopathy, like, we’ve been able to get that much deeper. If you tended I. When I was in EMDR as a patient, I often struggled to really connect. There was so much dissociative process going on for me.

Dawn Wiggins [00:29:27]:

I could get a certain amount of benefit. I did get a lot of benefit from emdr, but I’ve gotten so much more since adding homeopathy because I’ve been able to go so much deeper into those memories and unlock so many things. So in the loneliness roadmap, I just created like a worksheet, right, for you to sort of journal through. I very early on taught Joy, like, if you can’t go to EMDR today, because very often we’re triggered and we need to work through things, not when we’re conveniently sitting in our therapist’s office. And so I, you know, when you journal what you’re feeling, what it feels like in your body, do a body scan, right? EMDR uses a lot of body scanning. Do a body scan, write what you’re feeling, you know, butterfly tap. Let the mind just wander with it as long as you’re welcoming in the feeling. Right.

Dawn Wiggins [00:30:15]:

I think the. Where people go wrong or what I would often default to is I was trying to distance myself from the emotion. You’ve got to really lean in and welcome it and support those parts and then go back to journaling and then butterfly tap and journal. And so that’s how I designed the loneliness roadmap, to be able to sort of lean into and process some of that, because there’s just something the body was designed to heal itself, right? And so when you bilaterally simulate, it allows the mind to tap into what they, whoever they are, have called the adaptive information processing system in our minds. So what I’ve seen anecdotally in my therapy practice is let’s say you’ve read Mel Robbins book Let Them, and you sort of understand it intellectually, but you can’t sort of seem to get it to integrate or kick in automatically when you’re actually triggered, right? And it’s like. And then you’re three hours later and you’re like, ah, why didn’t I use the let them theory, right? What I’ve seen with EMDR is once we’ve processed something using all that, the elements of the technique, then all of a sudden the let them theory become it. Just like the brain is like, oh, you know what we could have done there? We could have used the let them theory. And then that all gets embedded in the mind, the adaptive information integrates, and then the next time you get triggered, it’s like, that seems far more on the menu.

Dawn Wiggins [00:31:37]:

It’s like, available. Fascinating. And then I’ll add, I’ll take that even up a notch. A couple of summers ago, I microdosed psilocybin with a guide, and I had been doing a lot of EMDR work. And then all of the sudden, after that one microdose with the guide, it was like so much of what I had done in EMDR felt like it just locked in in just such a more profound way. So there are so many ways, right, to open the mind and allow it to be reprogrammed in a way that it’s thriving, you know, it’s very cool.

Kim [00:32:14]:

Amazing.

Dawn Wiggins [00:32:16]:

What a beautiful time together. Ladies, I just want to say that.

Kim [00:32:20]:

The three of you are so awesome and amazing and I’m so glad that I’m seeing you together now. And I want to travel and come see you, you know?

Dawn Wiggins [00:32:31]:

Yes, well, you could do that. Our retreat is at the end of June. Well, you know how to find us. We’re going to look forward to many more. A conversation, sending you lots of love, have sweet dreams tonight, and I don’t know, thank you for being the best part of what we do. You know, without you there is no dear Divorce Diary podcast, you know, and the connection and the relationships is why we do what we do. And I know we’re just beyond grateful. All right, love.

Dawn Wiggins [00:33:02]:

Have a beautiful, beautiful evening. Reach out if you need us. Good night, friends. Thank you for being here.