Grief Process After Divorce: Letting Go Of The Life You Imagined

Do you know how to take the vision of the life you had imagined with your ex and your children and turn it into your future reality?

Today, we’re talking about what holds us back from processing the loss of what could have been, and the importance of continuing to dream, and then creating new dreams. We’re going to check whether you’re still dreaming, or if you’ve forgotten how.

Embracing Grief: Moving Beyond Avoidance

How do you let go of the life you imagined after divorce and grieve what could have been?

Grief isn’t linear, and it has many stages, and a lot of us unknowingly hop off the grief process after divorce.

Often, we women avoid processing grief after a breakup or divorce. So I want to ask: are you actually grieving? Or are you lingering in a hallway of grief avoidance—thinking a lot about grieving while staying numb and angry?

Grief is a surrendered process. You have to create space to grieve because you’re probably going to cry a lot.

People often tell me, “If I go there, Dawn, I’m afraid I’m going to get depressed and I’m never going to come out.” It’s heavy. There’s a lot that you’re carrying that has to come out, and you have to feel it as it passes through you.

Creating Space to Feel and Heal

Many of us would rather avoid creating space for emotions and grief healing after divorce. It means putting down your phone, or Netflix, or the wine, or the busyness. And when we women don’t do that intentionally, life often does it for us—at less opportune times.

There’s value in checking in with yourself and asking, “Hey, could I be more intentional about allowing these feelings to move through, not just sitting in them, but processing them?”

We love to talk about processing feelings around here. You can use a homeopathic remedy, a plastic baseball bat, bilateral stimulation, EFT tapping, or even just sitting on the shower floor and crying your eyes out there.

But you have to give yourself permission and space to feel—it’s something that we avoid a lot as a society today. We avoid it because we think we don’t have the energy or capacity.

We women tell ourselves, “I’ll do it tomorrow because it’s too hard to grieve today.” But the more we do that, the more we suffer. We need to take ownership of moving our grief process forward.

And I know that one of the things that made it abundantly easier for me to grieve was working a program in Al-Anon. I got a sponsor and I worked through the steps.

Grieving Together: The Power of Team Support

Going to Al-Anon and grieving my marriage felt like grieving with a team. For some reason, it made it seem a lot easier. I had people to do it with—people I could consistently see at meetings.

We would get together after meetings for a meal, or I’d pop over to someone’s house and climb into bed with them to cry or get a hug.

It was this automatic grief support community—people who were also doing the work.

It also wasn’t just an endless spiral of grief, because the program had a structure. It has steps and principles, which means that we were not allowed to just sit and wallow in our grief.

It was forward momentum—but with a team. And that’s what we aim to do in our coaching program called A Different D Word. We have women in a 12-month process of moving through and manifesting a new life after divorce.

I envision it as team grieving.

Admitting Powerlessness: The First Step to Healing

Al-Anon made grieving feel a little safer in the first two steps. The first step was admitting we were powerless and that our lives had become unmanageable. This was key for me, as through the divorce process, I realized that things in my life were massively out of alignment. Al-Anon was the first moment I couldn’t avoid that reality.

I was used to being an overachiever—in both my career and personal life—so it was hard to admit I wasn’t succeeding in my relationship.

Finding Relief Through Accountability

Ultimately, there were things I needed to look at and be accountable for. Acknowledging that—with a group of people whose lives had also become unmanageable—reduced a lot of shame for me.

The second step of Al-Anon that helped me was believing that a power greater than myself could restore me to sanity.

It helped me feel less alone. I found relief in feeling like I had leadership in my life that didn’t have to come from me—because at the time, I didn’t feel capable of leading myself. Of course, I took myself to meetings, therapy, and yoga, but feeling like I could lean on something greater brought comfort.

Ask yourself: Are you grieving on a team? And does your team have a leader who can take some of this off your plate?

Taking Accountability: Manifesting Your Own Dreams

The next thing that often blocks us from letting go of the life we imagined? We want it to be easier. We want the path of least resistance. That often means avoiding the hard work of grieving, letting go, or rebuilding life after divorce.

Often, we women have dreams, but we want someone else to be accountable for making them come true.

Producer Joy and I were chatting about how we’re the generation raised by the Disney fantasy. We’re still waiting for Prince Charming. We want to be rescued—like Cinderella—and not be accountable for fulfilling our own dreams.

Personal accountability after divorce might feel easier if you feel competent and qualified.

And when it feels overwhelming, I would like to suggest that you have that higher power who can restore you to sanity.

Trust the Process, Do the Work

You have a higher power advocating for you—on your behalf, behind the scenes, at all times. You have a higher power who wants to help you step into your purpose and lead a fulfilled life. You have a higher power who is constantly showing up for you.

But we have to put the reps in. We women have to be willing to pick up heavy things and put them back down again, which means personal accountability and effort.

Choosing Growth Over Convenience and Numbing

We’ve grown more and more uncomfortable with accountability and effort in our modern life, because modern living has told us that we women can have whatever we want, whenever we want it. There are so many expectations of us—and so many ways we numb out—because we feel burned out and overwhelmed.

Sometimes, we have to make the hard choice to dream again after heartbreak and manifest new dreams for ourselves.

Are you still dreaming, and are you dreaming your own dream?

When I was younger, pre-30, I was dreaming, but I wanted my ex-husband to fulfill my dreams. And then even in this next marriage, there have been lots of times (and Producer Joy will attest to this) where I had full-blown brat attacks about my husband not manifesting my dreams fast enough.

I think once we truly get accountable and say, “I will dream my own dreams, and I will be accountable for making them happen,” everything changes. Things open up.

Dreaming Boldly: Reclaiming What Matters Most

Are you still dreaming—and are you dreaming on your own behalf? Are you dreaming primarily on behalf of your kids? Are you hoping a new relationship will fulfill you?

Do you know how to take the life you imagined—the dream of what could have been—and validate it and nurture it?

What were the elements that felt so good to you? Was it the connection? Belonging? Community? Purpose? Safety?

I need you to write those things down, as it’s time to carve out space to grieve them, but not abandon them.

Don’t Give Up—Your Dream Still Matters

When you look at successful people—and by success I don’t mean monetary, I mean people who have claimed a sense of abundance in their lives—they often talk about grit and not giving up.

How often do we women give up on our own dreams and take the roadblocks, detours, or griefs we experience and let them completely knock us off track? We give up on our own dreams.

I want you to identify what you longed for in your old dream, and then dream a new dream that includes those pieces.

And here’s the key: everything you want is available to you, but you have to spot it when it arrives—and you must have the capacity to let it in.

There are so many times I have wanted something from a very specific couple of people and a very specific place.

But once I opened up my heart wide enough to be able to receive it from other people in other places, it came in spades. It was an overflowing amount of all the things that I have longed for or needed in my life.

Trust the Dream, Receive the Gifts

Your dream matters. Your dream is purposeful. You are dreaming that dream for a reason. And I need you to believe that and trust that.

I also need you to believe and trust that your higher power is working very diligently to make it manifest.

But you have to open up your capacity to receive it in new and different ways.

Take the Next Step

I want to validate that the life you imagined has so much beauty in it. It’s time to take that, reroll it, and implement it and trust that it can be. It’s just going to look different than what you thought it was going to look like.

So, a gentle reminder to check in with yourself.

Are you actually grieving in your body? Are you shedding? Are you releasing? Are you letting go? Are you willing to take the harder path of serotonin versus dopamine? Are you willing to invest in your own dreams—not just for your children or through a partner, but for yourself?

I believe in you.  Peace.