How to heal after divorce for women is a very big, deep, and wide topic. It’s impossible to cover within one article or one session. Today, we’re concentrating on just one aspect of it: the fundamentals of healing and how to do this after divorce. As I was preparing to write this, I kept circling back around to the resistance that comes up during this process.
Resistance to Change
The first healing step is to shed your resistance.
Resistance means the difficulty accepting that where you are and what is unfolding is perfect and beautiful – it’s like when a caterpillar turns into a butterfly.
You have to remember that even when it doesn’t feel okay, and you’re certain that it’s not okay, it is. The stories you’re telling yourself in your mind in how to heal after divorce are what are creating resistance and slowing you down.
Overcoming Resistance to Change
The second step of how to heal after divorce is accepting that your marriage is over.
Your beautifully rich, abundant future self is so clear that the time for looking back is over, everything you want is forward. Remember, it’s okay for you to love him and move on.
It’s okay if you love him forever. I want you to be able to love him and believe in your future and believe in yourself. You don’t need to build your life around him to be okay. You must accept that your marriage is over and trust, believe, and have faith that your future can absolutely be greater than your past.
We Attract What We Are
If you are invested in believing that your ex-husband and your past are everything and your future is bleak, then that is what you will create. However, if you catch some fire inside of you and say: “I did not come this far to only come this far,” it will ignite transformation.
Process of Transformation
I believe that there is so much more for you. The more you are second-guessing yourself and doubting that you made the right decision or fear that you can’t do anything without him, the more your thoughts are keeping you trapped. When we women convince ourselves of flawed thoughts, we remain trapped in a mental prison.
Ready to See What Life Has to Offer
There are many soulmates you will have in your life; some of them will be your best friends, your children, a lover, or your husband. There are so many places for you to have a richness of love in your life and the people in your past are not the only conduit to that.
It’s important to have a wider, more expansive view of what life has to offer you and what you are willing to consider as possible.
The forwardness of it all is the solution. When we are trying to heal from something massive and deep, we ask a lot of questions that (in the words of Brene Brown) are in an attempt to control and predict. As humans, we don’t like uncertainty and pain.
Focus on Healing, Not Thinking About Healing
When women find themselves Googling, “What are the stages of healing?” or “How long is healing going to take?” I want you to know a couple of things: Those questions are holding women back because they’re focused on not being over the divorce and how uncomfortable you feel.
I want you to throw those questions out and start asking yourself, “How can I fall more in love with the process of healing and of transforming?” or “How can I focus more on what my mind and body are trying to communicate to me?” and “What do I need to shift in how I’m healing?”
I would rather you focus on how you can fall in love with the process of transforming because it is the process of living.
Life is About Change
If you’re living with intention, you will constantly be transforming.
It can be intense and overwhelming right now because it’s a lot at once, but I want you to abandon trying to control and predict this process and start appreciating the magic that is coming through you. I want you to stop focusing on what is going wrong and start noticing what is working in your favor and finding joy.
Notice each time you feel resentful – whether it’s about him or his parents, something to do with the kids, the court, or anything.
I want you to turn that resentment into an appreciation for what it is molding you into.
I am not minimizing what you’re going through. However, this transformative journey is molding you into something so magical.
Can Focusing on Pain Make it Worse?
Sometimes, we women cross the line into a dark, heavy place. When you’re in this headspace, hear me calling you over here from The Light because I know that you can’t get to where you want to go when you’re focused on the unbearableness of it.
I want women to switch their focus and find some appreciation for the transformation and the journey that they’re in.
How to Create My Future?
When you’re healing after divorce, I want you to get better at defining what you want your future to look like – rather than being upset about the past that you’re losing. Your therapists, coaches, and your healing guides will offer you opportunities to process that pain but I don’t want you to live there.
You can say, “I am on a journey, and I will find a way to love it a little bit more in my day-to-day life.”
Laugh More
Recently, I went to a Reiki session with my daughter, and one of the takeaways from the session was silly, but it helped me react differently when we were getting into a power struggle. It made us laugh rather than fight. People might think that some of my parenting tactics are ridiculous, and I might think that some of my parenting tactics are ridiculous, but guess what? It’s a form of healing that brings a smile to my face, and it makes me giggle more and creates rituals that please me. This makes the healing not hurt as much because it’s fun.
Throughout the healing process (especially with my kid) I have to focus for a few minutes on what isn’t working and what needs transformation. However, we women focus on it to let the emotion flow through and then find a solution.
To find appreciation for the divorce healing journey, you must play and find joy through the process.
How to Heal After Divorce from a Narcissist
A common conversation I have is about how to heal after divorce from a Narcissist. It’s a lot to cover, but if you have been in a relationship with a Narcissistically organized person (and that could be more than one person) just know that when we choose Narcissistic partners, we tend to have come from Narcissistic environments.
Find Yourself
Here is a very simplified version of how to Heal After Divorcing a Narcissist.
The transformational journey that you’re on is all about you finding your truth and your inner self: validating it, celebrating it, and honoring it.
When you have been in a relationship with a Narcissist, you’ve been so organized around somebody else’s reality that you have shoved down your thoughts, feelings, desires, urges impulses, and fascinations.
So much of healing is about tapping into your own inner guidance and wisdom. How do you do that? When women feel joy, they are tapped in.
Feeling present and gleeful and inspired or clear or motivated will help you find yourself.
When you are feeling heavy, sad, angry, or confused, you are not tapping into your inner guidance. So I want you to notice when you have moments of clarity, moments of ambition or inspiration, when that dance party hits, when you catch that spark – that is your inner guidance and the truth of who you are rising to the surface. So when that surfaces, I want you to run with it as long as that wave will carry you.
You have the truth inside of you. You have everything inside of you.
Start Journaling
When you think you might be tapped into your true self, write it down.
I would love for you to have little books of inner truth and knowledge. Maybe you’re afraid to say these thoughts out loud, share them in therapy, or tell a friend because it’s still too fresh and it feels too wobbly. Whatever the circumstances, I would love for you to have a place where you can write these feelings down, as by doing this, you are honoring the voice from where they come.
You don’t do anything with them, just write them down in their little booklet, and then you can always come back and say to yourself, “I did know,” which will be such a rewarding and valuable process.
It’s hard to know what the truth is when you’re healing trauma.
There’s a lot of inquiry and dialogue about how the process of divorce changes a woman, and so much of what we talk about centers on darkness or the suffering that came about or the betrayal, wrongs, and injustices.
With this mindset, many women are not celebrating the way that divorce changes and transforms you. Divorce won’t do this for all women, but it will for you because you’re here reading this, which tells me that you’re looking deeper and you want to know more.
You are coming through a process that is allowing you to shed layers that do not serve you and build layers that do.
Imagine for a moment, the person that is the most magnificent version of yourself, this is precisely where this journey is taking you.
How to Become the Best Version of Yourself
When you have finished reading this article, I want you to sit and think for a moment. Do you feel a bit of inspiration or confidence? Do you feel a bit of a spark? That is our guidance shining through. That is you recalibrating to your truth.
I’m here to remind you of the truth of who you are.
‘How To Heal After a Divorce’ is all about falling in love with yourself and then the rest just clicks into place.
You’re on your way to that but you cannot get bogged down in thinking, “I don’t see results,” because that will knock you out of the game. Stick with the process, trust the process, and know that all of a sudden, you will be there.
Belief in Yourself and Your Ability to Heal
You have to believe in yourself and be patient. If you feel as though you aren’t seeing results, you’re focusing too much on the problem and generating too much of your pain rather than believing in yourself and moving forward. You’re here to do amazing things and you are magnificent.
Know that you’re on your way to the fulfillment of that magnificence and that it’s not all or nothing, and that it doesn’t happen all at once. It happens in stages.
Switch your focus from asking how to heal after divorce to stepping into your magnificence. What if we even stopped calling it ‘Healing from Divorce’? What if we called it something else? What if we call it ‘Becoming More of Myself’?
You’ve got this.
