Moving on after divorce can feel overwhelming, but it’s also an opportunity to rebuild your life with intention and purpose. Letting go of the past and embracing a new chapter isn’t just about healing; it’s about consciously manifesting the life you truly want.
By focusing on three essential elements – building structure, processing, and manifesting – you can step into your power, let go of what no longer serves you, and create a future that aligns with your dreams.
This journey is about more than just moving on; it’s about reclaiming your strength and manifesting a life full of possibility after divorce.
From Fight or Flight Response to Stable Capacity
The first step? Building structure, which means stability, support, and accountability.
It’s going from disrupted crisis and chaos to taking action in the direction of stabilization and healing.
It’s moving out of fight or flight into a stable, working capacity.
You Can’t Heal While the Knife is Still Stuck in You
I heard this phrase once, “You can’t heal while the knife is still stuck in you.” To deal with the things that come at you every day without being completely underwater, we women have to get stabilized and in a working phase. And that means structure.
It is consistently taking good care of yourself and getting enough food, rest, and support.
Make sure that there are enough of the things you need to grow and thrive to heal when moving on.
Healing Takes Time
You need enough bandwidth to tackle healing when moving on. We can’t keep trying to play catch-up all the time; it’s not a feasible place to heal from. A lot of women feel that support is what they are lacking the most.
You can hire a nutritionist, a fitness coach, an exceptional healer or therapist, or a chiropractor, but you kind of can’t hire a support system or a friend group.
Seek Support
When you’re looking for support when moving on, it’s very common to lose friendships as a result of the divorce process. It’s very common to go through conflict in some of your friendships and with your family. I leaned heavily into Al Anon and I joined group therapy and went to all of these places to find support.
Cohesive Support is Hard
It can be really hard to go to a support group that’s not cohesive or doesn’t feel like it’s a safe place to heal.
Support groups are often a tricky business because you want there to be a sense of safety and stability.
And oftentimes people who are going through a crisis have pretty significant mental health issues. It’s hard.
Build Structure to Gain Stability
Accountability is also where people get stuck. You know, a lot of times we women have really good intentions but then we struggle with accountability and consistency – especially when you’re so tired, your energy and motivation are low, and you’re struggling with depression.
A lot of times what you need is some accountability to help keep you on track with building that consistency until it becomes more habitual and you’re a little bit out of that divorce ditch.
So, the first element is structure, stability, support, and accountability.
Process Unprocessed Pain
The second element is processing the unprocessed pain in both your recent history and your remote history. We have to process all the stuff that went on in your marriage as a part of the divorce process, and we women also have to unpack all the unprocessed stuff from your childhood, because they’re related.
When we women do the subconscious work, we can identify the negative beliefs that we have been carrying around.
If your subconscious mind is programmed to believe that you’re not worth it, you can’t trust people, you should have known better, you have to be perfect, you can’t be yourself, you will have built a life around those negative beliefs. Those beliefs, typically for most people, were adopted somewhere between birth and seven years of age.
Processing the unprocessed is a significant piece of moving on and creating a new life for yourself where you don’t repeat past mistakes.
Recognize the Difference Between Processing and Rehearsing
Very often, when people think they’re processing, they’re really just rehearsing or looping on their pain.
They’re not getting deep enough into the emotional spaces or the soma in the body to process the unprocessed stuff.
They end up repeating it or rehearsing it but not metabolizing the pain. Why does that happen? Why do people get hung up there? Well, we are very numb, distracted, dissociated, suppressed, repressed people.
We women are overworked. We are overstimulated. We have so many ways that we dissociate from our true lived experience.
Our thoughts are separate from our emotions, and we are out of practice in really dealing with the stockpiles of toxic emotions that live inside of us.
This is where I really see people get very stuck instead of moving on, and then they loop in places like regret, resentment, and a lack of empowerment.
Face Your Faith Struggles
Can you relate to that? You’ve had some good therapy, you’ve worked with some decent coaching, you are moving on, and you’ve taken a lot of steps, but you still feel heavy, sad, anxious, depressed, regretful, or doubtful.
If you struggle to have an embodied faith that life after divorce can be so much more magical than this, I want you to know that it’s not because it’s not possible for you. It’s because you haven’t gone deep enough into processing.
Use Healing Tools
Now, for me, some of those things were about the amount of dissociation that I experienced due to trauma. But also, the tools that we are commonly taught in therapy don’t go deep enough. This is why I am such a proponent of EMDR and homeopathy because they help you get unstuck.
Be Prepared for a Transformation
If you have a great therapist or a coach and you’re processing, and it feels like you are still not able to move on, just know that that’s because there are tools that go deeper than what we’ve been taught.
You do not have to accept a life of anxiety, depression, resentment, or regret.
It’s a matter of finding the right tool, dialing it in, and going deep enough.
Gain Clarity
Now, the third element of a happy post-divorce life is getting very, very clear about the life that you want for yourself in the near future. What do you want that to look like? Specifically? What do you want it to look like? From all the lived experience you have, you certainly know what you don’t want.
But do you know what you want?
Manifestation
Abraham Hicks once said, “Manifesting is the process of turning thoughts into things.” Everything we women experience in life – whether it’s a new job, a relationship, or something material – begins with a thought.
When that thought is fueled by desire, it sets the stage for manifestation. By acknowledging and refining your thoughts, you create a clear path to turn them into reality.
You hold the power to shape your life after divorce through your thoughts. Manifestation isn’t about controlling outcomes; it’s about releasing them. Trust that the universe and a Higher Power will always support you.
There are countless tools to help you move on and manifest the life you want – what’s important is to focus on them and embrace your power. You are incredibly powerful.
Choose to build yourself a beautiful future. You are so loved.
About Dawn Wiggins
Divorce Recovery Coach • Holistic Healer • Founder of Cocoon
Dawn Wiggins is a licensed marriage and family therapist who combines science and holistic healing to help women recover from divorce. Through EMDR, homeopathy, and compassionate guidance, she helps clients process pain and rediscover confidence. Dawn created Cocoon, a supportive divorce recovery community for healing and growth after divorce—because you don’t just deserve to heal, you deserve to thrive.
