Becoming You Again
Becoming You Again is the podcast for women who are going through divorce wanting help navigating grief, guilt, and the challenge of rediscovering who they are. Divorce Recovery Coach, Karin Nelson offers compassionate guidance, practical tools, and powerful mindset shifts to help you rebuild self-trust, reconnect with your intuition, and create emotional resilience. Each episode is a safe, supportive space that reminds you: divorce isn’t the end of your story; it’s the doorway to becoming the most authentic, confident version of yourself and creating the best of the rest of your life.
Becoming You Again
What to Remember When You’re Going Through Divorce (So You Can Heal & Move Forward)
Feeling the overwhelm of divorce? Here are nine essential practices that reduce all that unnecessary suffering and help you heal as you go through your divorce.
There are nine ways to lighten the emotional load of divorce without adding more pressure, from reclaiming capability and worth to grieving well, caring for your body, and making calmer decisions. You’ll learn tools, mindset shifts, and gentle reminders help you move forward with less overwhelm.
• remembering you are capable
• anchoring in your worth
• trusting that feelings pass and better days return
• allowing it to be hard
• grieve
• lean on support
• caring for your body
• processing emotions with mindfulness and somatic tools
• making intentional decisions
Divorce is hard, but let this episode teach you how to make it a little bit better and easier to handle with these emotional support tools.
Click here for the $29 Feel to Heal Guide
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This is Becoming You Again, the podcast where you learn how to handle your mental and emotional challenges that you face as you go through your divorce. This is episode number 236, and I am your host, Karin Nelson. Welcome to Becoming You Again, the podcast where you learn to step into your power as a woman in this world, where you learn to reconnect to your wholeness, your integrity, and bring into alignment your brain, your body, and your intuition after divorce. This is the podcast where you learn to trust yourself again and move forward toward a life that you truly want. You are listening to Becoming You Again, and I am your host, Karin Nelson. Welcome back to the podcast, my lovely, lovely ladies. As always, I'm so, so happy that you're here. How's everything going? Are you doing okay? Remember to drink water, remember to try and get some sleep, remember to move your body, even if it's just to dance to your favorite song for three minutes out of the day. Whatever it takes to support yourself in a small way is going to help your healing as you go through your divorce. And this podcast will probably help too, because you'll learn some things that maybe you weren't aware of that are going to help you make some changes, become more intentional, be a little more kind to yourself, and just trust that you can handle the things that are coming your way. You are strong, you are capable, even if you don't see it yet. All right, let's jump into this episode because I think it's gonna be really important, especially for those of you who are going through the actual divorce process. Like right now, you are in it. Like I work with clients who have been divorced for years. I work with clients who are going through their divorce right now. I work with clients who are at the very beginning stages, like haven't even told their partner yet that they're going through a divorce. And I work with women who all the way through the whole process and then they've signed the papers and we continue working together. So I've got like, I've seen it all, I've coached women through it all, and I myself have experienced a divorce. My divorce is now going, we're going on eight years out from my divorce. So I understand the process, I understand the healing that needs to happen, I understand the ways we need to support ourselves through the emotional baggage that comes along with divorce. Now, I may not be right in it with you at this moment, but that's okay. That gives me perspective that you might not have if you are in the divorce as we speak. And that can be really useful to you to be able to heal and move forward a little bit faster than perhaps if I was going through it right with you. All right. So today, these are some things that I want you to remember when you're going through your divorce so that you can heal and move forward. Because I think that these things are really going to help you lighten your load. You're going to feel a little less overwhelmed if you can just let these things sink in and apply some of them to what you're going through in your life. So I have nine things that I'm going to talk about today. Four of them, I at 100% wholeheartedly believe and know that these are the things that are going to help you feel a little bit better, feel a little bit lighter, feel a little less overwhelmed as you go through this process. And then five more things that like research and mental health experts are saying are very helpful as you're going through divorce. And I want to say, I've probably talked about all of these things too. I'm just putting them all in one episode today to give you like the most help that you can possibly find in one place. I truly believe that if you'll open up to accepting these things into your life, trying to implement the things that need to be implemented, it's going to feel a little bit easier as you go through your divorce. It's not going to take away all of the hurt and all of the pain and all of the like negative emotion that you might be feeling, but it will help lighten it. Remember, all of us have just like a level of pain that we're going to feel when we go through challenging hard things. But then we, as humans, like to go like to get real weird and add more suffering onto that amount of pain. These are the things that's going to help lighten that load. It's taking away that layer of suffering that we add onto our things, onto our challenges. All right. So here are the top four that I believe are so important for you to understand. Number one, you are capable. You are far more capable of handling bullshit and hard things and challenges than you ever give yourself credit for. Divorce is hard. Divorce at its base level, even if you have a good relationship with your soon-to-be ex, even if you get along, even if your kids are totally on board, even if everyone supporting you is like, yeah, we see it. This is a good decision, all of that, divorce is still hard. Right? And that's just like a baseline level. But it doesn't mean that you're not capable of handling all of the other things that come after divorce mental, emotional, physical, financial, etc. You are. You are so fucking capable. You are so fucking strong, and you do not give yourself credit. And the reason why I'm being so adamant and strong in my words here is because I was you. I did not believe that I was capable. And when I started to step into that, I could see it, which built belief in myself and trust in myself, which then created a cycle of more trust, more belief, more seeing my capabilities and understanding. I fucking got this. You fucking have this. Okay. You might have forgotten what it's like to be independent. And that's, I want, I want to say, that's probably not your fault. Like it's only been like 50 years since women could actually live independent of men, right? Women in the United States, it wasn't until like 1974 when we could even get a loan without having a male cosigner, get a credit card in our own name without having a man sign for us. Some banks would turn down women from having a bank account without a man's name on it. So it's not like we've been able to just live independently for our whole lives. No, this is like very new for many of us, and many women even forget that. And men forget that. Men, because they've never had to experience it, but women, we forget. We forget. And when we become a married woman who is tied to this other person, we often forget that we can do things financially independent of someone else. We can make decisions independent of someone else. We can have an identity that is independent of a partner or our children. We can handle our finances independent of someone else, right? Maybe somebody else handled a lot of those other parts. Maybe you weren't in charge of the finances. Maybe you didn't have a bank account that was your own, or maybe you didn't pay the bills. I don't know. I think most women actually are kind of in charge of the bills. I don't know very many women who aren't in charge of that. Maybe you didn't have your own bank account, though. Like I understand that. But I want you to know whatever the reason is, the truth is you are capable. You may not believe it now. You may not know how, you may have some things that you need to learn, but that's okay. I had a client who didn't really know or understand all of the financial aspects of her life. And so she got a financial planner to help her understand the nuance of that. Like you're capable, right? These are things that you can learn, these are things you can get better at. You just have to begin to step into that capability, trust yourself, and that happens decision by decision by decision, moment by moment. So you got this. So that's number one, you are capable. Number two, you are worthy. That worth is inherent, meaning you're born with it. And the thing is, is that everybody's born with it. Everybody's born worthy of being a human, worthy of living on this planet, worthy of existing. That is what worth is, is being worthy to be here. And divorce doesn't make you less worthy of that. Divorce doesn't take that worth away or mean you're less valuable in some way. It doesn't make you less lovable or less deserving of love or less deserving of care or joy or respect or any of that. There is a societal story. Maybe people you know are telling you this, that your worth depends on someone choosing you. Like we are kind of raised as women. It's our goal to get married because then we've been chosen and then we'll be worthy to dot dot dot, right? That stuff that story is a lie. Your worth is constant, it never changes. Whether you're married, divorced, picked, single, any of that has nothing to do with your worth. Number three, things are gonna get better. Period. Like I probably shouldn't even have to like explain that, but I'm going to. I promise you, things are going to get better. It's not always going to feel terrible if you're in the the part that feels terrible. It's not always gonna feel that way. I promise you. No one emotion or several emotions just sticks around forever. Emotions wax and wane. Even in the terrible, terrible stuff, the really challenging stuff where we feel sad and it seems like we feel sad all the time. Even in those moments, there's still glimmers of awe, of hope, of joy, of peace, of neutrality, of whatever. So I promise you, things will get better. You might not see it right now. It might seem impossible, but that's okay. That's okay. Things shift and move and evolve and grow. Life is not static. And brighter chapters are ahead. I promise you that. And number four, it's gonna be hard. Okay, that's the reality. Like I said, with number one, divorce is hard. It is. And that's okay. Because as my friend, she's not really my friend, but I like to think of her as a friend, Glenn and Doyle says. Uh we can do hard things. Hard doesn't mean that you're a failure. Hard doesn't mean that it's impossible. Hard doesn't mean that you're broken. Hard doesn't mean that you can't handle it. It just means that it's hard. Let those moments be hard. Let them be hard. Don't force yourself into telling yourself that you're fine before you are, because maybe it will take a little while for you to get to that place where you are fine. Let yourself feel what you're feeling, be where you're at. But also remember you are stronger and more capable than you think. And you can do hard. We can do hard things. If this is just a little plug for my my friend, Glenn Doyle's book, Untamed. If you haven't read that book, she talks about this concept a lot of like we can do hard things. And she talks about her divorce in this book, and it's a really great, like, divorce book that you should read if you haven't read it. Untamed. It's amazing. Okay. Now, here are five extra things where I've gathered them from articles, from export, from experts, things that are gonna help you figure out how to do this divorce thing that are gonna support your emotional aspect, but also your body and your future self. Okay. So let's talk about it. Number five, I want you to grieve. I want you to grieve your divorce. I want you to grieve your marriage. I want you to grieve what you thought your future was gonna look like. I want you to grieve believing that you were gonna have a companion into your old age, or believing that you were gonna be able to see your kids every single day, or believing that the dreams that you had, now they're you might have to shift what those dreams look like. I want you to grieve the daily routine that you maybe used to have, or the ident the identity that you had developed, and now you have to kind of bring it back home and go, who am I? I want you to grieve what your financial situation looked like. I want you to grieve what other people might be thinking of you, or whatever it is. Grief is different for every woman going through divorce, and that's okay, you're not doing it wrong. But giving yourself the space you need to feel that sadness and that anger and that relief and that confusion and all of it is an essential part of your divorce. It really is. So grieve it, allow it, feel it, be in it. That creates capacity for you to feel more. So be in it. Allow that grief to show up wherever it needs to show up. Okay, number six. Seek support, find support, lean into that support, right? This can look a lot of different ways when you're going through a divorce. Maybe it's a close friend or a family member that you feel really connected with and that you trust. Like for me, this was even before I went through my divorce, before I even told my husband that I found out that he was cheating on me. I didn't know what to do. I hadn't told anyone, but I needed to talk to someone. I didn't have a therapist. I didn't really feel like anybody close to me I could trust because they were all like so close to my husband, also. And I didn't want to put that burden on them as we're like st you know, still interacting and all the things. And I didn't know what my decision was going to be yet. And so, anyway, that's a long explanation for this reasoning. But I needed somebody to talk to. And I have a sister who lives in Alaska, as most of you know. If you listen to this podcast, I went and lived and stayed with her for two months last year. Um and so she she knows, she knows my husband, right? We've been, we had been married at this point for 20 years-ish. And um, but she didn't see him on a daily basis. She didn't interact with him on a daily basis or, you know, a weekly basis or whatever. And so I called her because I knew that I could talk to her. She would be like um disconnected enough from daily activities or even just like the community that we live in that I felt like I could talk to her and trust that she wouldn't tell anyone. But also she gave me that space that I needed to be able to just be supported, feel supported, feel heard, and feel loved in this moment where I didn't know even what I was feeling or thinking or what I was even gonna do. So find somebody like that if you have someone. And if you don't, listen, there are support groups at churches, there are community groups, there's therapists, there's coaches like me, there's Facebook groups, there's like there's all sorts of ways to feel supported and to lean into that support. If you need my help, I offer a free consult. Come talk to me. Even if you decide we're not gonna work together, you can at least have a half an hour of being able to speak and be heard and seen and comforted and feel supported. Okay. So if it's not me, find somebody else, but get that support that you need. It reminds you that you are not alone. It will show you perspectives that you maybe don't have or can't see in the moment because it's really hard to see other things when you just can't see outside of the bubble that you're in. And that's okay. I'm not saying you should, but it's okay to have people who can see it. And just to be heard and held can help so much. All right, number seven. Please, please, please take care of your physical health. Okay. When I was going through my divorce, I went on a walk every single day. I live in kind of like the bench of the mountains. So I didn't go on a hike every day, but I went on a walk. Like we've got a little bit of hills and just being outside in the fresh air. It's so, so helpful and important for you. And I'm not saying you have to do that. I have one client who really loves swimming. That is her thing. And she really leans into that. It gives her it makes her feel powerful and reconnected to herself. Whatever it is for you, take care of your physical health. Okay. Maybe that means prioritizing your sleep. Maybe that means eating food that that fills you up, that makes you feel strong and powerful. Maybe that means just drinking a lot of water. Maybe that means small movements, dancing, um, running, um, yoga. There, like there's so many, there's so many different things, right? And you might have one that you just absolutely love that fills you up, that makes you feel connected to yourself. Do that thing. Try and create a routine for these things to help you feel more supported, more anchored, and more taken care of as you go through your divorce. Okay, number eight. I want you to practice being with your emotions. And this includes mindfulness, like understanding the thoughts that are going on in your head and that they're not all true, but also like being able to regulate yourself through your emotions, processing through your emotions, not pushing them away, not running away from them, not distracting yourself from them. Because those emotions build up. If we don't process through them, they just continue to build up and then we feel really emotionally overwhelmed. And then we go down that rabbit hole in our brain of like, listen to this story, believe this story, which I don't, that is not helpful, right? We want to take away some of this emotional overwhelm. We don't want to believe everything that our brain feeds us because it's not all true. And the strong, challenging emotions are going to be present as we go through this divorce process. So ground yourself when you need to be present. Use a somatic practice when you need to be present, because in the present moment, that's where true healing happens. It doesn't happen in the past, it doesn't happen in the future, it doesn't happen in our brain when we're spinning in stories. It happens right now in this moment. So I have so many episodes of grounding practices and somatic practices that can help you. I have a whole guide on how to feel to heal. It's $29. This guide is literally everything you need to move through the pain of your divorce one step at a time. You get a guided audio training, you get a companion workbook, you get a 30-day feel-to-heal challenge workbook, you get coloring pages. Do you know how good it feels to use the artistic side of your brain and body to get out of that pain? It feels really good. You get an emotions wheel, you get a body and sensations chart, you get a processing journal, like you get so many things. But what that does, what this guide does, is it teaches you how to be with your emotions, how to sit with your emotions, how to process through them. Instead of just like trying to run away, trying to pretend like they're not there, trying to just get through it all by yourself, all on your own, without feeling all the things that you're feeling, because that can feel really overwhelming. But guess what? You don't have to do it alone. You can have help. You can regulate and feel and process through those emotions so that it doesn't feel so heavy and hard. You can learn to journal your feelings because writing and getting those thoughts and feelings out on paper can be so, so useful. Find a way to process through your emotions. It is a huge key to being able to move forward from your divorce. And then number nine, be intentional about your decision making. Be intentional about what it is that you want and who you want to be and who you are becoming. When you understand what it means to be intentional about creating that pause and making decisions in the pause, not letting your emotions be the driver, but creating that pause, regulating yourself as much as possible, and making decisions from your prefrontal cortex that are in the best interest of you and your future self, that is when you move toward the future that you want, toward that person that you are becoming. And that's truly what we want. So I want you to be real intentional about making your decisions as you go through your divorce. And I have podcast episodes on how to create that space so that you don't just react, react, react, but you're actually creating space to choose an intentional response, a response to anything, right? A response to what do I want to do in this situation? How do I want to respond to this email? How do I want to pick the lawyer that I'm going to pick? How do I want to choose where I'm going to live or the job that I'm going to have or how I'm going to support my kids through this, or like whatever? We have a million decisions, it seems like, to make as we're going through a divorce. And so often we are so stuck in our emotional overwhelm that we don't make decisions that are in our best interest for our future life and the life that we want to live, the life that we want to create, because we're just react, react, react, react, react from anger, from sadness, from hurt, from blame, from shame, from all of the things. So we want to create that space to be able to choose intentionally. Okay, what would be the best decision in this moment? What does that look like for me? So I have tons of episodes on how to do this. I'm not going to go into it right now, but that is number nine. Be intentional. Do not rush, do not react. Create that space and respond in the way that is best and right for you. All right, my friends, I hope that these things will help you. These are nine things that you're totally going back to number one, you're totally capable of doing. You're totally capable of implementing all nine of these. But even if you just do one, because nine might seem really, let's face it, it could seem really overwhelming, like this is just another thing I have to add to my to-do list. No, no. We are not doing that to ourselves, okay? We are not adding one more thing to your do to-do list. We are using these tools to support you. And if you can just do one, I promise you that is enough in the moment. Because what you're doing is enough. These are just going to help you feel like you got this more than you're feeling it now. And that's what I want for you is I want you to see your capabilities. I want you to see that you can do this. I want you to see how strong you are. I want you to see that you it's possible for you to get through this without feeling like your your life is going to hell in a handbasket, or however you're feeling. Because it's not. You're not. You got this. All right, my friends. I love you. Be kind to yourself today. Give yourself a little internal hug. Snuggle on the couch with your kids or your cat. Be loving to yourself, be compassionate to yourself as you go through this process. I love you. I'm here for you always. I will be back next week. Hi, friend. I'm so glad you're here and thanks for listening. I wanted to let you know that if you're wanting more, a way to make deeper, more lasting change, then working one-on-one with me as your coach may be exactly what you need. Together, we'll take everything you're learning in the podcast and implement it in your life with weekly coaching, real life practice, and practical guidance. To learn more about how to work with me one-on-one, go to Karin Nelsoncoaching.com. That's www.k-ar-in-n-l-s-o-n coaching.com. Thanks for listening. If this podcast agreed with you in any way, please take a minute to follow and give me a rating wherever you listen to podcasts. And for more details about how I can help you live an even better life than when you were married, make sure and check out the full show notes by clicking the link in the description.
