Ep 219: Reclaiming Your Future After Divorce

What happens when the future you've always planned for suddenly disappears? After divorce, many women find themselves trapped in a pit of despair, believing their chance at happiness vanished along with their marriage. But what if this challenging transition actually offers an unexpected gift – the freedom to design a future that truly resonates with who you are?

In this episode I’ll explore how society's prescribed notions of family, happiness, and success have shaped our expectations. Those perfect retirement scenes in medication commercials? The idyllic nuclear family portrayed in media? These aren't universal truths – they're social constructs that have evolved (and continue to evolve) throughout human history. You'll discover how challenging these inherited beliefs creates space for authentic growth and self-discovery.

 The episode offers practical guidance for creating a new vision that aligns with your values and current reality. Through targeted questions – about your guiding principles, bold dreams, and how you'll view this chapter in hindsight – you'll learn to craft a future outlook that serves and inspires you. Because if we're going to "make up" our futures anyway (as we all do), why not create visions that genuinely support who we are and who we're becoming?

To download your FREE GUIDE: "What to Expect When Divorcing: The Ultimate Guide to Dealing with the Emotional Rollercoaster of Divorce" click here. 

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Grief and trauma are the two biggest struggles women deal with as they go through their divorce. It's highly likely that you are experiencing both and don't even realize what you're feeling. I'm here to tell you that it's okay for you to grieve your marriage (even if it was shitty) and it's normal to be experiencing some kind of trauma (which is essentially a disconnection from yourself - your mind, body and soul). I can help guide you through the grief in all of the forms it shows up so you can heal. I can also teach you how to ground yourself in healing so you can ease through the trauma. Schedule your free consult by clicking here.

Featured on this episode:

1. Interested in the Divorce Betrayal Transformation? Learn more here.

2. Are you lost and confused about who you are after divorce? Don't worry. I've got 51 Ways to Get to Know Yourself Again. Click here to download.

3. Want to work first hand with Karin so you can stop worrying about what your life will be like after divorce, and instead begin making it amazing today? Click here to schedule a consult to find out more about working 1:1 with Karin as your coach.

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Full Episode Transcript:

You are listening to Becoming you Again. This is the podcast helping you heal from your divorce and deal with the mental and emotional challenges you face so that you can get on living the best of the rest of your life. This is Becoming you Again, episode number 219, 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. Good morning, good afternoon. Whenever you happen to be listening to this podcast, it's like mid-morning for me as I'm recording. So good morning, and today I am well. First of all, I'm glad you're here, as always. I love that you listen to my podcast. I love that it is helping you. I want it to feel like a giant hug, like I'm right there with you and I understand you, and I definitely get feedback from people when I talk with them that that is one of the effects of this podcast and I love hearing that so much. So thank you for continuing to trust me and come back. That's amazing.

Today, I want to talk about reclaiming your future outlook. During divorce, I've played around with a couple of different titles. That's one of them I've also kind of thought of like the future looks bright. Your future looks bright. I'm not sure which one I'll land on. It might even be something different, but this is basically the theme of today's podcast and I really want to emphasize how important it is for you to reclaim what your future looks like, Because studies have shown that if you go through with a future in mind that is full of hope, that is full of happiness, that is full of strong relationships or whatever kind of future looks good and looks bright to you, like it doesn't have to be those things right.

But this study by Ottinger and Mayer that was done in 2002 showed that people who envision their future increase their belief that it's actually possible to achieve those things that they're envisioning. And the study showed that those people have a better outcome for themselves when actually achieving what they've envisioned. And those people in that study weren't going through divorce specifically, they were just envisioning a future that they believed could be possible. But this is true for when you go through divorce too, because everything that we once thought our future was going to look like when we were married now might look different. We might be envisioning something totally different.

Right, and it might be bleak, this new vision. It might be like, well, now I'm just going to be alone for the rest of my life, or I'm never going to have those sitting on the porch drinking wine, watching the sunset with my partner, or whatever you envisioned your life to be right. It might, in your head at this point, feel so different, so unattainable, so impossible to have some kind of great future. And I am here to tell you and this study backs it up that that's not true. If you envision the kind of life that you want whether or not it includes a partner but you envision yourself acting in a specific way, living some kind of life that makes you feel full and happy and complete, those things are way more possible. If you can picture yourself living that kind of life, then if you just continue to picture yourself living the kind of life, that sounds terrible and unfulfilled and incomplete and sad.

And I want you to know, I understand envisioning a different future than what's going on in your head right now. That can be difficult and it's especially difficult when you're going through the divorce, like when you're in it. That can be really hard to see. I understand that because you have been so attached to that future that you already thought that you were promised or that you already thought you were going to have. You've been really attached to it right and you already kind of predicted what that future with this person was going to look like, what your family was going to look like, your family was going to look a certain way. You already had been fantasizing about those things and thinking about that and envisioning that for a long time, maybe even before you were married. You were envisioning that right long time, maybe even before you were married. You were envisioning that right.

And not only you envisioning that, but society has also helped you formulate a vision of what you thought your future would look like if you just checked off the boxes and did all the things that you're supposed to do right. You go to school, you get married, you get a job, you have kids, you buy a house, you raise the kids, you buy a bigger house, you get the things and you support and you raise and you love the kids, and then you save so that they can go to college and then you watch them launch into their amazing, beautiful, happy lives. And then it's you spending all of these amazing years, your golden years, together with your partner, and you're traveling and you're doing hobbies together and you're retiring and you're watching the sunset in each other's arms as you sit on the porch or are on a cruise somewhere. Right Like? Think of any movie about a life together as a family or any kind of like prescription medication commercial for old people. Right Like? Those are the ones that society uses to paint the picture of what your future should look like.

So I want you to know that I understand that letting go of the idea, that vision of what you thought your future was going to look like I understand it's a difficult thing and that it can be hard to do, but I also want you to know that even if things are difficult or things are hard or challenging, it doesn't mean that you shouldn't do them. It doesn't mean that it's impossible or it's not for you. No, when things feel challenging, when things feel hard, when things are difficult, that's where we have the opportunity to actually grow and actually learn things about ourselves when things are easy, when things are going smooth. When things are easy, when things are going smooth, when things are neutral and everything seems fine, most of us don't take the opportunity to create growth for ourselves or to create self-exploration. Doesn't mean that it's not possible. You totally can, at any time in your life, do those things, create growth, create self-exploration and some of do that, and some of us create amazing things in our lives, but most of us do not. Most of us wait until we're kind of forced into the situation to create growth, to create opportunity, to create self-exploration, to create self-attunement. We often find ourselves at that crossroads when things are difficult and challenging, and we can choose the growth. Some of us also choose not to grow and that's okay too. That's totally up to you. You never have to do anything that I am like offering to you if it doesn't feel right to you, and that is totally fine.

A lot of people will retreat into themselves and their pain and they will let the grief kind of take over their life of what their life was supposed to be. They will let it take over and a lot of women will allow themselves to be swallowed up in that pit of pain, that pit of sadness and anger and regret and guilt and shame. It could be that there's an unconscious belief that maybe we think we didn't actually deserve a future that looked bright, because things seem to always just go wrong in our lives. Right, I definitely know people who have that belief. Or maybe there's an unconscious belief that, no matter what you do, you're just never enough to make things good, to make things right, better, different, whatever. Or maybe there's some other thing that is kind of directing the way you're thinking right now.

But listen to me when I say this you do not have to give in to that pit of despair as you go through your divorce. If you don't want to, you do not have to. It's an option of despair as you go through your divorce. If you don't want to, you do not have to. It's an option and you might choose it sometimes and that's okay. Or you might've chosen it and now you're looking for a way out of that pit. You can choose it now. You can always change your mind, and this is something that I help my clients do Like when we're working one-on-one together and they might be in a space of only seeing the worst case scenario, or when they are in that pit of despair or that pit of disbelief or that like cloud of grief where they just can't see that anything might be better on the other side of it.

That's where I come in, right. I help them through that. I teach them tools and techniques to change their lens. I don't jump into the pit with them. I reach my hand down and say listen, let me help you out of that pit, let me show you something different. And we talk about it, and they can then envision something different. They can then realize that what their brain is offering them isn't the only option, and then they get to decide for themselves what they want to envision, how they want to feel, what steps they want to take next.

When you are in the pit of despair, it can feel really difficult to pull yourself out of it on your own. That is one of the reasons why we need community and we need interconnectedness. This is one of the reasons why I literally work with my clients is to help them and support them all along the way. You don't have to do it alone, my friend, if you want to know more about what it looks like to have me walk alongside you as your guide, or to teach you things or to just be there on your journey with you. You can schedule a free consult with me. You can click the link in the description to do that.

But I just want you to remember you don't have to do this alone, and I'm going to teach you a step to help you climb out of that feeling of despair or that pit of feeling like the things that you wanted, the things that you thought your life was going to the way you thought your life was going to be now you can't have that. If you're in that space, I'm going to teach you something that you can do to help support yourself right now, okay, and that is to start to envision and believe that a future that is nice, beautiful, bright, happy, full of strong, healthy relationships, or whatever it is that you wanted your future to look like. I just want you to start to envision and believe that that might be possible, because the reality is that whatever future you told yourself you would have when you were married, whatever predictions your brain was making based off of what you had seen or what you had been told, or what your parents had, or any of that. That future was never guaranteed. That vision that you had, that was all made up. It wasn't reality yet. It was an idea, and that, my friend, is exactly what I am inviting you to do now is to come up with an idea for a future that feels good and right to you. You're going to decide on a vision of what you think you might like your future to look like and then keep that in your mind's eye as you move forward, as you make decisions, as you live your life, as you move forward, as you make decisions, as you live your life. Because, in the same way that the old vision that you had was made up, if we're just going to make it up, we might as well make it up in a way that serves us, in a way that we'd like, in a way that supports where we're at and the reality of our situation right now, of our situation right now. Now, this is where you get to play around and you get to work on breaking down some old beliefs that you are maybe holding onto.

This patriarchal system that has been set up for us and that we live in tells us that the nuclear family man, woman, kids all together under one roof is the number one best way to have a family. And the thing is, is now that is not the reality of your life? Does it make you feel good or bad to think about how your family looks now, based off of that patriarchal ideal? Do you feel better or worse when you look at how your family looks now versus how it used to look? If you answered that you feel worse or that you feel bad when you think about your family as a divorced family, if you believe that your family is now fractured or ruined because of the divorce, then that is a good indicator that this idea of what family is might be a belief that you maybe want to let go of right. I can't answer that for you, but when something feels bad or off or makes us feel guilty or shameful, those are things that we now have the opportunity to take a deeper look at and decide consciously if we agree with them, if they fit with our integrity and our intuitive living.

Many of the ideas about family and marriage and adult life and how it's supposed to look weren't created by your brain. They were given to you on a platter by the social structure that we live in. You were born and because of the way you were raised or the family units that you saw around you or on TV or read about or heard about from the pulpit on Sunday or saw culturally around you, those ideas informed you on what was acceptable socially and not acceptable socially. But the truth is all of that is made up too. Somewhere down the line people decided oh well, this is kind of a way of living that seems to work, so we'll just keep perpetuating this and see what happens. But it was made up.

Think back to like caveman days. They weren't like okay, the woman is going to stay in the cave and she's going to stay home with the kids and she's going to raise the kids and teach them all the schooling. No, you know what was happening. Men and women were out hunting and gathering together. It wasn't just women were gatherers and men were hunters. Archaeologists recently have been finding burials with women with their bows and arrows from millennia ago. I don't know the years. I'm probably wrong about like how many years, but a long time ago. Of the years, I'm probably wrong about like how many years, but a long time ago. So to think that like one thing was one way, and it's always been that way is ridiculous.

The first humans weren't born or evolved immediately into marriage and kids and work and raise kids and buy a home and retire right. That was adopted over time as a way of life that seemed to work for a lot of people, but not for everyone. And as we grow and evolve as a society and we learn and evolve, we will continue to evolve and adopt new ideas and new ways of being and new ways of living and new ways of existing in this world. And you know what you are allowed to live in a way that suits you, and you are allowed to believe that it doesn't mean that you were doing life wrong or that there's something wrong with you, or that you're now ruined or fractured because it looks different. If women hadn't given themselves permission to believe that there was a future where they had a right to vote or they had a right to own property, or they had a way to buy a house without a man as a cosigner, then you know where we'd still be living. We'd still be living in a world where the norm was that white men held all the rights and the women and the marginalized were deemed less worthy and less acceptable and less valuable, and in some places in the world today, that is still the case. Right, we are still fighting that story, but it doesn't mean that, because we haven't achieved everything that we want for every woman or every marginalized person in this world, that we just give up the fight. No, we just keep envisioning what it is that we want and we keep moving toward that.

So here's an exercise that you can use to help you be more conscious about what you might want your future to look like. And as you do this exercise, here's the number one rule. What do I always say? Don't judge yourself right. Don't judge yourself that. This is just like too out there, or it's not realistic, or it's not rational. We're not doing that. Okay, we're not doing that. That we're not doing that. That is not the point of this exercise. Give yourself permission to make it up.

In the same way, your brain made up what you already thought your life was going to look like, but this time I want you to take into account the facts that are already present in your life, like the reality of what your life already looks like in this present moment. So, for example, family right now, for you might look like mom and kids in one house, dad and kids in another half the time. Right, that might be your reality. And so, whatever your reality looks like right now, take that and then envision what you want your future to look like. And I want you to take some time and I want you to write out a new vision for your future. Write out what you'd like it to look like and how you'd like to feel about it, and this is where you get to see that you don't have to feel bad thinking about what your future might look like. Like, maybe you were in that pit of despair and you were like, oh no, there's nothing great on the horizon. This is where I want you to have fun and just set that thought aside for a minute and think about ways that your future might actually look pretty amazing.

Okay, now ask yourself these three questions as you do this exercise, and then I want you to give yourself permission to answer them without judgment. No judgment zone, okay. So question number one what values or principles do you want to guide your decisions as you create your next chapter in life? Number two what's one bold dream for your future that excites you, even if it feels out of reach right now. And number three, how do you feel about yourself when you look back on this chapter of your life a decade from now? When you look back on this chapter of your life a decade from now? Okay, these are some fun questions, I think, and I think if you open yourself up to it, it can be pretty cool what you might envision for the future. So take some time to do this exercise.

You are allowed to have a bright looking future and you are allowed to believe that your life isn't ruined or fractured because of your divorce. I promise you. You are allowed to believe that. You are allowed to set down the old beliefs. All right, my friends, do this. Come tell me on Instagram or TikTok how you're doing.

That is it for today. 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 karinnelsoncoachingcom. That's wwwkarinnelsoncoachingcom. 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.