Ep 223: Healing from Divorce Without Shame

Grief is an inevitable part of divorce, but the shame and judgment that often accompany it? Those are completely optional. In this episode, I explore why so many of us pile unnecessary suffering onto our natural grief during divorce—whether it's shame about past behaviors, feeling we weren't "enough," or guilt about hurting others, especially our children. 

Drawing on the Buddhist story of the two arrows, I explain how when we layer shame and judgment onto grief, we actually block the very healing process we're trying to move through. The solution isn't to avoid grief, but to approach it with self-compassion instead of criticism. I share a practical three-step self-compassion practice that you can use whenever that mean inner voice starts berating you about your divorce.

This isn't about giving yourself a free pass—it's about creating the emotional safety needed to actually feel and process your grief without the additional burden of shame. As someone who's walked this path, I know firsthand how religion, family expectations, and our own perfectionism can make divorce feel not just painful but shameful. But I also know the liberation that comes when we drop that second arrow and simply allow ourselves to grieve with kindness.

Your healing doesn't require suffering—it requires feeling, with compassion, exactly as you are. Ready to get off the emotional rollercoaster of divorce? Download my free guide "What to Expect During Divorce" through the link in the show notes and start feeling more grounded today.

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're going through a divorce. It's hard, it's heavy. You're feeling that emotional rollercoaster every single day, seemingly constantly. So where do you turn for the support, the love, the tools, the education and the comfort that you're looking for as you go through one of the most challenging things you've ever been through? You turn to this podcast, becoming you Again, because this is the podcast where you are going to learn to heal and support yourself and reconnect to you as you go through your divorce and then beyond, moving into figuring out how to live the best of the rest of your life. This is Becoming you Again, episode number 223, and I am your host, karin Nelson. I'm so glad you're here. 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 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 ladies, I am always so happy to be here. Hope you're doing well.

Karin Nelson:1:29

We're going to jump right in today because when we go through a divorce, grief is a pretty common emotion, but what often comes along with grief is feeling a lot of shame and a lot of judgment about yourself, about your divorce, about your decisions and sometimes even about the grief that you're feeling. I'm going to talk about all of it today because I want to help you understand how to move through that divorce grief that you're going to feel without the shame and without the judgment. So if you're feeling divorce shame or if you're feeling divorce judgment, it could be coming from some behavior in your marriage that you're just not proud of or that you wish you had done differently. Maybe it's shame or judgment that is coming from believing that you just weren't enough, or judgment that is coming from believing that you just weren't enough. You should have tried harder, you should have tried more things. Maybe if you had been enough, he wouldn't have left you or you wouldn't have wanted to leave. Maybe it's coming from believing that, because you asked for the divorce, you're the cause of pain and suffering of other people, like especially your kids. Right, that's where a lot of mom divorce guilt and shame comes from. Or maybe you're putting that story on now. My extended family is feeling this.

Karin Nelson:2:58

In my religion that I was raised in, in the Mormon religion that's where a lot of my shame came from about my divorce was wondering what kind of a burden this was going to put on my parents, who are very strong believers of their Mormon religion, and at that point I had left the church. But it didn't mean that I didn't still feel shame, tied to that generational belief that I carried with me and that I continue to work to unwind. Or maybe it's coming from a deep seated belief that you are broken in some way or you are bad in some way and that you deserve to be judged or you should feel shameful for who you are or the decisions that you've made. Or maybe the shame and judgment is present for some other reason that I haven't mentioned. There's my kitty. You can hear my kitty in the background Say hi, that's Charlie.

Karin Nelson:3:51

But no matter the reason behind it, I want you to know that shame and self-judgment they are not necessary accompanying emotions to your grief to be able to work through your grief. You can feel and process through your divorce grief without feeling shame, without feeling judgment without bringing those emotions along for the ride. And I actually believe that by continuing to believe that you are not worthy, to believe that you did something wrong, to believe that you are broken, to believe that you are not enough, and continuing to like, bring that shame and that judgment on yourself for your past, is actually hindering you from fully being able to grieve your divorce in a way that is going to be healing for you. This shame and this judgment is actually, in my opinion, keeping you from being able to move through the grief and move forward in your life. Now, that's not to say that if you have made mistakes that you don't want to make moving forward, that you just give yourself a pass and just be like it's fine, I have nothing to learn from this, like no, of course we want to learn from our past mistakes right. But it doesn't mean that we have to continue to beat ourselves up and hate on ourselves for the decisions that we made in the past. We work on understanding the reasoning for making those decisions, what was behind it, what the needs were that we weren't having met for ourselves, and then we choose, moving forward, to intentionally make different choices. That's how we're able to move on without the shame and without the judgment. But I'm going to talk more in depth about how we do this, because that's not the only way right. That's just if we are judging ourselves or feeling shame over past decisions that we're not happy with, that we're not proud of, but what we really want to do is we want to be able to grieve, whatever. The grief is that we're feeling about our divorce without feeling like a piece of shit every time we grieve. So what is the answer, then? To being able to grieve, but doing it without the shame and without the judgment? The answer is to have compassion for yourself as you move through the divorce grieving process. Self-compassion is actually a way to lighten what you're feeling.

Karin Nelson:6:24

I've told this Buddhist story before on the podcast, but Buddha describes pain and suffering with the story of the two arrows, and this is just a very shortened version of this story. I have a much longer version of it in a different podcast. I probably should have looked that up, but I didn't look it up, so you'll just have to go. You'll just have to go listen to all of them If you want to find it. It's in there somewhere, but I'll give you the shortened version.

Karin Nelson:6:51

It's basically you're getting hit by two arrows, right. The first arrow that strikes is the natural, normal emotional pain that accompanies challenges that we face. That is just a normal thing that we experience as humans. It's just that pain. Everybody's going to experience pain, no matter what right. The pain is normal, it's part of life. But then we get hit by a second arrow, and the second arrow in this story it's optional. The second arrow is you're. You got hit by the first arrow. You take that arrow out and then you watch the second arrow coming and you just stand there and you let it hit you in the exact same spot that the first arrow hit. The suffering is the second arrow.

Karin Nelson:7:32

Suffering is the added layer of unnecessary pain that we bring on ourselves and in this example that I'm talking about in this specific podcast, that first arrow is grief. It's normal. We are going to grieve different aspects of our marriage or our divorce, right? Maybe it's our life before the divorce. Maybe it's not being able to see our kids all the time anymore. Maybe it's what we thought our life was going to look like. There's all different aspects and you may feel some of those. You may feel all of those. You may feel only one or two or some other aspect, but that's the normal part of the pain that we're going to feel, that everybody's going to feel, and it totally makes sense to do that. However, the shame and the judgment and the pain we feel from those emotions, that is optional. That is optional. We are doing that to ourselves by telling ourselves a story or beating ourselves up over and over and over again, and that is the optional part. We do not have to do that.

Karin Nelson:8:39

So by opening yourself up to self-compassion, you're lightening the emotional load that you're carrying around with you as you go through your divorce, but you're also allowing yourself to sit with the discomfort of the grief without feeling overwhelmed or consumed by it. And what I really, really, really love about self-compassion is that you are offering yourself validation that, even when things are really hard or really challenging, that you are enough. You are enough exactly as you are. You can feel these emotions, you can handle this, you are resilient. These emotions will not be the end of you. This is one of the best ways to move through your grief and allow space to heal around the grief, with the grief, through the grief, and it's really important when it comes to divorce grief, because I want you to remember that grief is always a unique experience to you.

Karin Nelson:9:46

There's no one right way to grieve your divorce. When you open yourself up to that self-compassion during your divorce grieving process, you give yourself permission to grieve in your own way and at your own pace. You remind yourself that it's okay to be human and to feel emotions and to be messy about it, and you're still enough and you're still complete. And you're still whole and you're still worthy exactly as you are, even with the grief. This is what kindness does for us. It allows us to have permission to be fully accepting of who we are and how we grieve. So I'm going to give you a quick self-compassion practice that you can do for yourself as you're moving through your divorce grief.

Karin Nelson:10:43

And if you're really struggling with not only the divorce grief but like the whole emotional rollercoaster of all of it, and you are really just struggling from the day to day, your nervous system is completely heightened all the time. Anything that your ex does, anytime you have to meet up, anytime you have to drop the kids off, anytime you get a text, anytime somebody says something about being a divorce person, anytime you smell a smell like the cologne or whatever. Like whatever it is. Your emotions are heightened constantly and you don't know what to do with all of that. I have a guide for you. It's a free guide, which number one is amazing and number two it's called what to expect during divorce. It's going to help you expect more often when you're going to hit the emotional roller coaster, when those emotions are going to go haywire and you're going to be feeling a lot of pain a lot of the time. But it's also going to give you some specific tools to help support yourself so that you can start to feel better faster as you go through your divorce. You can step off that emotional rollercoaster much faster and get on solid ground. So if you want that, you can click the link in the description of this podcast or you can go to my website and find it. It's a. You just scroll to the bottom on that main page and there it is and it's free.

Karin Nelson:12:00

But in it I talk about self-compassion and how important that is, because it's one of the tools that you can use to support yourself, which is why I'm talking about it today in this podcast, because it's so important to your healing process and especially in being able to move through your grief and to let go of the shame and to let go of the judgment, because when you are compassionate with yourself, you're giving yourself grace, you're seeing yourself as a human who's going through something really hard, and that's where we want to be. We want to be coming from that perspective, from that lens, not the judging, shaking our finger at ourselves, saying you did all of this wrong, you're a bad person, you're a terrible human, you've made all the mistakes and if only you could have just been better, none of this would be happening. We don't want to come from that perspective because, number one, that's not true and number two, it's not helpful. To help you actually become in tune with, to help you actually become in tune with the underlying emotion, which is grief, to be able to move through it and heal from it, we need to be able to access it, and with shame and judgment layering on top, we can't even access it. So, to be able to set down the shame and set down the judgment and instead pick up kindness and compassion, I'm going to give you this practice to be able to help you do that, because you're deserving of it. You are. I don't know if you believe that yet, but you can take my belief and you can just keep using my belief until you build your own. Okay? So when that shameful, mean girl voice shows up in your head, I want you to take a beat Like. I just want you to pause for just a minute and I want you to take in a cleansing breath, let it out. I want you to validate what you're going through. Say something like this is hard and I am struggling, or this hurts and I am having a hard time. Just something very simple that validates what you're feeling, that validates what you're going through. Then I want you to normalize the way you're feeling, and you can do that by saying something like it's totally normal to feel this divorce grief. Many other women have felt this way too, or are feeling this way too. Or you could say something like it's very normal to feel this way. I am not the only person to be feeling like this.

Karin Nelson:14:51

And then here comes the other ultimate show of kindness and self-compassion. And I understand that this can be really difficult for people who have always been hard on themselves, who have always kind of come from that place of I got to beat myself up. It's the only way to achieve. It's how I was raised. I'm not supposed to like see myself in a compassionate way. I'm supposed to judge myself because that makes me better. We're trying to unwind those beliefs and that way of being because it's not useful and it's maybe worked up till now, but it's not helping in this moment. I can guarantee that.

Karin Nelson:15:28

So the ultimate show of kindness and self-compassion is by giving yourself a kind word, and I'm going to give you two sentences that I think, if you're really having a hard time with a self-compassion you'll be able to take on and it will help you. It will give yourself that grace that you need in these really challenging, difficult moments. So I want you to try them on when I give them to you and just keep practicing, keep using them in moments and see how much better you feel. So the first one is I see you and I'm here for you, just as I would be for someone that I love. I feel like I should. I need a mic drop after that sentence, because we might not be in a place where we love ourselves yet. Right, we're working on that and that's amazing. You should definitely be working on getting to that place, but we're not all there yet, right, and that's okay.

Karin Nelson:16:27

But by validating and being kind and saying it in this way, you are telling yourself I'm working on it, but I see you and I am here for you, just as I would be for someone that I love. Doesn't that feel so? Loving and giving to you? Okay, I love that sentence so so much. So please, if that one resonates with you, write it down and start using it.

Karin Nelson:16:56

But here's the other one. I'm here for myself, in the same way I'd be for my kids when they are struggling. I also love that one because I know that if you have kids and you're going through a divorce, every single one of you feels for your kids. You are questioning whether these, this decision that you've made, or this decision that has been put on you, is going to hurt your kids or ruin them in some way. I know I guarantee every single one of you has thought that or felt that, and I know that you all want to be there for your kids as they struggle. But you also have to be there for yourself, because you are the most important person in your relationship.

Karin Nelson:17:42

So say this to yourself I'm here for you in the same way I'd be for my kids when they are struggling. You deserve this kind of compassion and love and grace as you go through your divorce for you. So this practice it is going to be a way for you to give yourself permission. Giving yourself permission I have I think I have another podcast about this but giving yourself permission is like one of the best things you can do for yourself during your divorce. Give yourself permission to do all kinds of things that you never gave yourself permission to do before, but giving yourself permission to drop the shame and drop the judgment and feel the grief, instead of being stopped from feeling it when you feel the shame or you feel judged, that's going to be your best way through it. Just give yourself permission, because shame is telling you that you are doing it all wrong, that there's something wrong with you and that is just not true. So use this compassionate practice to help you move through the grief. Let go of the shame and let go of the judgment. All right, my friends, I hope that you find this helpful and I truly, truly hope that you will use these words, these sentences that I gave you to be able to let go of the shame, let go of the judgment and really step into self-compassion so that you can start to heal from your grief. It's the only way through. It is to feel it and heal it. All right, my friends, that is what I have for you today. I love you. Remember that. Okay, I will be back next week.

Karin Nelson:19:17

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 karinnelsoncoaching dot com. That's wwwkarinnelsoncoaching dot 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.