Ep #32: Feeling Independent After Divorce | Becoming You Again Podcast
When a woman gets divorced there's often an initial reaction of freedom and independence to live her own life, be her own person, do her own thing. But for many divorced women, actually being independent is scary. The thought of having to make all the decisions, fully step into the financial caretaker roll, handle all of the household, raise the kids and trust themselves that they can do it is frightening. They like the idea of independence but actually feeling independent after divorce without feeling stuck, uncertain and at times even helpless. In today's episode I'll be talking about how you can use your divorce as an opportunity to use this new independence to feel free, to feel capable, to feel connected to yourself, to build confidence. I teach you the steps to take including the importance of learning to make decisions and celebrating your wins. Divorce is hard and at times scary, but feeling independent doesn't have to be. Listen in to learn how to use feeling independent to your advantage after divorce and create an even better life than when you were married. What you'll learn in today's episode:
How to redefine your life after divorce that works in your favor.
The importance of making decisions and how you can start making decisions today to feel empowered as you move forward.
The key element of independence you've been leaving out and how to implement it now to build confidence, self love, and a strong independent character.
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List to the full episode:
If you want to feel independent without the fear or uncertainty that you can do life on your own after divorce, then I want you to schedule your free consult with me. Living independently after divorce is one of the BEST things that can happen to you. It's a feeling that will create confidence in every aspect of your life and will help you live a great life after divorce. (Not to mention your ex will look at you exuding your independence and won't believe his eyes.) Schedule your free consult by clicking here and let's get you started on that life.
Featured on this episode:
Interested in the Divorce Betrayal Transformation? Learn more here.
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.
Want to know first hand how Karin can help you with your specific problems and create an even better life than when you were married? Click here to schedule a free consult.
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Full Episode Transcript:
Welcome back to Becoming You Again. I’m your host Karin Nelson. I’m a certified divorce confidence coach and this is the podcast where I teach you how to reconnect with yourself, create emotional resiliency and live a truly independent life, so you can have an even better life than when you were married.
Hello my friends. Welcome back to another episode of Becoming You Again. I’m your host, Karin Nelson and if you don’t know already I am a divorce confidence coach and I work specifically with women who are struggling after divorce. I teach them how to be confident, how to create emotional resiliency, how to feel independent after their divorce and in this new life that is ahead of them.
How are you all doing today? I hope you’re having a beautiful day. The day that this episode comes out will be on the Fourth of July. And in America the day this episode drops is Independence Day. It’s the day that we as American’s celebrate our independence as a country. So hopefully if you’re in America you’re enjoying good food and fireworks or doing something fun. Because it’s independence day I wanted to talk about independence after divorce.
I know right now this idea of independence can feel a little out of reach for many of us. I don’t really want to get too political on here, but with the overturn of Roe by the Supreme Court a few weeks ago, many women are feeling like our rights, our independence, is being taken away and we are essentially being told that we don’t get to decide for ourselves what we do with our own bodies. When something like this happens it leaves many of us feeling stuck, or uncertain and even helpless in our lives. And I know there are women in this country who don’t feel much like celebrating independence for this country because they have these thoughts and feelings like it’s all being taken away.
This same idea shows up for women after divorce because for however many years they were married they forgot how to live independently. This totally happened to me when I was in my marriage. And so when the marriage ends, they feel stuck, they feel uncertain. They don’t trust themselves and they uncertain of what the future even holds and they can even get to this place where they feel helpless because they don’t know if they can make it on their own. They don’t know how to make decisions. They are scared of what might come. And celebrating themselves or celebrating that they are out of a bad relationship or that they have created some kind of freedom for themselves just doesn’t seem that great or something to celebrate.
The question that I want you to ask yourself right now is, how can I lean into the independence that I have now that I’m divorced?
When we go through challenging things in our lives we can look at all the hard stuff and wonder why is this all happening to me? Or we can look at it and think how can this be an opportunity for me to grow? And I know there are a million other ways that we can look at these situations, right, these challenges that we go through but often we think in these terms of black and white and so it does sometimes come down to why is this happening to me or how can this be an opportunity for me to grow?
And regarding independence after divorce I want you to know that now is your opportunity to use this independence to feel free, to feel capable, to feel connected to yourself. To use it to feel confident, to build confidence in who you are. You are in a space right now out of divorce and in this new beginning where you get to choose what you want your life to look like and you get to move toward that every single day.
The first thing I want you to do – that every woman who is divorced needs to do – is define what it means to be a divorced woman. You need to do this for yourself. And here’s the really great news. This definition of what it means to be a divorced woman can be whatever you want. You just get to make it up. Who do you want to be? How do you want to think about yourself? What do you want your life to look like? Take all the best things that you want and write it all down and that is your new definition of what it means to be a divorced woman. I’m not kidding you when I say, write it down. This can be like the outline of who you are moving toward. Of who you are becoming in your life. Hang it up. See it every day. Read it every day. Use that as your intention of the kind of person you are becoming. This is your first step toward feeling independent after divorce. Have a focus of the person that you want to be and start to become her as you live your life.
The next thing that I want you to do is start making decisions. This can really tricky for a lot of divorced women. I know for me personally it has been a challenge that I continue to work through and work on every single day, because when I was married I got into this habit of deferring all of my decisions to my partner. I adopted this story that my ideas, my opinions, and my decisions they just weren’t right. They weren’t good enough. He didn’t like them. He would often put the blame on me. Or at least I was telling myself that story. I don’t know if this happened every time and maybe it did and maybe it didn’t. What matters is, I came out of my divorce not being able to make decisions because I didn’t trust myself. I would never choose anything because I thought I would fail or other people might not like it and they might be unhappy with my choice and so I just wouldn’t make decisions. Because I had created this habit while I was married, this didn’t magically disappear when I got divorced. I still had a hard time making decisions and so this habit of not making decisions came right along with me after my divorce, right, because my brain came with me.
So making decisions and trusting yourself that you can and that you know what is best and right for you, it may not come easy but this is something that can be learned. I promise you that. This is what I had to do and it’s what I’m continuing to do and it’s what I continue to help my clients do and it’s what you are going to do too as well.
So today, we are going to start. You are going to make one decision. Now it can be big. It can be small. You get to choose, but decide on something today. And the only rule is that you pick and then you don’t change your mind. You pick and stick with it. This is going to be very uncomfortable for a lot of you. I want you to remember this, just because something is uncomfortable doesn’t mean that it’s wrong or that something has