What will life be like after Divorce?
This is the most common question I get asked by mothers and wives who call for coaching. What will my own life look like? What will life look like for my kids? How often will they see their dad? How often will I see my own children? What will the relationships look and feel like?
I don’t sugarcoat it for them. It’s rough. Personally speaking its one hell of an adjustment for everyone involved. No one is spared in this uprooting of marriage and family life once hoped for and invested in. Mine was an extreme case but unfortunately not as rare as I would have hoped for other womens sake. Even if you have an amicable divorce it still a monumental change in your life. The guilt, the kids’ new reality and lives, switching back and forth, the children not having the parent they want in the moment, dreams and future plans shattered, psychological issues for both adults and children alike and the loneliness. Oh the loneliness. Not being able to confer and reflect with a partner at the end of the day about your child’s progress (or lack thereof) and their medical, mental and emotional needs. The actual silence and grief on your free days feels suffocating. Planning when to throw out the garbage because you can’t leave the kids alone, no extra pair of hands to help in the exact moment you need, no hive mind about how to problem solve issues.
Unfortunately, these examples are only the tip of the iceberg. I like to remind family, married friends and single friends that new issues arise weekly, monthly and yearly. Just because you are divorced doesn’t mean it’s over.
But as I come to the end of painting this gloomy picture to these women and mothers, I get to the high priced benefits. Soon, after you find the time to throw out the garbage, you’ll need to fill those silences. And this is the time you can start to GLOW. This is the time to start rebuilding yourself from the ground up. You get to rediscover what your hobbies are, make new divorced friends who will understand your circumstances, rediscover your sex life, rediscover your new tastes in men or women or both. You get to have a LIFE! And you get to curate it exactly how you like it. So just like in marriage when it was hard, divorce will be too but this time you’ll get to GLOW.