Divorce Grief

In divorce we make time for meeting with lawyers, filing papers, decision-making and strategy — and yet, we often bypass our need to grieve

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No one going through divorce needs to be reminded that this experience stirs the pot emotionally and can rock you to the core — tossing you up and down and all around.

But who has time for all of that messiness on top of everything else...let alone to grieve?

There’s a lot to do — figure out, negotiate and navigate during divorce. It’s why we push our feelings to the side — especially working mamas who are used to muscling their way through, attending to the needs of everyone else first and often bypassing their own.

But those feelings, wounds and needs don’t go anywhere — and definitely don’t like to be shoved aside. In fact, they’ll grow like weeds with voracious roots. And if ignored for too long, they may make a surprise visit at the most inopportune time.

This could be something like lashing out at your kids or a friend or your dry cleaner or lawyer. Regrettable words that need to be cleaned up and add another thing to your already filled plate.

I recently read the galley for my friend Kris Carr’s soon-to-be released book, I’m Not A Mourning Person. Kris is a New York Times best-selling author and wellness activist who knows a thing or two about grief. And while the book is about the loss of a loved one — in this case, her father — it occurred to me as I was reading it that many of the same feelings and experiences apply to divorce. And so do the principles for healing and nurturing yourself through it all.

I’m Not A Mourning Person by Kris Carr

Grief is a part of divorce — it is an ending.

Even if you initiated this process, even if you already see how you will benefit from this, even if you want it desperately — I still want you to be aware of your own grief. Why? So, you can identify it, heal it and release it — and walk away from your divorce a whole person.

We grieve the loss of dreams — what we had hoped our marriage would be when we walked down the wedding aisle, how we thought our ‘family unit’ would look like, how we would become loving and supportive partners and parents, etc. It comes in many flavors.

Yes, you must grieve to heal, mama.

Why do I bring this up?

Not because I expect you to take on another thing right now. Not because I even think you can recognize it all in the throes of this process, but because I want you to give yourself some grace — and permission to exhale, breathe, feel — and be human.

Yes, be human…what a concept!

It is also a time to allow yourself to sit in the duality of your emotions and recognize that it is a part of the process.

There is nothing wrong with you. Yes, you may be up one minute, down the next — at peace and then suddenly triggered.

This in-between space I’m talking about is not black or white / right or wrong — and neither are you. In Kris’ book she called this duality ‘the both/and place’.

The ‘both/and place’ is where we just allow ourselves to be and feel. It’s likely uncomfortable, but it within this in-between space of the wound and the scar that our healing emerges.

It’s OK to grieve something you want to let go of — in fact, it’s necessary.

—Kristen Noel, Certified Divorce Coach & Founder, Best Self Intuitive Divorce