Falling Through the Cracks

When you are juggling work, kids, lawyers and life...what’s your strategy for keeping it all together?

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Do you feel like you’re drowning?

Let’s face it, when we think of divorce, the first thing we focus is on is hiring an attorney or mediator...then maybe a financial advisor. And while that is prudent and often necessary, what about all the space in between? No one ever really talks about that.

What do I mean?

Well, while the lawyers and advisors may have your legal strategy covered, there you are left to your own devices, left navigating the feelings, the vulnerability, the unknown, what to tell your kids — and trying to keep it all together.

It’s overwhelming...24/7 overwhelming.

You wake up with it, carry it around all day, and are often kept awake in the middle of the night with your kids asleep down the hall.

It's a tremendous amount of new territory to navigate and your mind is spinning on overdrive to make sense of it all.

People rarely refer to self-care and mindset as strategy, instead they focus on hiring the best ‘team’. But the team can only accomplish so much, if you are coming undone.

The dissolution of any marriage with children brings along with it more decisions than you can imagine. It’s such a difficult time of planning, compromise and negotiation — and these decisions will have lasting impact upon all of you for years to come. It’s daunting.

There are few experiences in life that cast such a broad net and scoop up so much of you along with it.

How can you possibly be on your A-game with all of this going on at the same time?

How can you avoid falling through the cracks and making regrettable decisions for the wrong reasons?

How can you stop running on empty, a frazzled, worn-out mess?

How can you show up for yourself and your kids in a way that you can feel good about?

You can get strategic. You can realize that your feelings matter.

This is a big deal. Strategy isn’t about being in denial, it is about being grounded. How you get through divorce determines the condition you will be in on the other side of it all.

And I totally get how difficult it is to stop in the middle of all this chaos and take care of yourself. Us mamas are programmed to put our needs to the bottom of the laundry basket, but that won’t help anyone. There’s a new game in town.

I’m not asking you to sign up for any new classes, read any books, depart on a retreat, change your diet or join a gym (though please employ any and all if they feel right to you). I simply want you to start by acknowledging your worth and value.

You are worthy of nurturing.

You are worthy of being your Best Self. You are worthy of time out to calm your nervous system, get grounded, make intuitive decisions, to trust yourself — and to actually feel good while doing it.

You may have lost pieces and parts of yourself along the way in your marriage, but you are worthy of preventing yourself from falling through the cracks — and better yet, writing a glorious new chapter. You are, my dear!

—Kristen Noel, Certified Intuitive Divorce Coach | Editor-In-Chief, Best Self Magazine