Winning In Divorce

Custody, settlements and assets are obviously important...but winning is about so much more.

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You might think that ‘winning’ equates to getting the house, or the 401K, full custody of the kids or a fat financial settlement. Hey, I’m not diminishing the importance of any of those things but ‘winning’ in divorce is defined by so much more.

It’s about your freedom, it’s about healing and most of all, becoming.

When a coaching client once said that divorce is a spiritual journey, she wasn’t kidding!

It is a journey of transformation. For some it is about reclaiming lost pieces of themselves that got shoved away, long forgotten, sometimes for decades. For some it is being seen, heard, validated for the first time. And for others it is about coming alive again.

Material gains aside, we can’t ‘win’ unless we can consciously rebuild ourselves and our lives — unless we have a target to aspire to — unless we have a willingness to take steps to support this.

It isn’t winning to drain your bank accounts with legal fees, endlessly fighting back and forth.

It isn’t winning to lose your health and vitality in the process.

It isn’t winning to be up all night worrying about bills and the future — or losing yourself in a continuous fit of rage or slumping into a pile of despair.

It isn’t winning to witness your kids spiraling down.

The divorce train is pulling out of the station...are you going to let it become a trainwreck? Hell no.

Winning is having room to breathe. It’s about discovering what you want to lean into and what you want to leave behind — it’s about redesigning what comes next. And in the meantime, it’s about navigating it in the most grounded, heart-centered, intuitive, and strategic of ways. That’s not pie in the sky...it’s totally possible.

I witness this in motion every day with our coaching clients. While they have different stories and paths that led to here — they each share the emotions of fear, anger, grief, confusion, vulnerability and sadness. There is no magic pill to navigate this, but it is actually possible to experience this and use it to heal your way forward.

I want you to consider ‘winning’ through a new lens — one that takes a holistic approach.

Yes, I want you to be grounded, safe, stable and to take prudent legal and financial moves. But I also want you to navigate them with a new confidence that allows you to trust yourself to make decisions with calm and conviction — no kneejerk reactions, no making decisions for the wrong reasons, no seeking revenge, no regrets.

These aren’t just divorce skills...these are life skills.

Don’t beat yourself up if you haven’t been able to do this yet. Don’t berate yourself for not knowing what you don’t know, or any of the messes you might have made up until now. Instead, congratulate yourself for realizing that you want to navigate your divorce differently. Just being able to recognize that is a win in itself. Congrats mama!

Please take your wins where you can and give yourself credit where credit is due. It is a gamechanger in your perspective and life.

True winning is so much bigger than bank accounts and legal docs...it is about owning and activating your intuition — learning to trust yourself — and there is no greater prize than that.

And at the end of the day, only you can decide what ‘winning’ truly means to you. When you close your eyes, calm your nervous system, take in a big expansive slow breath — what do you see? More time laughing, more time being present with your kids, more time being unapologetically you? These are feelings not things. Yes, more of that please.

That is winning.

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