A woman shares five lessons from her divorce: knowing your triggers through shadow work, over-communicating instead of assuming, treating conflict as growth, not mothering your partner, and quarterly check-ins on finances and goals. She invites people rebuilding after breakups to her Facebook community, Brave New You.
What if I told you that my greatest pain and the most difficult chapter in my life also became my greatest teacher? I became the person I am today because I went through a divorce. And while the experience wasn't fun, it really molded me into the person that I am today. It was exactly what I needed to reconnect with myself, to rediscover who I was, and to start putting myself first and living life for me and nobody else. Going through that rediscovery helped to stretch me, it helped me to grow, it helped me to become the someone that I knew was hidden in there. And I learned 5 important lessons that I would like to share with you today. And the first one is: be more self-aware. Do your work, do your deep work, your shadow work as I'm sure you've heard it referred to. When we can address our triggers, we actually make better decisions because we make decisions based on rational thought instead of the emotional soup that we might be navigating. Today I know who I am. I know what I want. I know what I like. I know what I don't want. And I also understand what the things are that make me tick. I understand what my buttons are, and by understanding them, I can take them off the table so nobody can push them for me. Number 2: Learn to communicate effectively. If you've listened to some of my videos or read some of my blogs, you know I wasn't a good communicator. I used to keep things bottled up. I used to not say anything in the hopes that the problem would resolve itself. I also wasn't very good at setting boundaries, and if I did set boundaries, I wasn't really good at making sure that they were adhered to. And when the dam finally broke, it was a mess. I was all over the place. I was emotionally so challenged to be able to communicate in a way that I could express my thoughts and my feelings clearly that the message got lost and it only made him more resentful. Today, if I do anything, I probably over-communicate. I think things through, but I don't hesitate to share. I've also learned to ask questions and I make sure not to make any assumptions. Lesson number 3: Don't avoid conflict. I used to think conflict was a 4-letter word. In my house growing up, conflict meant a lot of yelling, and I knew that I didn't want to have that in my life. So instead of addressing conflict in a good way, I just didn't address conflict at all, because there was— if there was no conflict, there was no chance of yelling. And because I couldn't manage my feelings, I avoided it altogether. Today I look at conflict differently. Today conflict for me is a way to elevate the relationship. It's— it can be difficult discussions, but it's also a way that can bring us closer together. Because when we have a problem or when we need to discuss something, the idea is not to find a solution that works for me or that works for him. It's a solution that works for both of us. We really try to make it win-win for everyone. And we never raise our voices, we never yell, we never scream, we just talk. And taking that emotion out of it really makes a difference in terms of the level and the quality of decisions that we come to. Number 4: I am not his mother. He's got one of those. In my previous relationship, I, thinking that I was doing something good, I would do a lot. So I would take a lot of the ownership away from him because I thought that by doing that I was helping him. But what I found over time is that it was completely the opposite. I mothered him, I treated him like a child, which is not a happy situation for him, and it certainly wasn't a happy situation for me either. So today, while we support each other and while I support him, I also know where that line is. So if I see him struggling with something, I'll offer support, but I'm not taking that ownership away from him. I'm not taking that accountability and that responsibility away because he's got to find his way. And like I said, he has a mom. And number 5 is make sure that you're aligned. In my previous relationship, I thought we were aligned. I thought we were aligned on the big things, at least. Turns out we weren't. When I think about finances, he was a spender who lived his life on credit. I was somebody who had never had credit card debt until I met him. And that caused so much friction because we were just completely different people with completely different points of views when it came to finances. Today, it's a very different thing. On a quarterly basis, my honey and I go away for a few days. We make sure that we are aligned on our goals and make sure that we're aligned on what we want to accomplish, on how we want to show up for each other, and it makes life so much easier. So if you're just coming out of a divorce or a long-term relationship and you're looking for a supportive community, I invite you to join my Facebook group called Brave New You.
