After divorce, a woman reclaimed her identity through solo dining, dancing, and adventure sports like skydiving. She shares a framework for rediscovering joy: check old journals for what made you happy, listen to what your body wants now, try new creative pursuits, and block self-care time on your calendar.
When I was married, my whole life revolved around our relationship and my former husband. I helped him to build a business, I followed him in his pursuit of his passions and his needs, and I forgot that I also had needs that needed to be fulfilled because I got so much joy out of making things happen for us and supporting him in his passions. So when I got divorced, I was like, Now what? What do I do? What are the things that I love? What are the things that excite me? I had to really reconnect with those things and bring those things back into my life because I wanted to bring more of those things that brought me joy, that made me feel excited. And there were really 3 things that ended up rising to the surface. The first thing was I love good food. Good food, good drinks, good company. I couldn't have the company, but I could have the good drinks and the good food. So I would take myself out on a weekly date, solo. I had certain restaurants that I liked going to. I would bring a book and I would go and sit either at the bar if I felt social or at a table if I wanted to be more of a low-key evening. I would get a drink and I would start to read my book as I was sipping my drink. Then the food would come. And there were some places where I went to so often that people remembered me. And so I was kind of like Norm, right, from Cheers, where I would walk in and people will recognize me. And it felt nice to be part of this little community. The other thing that I did after I got divorced, which I never partook when we were married, was actually dancing, right? Because he had two left feet and he didn't really care for it so much, but I loved it. So one of my lifesavers there was meetups. I ended up going to a lot of meetups where I knew dancing was going to be involved, and it was great because I got to do the thing that I loved, but I also got to spend time with other people who loved it as much as I did. And the last thing was that I realized that I craved adventure. I felt like the last few years had been so uninspiring that I wanted to bring something in that was gonna kind of like be a shot to the ticker. So I ended up going skydiving, I went hang gliding, I went ziplining. All of those things together brought my confidence to a level that it had never been before because I felt strong doing things that scared me. Because it's not easy to jump out of an airplane, even if you're strapped to somebody else and they're the ones kind of forcing you to go out the door. It was exciting and it's something that is probably one of the best memories that I have from after my divorce. So how can you rediscover the things that you love? If you're a journaler, that is a great way to do it. You can go back to past entries when you were younger, when you did the things that you love to do, and kind of make a list of these are the things that brought me joy, these are the things that got me excited, and maybe it's time to revisit some of those things. The other thing is learn to listen to your body. When you think about the list that you just made, right, from your journaling days or from what you remember, how does it feel in your body? Do you feel that pull and that excitement and that desire to go back and to do it again? Or do you feel like, hmm, maybe now is not the right time, or that was good then but it's not so good now? And you have a choice. You can either do it anyways to see if you really feel that way, or you can let it go. You are going to have so many other things that you can focus on that are going to bring you joy. You don't really need to focus on, unless you want to, the things that maybe don't feel quite as good as they used to. And then think about different things that maybe bring you joy. Are you creative, right? Do you like to play an instrument, draw, craft? Do you like to spend time in nature? Do more hiking? Do maybe some solo traveling to places that you've always wanted to go to that you didn't really have the opportunity to up until now? Do you love music? Did you stop going to concerts because it wasn't his thing? Do you want to do more of that? Do you want to play an instrument? Do you want to be able to walk around the house dancing because you have your favorite music on, and that brings you joy. Do you like cooking? That's something that I discovered after, um, after my divorce was I actually kind of like this whole cooking thing, and I've gotten so much better at it. But you know, it's a great opportunity for you to try new recipes and then invite friends over and share what you've created. Make it fun and get your pound of joy out of, out of that. And maybe you've been considering volunteering for the community, but you haven't really found the time to do it. Explore what are different volunteer organizations that might be able to help you to do that. And then the last thing, and probably the most important thing, is use your calendar as your weapon of mass excitement. When you prioritize yourself and your needs and you make sure that those times are blocked on your calendar and they're non-negotiable, that gives you a huge sense of power. I know it does for me. Some people think, oh my God, a calendar is going to make me feel restricted. But at the same time, it's all a mindset thing. A calendar can help you to feel much more free because you don't have to think about, ooh, I gotta make time. Or if somebody says, oh, let's go do something, this or that, if you plan it, you don't have to worry about having to make time for it and you can commit to yourself. And that's something that you have to relearn to do. At least I had to relearn to do after my divorce was committing to myself and doing the things I love. I hope you found this helpful. Let me know how you make out. I'd love to hear it.
