Alexandra NielDivorce Recovery Coach, ANiel International, LLC. · I help women who held it all together through divorce finally build a life that’s actually theirs | Thrive After Divorce

Post Divorce Grounding | Get to Shore, Sort the Pieces, Rebuild

23 Sept 2025 · 1 min

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In this brief dialogue, Speaker A uses a shipwreck metaphor to illustrate the process of recovering after a divorce. The metaphor describes feeling adrift, surrounded by broken pieces of one’s life, and emphasizes the first priority of getting to shore—establishing a safe, stable foundation. Once on solid ground, the speaker advises organizing the remaining usable “pieces,” planning how to rebuild one’s life, and focusing on emotional regulation and resiliency. The conversation also warns against returning to destabilizing interactions that could cause emotional “wobbliness” and further fragmentation, implying the importance of avoiding re‑engagement with the ex‑partner or toxic dynamics.

The metaphor that I often use is like you kind of have like a shipwreck, right?
Yeah.
So you're on sea and everything around you is like there's a suitcase, there's like a plank, everything broke down. So the first step would be get yourself on shore and organize, you know, what you still can use and how you want to rebuild your life to get on solid, safe ground, especially safe. And regulate it, learn about your emotions, build emotional resiliency. So because sometimes you have to go back to talk to him so you don't feel again, like all wobbly and blown, blown in million pieces again.
And you don't fall into one of the three in the drama triangle then.