In this personal, conversational talk, the speaker shares her experience of grieving a ten‑year marriage and frames divorce as the death of a relationship, an ideal, and a future that will never materialize. She outlines the five classic stages of grief—denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance—emphasizing that the process is non‑linear, with stages overlapping, repeating, or occurring simultaneously. For each stage she provides concrete examples from her own divorce (e.g., denial of the marriage ending, anger expressed through journaling versus destructive behaviors, bargaining through last‑minute counseling requests, depression manifesting as emotional eating, and acceptance rooted in recalling past independence). She then offers practical coping strategies: allowing space for fun and self‑care, seeking social support, engaging in therapy, and engaging in self‑reflection to understand one’s own contributions to the marriage’s breakdown. The overall message is that acknowledging and working through grief, rather than avoiding it, enables a healthier transition to a new life phase and opens the possibility of future love.
Chapters
I started grieving my marriage before I got divorced because I was the one who chose to leave, so I had the time to really process my emotions. Grieving a relationship, either because of a separation or of divorce, is pretty much like a death. You're grieving the death of a relationship. I grieved an ideal that would never come to pass, kids that I would never have, memories of what was, and visions of a future that would never become reality. Today I'm going to talk about 5 stages. So one thing to remember is that the process isn't linear. The grieving process takes you forward, you'll go backwards, you're going to take tangents, some of the stages are going to be happening all at the same time. It's a very intensive process, it is very emotional, but it is what's going to allow you to move forward and to look forward to the next phase of your life. And the first stage is denial, Really? Is it true? Could it be happening to me? Those, I'm sure, are the things that were going through my former husband's head when I told him that I wanted the divorce. And your behaviors are likely to reflect your thoughts. Maybe you keep going in the same routine hoping that it's not happening. Maybe you keep having the same conversations thinking that this isn't really true. For me, it was not wanting to come to terms with the fact that the next best course of action was ending our 10-year marriage. And when I said to myself, "I'm done," I felt sucker punched because I never thought that it would ever get to this point. Stage number 2 is anger. When something happens that we don't like, whether it's this situation or something else, we get angry because we're frightened, we're hurt, and anger is one way that we process our emotion. And there's nothing wrong with anger. Anger is part of the process, and you should allow yourself to feel it. But there are healthy expressions of anger and not so healthy expressions of anger. Healthy expressions of anger might look like journaling, exercising, talking to somebody about the feelings that you're going through. Unhealthy expressions of anger could be throwing dishes around, drinking, substance abuse, or even using your children as weapons. Number 3 is bargaining. I had asked my ex to go to marriage counseling for quite some time before I made the decision that I was done. His response was always, "We don't need it, we're fine, we'll make it through, we're good." And the first thing he said when I said that I wanted a divorce was, "Let's go to marriage counseling." By then it was too late. I had already made my decision. But bargaining is something that gives you hope that you can fix things and that you can repair the relationship. And maybe in some cases that is true, but if the decision has been made, it's very difficult to then go back and agree to bargain on any of those terms. And bargaining comes in when the other person is not ready to let go of the relationship. Stage 4 is depression. I dealt with my emotions the same way I deal, and I'm working on it, with a lot of negative emotions. I basically ate my way through my emotions, not particularly healthy. And depression can manifest in different ways. For me, it was eating. For you, it might be to cry and feel hopeless. So I cannot stress enough the importance of getting help at this stage in the game. You can get help at any stage in the game, but when that depression hits, when that sadness and those negative thoughts become all-consuming, getting help is the best thing that you can do because you want to be able to deal with all of these overwhelming emotions. And finally, number 5 is acceptance. This is the stage where you start to move forward. When we hold on to something that is not ours to have, like a broken relationship, we don't make room in our life for the things that are meant for us. But when we finally accept that it's over, we begin to understand that we're going to be okay no matter what. When I went through my divorce, I replayed all of the times that I traveled on my own, that I lived overseas, and that gave me strength. That gave me the fortitude to know that, you know what, I did it before, I can do it again. So what are some situations where you were on your own and you thrived and you succeeded? Can you bring some of those feelings in? Start to think about, you know what, I can do this. I've done it before. There's no reason why I couldn't do it again. So I want to share a couple of coping strategies that hopefully can help you. Burying yourself into work isn't necessarily a good coping strategy. It might work in the short term because it helps to not think about what's going on, but it's not going to help you to deal with the emotions, which is at the root of what you need to do in order to grieve and in order to move beyond your divorce. So Give yourself some space to have fun and to explore. Take some time for you, whether it's spending more time with friends, getting mani-pedis, getting massages, whatever the case may be. Give yourself some of the attention that maybe you directed towards your partner when you were married. Cry it out. Put on music that you know is going to make you feel like just you can't hold back the tears because you need to let that stuff go. Talk it out. Find some friends, family members that you can really talk to. Find a therapist if you have to so that you can process your emotions more effectively. And the last one, which was a game changer for me, was learn more about yourself. Try to figure out what went wrong. Try to figure out what you might have done that contributed to the demise of your marriage because it's a two-way street, right? It takes two to tango. It's not just him and it's not just you. It's a combination of what he had going on versus what you had going on. So not in terms of conflict, but in terms of whatever inner stories we tell ourselves and behaviors and actions that we took while we were in the marriage. So these are the things I wanted to share with you. I hope that you allow yourself and give yourself the space to grieve because the quicker and more effectively you go through that process, the sooner you invite your forever love.
