If you are here with me you probably know that we always look for heart-centered solutions, ideas, and perspectives for your life. And today’s topic of divorce is no different. Whether you are a child, adult child, or divorcee all of these words are meant to help you get back to your heart and inner alignment.
You should know that while I have only been married once and have never divorced myself, I have been part of 5 paternal divorces and witnessed from the sidelines 4 sibling divorces. That doesn’t count all of the divorces that I have supported my friends and clients through. I have been around the block with divorce so many times it’s almost impossible to count. Some have been the foulest, knock down drag out experience, some were so bad that intervention by authorities could have been and maybe should have been involved. Others were more mild and transactional in their reverberation through people’s lives.
Here is the thing about divorce, the nagging details gets lodged like thorns within the person’s story. Ideas about love get taken hostage by the scars left behind. The echoes of everything that went wrong become the loudest voice in your head.
There is something valuable that I have witnessed in all of those divorces that I want to share with you. Whether you are a child, adult child, or divorcee you will take it with you until you use it to help you. Yes, I said, “use it to help you.” Again I have been through this myself 5 times and I stand before you saying you have the power to use it to help you.
If you are in the middle of it all now and the information and wounding feels fresh or you are reliving the patterns of something that happened a long time ago, I want you to know that you absolutely hold the power to use it to help you.
I may say some uncomfortable things that push against the way of thinking that you have used to survive your circumstances. So let me lay the groundwork by saying that no matter where you are in your story, you are valuable, worthy, and significant just as you are.
Here are some tips:
- Try not to suppress it or bypass where you are in it.
- Be brave enough to sand toe to toe with the things you are thinking and feeling.
- Understanding that you have the power to choose how it all impacts your story.
- If you need help to navigate your way through reach out in the comments
FOR CHILDREN & ADULT CHILDREN OF DIVORCE:
I want you to know that the breakdown of the marriage has nothing to do with you. Even if they told you it does, even if it feels like it does, it has absolutely nothing to do with you.
I also want you to know that you will carry the experience of it with you. It will get woven into the fabric of your belief system. The people who were your first teachers, your parental figures, are always teaching you with their actions. It is so valuable for you to understand this and not fight against it, but use it instead.
Your mind, if left in a state of survival will use its negative bias to focus and carry the wounding. It will create patters of thinking that hold you in an inevitable state of repetition. But I am here to tell you have the power to choose how you carry it and how it gets woven into your belief system.
* For the lucky few who have parents who are consciously uncoupling, your parents are probably working very had to help you decipher what is yours and what is theirs. The more conscious the people involved are the more heart-centered it will all be for you. You will still have to choose what you decide to believe about love and marriage and how it applies to your heart and story.
* For the ones who are still living at home and whose parents are ripping thought the security you once held around the ideas of home, love, and marriage your work will be a little bit more pointed. The tendency will be to survive in the same way that they are surviving. You might get caught up in picking sides and feel as if you are splintering off into appease both sides. You may hear things that feel like lies. You may be treated like a pawn in their game. You may feel emotionally overwhelms as they bully each other or as one gets bullied and the other one tries to survive.
I want to remind you that you have an inner guidance. You know what feels right and what feels wrong. You also have the power to choose how this all gets woven into your story. Yes you may have to survive this period of time, but you are not a victim of their choices unless you allow your mind and heart to run unchecked and on autopilot. You have the power to determine the inner dialog you take away from this chapter in your story. You can use this time to help you strengthen what you know to be true, your connection to that inner guidance, and your own consciousness. Their patterns do not have to become your patterns.
* For the ones who are adults when your parents separate, all of that is also true for you. This latter in life breakdown of your parents marriage may leave you questioning what was real and what wasn’t, but you too have the power. Your pattern of learning doesn’t stop when you become an adult so witnessing the breakdown of your parent’s marriage while your are an adult still has the power to shake you to your core.
But remember you have the power to choose what part it plays in your life. I want to remind you that you too have an inner guidance. You have the power to determine if you let this limit how you create love in your own life or if you use it to help you check in with yourself and get conscious about your belief system around love.
Here are some videos that I think will help you get to that place of conscious awareness:
- The Other Side Of Hate & How To Heal
- Emotional Tool: Point Of Reference
- What To Do When Other People’s Actions Lead To Self-Bulling
- What To Know When It Comes To Your Emotional Heart – (advanced information)
You are not alone in this. Reach out if you need help navigating or processing what is going on in your life.
FOR THE DIVORCEE:
If you are an adult going through a divorce I want you to know that it has everything to do with you. And that is really a good thing. Here is why. You have autonomy over your heart and story and if you can get curious enough to figure out how all of this filtered into your story, then you have the power to make sure it doesn’t happen in the same way again.
I know that it is a radically unpopular idea to say it has everything to do with you. It would be so much easier if we could successfully hold our point of reference on the other person and make it all about them.
The tendency is to want to blame and make someone at fault. It’s easy to categories into right and wrong, good and bad, but does it really get you anywhere? And maybe you are right; maybe there is someone at fault and someone who is bad. But again what good does that do for your story and your evolution? How does that help you settle out the details of what happened? Will that stop it from filtering into your life again?
Now if it is a matter of safety, physical and or emotional you have to first get yourself safe. But then as you work on healing from that experience the value will be in searching your own heart and focusing there, rather on the other person’s wrongness, because you will never have power there in their story, the power lies within your story.
Here is a reality that people don’t usually talk about. Focusing on their wrongness may help you feel validated, right, justified, and powerful. It may make you feel all the things you never felt in your marriage. But holding your focus on them so that you can feel those things only keeps you tied to them. It also keeps you tied to the old limitation that let them into your life in the first place.
This divorce is your chance to really get conscious and take your story back. To clean up the limiting beliefs that made it possible for you to be here. But you have to be brave enough to pull your focus off of them and their wrongness (trust me I see you and I get how truly wrong they are) and put it back on your own heart. It’s time for you to be willing to get curious about how your emotional heart works. It’s time for you to pay attention to the old patterns of thinking that have been running unchecked and determine what no longer servers your higher good. It’s time to heal the limiting beliefs that helped you to enter into this marriage that goes against what you believe today.
The dissolving of this marriage could be the worst and hardest things that ever happened to you, and the negative echoes can course through your mind for the rest of time. The dissolving of this marriage could also be the best and most liberating thing your heart has ever experienced, and you could build up your truest and most conscious inner voice you have had up until this point in your life.
The power lies in your heart, head, and being. You get to decide. There is no judgment here, no matter where you are on the journey. I will always advocate for you to keep returning to your heart and to keep become even more of who you truly are. So if you need help navigating any side of divorce I a comment away. You are not alone.
Here are some videos that I think will help you keep that focus on your own heart:
- The Other Side Of Hate & How To Heal
- Emotional Tool: Point Of Reference
- Emotional Tool: Volume and Information
- Emotional Tool: The Streak Kayak Principle
- What To Know When It Comes To Your Emotional Heart – (advanced information)
Ok, until next time know that I am here holding a place of love for you where you have the power to determine how love and marriage play out in your story.
