What to Do with Divorce Despair

You will not get through divorce without despair.

Your despair will be unique to you and touch on topics that speak directly to your heart:

• Confusion around when the “moving on” part can really take root

• Fear over money or negotiations

• Lack of hope in the legal process to actually conclude

• Irritation over how often the sticky thoughts of divorce pop up in a day

• Disbelief around how long the dark emotions of divorce last

• Lingering resentment that divorce even had to happen

• Wonder over whether the future actually will work out or be better

• The inability of former partners to be empathetic in the divorce process and in the raising of kids

Understanding despair is important work in divorce. If you skip over it, you’ll cut off access to a really big teacher in your life. So let’s take a moment to develop a starter framework around despair.

Despair is a weed that grows best in one type of soil.

What's the soil? A truth we cannot integrate.

Despair flourishes when we cannot handle a particular truth or a collection of truths in our lives. 

 It can feel dismissible, but the call of despair is quite urgent. The weed killer of despair is to grieve our losses and examine the meaning of life going forward.

But how do we undertake a mission that big? Start small.

If you find despair is regularly popping up in your lifek, take five minutes today with these three exercises:

• Ask yourself: What is the truth of my life that I resist and cannot integrate right now? What is causing my despair?

• Now ask your despair a question: Despair, what do you want of me? Despair, what are you asking of me?

• Finish by completing the prompt: Today in an effort to learn from my despair and usher it out, I am willing to (insert action or mindset change) in response to this awareness.

Your answers may surprise you, upset you, or even kick up resistance. Listen to it all. This is a process, not a pill.

I work with people everyday to rework their relationship to despair. Hop on a call to hear more about what that looks like for you.