Ep #160: Finding Your Way Forward After Divorce: Healing, Hope & Co-Parenting with Clarity

Welcome to Co-Parenting with Confidence, a podcast for those courageous moms out there who want to move past the conflict and frustration of divorce and show up as the mom they truly want to be. My name's Mikki Gardner. I'm a certified life and conscious parenting coach with my own personal dose of co-parenting experience. Throughout my co-parenting journey, I have learned to become confident in who I am as a woman and a mother, and I'm here to help you do the same. If you're ready to learn what it takes to become a great co-parent and an amazing example to your children, we'll get ready and let's dive into today's episode.

Hello, friend, and welcome back to the podcast. I'm excited to be with you here again. And this topic, I don't know, it feels really relevant right now, and so I wanted to do an episode and really share from my heart with you about ways to find your way forward after divorce. And know this isn't going to be a podcast where I tell you you do step one, step two and step three and then magic. But what I wanted to do is sort of share an experience that I had recently, and I hope that it is helpful for you because with this podcast, what I most hope is that you find hope, that you find connection, that you can see yourself in the conversations that we have here together because you're not alone in this. And if there is one time in my life that I felt desperately alone, it was the end of my marriage and the beginning of the new next chapter where I was trying to navigate the intense pain, confusion, overwhelm, the emotional rollercoaster that comes from a marriage being destroyed, which is what I experienced.

And I had an experience recently, and that's what sort of prompted this, and I want to share it with you. And this is very vulnerable for me to put out there. There's hesitancy on my part. I'm always very careful about how I talk about my divorce and my way forward. I talk about it from my perspective. And here's the thing that I know is that there's always two sides to the story. And sometimes we remember things later differently, and that's where I wanted to come from today. But the reason that I say this is really vulnerable for me is because I'm really careful about what I share because I want my son's life to be his own journey, his own story, not about what happened between me and his father, not because of our failures in the marriage and not because of our successes either, right? But I always want him to have as clean a slate as possible. And at times I think I don't share that much because I'm trying to protect him. So that was, I guess a little caveat for me here.

Yeah, this was really an emotional week for me, and it all started when I was sitting in my lawyer's office because I'm redoing my will and all of my living will and all of my documents to make sure that they're updated because they haven't been updated since basically right after I got divorced. So as I was rereading my documents, I came to a part of it where I asked for the court or whomever was reading it if I had passed away to take into account my wishes and my intent. And I said in there that it was my intent that my son, if I'm gone be in the care and custody of my parents and not his father, and I'm going to just be really honest, I was blown away. I was shocked. I couldn't believe that I had put this in a legal document.

And it started me spiraling thinking, oh my gosh, what on, because it's not the way that I feel today. And I had to really stop and go back in time and remember, okay, what was going on? What was really happening? And what was really happening was I was probably, I'm not sure of the timing, but within six to 12 months of my marriage falling apart, I was in that time of really intense anger, fear, grief about everything that had happened. And I was in a trauma response because when my marriage ended, it ended because of actions that were taken where I didn't think that I knew the man that I was married to anymore. I suddenly was hit in the face with all of these things that I didn't see coming that I didn't know. And betrayal we've talked about before, any types of betrayal, whether it's financial, whether it's infidelity, whether it's whatever it is, these moments really knock you backwards.

Yes, because of what's happened, but also because you start to look around and go, what did I not see? What do I not know? And it puts us into this intense stress response, and we fight flight or freeze, and we're kind of living in that just response. And that's what I saw on paper, black and white in text saying that I could not trust this person and I didn't want him to be with my son, and I'm grateful that I am here today living and breathing and able to rewrite that document now that he's older. Because what I saw on there was someone who was really riding the emotional waves of trauma, of pain, of intense grief, of trying to figure out how the heck am I going to co-parent with this person that I don't even know who they are and I don't want to know?

And as I sort of sat there in the office that day after I reread this and had to take this in, I've been really thinking about it. And then to the other extreme last night, I'm sitting next to him, my son's father at a hockey game chatting, talking about what's going on in his life with his other son, talking about what's going on with our son and things going on in the future. And we have this relationship that is very amicable. And I can say that I have found a place to be able to be really grounded in the love that I have for him as my son's father. And we are able to navigate things. But that didn't happen right away. And that is where sometimes I think when we're talking about life and co-parenting and divorce and healing 10 years later, it is for me, we can really forget what it's like in those moments.

And that's what this moment in the lawyer's office took me back to was how do we navigate that intense emotional roller coaster? How do we understand the feelings that we're having? Because a lot of times it's completely normal to feel grief and anger and relief and fear in all of the things. And all of them happen sometimes in one day or in 10 minutes. I was just navigating a session with a client the other day who is in the midst of mediation, in the midst of trying to figure out all the details. And you know what it is, it's completely terrifying. It's terrifying because you don't know what's coming next. You're feeling all of the intensity. You're having to sit next to the person and talk it through, and there's just so much to unravel. And so I wanted to talk about really how do we start to find our way forward to find healing and hope and clarity and co-parenting, but especially in those early days, what can we do?

Because I'm looking at it 10 years back, and I got to be honest, I was like, wow, wow. I remember those moments. But for me to and put it into a legal document really showed me where I was emotionally. And I wish that I could tell you that a year later, boom, I was doing really well. For me, that wasn't the case. And I think I've shared this with you many times. It took me years living in anxiety, really intense anxiety and fear and over controlling and hypervigilance to a point that I had to really come to a point where I broke. And I thought the break was around the divorce, but it wasn't was later. And I write about that in my book. It really came when I saw the anxiety and the stress and what it was doing to my son. And that's a different podcast.

But I want to talk about sort of how do we find our way forward. And again, if you've been here, we have sort of the four steps, the four a's awareness, agency, aligned action and accountability that I talk about and that emotional roller coaster. Part of finding our way forward is just to be aware of or be able to acknowledge that we're on it because I know that's what I pushed past for so many years to just simply refuse to feel any emotion that I didn't want to feel. And until we're able to acknowledge the emotions, we can't do anything about them. When we stop fighting against them and start sort of witnessing them, acknowledging them, understanding them, and being able to start to see them, how they show up, what does it look like when we're in fight mode? What does it look like when we're in flight mode?

What does it look like when we're freezing? And then there's fawning putting in that people pleasing aspects. So there's all of these intricacies, and those are things that are happening within our nervous system that we have zero control over. Let me just say that again. We have zero control over if we go into fight or flight or freezer, fa, what we have control over is how we get ourselves out of that. But that only comes when we're sort of aware of what's going on and we're choosing differently. It looks like learning how to ride the emotional waves without letting them control our actions. And I think that's what I saw in the lawyer's office. And listen, I'm not criticizing myself. I'm not blaming myself. I'm not saying I shouldn't have done what I did. That's where I was, right? So we're not going to try to go back and rationalize it or explain it away, but in those moments when we're having really intense emotions, part of what we need to do is slow down and figure out what am I feeling in this moment, right?

Why am I feeling this? What's true here? And then what agency do I have, right? Agency is simply that fancy word for choice, what choices do I have? So it's understanding the emotion but then deciding what can you do about it? So I think one of the biggest things that we have to do in these moments is again, not try to change everything all at once, but really just starting to have some self-compassion to understand that we are in a really emotional time. We are really terrified. We don't know what's next. There's a lot of uncertainty. It's a new season, it's a new chapter, all of these things, and we don't have to figure it out right now. We don't. And understanding that some things that we feel really strongly about now, like me writing it in the will, it might not actually always be that way.

And when we can start to allow ourselves to be in a season and also understand that we might go into a different season, which we will, that starts to allow us to have some compassion, some grace, some space to know that it's not going to be this way forever, that things are going to change. And I think that's what I really wish that I had allowed someone into my life during that time to tell me, it's not always going to feel this way. It's not always going to be this scary. You're going to figure it out and move forward. I wish someone could have shown me a picture of my son's dad and I sitting together when he's 10 years down the road, 10 years older in a really good place. But in that moment, I couldn't see that, and I didn't know that we were going to get there, and I didn't know that I was going to be able to get there.

And so opening up compassion, opening up space and grace for us to move through this and to not have to have it all figured out right now is really important. And that's that awareness and that decision and that choice. But how do we move forward towards the stability? And this is where we have to start to move into that aligned action. What are the actions that are going to support me and where I want to go? And this is something that for me, took 4, 3, 4, I'm not sure of the timeframe years later down the road where I really started to stop trying so desperately to control everything around me. I would vacillate between anger and complacency. I would vacillate between deep sadness and completely ignoring it. Just I'm okay, I'm okay, I'm okay for so long. And I wasn't okay until I actually stopped trying to be okay and started to do the little things that helped me move forward.

And eventually I started to feel okay, but it took me letting go of needing to look okay and act okay to start to actually get there. And those are those little steps forward. When we are on the emotional rollercoaster, when we are really confused, what are some things that we can actually do to start feeling like we're grounded? If you're on that rollercoaster and you're feeling like you're being thrown all over, well, what can we do to actually slow the ride down or get off and sort of ground ourselves a little bit? Well, this is where the not so sexy stuff comes in, but it's those routines, those consistent routines that support us to have more stability and structure self-care. Again, not man petties, that's not what we're talking about, but how are you taking care of your mind, your body and your spirit? Therapy, coaching, really getting the help, but starting to put into a structure in your daily life of things that are going to help you move forward, finding those emotional anchors that really help support you.

And those anchors for me at this point in my life are my coach. I have a therapist, my friends, the women around me that are so integral to keeping me grounded, movement, yoga, moving my body meditation, having those routines and habits. These are the things that actually anchor me emotionally so that I'm not just being drug on that rollercoaster ride all the time, learning how to set boundaries, minimizing the unnecessary conflict. Listen, there's always going to be conflict, but then there's a lot of it that we don't need to engage in that we simply do. One thing I say with my clients all the time, and I have to remember is we are not obligated to attend every fight we're invited to. And if you think about the drama and the crap that comes along with co-parenting, sometimes the other person is inviting you or baiting you into a conflict, you don't have to go right?

And that's where we can learn to ground ourselves emotionally and minimize that by setting boundaries, by learning to say no, to recognizing that you're there for your children, not for the conflict. And really ultimately understanding what is the difference between me reacting to everything in my life and responding, right? We talk so much about responsibility on this podcast. Again, the ability to respond instead of reacting. And that is where I saw in black and white when I was rereading my will, I was in complete reaction, fear, stress, and reaction. And now I'm looking at it from a very different vantage point of where I'm responding differently, where I've taken the small actions over time that have allowed me to respond differently. And that's part of it doesn't happen overnight. And that's what I want you to hear this loud and clear is that the season that you might be in right now, in this moment, it's not going to last forever.

And it changes when you are able to anchor yourself, when you're able to ground yourself emotionally so that you can move forward by responding, not reacting, when we can get ourselves out of those stress responses and into more aligned action. Also, when we're able to do this a little bit more and more, it opens up this space for things to actually get better when we're so desperately clinging onto trying to make them better. We're not leaving room for what we don't know yet, not leaving room for growth, not leaving room for things to change, not leaving room for us to see things differently in a different perspective. And that's how time and distance can really help shift our perspective. But we have to leave room for that to happen because so many times we define our co-parent by their worst moments. And that's again what I saw on paper in black and white instead.

Now, what I'm looking back as is that neutrality of being able to look at it differently, to see things differently, to see us as different people, as different co-parents. Now, in this moment, when you're in it, when you're really trying to navigate those ups and downs, focusing on you and grounding yourself emotionally might feel like you're not doing anything, but you are because you're making room for healing to happen. You're making room for future co-parenting decisions that are going to make life smoother. And it's really allowing yourself the space to see possibilities beyond the pain that you're feeling right now beyond the reactiveness that you're feeling right now beyond sort of that grief and the intensity and all of the feelings that you're navigating. It's seen that there could be something else. You might not see it yet, but there is something. There may be something there.

And it's shifting our mindset to this isn't the end of everything. It's a beginning of something else. When we can start to see that, yes, the marriage has ended, but something new has started, what do I want that something new to be? Right? Do I want to keep dragging everything from the past with me or do I want something fresh? And it helps to just remind yourself, it's not going to be this way forever. This is a season that I'm in. Even if I can't see it yet, the season will change. And we can start to imagine what if the relationship could be different, or what if it could be peaceful? What if your co-parenting relationship could just be functional, efficient, neutral? Maybe we're not trying to get to hugs and like rainbows and daisies and unicorns, but what if we're just trying to move to neutral?

That space where you have the ability to respond versus react, and you may not be there yet, but just reminding yourself that it won't be this way forever. There is a way forward and letting go of the need to immediately change it or to have resolution in this moment and allow for things to unfold, progress is slow. And that's okay. What I just told you about in my own life, we're talking about what happens over 10 years, right? And I'm not saying it took all 10 years, but there's ebbs and there's flows. But allowing yourself to heal, allowing yourself to grow, allowing yourself to believe that the future will be different, and that it will not feel like this forever because it won't feel like this forever friend, I promise you. And you are stronger than you think. Your future and your children's future is open and wide and vast, and there is so much possibility.

And I want you to start being able to shift your mindset to, you might not be able to see it today, but when there are ways that you are focusing on, well, how could I get there? What is going on? What is a possibility that I can't even imagine yet? And allowing yourself a new beginning, allowing yourself to see things differently. But it starts with letting go of needing to have the answer right now. And part of that is that calming our nervous system, calming ourselves down, becoming more aware and reminding ourselves, it's not going to be this way forever. One day you'll look back and you'll be so grateful for yourself, for the decisions that you made that move you in the direction you want to go. For me, I had to decide what was I going to choose. Was I going to choose to stay in that place of reactivity, of fear, of anger?

I was in there a really long time, but there was a little knowing in me, right? My intuition, the divine, when I heard a voice say to me that I could choose what I wanted. And for me, the voice that I kept hearing is, your only job is to learn to love my ex-husband and his now wife. That was my job, because if I was able to do that, that benefited my son. So I had to choose love. I had to choose radical compassion. I had to choose my son over myself. I had to choose my son's best interest over my own in those moments. And that actually for me, that idea of could I someday get there felt impossible. It felt like it was never going to happen, but it started to direct me and shift all of my steps. It started to shift the way that I was thinking, the way that I was feeling, the way that I was acting into a direction that was different.

And that's where I wanted to start today, is finding your way forward begins with just opening up space for where do you want to go? And it might feel impossible or so far off, but if we start to become aware to make the choices, to take the choices that we have available to us and take the actions that get us in the direction we want to go over time where you end up, not where you are today, you end up in a different place. And that's where we can choose to find peace and calm and love and grace. And that's what I want for you. I hope me sharing this story was helpful. And I hope more than anything that it gives you some hope that whatever you are feeling wherever you're at today, I want you to know that it's not going to be like this forever, that you have so much more power than you think you do.

And I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that you can create an unbelievably beautiful future for you and your children. And it just takes allowing some space some time and having the grace to not know the answers right now, but to open up space for what could be next. Alright, I hope this is helpful. I will see you next time and sending you much love and many blessings.

Oh, and one more thing, the legal stuff. This podcast is solely intended for informational and educational purposes only. It is not intended to be a substitute for any medical advice. Please consult your physician or the qualified medical professional for personalized medical advice. Thanks for listening to Co-Parenting with Confidence. If you want more information or resources from this podcast, visit coparentingwithconfidence.com . I'll see you next week.