My Divorce-Curious Story

Summary
In this episode of the Divorce Curious Show, host Lisa Mitchell shares her personal journey through divorce, discussing the emotional challenges and the process of navigating life after separation. She emphasizes the importance of education and support during this transition, addressing topics such as co-parenting, dating after divorce, and the need for a supportive community. Lisa invites listeners to share their stories and engage with the Divorce Curious community, aiming to create a space for open dialogue and healing.


Takeaways

• It's normal to feel alone during a divorce.
• Education is key to navigating the divorce process.
• Co-parenting requires support and understanding.
• Re-entering the dating scene can be challenging.
• You have the freedom to decide your next steps.
• Creating a supportive community is essential.
• It's okay to not have all the answers right away.
• Your feelings are valid and deserve to be expressed.
• Courageous decisions lead to personal growth.
• This podcast aims to be a resource for those in transition.

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Transcript

Lisa Mitchell: This is a Divorce Curious podcast. I'm your host, Lisa Mitchell. If you're here, your life and marriage might kind of suck right now, and I've been exactly where you are. At Divorce Curious, we're going to say the quiet parts out loud. We're going to sit in the anger, confusion, and disappointment that you're feeling and talk about what it looks like to go through the before, during, and after.

So I have to be honest with you. It feels a little weird to be back podcasting again. It's been a little while. So Bear with me. I'm happy to have you here at the divorce curious show. And I figured if I am going to ask for your time, then I probably should give you a little bit of perspective on why I'm doing this and why I'm doing this now.

So I wanted to share a little bit of my story and Um, just hopefully it makes you feel a little less alone and a little bit more in good company as you spend time here at the Divorce Curious show and with the community that we're building here. So I have kind of avoided for the most part really talking about my divorce curious journey and what that looked like.

And there's a couple of reasons for that. One of the primary reasons for that is I was really just trying to get my daughter grown to the age of 18 and kind of off to her next journey and we recently hit that milestone of her leaving for college and that has luckily freed up a little bit of space in the co parenting realm which is something we're going to spend a lot of time talking about here in future episodes but all of that to say is that now I have a little bit more freedom and a little bit more courage maybe to share some of my story.

So I'm not going to go into all the details of it. I, I'm going to share bits and pieces of my story as it relates to each topic in future episodes. But the, the long story short is I am now 14 years out from my divorce being final and about 16 years out from when I separated. From my now ex husband and when I think about where I was in the time leading up to that process to, I mean, finalizing a divorce is one thing, but making, making the decision to separate and to file for divorce and to take that journey at any point in your life.

I don't care if you have kids or don't have kids, if you've been married a long time or a long time, right? Like it doesn't matter when. In the cycle, you really find yourself in that place, but you know when you're there. And I'm guessing if you're listening to this now, you're probably there. When I put myself back in that space, like I remember, I remember it so, so, so clearly.

And there were like lots of other circumstances going on besides just my marriage and just my relationship. But I remember there was just one day in particular where I woke up and I just felt like I, I can't do this. Like I can't wake up every single day going forward feeling like I feel right now. And for me, that feeling was that I was very much alone.

There were a lot of difficult circumstances going on and not just only in our marriage, but in our business and in some of our other relationships that we had, it was just like a really. I call it like the perfect storm of suck. Like just nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing felt like it was going right. And at the top of the pile, the thing that broke my heart more than any other piece of everything that was a mess in my life was the fact that my.

Marriage was essentially over and that I was alone, except I was still feeling primarily responsible for almost everything, including having a very young child at home in the mix too. And so my biggest realization was that I had a couple of options. I could either. Keep waking up in the day that I was waking up in and hating my life and ending up either very candidly like killing myself because that was definitely an option that I had considered on multiple occasions or Really just blowing everything up and I am NOT one to be subtle Historically.

And so in, in spectacular fashion, I basically just imploded my whole life within a matter of a very short timeframe, everything from communicating that I intended to file for divorce, moving out of our marital home, moving several hours away from the community that we had put down roots in and had started our family in and closing a business, just All of it.

I was at that point of just complete anger and disappointment and frustration and just like almost a place of, of no hope. Like the only hope I had at that point, it had nothing to do with the current life I was in. The only hope that I had is that I would be able to, when the dust settled, And the suck was done or at least slightly more under control that I could see the light at the end of the tunnel to be cliche.

Like I could see that, okay, like Lisa, if you can endure the next steps, if you can endure whatever it's going to take to set up your life again, independently and outside of the married life that you've come to know. And has come to be routine if, if you can set it up again, and I had a pretty high level of confidence in myself that I would be able to, because I, I've always kind of been the person that can figure stuff out, even if I'm starting from zero.

But if I, I knew that if I could just, just, just, just make it through the next 24 hours and then the next 24 hours, and then the next 24 hours after that, that eventually I would be at a place. Where I was me, I was me, I was in charge of myself and my daughter and what our day to day experience looked like.

And it was going to be vastly, vastly different than, than the life I had known as a married person. But that didn't scare me. That was my hope. Like, that's what I knew. And for me, that That gave me the courage to like, just figure out the next best thing for me. And that meant educating myself, like educating myself before I made the decision that something, you know, we're going to spend a lot of time here at Divorce Curious really digging into is like, what do you need to think about before?

You're obviously here. You're obviously at the point where you're like, at least wondering, is divorce an option or what would it look like if I went the path of divorce? Or maybe you're a little further along and you're like, you know what? I've already decided, I've already decided divorce is my next play.

Now it's just a matter of figuring out what I don't know and getting connected to the resources and the tools and the perspectives that I need to get connected to and getting the right support system in place to be able to execute those next steps towards getting my divorce. Right? Like we're going to have tons of stuff here for you if that's where you're at too.

Because what we don't know scares us. And when you're in the place where, I mean, I have a, I have a lot of friends and a lot of colleagues I respect and a lot of people in my life that have been in a similar situation and everybody's kind of got their own, how we got here story or what the last straw is story.

But the one thing everybody has had in common is. You don't know how much there is to know until you start going through the process. And that's what I'm hoping that this show and the community at Divorce Curious is going to help just inform, provide resources, provide tools, point you in the right direction to get the answers that you need to get.

So if you are considering it, or if you have made the decision, please That you know what the next best step is for you. Because once you know, like you don't have to have the whole thing from A to Z figured out and mapped out and perfectly planned, but knowing what the next best step is for you can give you that courage, can give you that confidence to move forward in whatever way you need to move forward and feel a little bit better about the way that you're doing it.

So for me, it was really getting educated in the process and, and everything from you. What do my state guidelines for parenting time look like? And what is the average time it takes to file and complete a divorce proceeding? And what are some of the complications that can arise? Even if you are both in a space where you say it's what you want and you agree, just like any other transaction, time can kill, can kill all deals.

And, and the longer it takes and. The longer it requires you to work together or to be collaborative or to get the paperwork done, the more and more people are going to have an opinion and are going to have ideas and are going to try to have influence and things are going to get really, really complicated.

So we're going to talk through. What are the steps? What are the things you need to consider? How much time should you plan on it taking? Again, every situation, every circumstance is a little bit different in its level of complexity and level of cooperation, I guess we'll say. But getting answers to things like that for the during piece of it, right?

So we've talked about before How did we get here? What do we do now? How do we know what the right decision is? We're going to talk about during like, what are the logistics? Like, what do you need to be prepared for financially? What do you need to think about from a safety perspective? What do you need to have documentation wise to establish a new household somewhere?

If that's going to be something that you need to do, like all of those like logistic things, you know, is mediation an option or there's so much to consider and I'm

But that is part of the why behind. Me sitting behind this microphone and going to the effort to bring the divorce curious show to you and to people in the situation that I've been in and that you may find yourself in right now. So you are in the right place. And then we're going to talk a little bit about the after, the after of if you choose to stay in your marriage and you want to commit to Maybe undoing some unhealthy patterns that you've adopted, or maybe learning more about how to better communicate in a way that doesn't feel so confrontational, or doesn't immediately lead to conflict, or doesn't leave one of you feeling unseen or unheard.

And if your path was divorce, We're going to talk a little bit about what does that look like after, and everything from co parenting, if you have children involved, I, I will tell you as someone who raised their child from the age of three, I mean, still to today, she's almost 19, in a co parenting environment with varying degrees of collaboration and cooperation and conflict.

And all sorts of circumstances thrown in there. You need support. You need help. You need people that can walk that journey and share their stories and give you some tools and resources and just even things to think about of how you want that experience to look and feel regardless of who's on the other side of your equation, right?

Like the show is for you. This show is not for you to manage anybody else. This show is for you for you to get the answers that you need and the support that you need. That's what we're here for. We're going to talk about what the heck is it like to date again after being married and it. I don't care how long you were married before you got divorced.

Anytime you go from being in a committed relationship where you only have one person to focus on, and you know, if it was long enough ago, you met through friends or at work or out in the wild, getting back into dating after you divorce. And then dating other people who are probably also divorced, depending on your age, it is a whole new ballgame.

Like, so much so that back in the day, I had a podcast called Shiny Things that was all about my experience dating in the digital world as a recently, or not so recently, divorced. Formerly married person and who hadn't had to date in a while, who, who met my husband basically through working with one of his family members, like way back in the nineties, I was not prepared and I don't care how many Instagram accounts you follow or how many tick tocks you watch, or.

How many blogs you read or books you read about getting back out there, like it is not gonna feel like you think it is gonna feel. And that's not to say that it's terrible all the time. It's just to say that as someone who was formerly married, reentering the dating market, And the age of technology and apps and hookup culture and all the things going on right now when your target demographic is people who are also divorced and maybe not fully healed or maybe haven't given them the time, uh, given themselves a time between getting divorced.

Or, you know, hopefully they're not still married, but you run into some of that too, a lot of that actually, but from getting divorced to being ready to be in a healthy relationship again, if that's what you even want. You may find yourself, like, honestly, for me, on, on this side of it, having been kind of long term divorced, having a few, you know, longer term committed relationships in, in the last 14 years, and plenty of dates and casual dating and whatever, like, I really have just, like, pressed pause on dating, and that's okay, too.

This is a beautiful part. When you have the courage, and you have the bravery, and you re engineer your life, you get to decide. The beautiful part of after divorce is like, yes, there's the complications of possibly co parenting, or logistically moving, or dealing with judgment, or, or the impact of relationships, other than just, you know, who you were married to, right?

There's all sorts of complexities around in laws and friends and neighbors and everybody else who's going to have an opinion on your situation. But, but the beauty of, of like the reward, the reward for having the courage to endure the pain of change. is that then you get the freedom to decide what you want.

You get the freedom to decide what is next for me. What do I want to do differently with my time, with my energy, with my emotions, with my relationships? What do I want to do differently this time? that I either couldn't or didn't do when I was married. And you know what? If you don't know, that's okay too.

It's fine. The beautiful thing about making a decision is that it's not your last decision. It's just your next decision. And if you don't like it, you just make another one. You will find that through this process, like my, my promise to you through the process, through your divorce curious exploration is that whatever you decide is the next best step for you will make you a more courageous person and when you can make courageous decisions Where you are centering yourself and you are centering your happiness and you are centering your needs.

It's amazing how much happier you'll find yourself. So I'll keep filling in the blanks on my story, but I really want, I really want to hear your stories. Like I want to, I know what I want Divorce Curious to be. I know how much. I truly, truly, truly desire to be a resource and to just create this, the space in this community where we can just say the quiet parts out loud.

Like there is such freedom when you can just take your anger and take your frustration And take all of those things that like rattle around in your head that you feel like you can't say out loud or you're going to be judged or you're going to be gas lit or, or whatever your experience is. Like there's so much that most women that are in this space right now just don't have anywhere to say what they really need to say, or they don't have anywhere that They feel like they can express the anger or the frustration or the disbelief or the heartache or literally just disclose the fact that you just screamed as loud as you could in your car when you were driving home from work because you didn't have anything else to do to help you feel better.

This is a place for that. That's exactly why Divorce Curious exists. I'm really glad you're here. Thank you for entertaining a little bit of my story and a little bit of my history and a little bit of my perspective. You're going to hear a little bit more about it, but it's not about me. I'm going to bring you some really great stories from people who have been in the exact same place you're in.

I'm going to give you some great tools to even like pause a minute and help to figure out what it is you even really want. And hopefully you're going to get the opportunity to borrow a little bit of courage to really get honest with yourself and figure out what next best step makes sense for you. And just know like my sincere hope for you is through your time here that you are going to feel like you have somebody in your corner who's going to let you say what you need to say and feel the way you need to feel and is going to help you just get a little bit of you.

That's it. I'm going to shut up now, but my hope is, you know, it's worth the subscribing. It's worth listening. It's worth sharing. I want to earn the right to keep showing up for you and to keep creating space for you and you're going to have the opportunity to share your story, whether it's coming on as a guest on the podcast or submitting your situation, your questions, your scenarios, your thoughts, feelings, problems, what you need.

Through messages to me or emails to me and I'm going to try to help you find What you need to feel good about your next move. So like subscribe comment connect join the community become part of the divorce curious crew and We'll catch you on the next episode