7 Steps to Creating Your Best Life After Divorce
To quote some homespun wisdom, every cloud has a silver lining, right? Even maybe a golden lining. And if one door closes, then you will find other doors swinging open. If you are in the divorce zone, you can make a better life for yourself following that event. You can find golden linings and doors opening into new spaces, and good and exciting chapters to come. We know, it may be really hard for you to imagine that. But we’ve been where you are, and we’re in a whole other place now.
With a blend of courage, determination, and an open heart you can make a different yet wonderful life following the end of your marriage. Whether you planned your divorce or had it thrust upon you, there are ways to exceed your expectations of what is possible.
In this post, we look at 7 ways to create your best life after divorce. Because? Well, after all you’ve been through, you deserve it.
7 Steps to Creating Your Best Life After Divorce
Step 1: Tap into your resilience of spirit
You (and your kids) will have this quality naturally in spades and you can rely on it. It is the healthy ability to bounce back from the superficially “negative” nature of divorce. Any feelings of rejection, anger, bitterness, or loneliness—you know you can and will bounce back. You will heal. Look yourself in the eye and know you have what it takes to last the distance and rebuild.
Just consider what you’ve already been through.
Have faith, recognize your achievements, and give yourself credit.
Step 2: Look back and learn
Understand what your divorce recovery is all about. Consider deeply the main and perhaps various reasons for the divorce and see if you can learn from it/them. You can take these calm, honest pearls of wisdom into your friendships and perhaps, your next intimate relationship. There are many pressures on couples in this 21st-century post-COVID life. You are not 100% foolproof, nor were you a perfect spouse, and neither was your Ex. See if the reasons the marriage didn´t last were due to your own changing personal standards, or necessary personal development—or your Ex´s. If you feel you could improve in your relationships, forgive yourself, and then resolve to improve. Marriage is a 50–50 dynamic, so you can learn from what you brought to the table. You are refining and maturing over time, like a good bottle of wine.
Consider reading, “Do Women Regret Divorce?”
Step 3: Give your work or daily life a boost!
Being single means you no longer have to compromise on your work or how you find meaning in your days. There’s no need to consult someone else on big decisions unless you choose to do so. Enjoy the freedom to make choices that align with your goals and values. Shifting your attention to your career or how you spend your time can be so rewarding for your confidence and self-esteem. It’s also a way to meet like-minded people. You are your boss now, and your actual workplace boss, if you have one, will be happy for your newfound energy and headspace availability. Your colleagues (the ones you talk about personal matters to) can form a positive buffer zone too and have your back in your new single life.
Step 4: Rediscover your identity
You are no longer the wife, the missus, the woman joined emotionally, spiritually, and financially to the spouse.
Marriage is no longer playing a central role in your life.
You might have your kids with you, but you are you again! Like you were as a child, a teenager, a young adult, step into this new space with wonder. Explore who you are and what you want now. Be open to trying things out, visiting new places, and dressing differently. What friends do you like to see or reconnect with? What activities make you happy? Where do you like to hang out? It is much more about pleasing yourself now. Explore the life and don’t commit to any one thing or person right now, except you!
Stretch that muscle and challenge yourself by doing something new each day. Read “100 Must Do’s for the Newly Divorced Independent Woman.”
Step 5: Explore your femininity/sexuality
Following on from step 4, your life as a newly independent woman can include the enjoyment of exploring your sexuality and dating – if you choose. The knee-jerk “rebound” relationship is perhaps to be avoided, but just going out and getting to know yourself as a romantic being could help you recover what it is to live again. This may mean exploring same-sex relationships, polyamory, or no-love relationships at all. Let go of the “judge” inside you, and open up to what calls you. You get to call the shots on what intrigues or turns you on.
Check out “Finding Love After Divorce: 6 Women Tell Their Truths.”
Step 6: Work with someone who understands
Work with a professional if you have any painful or difficult thoughts that are preventing you from moving forward. A therapist can help you with strategies for rebuilding your new best life and dealing with feelings of grief, failure or guilt, anger or irritability, self-doubt and uncertainty, or symptoms of depression. If you have difficulty handling everyday life, or being a mom, or are not sleeping, eating properly, or are avoiding loved ones, or notice a drop in your performance at work reach out to a therapist, counselor, or coach who has experience supporting women in your situation.
Step 7: Find your tribe
You must take this: many people are not going to understand what you’ve been through, or what you are currently navigating as you recover from your divorce. They want you to partner up again, get married, or at least, cease complaining.
We say, stop wasting your time trying to explain to people how you are feeling and thinking, and instead start looking for women who are like you, women who have gone through a crisis and are seeking to rebuild in the most thoughtful authentic way.
Look for divorce support groups near you. But be careful, you want “divorce recovery” groups. You don’t want to go backward with others who are still in the decision-making stage or coping with the chaos of divorce. This will cause you to relieve your trauma and pain. You want support by stepping forward consciously and healthily. We find that’s best done when you feel normalized with other women who are similarly committed to learning from the past and moving into their most authentic future.
Read about our unusual divorce recovery group for women, Paloma’s Group, here.
You Can Find New Joy
Adjusting, adapting, and recovering from divorce is important work that requires a lot of psychic energy, and understanding that if you do the work, the pain will pass. Liken it to a necessary and daunting dental procedure—trust in the process of healing.
The good news is that there are countless stories of women like you. You need only start searching for them. We know one lady in such a predicament in her 70s—suddenly divorced by her husband after 40 years of marriage. With the help of her adult kids, she moved house and started a new life in a downtown condo. She joined the local gardening club and started working with teens to plant school ground gardens. Being connected with youth, cultivating herself as she cultivated the school gardens, and living in a new environment has helped her feel “younger than ever,” she says. She admits to dealing with the shock and pain, but “now feels energized and even at peace with her husband´s decision.”
“I never would have ended our marriage,” she told us. “But it was pretty empty, and I was bored. He knocked me overboard, but I not only learned to swim, I ended up swimming to a whole new place – and I love it!”
Your New Best Life Beckons
Nobody said rebuilding your life after divorce or a long-term relationship would be easy, but as you go about creating this new chapter that you love you´ll find that all those sweaty moments and tearful times had a purpose. They were open doors to you facing yourself. Yes, you may have a fresh set of responsibilities as a singleton and perhaps a single parent. But these go hand in hand with more freedom and the enjoyment of deeply connecting with you and who you are meant to be. Stay committed to you and your most authentic life. It’s been waiting for you.
NOTES
Sarah Newton-John, an Australian living in Galicia, Spain, and an editorial freethinker, you can connect with me here.
SAS women are those amazing ladies you meet who are entirely committed to rebuilding their lives after divorce—on their own terms. If you are a discerning, newly divorced and independent woman, you are invited to experience SAS firsthand and schedule your FREE, 15-minute, private consultation.
We’ll help you understand what your next, black and white steps are for walking into your BRAVE unknown.
*SAS continues to support same-sex and nonbinary marriage. In this article, however, we refer to your spouse as husband/he/him.
