How to Get Through a Divorce and Heal: The Surprising X Factor of a Divorce Coach

The idea that a divorce coach could help you figure out how to get through a divorce and also heal might surprise you.

You’re may have heard of the more practical aspects of working with a divorce coach, because coaches are particularly known for helping you understand and navigate the black and white steps of divorce. Often, those steps – those logistical parts — are easier for people to understand.

They seem more obvious.

For example, a good divorce coach will help you understand what your criteria is for really deciding if you should divorce or what your options are when it comes to finding the right legal process for you and your family. The right process is paramount for achieving the best outcome, one that will allow all of you to not only survive the process in one piece but to move on and rebuild afterward.

How to get through a divorce: the nuts and bolts

After helping you understand the different ways to divorce, and which may be the right approach for you (mediation? litigation? traditional approach? DIY?), your coach will help you find the right lawyer or mediator to consult or work with if that seems appropriate. A key piece your coach will help you with is making sure you ask the right questions when you get in front of a legal professional — based on your story and its unique factors. You’ll appreciate having somewhere to go after speaking with a lawyer, too—as you begin the process of metabolizing what the lawyer actually said; and then, developing your strategy for moving forward.

When it comes to the financial aspects of the divorce itself and your life post-divorce, your divorce coach can play a vital role.

“It’s a sad fact that even today many women aren’t especially financially literate,” says Trisha, a divorced mother living in Madison, Wisconsin with her three young boys. “Some of us have allowed our spouses to control the money while we focus our attention elsewhere. When we’re on our own, it all becomes so overwhelming—like we’re starting back at square one.”

It’s because of this that your divorce coach will be invaluable in helping you understand the impact your divorce will have on your finances – and this is different from the legal process ending your marriage.

A divorce coach will support you in making smart financial decisions that take into account your specific situation and particularly, your goals. She’ll also introduce you to exceptionally qualified and reliable financial experts should you need their expertise – during the divorce when it comes to understanding your financial negotiations, and importantly, for building your life as an independent woman.

“Your divorce coach will help you figure out how to make all the moving pieces of your daily life work together—a new living situation, a job, health insurance, child care. Even car maintenance!” says Trisha.

In other words, throughout the confusing, frustrating, and frightening process of divorce one of the critical roles your divorce coach will fill for you is being your “thinking partner.” She will be there with you every step of the way to help ensure that you understand the nitty-gritty details of how to get through the divorce strategically, economically and healthily. Armed with the right knowledge, you can make the best decisions for your future.

But how to get through a divorce and heal? That is another proposal.

A divorce coach can help you more than you realize . . .

Your divorce coach can help you do so much more than deal with the practical nuts and bolts of how to get through a divorce. She’ll help you understand the journey you’re on and the kind of healing that must take place to really recover from your divorce  This path of healing and recovery is very, very different from the logistical, legal, or financial paths that you must also take.

Each step of your divorce journey will evoke powerful and unfamiliar emotions

These negative emotions are often volatile and messy—they live outside the tidy boxes of logistics and documents. And at times, these emotions make us feel ashamed, like they are not normal. We are not “normal.”

“There might be times you hardly recognize yourself,” says Rebecca, who runs her own photography business in Brooklyn, New York. “A divorce coach can help you understand the value of these emotion and teach you how to release or rehabilitate them in a positive, healthy way instead of lashing out at your ‘was-band’.”

Your divorce coach will help you discover who you want to be during and after divorce

She will gently remind you of who you are and what you really want when the overwhelming emotional realities come crashing down on you. She will be your life-line helping you hold steady and connected to your truth along the way so that you don’t drown or wallow in negativity.

“I was so freaking hurt,” said Millie, a Los Angeles woman who had been married for 32 years before her husband asked for a divorce, “that I couldn’t get over my own victimhood, my rage and my incredible sense of betrayal. I look back and I see I needed those emotions at the time, to get through it all, to feel like I had been wronged, that he was the villain. I didn’t know what being whole again would feel like. I didn’t know what constituted ‘being healed.’ Working with a coach made me realize so much about myself — that I had a powerful journey to complete, to feel restored, to move on! I am sure I saved time having an incredible guide. Hell, I may have saved my life.”

Forgiveness is another important part of the divorce journey. Unfortunately, forgiveness is also a very misunderstood act. Your divorce coach can help you realize what forgiveness really is. She can also help you decide who in your life deserves your forgiveness, so you can move on without being haunted by the past.

Experiencing and moving through grief is another part of the divorce healing journey

There are so many things to grieve when one chapter of your life ends—and it may not be grieving the absence of your Ex. Your coach can help you understand what grief is and how to identify and process each and every facet of its confusion. To free yourself from the grasp of what was and could have been, you must embrace a new future for your family and yourself.

One of the key components of healing from divorce is compassion. Ultimately, it’s what will allow you to rise above the strife of this huge life change. With that said, compassion is almost impossible to embrace on your own when you’re in the throes of turmoil.

Luckily, your coach knows the redemptive power of compassion. She will share her skills with you and teach you how to see your world with a compassionate perspective — starting with yourself. This skill will serve you again and again as you face other challenges in your future.

You cannot fully recover from divorce without compassion.

Because your coach will assist you in discovering who you want to be after your divorce is over, she’ll also help you identify the opportunities that are unfolding as a result of this huge life change. Sometimes those opportunities disguise themselves as problems. But with her guidance, your divorce coach will help you see what she sees as being possible for you.

For the right person, a divorce coach can be one of the best sources of complete support you can have as you figure out how to get through one of the biggest, if not the biggest challenge of your life. She is someone who not only understands all the legal, logistical, and financial aspects of the dissolution of a marriage but will compassionately help you embrace your emotions and heal as you invest in yourself so that, moving forward healthily and wholly, you blossom. You become who you are meant to be.

 

*We support same-sex marriages. For the sake of simplicity in this article, however, we refer to your spouse as your “husband” or a “he.”