Dear Divorce Diary: A Fresh Approach To Healing Grief & Building A Life Of Confidence After Divorce

Dear Divorce Diary: A Fresh Approach To Healing Grief & Building A Life Of Confidence After Divorce

This isn’t a breakup pep talk. It’s a full-body recalibration for women navigating life after divorce. Dear Divorce Diary is a podcast for women dealing with grief, loneliness, anxiety, anxious or avoidant attachment, and identity loss after divorce — especially when quick fixes, positivity, and spiritual fluff no longer work. I’m Dawn Wiggins, therapist, coach, and homeopath, and this show goes where most divorce advice won’t: into your nervous system, your unspoken grief, your buried rage, and the parts of you that shut down just to survive. Through honest conversation, somatic tools, EMDR- and IFS-informed work, and nervous-system support, each episode helps you feel instead of perform healing — and rebuild safety, confidence, and self-trust from the inside out. You’ll hear raw solo episodes, real voice notes from women in the trenches, and intimate conversations with experts who don’t just talk about healing — they embody it. If you’re tired of being told to “move on” while your body is still bracing, this podcast is your place to land. Your nervous system already knows the truth — it just needs a space that can hold it.

Episodes

January 6, 2026 44 mins

What if this life after divorce never gets better?
What if this is just how it is now?
What he ruined everything? What if I can't be healed?

If those thoughts have been looping in your mind after divorce, this episode is for you.

In the Season 5 premiere of Dear Divorce Diary, we’re opening a powerful six-week series devoted to naming the thing under the thing—the deeper, often invisible forces that keep women stuck in a...

Mark as Played

This is not a lesson about divorce healing.
It’s not advice.
It’s a pause.

Day 12 of the 12 Days of Divorce Christmas is simply a blessing—offered to you exactly as you are.

If these last 12 days stirred grief, relief, exhaustion, hope, or something you can’t quite name, this episode is here to hold that with you.

No fixing.
No reframing.
No pushing forward.

Just a few quiet moments of being witnessed.

You’ve been strong...

Mark as Played

If New Year’s resolutions have never worked for you...especially after divorce, it’s not because you lack discipline, motivation, or follow-through.

It’s because the version of you who survived divorce is not wired to safely become the woman you’re trying to create.

After divorce, most women try to change their lives by changing their behavior.

But behavior never sticks when the nervous system doesn’t feel safe expanding.

In this New Y...

Mark as Played

New Year’s Eve has a way of turning self-criticism up to full volume after divorce.

The comparisons.
The sense that you should be further along.
The quiet question of what’s wrong with me that this still hurts?

If you find yourself being unusually hard on yourself today, this episode isn’t here to tell you to “think positive” or try harder.

It’s here to explain why this happens—and what your nervous system is actually doing wh...

Mark as Played

The holidays after divorce don’t hurt because you’re single.
They hurt because they force you to confront how unsafe it feels to need support.

In this Day 9 episode of 12 Days of Divorce Christmas, we talk about the hidden, hardest part of life after divorce—asking for help. Not logistically, but emotionally. Not politely, but vulnerably.

If feeling safe, seen, and supported came naturally to you, this wouldn’t be the relationshi...

Mark as Played

In this Day 8 episode of 12 Days of Divorce Christmas, Coach Tiffini joins me to unpack what actually happens inside your nervous system when you try to bring old traditions into a new life after divorce...especially in this in-between week between the holidays and the New Year.

Through an IFS (Internal Family Systems) lens, we talk about the protective parts that step in when traditions carry grief, memory, and expectation. Not bec...

Mark as Played

How ya doing babe? We're on day 7 of "The 12 Days of Becoming HER Again" and it's all pretty raw.

Today we’re talking about loneliness after divorce...not as something to fix or outrun, but as something that moves in waves.

For many women, loneliness doesn’t stay constant.
 It rises.
 It crests.
 And when it hits, it can feel overwhelming.

In this episode, Joy and I talk about:

  • Why loneliness after d...
Mark as Played

Today's convo is about a specific kind of holiday pain after divorce...
 the Christmas cards knowing exactly how to **send you.

The smiling families.
The matching outfits.
The quiet comparison that starts to creep in and makes you feel like you no longer belong to the world you used to be part of.

In this episode, Joy and I talk about:

  • Why Christmas cards trigger comparison so deeply after divorce
  • How performance c...
Mark as Played

If you’re here today, it means your kids aren’t with you...and that absence lands in the body, not just the heart.

This episode is for the moms navigating holidays, weekends, or long stretches without their children after divorce. The quiet. The ache. The way your nervous system doesn’t know where to settle when the people you’re bonded to aren’t home.

Joy shares from lived experience what it’s like to be deeply, trauma-bonded to you...

Mark as Played

Christmas after divorce can hit your body before your mind ever catches up.

You can know logically that other people’s celebrations have nothing to do with you—and still feel the ache, the comparison, the quiet grief in your chest when you wake up.

Today’s episode is different.

This is a short quantum healing track designed to help your nervous system release the emotional charge that gets activated when you imagine other families cel...

Mark as Played

Welcome to Day 3 of the 12 Days of Divorce Christmas...also known as the 12 Days of Becoming Her Again.

Today we’re talking about one of the hardest moments after divorce: going to the holiday party alone.

The explaining.
The questions you don’t want to answer.
The way your body tightens when you walk into a room where you used to belong as part of a couple.

For many women, this isn’t just social anxiety — it’s identity grief....

Mark as Played

Welcome to Day 2 of the 12 Days of Divorce Christmas...also known as the 12 Days of Becoming Her Again.

Today we’re talking about something no one prepares you for after divorce:
 when the house is too quiet.

Not peaceful quiet.
Not restful quiet.
The kind of quiet that feels heavy, deafening, and impossible to sit in.

When the house feels too quiet, most of us instinctively want to:

  • distract
  • dissociate
  • get busy
  • scroll
  • eat
  • s...
Mark as Played

Welcome to Day 1 of the 12 Days of Divorce Christmas...also known as the 12 days of becoming her again.

If you’re listening today, there’s a good chance part of you feels like:
 “I can’t do this.”
Not the holidays.
Not the decisions.
Not the weight of doing this alone.

This episode isn’t here to convince you otherwise.

It’s here to help you understand that when you feel like you can’t, it’s not weakness or victimhoo...

Mark as Played

After divorce, many women aren’t just grieving...they’re carrying too much in their nervous system.

Too much responsibility.
Too much self-doubt.
Too much pressure to hold it together.

That load doesn’t live in your thoughts. It lives in your body.

In this episode, Dawn guides a somatic practice that blends EFT tapping with IFS-style parts work to help the nervous system release what it’s been holding. This is not about insigh...

Mark as Played

The holidays can make everything feel heavier — especially when you’re freshly divorced or still deep in the weeds of it all.

In this episode of Dear Divorce Diary, we talk about three hidden patterns that often stall divorce healing and leave women feeling unsafe, unmoored, and scattered, even when the marriage is over and you’re trying to move forward.

This conversation is a teaser for Season 5 - can you believe it?!- where we’ll s...

Mark as Played

Today’s episode is personal, unpolished, and happening in real time.

This is the first in our new premium series, Behind the Mic—where we take you into the conversations that usually happen off-air. And this week, I’m sharing something I’m still moving through: a recent miscarriage.

Inside this conversation, we talk about how this loss collided with my lifelong pattern of staying in masculine energy—overfunctioning, overproducing, an...

Mark as Played

If the holidays feel heavier this year—even the tiny decisions that shouldn’t take this much out of you—there’s a reason. After divorce, women carry an invisible load no one prepares us for. The planning, the negotiating, the managing, the remembering, the holding-it-all-together… it piles up until your body feels like it’s running on fumes.

And that overwhelm you keep blaming on weakness or poor coping?
It’s not that.
It’s ...

Mark as Played

Letting go after divorce isn’t about willpower.
It’s about physiology.

Your body won’t release someone until it feels anchored somewhere safer than the place it’s been clinging.
And that’s why cord-cutting rituals, no-contact declarations, and “I’m done for real this time” moments almost never stick.

In this guided premium episode, we’re not letting go into emptiness...we’re letting go into self-belonging, the only place your...

Mark as Played

If you’ve ever felt that tug toward your ex...not the man, but the idea of him...we've got you. That pull is your nervous system trying to finish a story it never got closure on. And after divorce, that pull gets loud.

In this episode, we break down why trauma bonds feel like soul ties and why your body keeps reaching for someone who couldn’t give you safety. You’ll learn what’s actually happening in your brain, why familiar pa...

Mark as Played

Sometimes panic doesn’t wait for privacy.
It hits in the grocery store aisle, the Target parking lot, or right between the pasta sauce and the paper towels — the places where your body finally says, “No. I can’t hold this alone anymore.”

This premium episode is your real-time grounding track for those moments.
A full nervous-system reset you can use while you’re actively panicking — not later, not in hindsight, but right the...

Mark as Played

Popular Podcasts

    If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.

    The Joe Rogan Experience

    The official podcast of comedian Joe Rogan.

    Two Guys, Five Rings: Matt, Bowen & The Olympics

    Two Guys (Bowen Yang and Matt Rogers). Five Rings (you know, from the Olympics logo). One essential podcast for the 2026 Milan-Cortina Winter Olympics. Bowen Yang (SNL, Wicked) and Matt Rogers (Palm Royale, No Good Deed) of Las Culturistas are back for a second season of Two Guys, Five Rings, a collaboration with NBC Sports and iHeartRadio. In this 15-episode event, Bowen and Matt discuss the top storylines, obsess over Italian culture, and find out what really goes on in the Olympic Village.

    The Clay Travis and Buck Sexton Show

    The Clay Travis and Buck Sexton Show. Clay Travis and Buck Sexton tackle the biggest stories in news, politics and current events with intelligence and humor. From the border crisis, to the madness of cancel culture and far-left missteps, Clay and Buck guide listeners through the latest headlines and hot topics with fun and entertaining conversations and opinions.

    Dateline NBC

    Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com

Advertise With Us
Music, radio and podcasts, all free. Listen online or download the iHeart App.

Connect

© 2026 iHeartMedia, Inc.