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

You’re either eating everything in sight to numb the ache…
or staring at food like your body forgot how to be hungry.

Welcome to what so many women quietly call the divorce diet.

After divorce, your nervous system is on high alert. Grief, resentment, fear, and mental load don’t just affect your thoughts — they change your biology.

In this episode of Dear Divorce Diary, we unpack:

• Why cortisol and adrenaline shut digestion down — ...

One line from Brené Brown’s Atlas of the Heart hit me like lightning during my own post-divorce unraveling—exposing the exact shame trigger I’d carried for years, the hidden identity fueling quiet resentment, self-criticism, and that exhausting push-pull of “too much” versus “not enough.”

In this powerful episode, I take you straight into the moment it landed (page 30, in the section on resentment), share the raw, tender answers tha...

Divorce isn’t just an ending—it’s a sacred disruption, a call to reclaim what’s been missing: true polarity, grounded masculine leadership, and the feminine surrender that lets you finally soften without losing yourself.

When I read GS Youngblood’s The Masculine in Relationship: A Blueprint for Inspiring the Trust, Lust, and Devotion of a Strong Woman, my nervous system exhaled. I felt seen in ways I hadn’t before. That instant soma...

This is us. Moms who’ve lived it — sitting together having a real, unfiltered conversation about the one thing that keeps so many of us stuck: the feeling that it’s all so damn unfair.

We talked about the hard parts of co-parenting after divorce — the uneven load, the chronic illness with no support, the special-needs kids mostly on one parent’s shoulders, the guilt, the waiting for him to step up or see what he lost, the resentment...

You keep it together.
Calm texts. Steady schedules. Polite handoffs.
But every time his car pulls up, your body betrays you: heart races, chest tightens, breath goes shallow.
That’s not just “leftover divorce stuff.” That’s anxiety living in your nervous system—and it’s been quietly growing every time you swallow the unfairness to stay the “bigger person.”

He’s got the new life.
You’re carrying the kids’ big feelings...

This Thursday, you’re invited into something sacred and real.

One of our most cherished community members — the one who shows up honest, even when life feels like a rocket ship up her ass — sat down with Coach Tiffini for a live, unfiltered IFS coaching session.

She came in carrying the familiar post-divorce exhaustion: extra work responsibilities dumped without warning, barely time to eat, resentment simmering… yet underneath it all...

Hi, love—welcome to Dear Divorce Diary, where midlife women move beyond talk therapy to process grief held in the body, release what's braced inside, and reclaim the confidence divorce tried to steal. I’m Dawn Wiggins, therapist, coach, integrative healer, and the woman who once lay awake thinking, “I should feel better than this… but my body never got the memo.”

Toothpicks holding your eyelids open. Moving through molasses. Wi...

Thursday episodes are for when your body won’t do what your mind understands.

If you’re exhausted after divorce but still feel like you can’t drop the ball…
 If rest makes you anxious instead of relieved…
 If part of you believes that if you stop managing everything, it will all fall apart…

This episode gives you something to do in that moment.

Not a mindset shift.
 Not a pep talk.
 Not “just rest more.”

In this premium...

After divorce, women are often told to “step into their masculine energy” — be strong, decisive, productive, self-sufficient.

But what if you’re not choosing strength at all?

What if your body simply doesn’t expect help to arrive? And, do you know what to do about this?

In this episode of Dear Divorce Diary, we talk about why so many women feel stuck in over-functioning after divorce — and why what looks like competence is often a ner...

Behind the Mic is where we slow the conversation down.

In this premium episode, we speak candidly about dissociation during and after divorce—not in clinical terms, and not from a distance, but from inside our own lived experience.

This is a quieter, more intimate conversation about the ways women cope when life becomes overwhelming… and how easy it is to miss what’s really happening while you’re busy surviving.

We talk about:

• The ...

If you’re in divorce recovery and keep reaching for food, screens, or emotional numbness, it’s easy to assume the problem is discipline.

It’s not.

In today’s episode, we talk about what’s actually running underneath those patterns: everyday dissociation — the high-functioning, easy-to-miss kind that hides inside coping, productivity, and “getting through the day.” Divorce doesn’t just end a relationship; it changes how present you ar...

If you’ve been holding yourself together because it feels like the only way to stay functional, this guided reset is for you.

Divorce anxiety and overwhelm don’t come from weakness or lack of coping skills....they come from carrying too much responsibility for too long (often without enough support).

This Thursday, Premium Healing Tool offers a gentle, body-based reset designed to help you release internal pressure without forcing ca...

Hypervigilance doesn’t come from wanting control.
It comes from realizing—often too early—that no one else was going to handle it.

After divorce, many women find themselves overanalyzing everything: conversations, tone shifts, finances, social dynamics, parenting decisions, other people’s moods. Not because they’re anxious by nature—but because their bodies learned that vigilance was the price of stability.

In this episode of Dea...

If someone has ever told you to calm down after divorce—and it made everything inside you feel louder, sharper, or more volatile—you’re not broken.

You’re responding to a loss of connection.

In this Thursday Panel Rant, Dawn and the crew get cheeky, honest, and deeply real about why “calm down” is one of the fastest ways to shut a woman down—and why it so often backfires in relationships after divorce.

This episode explores:

• Why be...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...