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June 7, 2022 24 mins

"Waking up one morning in my new place by myself as a divorced, single mom in this pretty much empty townhome... it was this weird paradox of freedom, that I had so desperately longed for, but then also that realization that it was so completely different."

The road to finding yourself again after a decades long relationship is truly a journey of ‘unbecoming’ by unlearning everything you thought you were supposed to be and rediscovering who you really are. 

Walk with me in this first of 2 episodes as we talk about the healing process of redefining my identity in this new season of life and touch on some really tough questions: 

Was I letting God down?  Was it really what was best for my kids?  What does ‘starting over’ even look like after that long?

Whether you’ve been divorced or found yourself single after a long-term relationship that has left you feeling broken, lacking confidence, or even worthless, after listening to this episode, my hope is that you would be encouraged. 

You are not alone and this is not where your story ends. Beauty from ashes. Your story has just begun.

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Episode Transcript

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(00:00):
all of a sudden waking up one morning in my new place by myself as a divorced single mom in this pretty much empty town home.
And so it was this weird paradox of freedom that I had so desperately longed for.

(00:23):
But then also that realization that it was so completely different.
Hello and welcome.
My name is Shelley Simonson.
I'm a mom of four and a fitness and wellness coach with over two decades in the industry.

(00:44):
I'm a trauma and cancer survivor living my life now on a mission to help you reclaim your voice,
stand in your power and build the confidence to not simply survive this life but to thrive and create the life,
you know,
is waiting for you.
It's time to get out of your own way and be her now.

(01:10):
Hello!
My sisters welcome back to the podcast and thank you for joining me for episode four as we journey through the process of finding ourselves and rediscovering and rebuilding ourselves after a divorce.
So if you've been following along chronologically,
we have gone from making hard decisions,

(01:35):
realizing are worth and making moves when we don't feel ready yet to today I'm going to pull it all together for you with the rebuilding and unlearning to journey back to our true selves.

(01:59):
Finding ourselves again.
When are everything that we thought that we were has been stripped from us.
And so I like the concept of unlearning unbecoming I was a,
I still am a mom,
but all of a sudden I was a single mom,

(02:21):
I was no longer a wife.
Everything that my life had been built on was now so drastically different.
And also the person that I was,
the person that I had been made to believe I was.

(02:43):
I had to unlearn so much of that so that I could now blossom and flourish in this new life and this new identity And finding myself in a place where all of a sudden waking up one morning in my new place by myself as a divorced single mom,

(03:09):
in this pretty much empty town home because I didn't,
I hardly brought anything with me.
So much of what I have today was given to me by my friends who just rallied around me and supported me everything from a couch to a tv to a lamp to a table.
I mean everything and all of a sudden I'm waking up and so it was this weird paradox of freedom that I had so desperately longed for.

(03:46):
But then also that realization that it was so completely different and that my future and every step that I took from this point out was totally dependent on me and my own ability to take care of myself and two pursue the things that I wanted.

(04:15):
And I remember going,
I went live on facebook probably a week into my single motherhood and just really sharing my heart,
sharing my vulnerability about how hard it was for me And being without my boys.
And so I had them 50% of the time,

(04:39):
which in and of itself was I could do a whole episode on that,
on just coming to grips with the give and the take of divorce and so being without my boys half the time.
But yet this whole new world of opportunity that I was in now as a single woman I was sharing about that.

(05:04):
And through the feedback,
what I realized that I had no clue is that I was grieving and I never would have identified it as grief.
I thought I was sad that I was adjusting and that I was sharing my boys and that it just,

(05:27):
I was in pain.
But the the the grief part really struck me.
I never considered that.
And when when my friends were telling me this,
I thought,
how did that not even occur to me?
I'm grieving the loss of my home that I had lived in for so so long that I had raised my boys in.

(05:57):
I'm grieving the loss of my boys of the relationship that we had of,
I'm grieving 50% of the time away from my boys.
I'm grieving my role as their full time mom.

(06:18):
And I'm grieving the loss of my my future of this happily ever after dream that I had had,
wow,
that was a lot.
And it never occurred to me that it was grief because I was the one who chose the divorce.

(06:40):
I was the one with,
you know,
my vision for my life for what I wanted my life to look like and my happiness and my dreams and my goals.
So I thought,
oh,
it's just going to be.
I didn't think it was gonna be easy.
I thought it was going to be like,
that piece of me would not surface,

(07:04):
you know,
that,
that it was going to be hard,
but it was my choice.
So to understand that I was grieving to actually be able to put a name on it and then start the process of allowing myself to grieve.
That's a whole new concept for me allowing myself to sit in these emotions and not trying to push them away,

(07:25):
not trying to busy myself doing other things to avoid them,
but identifying them and honoring them and sitting in them and respecting them for what they are and allowing them and sometimes moving through them and sometimes sitting with it for a really,
really long time.
I did a lot of things to really work through the pain of it all.

(07:54):
And also finding myself again,
one of the things that I did was a class called divorce care through my church.
And it was a 13 long program,
13 week long program where each week was a different topic and it would be everything from,
um,
working on your finances,

(08:15):
rebuilding your finances,
um,
helping your kids through this emotionally,
taking care of yourself physically through it.
Um,
all sorts of different topics.
13 weeks.
And it was so,
so good because a lot of what I was struggling with was the idea that I was letting God down.

(08:45):
I never I'm not an advocate for divorce.
I of course,
nobody ever gets married thinking that they're going to end up in divorce.
And so coming to terms with,
I remember one of the ladies,
um the lady actually who was leading the divorce care because it was run through my church,

(09:07):
and so it was,
you know,
okay,
it was a lot of scripture involved.
Um it was just so helpful.
And one of the things that she said was God doesn't hate divorced people,
He hates divorce.

(09:28):
And that was so comforting to me to know that yeah,
that's that's not God's plan for marriage.
God is hurting alongside me just as much as I am,
and he never wanted this to happen.
It's not his design to break up families,
but he loves me,

(09:49):
he loves me and that's not going to change.
So that was that was really,
really helpful.
I felt a lot of shame around it that while on one hand,
I wanted to be this,

(10:09):
um this presence for women,
of being strong,
standing up for yourself,
doing what is right for yourself and your future,
finding your happiness.
I also felt there was that piece and nobody ever expressed this,

(10:29):
but I felt that piece of what if people thought I didn't try hard enough that I was giving up on my family,
that I was just doing what I thought was right for me.
And I struggled for a really long time with justifying my happiness.

(10:52):
And I think to be honest,
I still do because for so long,
so long I stayed stuck because I wanted to do what I thought was right for the kids.
And when it came down to it,

(11:14):
as hard as it is to admit that breaking up the family was right for the kids.
I know that it was and I could make the argument that staying there was it was already a broken home.

(11:36):
So there was a lot of that going on.
A lot of coming to terms with the fact that my happiness mattered and that in order to be the best woman,
the best mom that I could be for my kids.
I couldn't be it in that environment.

(11:59):
And so through divorce care and through therapy and through my,
my wise Godly friends and through books and just all the support that I had and still have that was all needed to help me to move forward.

(12:25):
And when you are,
um,
when you stay in a situation like that where you just feel stuck or you feel muted,
disregarded,
disrespected,
unworthy for almost two decades.
Yeah.

(12:46):
You're not cured just by leaving all your problems don't go away.
You don't wake up and go,
okay,
I got this,
Moving on,
let's do this.
There was that that feeling of of the freedom and the new opportunities and the excitement about my future.

(13:10):
But then also the aftermath,
you know,
my kids emotions and they don't want to talk about it and they're young and they're struggling and they don't understand and I sure as heck I'm not going to you know,

(13:32):
I'm going to help them through the best way that I can.
But they're not going to know everything.
They're not going to understand it.
They're not going to know details,
They're not going to,
you know,
they don't need to know all that.
They just need to be loved and supported through it.
And that is still hard to this day.
five years later my identity was wife mom,

(14:03):
homemaker.
And all of a sudden it shifted and I woke up the morning that I moved into my town home.
I'll never forget waking up the first morning by myself.

(14:26):
So my boys hadn't come with me yet.
And the place was virtually empty.
I mean I remember looking around with just a few things that I brought with me and thinking to myself,
I can make this whatever I want it to be.

(14:48):
But there was also that part of me that thought I need something to go in that corner.
I could put a bookshelf over there.
I need some pictures up there.
I need as if more stuff was going to make it a home.
And so I was coming from and my boys would enter into a brand new space that I wanted to symbolize peace and calm and joy and love and clean,

(15:24):
calm space and energy that was so drastically different from where I was coming from.
A place of chaos clutter pain,

(15:46):
darkness.
And so I opened every blind,
every window I turned on the music.
I listened to what I wanted to listen to.
I knew that every aspect of my new home,
every sight smell taste sound.

(16:08):
I wanted to create this experience for myself and my boys where they felt safe and at home in a home that they had never known.
And so I meticulously picked out the scent I wanted for my wax warmer and the music I wanted playing And the pictures I would put up on the wall and I vowed that I would only bring in beautiful things that represented my new life where I was going and and what I wanted our home to represent for the boys.

(17:04):
And I,
I scheduled a photo shoot for us as a way to kind of mm hmm Just just for me and the boys.
And I brought my daughter in from Georgia who At that time would have been 22 years old and just hired a photographer and we went out onto the Portland's waterfront during the cherry blossoms blooming in the spring and it was gorgeous.

(17:42):
And it was just this opportunity to represent the new dynamic of our family.
And I had those pictures enlarged and turned into canvas photos and,
and I'm really big on words and um,
like the wooden,
the wooden word pictures and so everywhere you look,

(18:05):
it's love blessing family heart and slowly but surely the space is,
the corners have been filled,
the garage has been filled.

(18:27):
I've bought more things,
but I can say that anything that I've brought in has been only things that will evoke feelings of love and joy and positivity.

(18:51):
Now emotionally,
on the other hand,
rebuilding unbecoming,
I'm just kind of stuck on those,
on the unbecoming because you spend,
I don't know how long it's it is for you or if you're coming out of a,

(19:12):
a relationship where you lost yourself.
But for me,
it was 20 years in the making of becoming,
adapting to who I thought I needed to be in order to get through another day.
And then all of a sudden I didn't have to just get through another day.

(19:35):
I wanted to arrive as the woman that I knew I was meant to be and I had.
And it's still,
it's a journey.
It's still a process of wounds of like just,
you know,
the three episodes prior to this,

(19:56):
one of opening up those old wounds and reliving it and retelling it.
I felt like I was there again and I'll be in situations today where I feel like that's the old Shelly,
the new Shelly,
like the not the new,
but the Shelly that I was born to be and that I was always meant to be is in there.

(20:20):
And how would she respond?
I still catch myself and I still find myself thinking I need to go back to my therapist today,
I need to schedule another appointment because there are,
you know,
there's triggers,
there's things that will open up that will make me question myself again,

(20:43):
question my worth,
question,
my voice.
I mean,
the whole premise of this podcast is is rediscovering your voice and rebuilding your confidence.
And I still struggle with that.
But I know that today the difference in me today is that I don't let the enemy take root.

(21:07):
I know that it's the enemy creeping in and saying,
who do you think you are?
I don't know who she thinks she is because you know,
like he had me in the palm of his hands right where he wanted me for so long to convince me that I wasn't capable of doing this on my own and that I wasn't capable of even dreaming,

(21:33):
let alone stepping out and pursuing those things.
And so when you when you break those chains and you and you do start to believe in yourself again and step out in faith and start to pursue things that's when he's unhappy and he's coming after you.

(21:58):
And I the thing today about me is that I can identify that and and for so long the devil came in the form of people around me that held me down that kept me stuck.
And you know what's crazy is that through my growth and,

(22:24):
and uh and just really reading God's word and really clinging to him,
what I've learned is that those people weren't the enemy,
they were also victims of the enemy.

(22:44):
They were the puppets,
they were his puppets,
his ponds.
So anyway,
that's just an aside.
But like realizing that I just remember thinking,
oh my gosh,
I can't be mad at a person.
The enemy has got his hooks in them so deep to the point where I almost can't distinguish between the person and the devil,

(23:17):
wow,
I've never said that out loud,
but that just the way he works so insidiously is mind blowing.
I have so much more that I want to share about this,
but we are going to pause right here and I'm going to split this up into two episodes.

(23:39):
So be sure to come back and listen to the next episode where we will dive more into that journey back to ourselves,
that journey of unbecoming and rediscovering who we are after a divorce that has taken our identity.
Thank you so much for listening today.

(24:02):
If you're loving what you're hearing and you know,
somebody who could benefit from this episode,
please spread the love and share this with them and I would be so grateful if you could take a moment to write a quick review wherever you're listening,
your feedback really matters to me.
And don't forget to tag me on social media at Shelly Simonson Fitness on instagram and share your favorite takeaway.

(24:23):
Learn more about how you can get in touch with me in the show notes.
See you next time.
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