March 21, 2024 • 45 mins
In this insightfully candid episode, our hosts delve deep into the emotionally-charged subject of divorce and its aftermath. Using their own personal experiences as a backdrop, they contemplate on societal views on divorce, the self-recrimination, and profound life changes that ensue such a transformative event. Beyond just impacting the individuals directly involved, they encourage listeners to understand the broad-reaching impact it has on those around them. Join us in this powerful discussion that peels back the layers on this taboo topic.
In the journey through divorce, from the initial awkwardness to facing a plethora of personal and financial challenges, the hosts highlight the invaluable power of supportive friendships. They discuss the tricky social dynamics that twist and tremble in the wake of divorce, stressing on the potential transformative power of empathy and acknowledgment. The episode advocates for dispelling the stigmas surrounding divorce and underlines the importance of acceptance and non-judgmental support in times of upheaval.
Sharing raw emotional aspects and real-life narratives, the discussion extends to co-parenting post-divorce, and the unique challenges it brings. It's a call to be more compassionate as friends and to extend grace and forgiveness during these challenging times. Listen to the heartwarming instances of unexpected support, unanticipated kindness, and unwavering solidarity that serve as lifelines amidst the struggles.
Concluding with the empowering roles that families can play in this healing journey, and the life lessons learned from this whole ordeal, the episode leaves listeners with a resounding message. Amid the trials and tribulations surrounding divorce, it implores each one of us to become more empathetic and extend a hand of support. Be part of this profound journey of resilience, healing, and mutual support, shining a comforting light on the darkest hours of our lives.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
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(00:00):
Music.
(00:29):
Good morning, ladies. Good morning. Welcome to my actual front porch today.
It's so nice to finally be back outside. Yeah.
So today we are going to talk about what it looks like to be supportive of other women.
We have found the need for a support from a group of women.
And so really just want to talk, what does that look like?
(00:52):
And as a woman, especially who's been through divorce, divorce,
if you could have had exactly what you needed from beginning all the way through,
what would that have looked like for you? What did you need?
And how does that now make you see other women and want to be there for women in your life?
I don't know. I think, you know, and this is sort of an, I guess the old adage
(01:14):
is you literally never know what somebody else is personally going through.
And I think that like going through divorce has made me a bit more cognizant
of that and that I'm less quick to be irritated with people you know what I mean and.
And I, you know, we were just sort of pre-talking about this,
(01:35):
but like divorce tends, anything that anybody's going through,
we're speaking all encompassing here.
However, divorce still tends to be a little bit taboo in that unless it's like
close friends that you're talking with and crying with, people don't really want to address it.
You know, like you were saying, when somebody passes away, a lot of people are
(01:55):
like, oh, I'm sorry that happened.
Like it, you know, or I'm praying for you or whatever.
It's okay to do that with divorce too. You don't have to sweep the topic under
the rug because, you know, Bonnie, you said it earlier, it is like a death.
It's a death of your former life. It's a living death. Yeah.
And a lot of times I feel like people just don't want to address it, but it's okay to go.
I know you're going through a hard time right now and, you know,
(02:18):
I'm thinking about you or whatever.
You don't have to pretend it's not happening. I think it's, even though we're
in 2024, I think divorce is still a taboo subject. and people,
it makes people uncomfortable.
I mean, it's just one of those uncomfortable topics because we've talked about it before.
When you have a divorce, if you have a couple friends, they don't know what to do with you.
(02:43):
They don't know how to act around you. They don't know if they need to pick sides.
Usually they do pick sides, whether they want to or not.
It's very very unsettling in
the kind of shakeout period where people find out you
know i think most of us didn't really tell people what we were going through
until we were kind of way into the weeds in it and it's not a thing that you
(03:08):
want to talk about i was embarrassed and i felt like a failure i didn't really
want to tell the whole world you know i don't want to wear a name badge that
said Hey, I'm getting a divorce.
You can announce on Facebook, going through a divorce.
This is why I feel like crap every day. This is why I look terrible every day.
This is why I changed my name.
(03:29):
You don't want to announce it. You feel embarrassed.
Now you have to figure out how to live a different life and you have to,
you know, I had the whole, like, I was disappointed in myself.
I think that's what it was. I was disappointed in myself.
I wanted to shake myself and say, didn't you see this person was going to do this?
(03:50):
How did you miss the signs that this affair was happening?
How did you, you're a smart girl. You're smarter than this.
How did this happen to you? And translating that into your everyday life.
I had friends, very, very close friends that knew what was going on.
But only about one or two of them knew the actual everything that was going
(04:13):
on. Because it's not something you want to announce to people.
And now what has happened now that I'm this far beyond it is I can recognize things in people.
And it has given me much greater
empathy toward women that are going through this
we talked about this pre pre recording how
(04:33):
people you know you support mothers that are having babies or have had miscarriages
or have but you don't nobody really reaches out or ministers to or there's not
a whole lot of support for women who are going through a divorce there's not
it's a huge huge field that is lacking.
(04:54):
Well, it's such a humongous chain. Yeah.
Because we've talked financially, you've gone from two incomes to one.
And for some of us, like me, I mean, it was the first time I ever had to budget.
This has been the first time I've really lived on my own. I never really lived
on my own. I had roommates or I lived with my parents. I was in college.
I never really lived on my own. So all of this was just such a huge learning curve.
(05:19):
And then not only are we dealing with our emotions and this feeling of disappointment,
all of that, we're having to help regulate and support the emotions of our kids.
Like we're not, we just became 12 people. you
know we are therapists we are everything and we no longer
have that support of the
(05:41):
partner who decide that we had kids with necessarily right
to be making decisions and to figure out
how to budget and even just to decide what to watch on television at night like
we're all of a sudden down with decision fatigue every single day i mean there's
just so much and to just have that That one person that pops by with a quiche
(06:03):
in the morning with pieces of quiche or just, just, you know, hey,
here's something for the kids or I'm thinking about you text.
Just really kind of, I'm not in this alone.
Well, I think one of the biggest gifts I had a friend that came by was.
Took my kids for like three hours and
you know I wasn't at the point where I could get all dolled up
(06:24):
and go do something fun but it gave me three hours like
30 minutes I sat in the floor and cried then the
next 30 minutes I was like get yourself off the floor wipe your
face off get cleaned up take a shower do the
little things you can't do journal do whatever you need to do while your kids
aren't here to see you completely have a fall apart and then be ready when they
(06:46):
come back I think I think I spent a lot of energy kicking myself about being
disappointed that this is how my life turned out.
Yeah. I spent a lot of energy, like the majority of my energy,
acting like everything was okay.
So my kids didn't feel like the rug was pulled out from under them.
I mean, it was a lot of energy that I put toward that.
(07:09):
And then as I moved through it, then I realized my kids already knew half of
it and they needed to process. So we all started talking about it,
like truthfully talking about it.
Well, there's a lot of, I don't know, I feel like you just got to keep,
you're not going to get there overnight.
And you got to just keep moving forward. Because I remember especially when
(07:29):
I was, because I'm almost two years out at this point.
But that first year was so hard because I did feel guilty.
Not, I mean, you feel guilty because you don't set out to break up your marriage.
Like that you don't set out for your marriage to fail.
And so there's even if you are happy in it, there is some guilt that you're
not able to finish what you started.
(07:49):
Like you'll never go, oh, I've been married for 50 years. Like I think about
that at church all the time when people come down for their anniversary blessings.
I'm like, that's I'm never going to be able to say I've been with this person
for 50 years. You know, that's just something that's not that that was necessarily.
But I think about that. That's something I'll never do. Right.
Unless I'm 105, unless I live to be 105.
(08:10):
Anyway so but and I
you know the expectations that you had for your life change you know you said
you go from from two people's salary to one and I that first year was so hard
for me I know we had Carolyn on several episodes back to talk about finances
but there's a lot of guilt with me having to say no to my son about some things
like he he wanted I can't remember what he wanted to do,
(08:33):
last week but I had to say we can't afford that and he was like what I'm like
we can't afford Like, I'm not, I can't afford to go to everything that everybody goes to.
I can't afford to go out to eat all the time. Like, I have to be very,
very particular about those things.
And it took, I mean, there's a little bit of guilt about it.
There's a little bit of shame about not having the financial support.
(08:56):
Stability or not even just in the ability ability to
do to to say yes to to everything everybody else
does that's just it's the new you know and it's okay to it's okay to be cognizant
of that like whenever I ask somebody to go somewhere I am cognizant of how much
money they have I think about that you know I don't think I did that as much
before right does that make sense it does I think, you know, well,
(09:20):
on that note, my kids were used to a certain lifestyle.
And when we got divorced, it scaled back significantly.
So much so that, you know, no is the standard answer and we can't afford that as the standard answer.
But, you know, for the first couple of years, I was really harsh about that
(09:40):
because I was under the gun to try to keep the budget and keep us afloat during
a pretty difficult time.
And, you know, everybody that gets divorced has a bad time with that.
I also had in, I mean, and other people have circumstances,
my ex had to be institutionalized for a little bit, like the first,
(10:05):
right out of the gate, like within the first three months of being divorced.
So we had to deal with that. And then he was out of work for eight months.
So that was a lot of instability financially. And then, you know,
fast forward a couple of years, you know, we had the attempted suicide and then
he was out of work for another year.
(10:26):
And my financial stability, I am stable.
I am just not able to do a whole lot.
And from my kids standpoint, I felt really guilty that they went from this larger
lifestyle to a much smaller lifestyle.
But, you know, I think we also pregame talking about some expectations,
(10:50):
like especially for spring break and vacations and things like that.
You know, I tried to make the staycation the new norm at my house because it had to be.
We can't just take off and go and spend money, you know, on things.
But I tried to whittle it down and make it to be quality things versus quantity
(11:13):
of things that we're doing and memories and experiences,
even if it's a Broadway play or a music thing every once in a while,
or even just a movie every once in a while so that they're special. Right.
But, you know, all this keeping up with the Joneses and the over the top and
(11:36):
we have to take a cruise and we have to go here and, you know,
we have to go to the latest and greatest vacation spot.
That had to all go to the wayside.
And that was never really important to me. I could afford those things in my past marriage.
But we didn't always have to do those things. But I think my children,
(11:56):
I think I gave my children more power of disappointment than they actually had.
You know, because it was a disappointment that I had. It was an internal disappointment that I had.
Not necessarily. I mean, kids will be up or down for anything, you know.
So I think I was hard on myself about my expectation of what my life would look going forward as far as.
(12:21):
The first year or last year, last year, right after my divorce,
I was like, OK, I need to like establish some traditions with my son.
That's just us. and I he loves Disney
World so I was like I'm gonna plan a Disney trip and I've
been playing catch up since I paid for that Disney trip
so what I learned was I can't there's just
things I cannot do that I can't be expected to do either
(12:44):
you know like yeah I've got to pay up front for something next week I can't
really and then get reimbursed I can't really afford to do that you know but
so it's it's things like that like to be cognizant of and I did you feel I felt
this a little bit of disillusionment in the first year every once in a while where I was like,
wait, did I really do that? Did I really get divorced?
(13:04):
Did I really leave my husband? Do you know what I mean? Yeah.
And I just had to talk myself through it that like, no, this was,
it's okay that you did this. You're much happier now, but that is real.
I mean, like those are the things you feel when you're going through it. So yeah.
Yeah, no, I definitely, I definitely felt that way a lot, but you know,
we were separated for so long beforehand where he was in and out out of different
(13:26):
rehabs, trying to get a handle on his disease and all of that, that really.
Until he finally started moving on into another relationship and stuff like
that, did I finally feel like we'd made a solid break.
You know what I mean? Like, I felt like, oh, I can hand the torch of responsibility
for him over to someone else.
Now that relationship didn't last very long, but it did make me feel like,
(13:49):
okay, I'm good. You know what I mean?
But it, you know, a lot of it It was just like, are we just,
are we in a weird limbo? Is this, I don't know. It felt very strange.
Yeah. It was like the twilight zone. Cause I think how people, okay.
This I've never really cared how people thought about me.
I know that's not good, but had a heightened awareness of how people perceive
(14:13):
me through the, before the divorce,
through, you know, at the rocky part of the marriage through,
Through the divorce and after the divorce,
I think people's perception of me changed.
It was a feeling that I had, and I'm not too sure that I was...
In a lot of cases, like just how people treated me, looked at me,
(14:36):
how people went down on different sides of the marriage.
You know, I think things were said that came back to me that I thought that is not true.
Yeah. So like, so like for us as women, knowing how we felt and like staycations
and all of that for me to support me, a great thing would be,
(14:57):
hey, what do you want to do over spring break are you
staying home not this expectation that i'm
going on a european vacation right you know what i mean just sort
of that hey cognizant just accepting of
of whatever it is that we're doing you know
so instead of feeling so if we have new people
who are getting divorced and all of that it just i think
(15:19):
as a supportive women to be able to just accept
them them wherever they are and make sure we're not
saying things in a way that sounds
judgy on the other end or expecting yes yeah
like one of the things that i found right after
i got divorced is someone in the church came to me and said you know what about
(15:41):
your tithe and i thought dude i'm barely putting food on the table yeah i and
it made me feel guilty yeah it that happened about god but But also,
at the same time, I'm like,
I cannot squeeze blood from this turnip that I've been given.
Not yet. And it wasn't productive for me in a budgetary way or a spiritual way.
(16:07):
And I thought, you know, sometimes, you know, as a nurse, I try to meet my patients where they are.
And it really doesn't take that much to go, oh, she just got divorced.
Things are still shaking out. It hadn't been that long. How about skipping her?
I don't think 100% participation is equal to making this person feel welcome
(16:29):
spiritually and supported in the church.
You know what I'm saying? I think you have to extend a little grace,
and I'm terrible about doing it to myself. I do it for others.
I think when you recognize that somebody is going through a period of change,
whether it be pregnancy, having a baby, getting married, getting divorced,
(16:51):
dealing with the death of a parent, a spouse, a child, those are huge, life-changing events.
Some of them are happy and some of them are not.
But you have to recognize where a person is and not overshoot the mark. mom.
Even in asking if you can help, you have to recognize that some people need
(17:12):
a little more nesting and they might want the casserole, leave it on the porch.
They don't need to spend time with you for an hour and you witness them crying
or moping or they haven't washed their hair in four days.
Leave the casserole on the porch and let that be a good thing.
You just have to recognize what somebody's going through. Yeah.
(17:32):
And it's okay to recognize that it's big.
It's It's okay to recognize that it's not normal or that you have a new normal.
Or that it's not nice and presentable all the time. And every change is hard, even good change.
Even if both people wanted the divorce and everybody wanted it, it's still change.
Every breakup is the, you have to get, it's getting over a habit.
(17:58):
And there is a grief process. Yeah, and there's a grief process no matter who
you are, what you are, how old you are. Or if it's good. In most cases,
I mean, I think it's great when people can stay friends.
My sister is going through a divorce right now, and they're desperately trying
to get to a place where they can be friends.
And they both want that. I...
Probably never have that with my ex-husband and it's very weird
(18:20):
I mean not that I don't you know you get divorced
for a reason you don't get along anymore but at
the same time to be friends for the kid and just when you've had love someone
when you've had that long with somebody that you spent that much of your life
with somebody it is very strange not to know them anymore when they knew you
intimately you know well now that's one thing my ex-husband and I as much as
(18:43):
sometimes we didn't to get along after the divorce,
it's like we moved into this area where we considered each other extended family. Yes.
You did. Yeah. It was not. You are friendly, but not best friends.
We were not best friends, but I do. You're like, it was like you were cousins.
But if he called me in the middle of the night and said, I need something, I'd have been there.
Yeah. And if I did the same, and he, he came and picked me up off the side of
(19:06):
the road when I ran out of gas.
I mean, like, you know what I mean? It doesn't, he still be,
he was still, if I showed up at his family Christmas Christmas after divorce,
people weren't going to be shocked.
We still felt like family.
And a lot of that had to do with the fact that we'd loved each other for so many years.
And you can no longer love a person in that way, but can still respect the time you spent with them.
(19:29):
And I guess that's what I don't understand.
Well, respect the past love. Yes.
So then I guess that's because of my ex-husband's disease.
We were no longer in love with each other, but we did still have have sort of
a familial love for each other.
But I guess I just had, since that was my experience, I don't understand spending
(19:50):
10 or 20 years with someone and all of this love and emotion on them and then
having no respect for that on the other side. Do you know what I mean?
So, but that's, but like I said, I'm short-sighted and then I have no other experience.
Right. Right. Well, not, you're not, but that is your experience.
Well, I think divorce brings up a lot of negative emotions, anger, anger.
(20:13):
Disappointment in yourself and the other person and fear.
There's a lot of fear of how am I going to do this? How am I going to support
my kids? How am I going to support myself?
How am I going to move about in the world in my new role?
And I think people get lost in their feelings a lot instead of thinking it through,
hey, what is the best? This is my outcome.
(20:34):
What is the best way to get there? What is the best way to shepherd my kids there?
What is the best way to take care of myself and you you tend to dump all your
feelings and and you know react to your triggers instead of,
saying hey let's kind of rationally go about this because those are two different
(20:57):
camps how to rationally do it and how to feel your way through it oh gosh you
have to feel the feels but you don't necessarily have to act on the feels oh
i didn't want to feel the feels nobody wants to feel Because they're uncomfortable. They're horrible.
Yeah. But you do have to get through those.
And I do have to remind myself that anger is part of the grief cycle.
You know, I got stuck in that. No anger. I didn't want to be angry. I didn't want to be ugly.
(21:20):
I didn't want to. I wanted to be Grace Kelly. Do you remember?
And my therapist kept saying, you know, I'm going to have to send you to somebody
professionally if you can't be angry. I'm going to worry about you.
But, you know, I go through that. And I still go through waves of where I just
sort of distance myself emotionally from everything.
(21:41):
It's just a much more comfortable place to be, you know, for a while is to just
kind of go numb and then come, come back.
Well, I think if we treated divorced women like we treat women who have a baby
in that supportive and caring and nurturing kind of way, I don't think we nurture divorced women.
(22:04):
No, I don't think society does that. I remember going to my OBGYN right when
I was in the process of getting divorced and I have known her for a long time.
Um, and, uh, I was, they were like, okay, well, how's, you know,
X, how's your husband? I was like, actually, I'm getting divorced.
(22:25):
And she goes, oh, and I was like, no, it's good. She was like, oh, congratulations.
And I was like, yay. Like, it was like a little, a little happy party.
So. And I think that when it's talking about women and getting divorced,
part of being a friend, even with our friends, back when we had friends having
babies who were being supportive that that way.
You watch your friend making mistakes, but you know you can't say anything because
(22:51):
they're their mistakes to make.
Or you say something and they absolutely don't see what you see.
And the best way to be a friend is to just to stand next to them as they completely
destroy their lives for a minute and be there on the other side to pick it back up.
Not to judge or to yell or to be ugly about it, just to be like, they're where they are.
(23:14):
They're going to do this. There's nothing I can do to stop it.
But as a caring friend, I'll be here on the other side. You just have to love
and support. Yeah, to love and support.
And, you know, you can do that in many different ways.
Yeah. I had a friend that would call me.
It was pretty, now that I think back, I thought it was random,
(23:34):
but it was pretty much on the cycle of things. And she was my Al-Anon sponsor.
And it's like she just knew the days. Every time she called,
I'd be in the middle of a weep cycle.
It was so crazy that first year.
And I just think back on that. And I thought she didn't have to do that.
You know, I actually didn't even sign up for Al-Anon.
(23:55):
She just knew the situation.
And she supported me. I mean, my support came from random. Random,
when I say this, random people.
I had a friend who helps me with a lot of things around my house.
His wife and I were friends and she would send him over with all his brothers
(24:16):
to like, when I got so pregnant, I couldn't mow my yard.
He would come and do my yard or he would come and help me. He and his brothers
helped me lay a brick patio at my house.
Like, and it's like they knew.
You know, I would never ask for help, but they knew. And he would show up.
One time he showed up in my garage and I was in the garage.
I would go into the garage and sweep out the garage when I really had to cry.
(24:39):
So I was out of the house and nobody could hear me.
And he pulled up in my driveway and was like, it's going to be okay.
You just need to do this. You have days. You just need to cry.
But that kind of support, just the recognition went a longer way than if somebody
had dropped a casserole at my house. You know, I mean, I would have loved a casserole.
(25:00):
But I'm just saying the support can come in different forms and from people
that I didn't really expect that from.
So that was really good. One of the best supports I got when I was,
I guess really when even when we were getting divorced, it was when my ex was
at one of the rehabs he was in.
(25:21):
I became very judgy, especially of one of my dearest friends.
And she forgave me. That was the best support that in my weird grief stress
anxiety place I became incredibly judgmental and the fact that she.
Responded with grace and apology to me when I was being Kind of awful And I
(25:47):
was kind of calling her out for not supporting me When I never really even let
her know I needed support, you know what I mean?
And it's so for her to respond to me with grace over my terrible behavior was
will always mean the world to me.
And it's just different little ways that we can reach out and understand the
person going through whatever.
(26:09):
Right. So what are the ways that you would feel have felt most supported?
Like, what are two ways that during that time that you didn't get or that you
got that stand out the most?
I remember like.
My main job at the school where I work, all the women that I work with were
(26:30):
just very, and the men too, like,
honestly, everybody just was just very caring. And I would, I would cry.
I mean, like, it was a hard year. And I remember my department chair,
who is one of my favorite people on the planet, I remember saying,
listen, you're, you're, you're going to drop some balls, just make sure that
none of them are balls that will break.
And you know I mean they they just I mean there would be days I just had to
(26:54):
go in and process it like because you can't it's hard to do your daily routine
like you'd normally do it like going going to work can feel hard when you're
going through something as yes as grief honestly when you're grief stricken
and that's what part of it was or when you're in a difficult situation and my,
the whole year I was going through my divorce my ex-husband still lived in the
(27:14):
house with me and it was really difficult.
I was very depressed. And luckily, I worked for someone and with people that
would just let me come in and be in whatever state I needed to be in.
I love the analogy of the balls.
Yeah. And I made it through.
And they all knew I would, but I got to the other side of it.
(27:34):
And we joked that everyone has kind of traded off a difficult year because I
went through that. Then I had a colleague last year who went through something else.
And then another one of my my colleagues this year started. We're like,
what are we doing? We can't just trade off bad years.
But I appreciated that I could be like that. And like, not that you don't want
to, sometimes you can't, you can control your emotions to some extent.
(27:55):
And I'm pretty good at it. But, you know, I would go in and my students could
tell when I was sad or if I'd been crying. And.
It's not like I like went into detail with them about anything,
but they just kind of let me be in that place.
And they didn't, they were very kind to me. They were gentle with me and everybody
was, and that, that was really helpful.
And then I think just like, you know, don't expect your divorced,
(28:19):
don't expect your divorced friend to instigate everything you do together.
Like don't assume that they're busy or that they don't want to like reach out
to them to, to just say, Hey, you want to go grab lunch or want to go do something fun tonight?
Because sometimes like Every once in a while, I'll call Bonnie.
I'm like, you want to go to the store? I'm going to run an errand. Do you want to go with me?
Just because I'm like, oh, I've got this free time.
(28:42):
It might be fun to do that because sometimes we're alone in the house.
We don't know what to do with ourselves.
I've never felt super lonely, though. I've not had that feeling, really.
But, you know, do call them. Do call them. Get them to do something.
It's not like we're at home just putting puzzles together, happy all the time.
(29:03):
I think I have a couple of examples. One, when I found out that my husband was
having an affair, my child was less than a month old.
And in the next period of a month, I lost 30 pounds. Like I couldn't eat.
I couldn't concentrate.
My stomach felt like jello all the time.
And I had a very caring priest who called me and said, I'm on the way to your house.
(29:26):
Because he knew if he said, can I visit? I would say no.
And he called me actually from my driveway. way. So there was nothing I could
do about it. And I was a mess and he came in and fixed me scrambled eggs.
He, he was just that kind of guy. Like he knew exactly what I needed.
Scramble eggs are very easy to eat.
Also hard to mess up if you're cooking them for somebody.
(29:47):
And he sat down with me and it was like, Oh, there is somebody out there that is worried about me.
That's going to mother me when I can't even mother myself, you know, or my child.
That's one example. Another one One is when the divorce actually came through,
my youngest child was in a private school.
Luckily, it was a Christian private school because there was tuition to be paid.
(30:12):
There was a new uniform to be bought for the year.
I had no money. Like this was one of the times when he was not working.
And so I went to the headmaster because they give you this, this little thing
that says, you know, you need to let us know if you're coming back to school
and you need to pay X amount by this day, blah, blah, blah. Well,
I couldn't do it. So I got really upset about it.
And I finally got up the courage and I walked into his office to ask to speak
(30:37):
to him. I told him what was happening.
And he said, I hope this doesn't get him drunk.
He said, we know your husband.
We know he's good for it. We'll let you go upstairs and pick out a uniform.
There was a used uniform closet.
Go pick out whatever uniform she needs.
Just write down what you got. It'll be okay. And I thought it was like a relief
(31:01):
that my child would have a place. Mm-hmm.
But it was also a huge financial burden lifted off my shoulders,
which that can be crushing.
That has been very crushing to me. Y'all know money anxiety.
And it stems from all of that that went down during that period.
And so I felt like, okay, my child has a place.
(31:24):
So my child is squared away so I can breathe a little more. Do you know what
I'm saying? It just lifted a big burden off of me.
I had people that would ask me to lunch or ask me to do things or just support
some weird things that I had to, you know, I had to close my shop.
I had people that came and helped me inventory like for three days in a row
(31:46):
so that I could physically get out of the space.
Just those overwhelming big things that I had to do by myself.
It looked like I had to do by myself people would show up and
it it has been amazing I had people show up when
I wanted to move here even though they didn't want me to move I had
(32:07):
people that showed up to do that and interestingly enough
none of them was family it was all
friends that I had
made along the way and it was I had a
friend say Beth you you know you've done this and
this and this so now it's your time to let other people help you which
was also sort of embarrassing and sort
(32:29):
of very humbling so but
I am so grateful for all the support the unexpected and unseen and kind of out
of the blue weird kind of support that I got during that period that I would
have never never expected from people I would never have expected it from,
(32:50):
which was kind of interesting.
You know, my best friends did support me and in different ways,
but those are some examples of just off the wall, big things that I needed at
the moment, in the moment that I can only say were God things.
They were people that God inspired somebody.
No, he didn't just inspire him. He sent sent them to my doorstep to change the
(33:17):
outcome of what was going to happen if it didn't happen that way. So, sorry.
I think, all right, mine is not near as big, but the biggest impact on me was my mom and my sister.
So I have a tendency to allow a toxic person to destroy me before I walk away.
(33:41):
Like I would rather love to death than give up on love. That just tends to be
one of my fatal flaws, I suppose.
So my mom and my sister would see when I would start spiraling and they'd be
like, oh, no, no, no, no. know, and come up with creative ways to pull me out.
We had, they had me think of, you know, who do you, who do you want to be?
(34:02):
Like, what are the qualities of a strong woman that you, and so we'd list those
now, like, okay, now pretend you're her.
And then they, they took note cards and they each listed every single incident,
alcoholic incident, every single thing that was done to my children or said
to me, every single thing they could think of.
And they put it in a file folder, a little file box.
(34:22):
And they said, every single time you start, when you forget and you get that
idealistic and you feel like this is something that needs to be saved,
I want you to start going through this box. Yeah. Just remember.
And it just, I mean, just that one little, you know, little thing was just,
my mom would just pop over and be helpful.
(34:44):
They would go and look Look at houses with me. I mean, just these little things
that they would do, you know, just to try and pull me out of that strange,
toxic cycle I would pop myself back into.
So, you know, I guess that's it. Just that I would realize I was doing it and just, nope, nope.
(35:06):
So, you know. Anyway, I think that's one thing people are not taught to be supportive
to people in difficult times.
You are taught certain like funeral etiquette.
You know, you come by, you see
the person. What I realized when my mother died, people are very caring.
(35:28):
And this is not a slam. I mean, this is just how it works.
People are very caring. They come to the funeral. They come to the visitation.
They bring you food. And then after about two and a half weeks,
It's crickets and what I found because my mother died when I was young I was
at Alabama and had to go back to school,
I was like, okay at the like three weeks to a month mark I was like It was so
(35:54):
weird to me that life goes on.
Mm-hmm and your life is forever changed, but.
The world is just still going on. I think I told you, like, I would sit in the
lounge of the Kyle house and people were talking about their dates and what they were wearing.
And I was thinking, I don't actually give a damn about any of this.
This has nothing to do with me. I am in such profound hurt, loss, grief.
(36:17):
I can't even, I don't even know if my socks match today.
Like, it was just such a, it's like they were speaking a foreign language,
which a month earlier I had been completely caught up in that.
You know it was such a weird and
it happened to me at fall so of course i was worried about who
my ball game date was going to be before my mother died but it's the
(36:38):
same with divorce it's like you live in a
little microcosm for a little while
that first i say that first year because sometimes it's not really a year for
other people but for me it was a full year of living in this sort of alternate
reality of getting my stuff together and padding the way for my children and
(36:58):
trying to lay down things for my future.
It was just a weird, strange environment that I found myself in.
I knew deep in my heart it was going to be okay at the end because this was what needed to happen.
But it's sort of like you live in this alternate reality for a little while.
And I don't, people are not trained to take care of you or I felt not noticed.
(37:26):
They didn't know how to notice me or reach out to me during that period.
And that was a grief process of death. But I think it's the same in divorce.
People don't really know what to say. Well, it's not on their radar anymore.
At that point, it's off their radar because the funeral's done.
They've ticked off their boxes.
And I think, talk about where you were. I think it's funny. We've talked about
(37:47):
this a little bit before.
I think it's funny that now I can look, and sometimes I know when someone's
in a happy marriage marriage because they're paying such attention to ridiculous details on things.
Like the smallest things mean the world to them. And it's like, oh, they're happy.
They're in a happy marriage because they have all of this room to care about
(38:10):
all of these things that really have no consequence, you know, have no.
But I think also if you have a very firm base. Yes.
And trust. I mean, that goes back to Kubler-Ross, right?
You have that secure versus non-secure when you're an infant.
And people that have that springboard of security are free to express themselves
(38:32):
in a way that people that are trying to fight for that security.
All that is kind of frivolous because you're just trying to survive when you're in survival mode.
If you have a base space of security you
can blossom you can do this you can do that you're free
to think about these other things because you don't
have all that other stuff weighing you down yeah but i
(38:54):
don't think i mean people are taught how to do the grief thing
and be supportive during a death but not
during divorce and divorce is the death of a
marriage but you don't you just
feel like you're not support it's one of
those in the south it's one of those whispered words oh yeah
she got a yeah you know what i
(39:15):
mean it's not one of those and then a lot of people were getting
better i think but it's still you know there are
those concepts especially here in the south you don't talk about the ugly things
out loud if you say and they're like whispered under your breath and talked
in the you know what i mean it just and so yeah but you know it's one of those
things you see an area you that we can do better. We can be better.
(39:39):
We can be a better friend. We can support each other. We can be a better woman.
Or even a better acquaintance. Somebody you may not know. Well,
I had a coworker when I got divorced.
I had a coworker and I knew each other. We're in the same department and all,
but she stopped me in the hall one day and say, Hey, I want you to know I divorced when I was young.
It was, it was, we weren't married long. It was not near the same thing, but it was so hard.
(40:01):
So I can't imagine after how many ever many years you've been married that this
is so I just want you to know I'm thinking about you and I was like wow yeah
you know don't know her it was
it just it meant a lot yeah so just those little things so yeah I think.
Recognizing it in someone else is or where somebody else is in it as a woman
is a big thing you can't do anything until you recognize where somebody is in
(40:25):
their journey and then even if it It doesn't feel comfortable saying something or being supportive,
maybe not directly toward the divorce, but like your friend did,
you know, I've been there.
Yeah. Or even it's just, hey, hope you're doing well today.
That has nothing to do with anything, but it would still be,
it's throwing sunshine onto somebody that may need it.
(40:48):
Think it's important i think women do not support women sometimes in
the way that they need to be well in a
friendly non-competitive way yeah we're all a
big family yeah yeah all right so what are
y'all doing this week to live like you live
i start spring break tomorrow and i am doing exactly
what we talked about earlier having a staycation so i
(41:10):
am doing a lot of i've really been trying
to to live more simply i just i
don't want things and so i'm trying to get rid of a lot of things
like so i'm gonna just continue and i've done
a lot of of just purging and we've talked about this at length but i'm gonna
do that for myself at my house and in my office as much as i can just to get
(41:32):
rid of things i don't absolutely need or or really want to keep for you know
anyway that's That's what I'm going to do.
And then just, I don't know, eat lunch, make food, make food and go on walks.
And it's beautiful right now. So I'm excited about having a week with good weather
just to be, just to focus on what I personally need to do.
(41:55):
Because I've had a lot of work lately and Sunday we closed our show.
And so I'm kind of able to go because I'm a person, I can multitask,
like I'm a pretty good multitasker. But when I'm in a show mode,
it's like that's the only thing.
And then as soon as that's done, I can pay attention to other things.
Like I'm looking back yesterday, I calendared through January of next year because
(42:17):
I can. I don't have any show to work on.
I'm going back through and I'm like, oh, there's text messages that I haven't
responded to because my brain can now focus on that.
So anyway, so all of that kind of like housekeeping stuff.
Well, my daughter sold spring break this week and I contemplated I had an offer
to go to the beach. but I didn't really want to take the time off.
So we are doing staycation and we are enjoying.
(42:41):
I slept in for an hour today.
So luxurious. And so I am working from home mostly this week.
So that's kind of a change.
And I feel like I'm on vacation, even though I'm not, because I'm not traveling.
I had traveled one day this week.
So that's kind of a little mini vacation and I'm trying to enjoy the weather.
(43:01):
And I am trying to pick up my house. i need to
mow my yard i need to like sweep up
my porch get ready for spring because now it
feels like it's gonna finally gonna be here but i'm
trying to fix better food and eat better and be conscious of what i have for
my intake so and in all areas i'm trying to finish my book because i have to
(43:24):
host the book club next week so that's one that's my big goal but just kind
of have a a relaxing weekend.
This has been my spring break. I'm like, I'm like, wow, it is Thursday already. What have I done?
But I mean, I've spent, I've spent the week getting some stuff done in the house,
spent the first two days sick, sick, sick, spent 48 hours in the bed. It was terrible.
(43:49):
So glad to be on the other side of that, but I'm going to enjoy being in my
house and kind of straightening up and getting some things.
I got part of my son, he and I worked on getting his room cleaned out.
We hadn't cleaned it out since we moved in when he was in high school.
So there are things that That we needed to get out. And, you know,
when you move, you just find and shove things in the rooms and put them in places.
(44:10):
Well, in this life that he's living now, it's different.
So there's a whole bunch of stuff we were able to get rid of,
put in storage or give away.
Like we've got those piles I need to actually now take and physically do something with.
And so I think I'm just going to enjoy this. And then, Beth,
you and I talked about, you know, we're trying to branch out and actually go places and do things.
(44:31):
And create little mini adventures that may be going over to Huntsville on Saturday
and just kind of spend some time downtown, wander around a nice room.
Just kind of a... And we had a fun girls' night out. We did.
We did. We had a fun girls' night out last night. That was great.
It was kind of refreshing and a break. It kind of midweek that I never leave.
Which right now, this is now month two. We've stepped to our,
(44:54):
we're going to explore one new place to eat every month.
Yes. Woohoo! Yeah. And we'll have to pick the next one. Yeah,
when we put things on calendars, we do it. We do it. Look at there.
All right. Well, thank you, ladies. Y'all have a wonderful week. You too. You too.
Thank y'all for joining us for Champagne Sunday. See you next week,
(45:15):
girls. See you next week.
Music.
Music.
(00:29):
Good morning, ladies. Good morning. Welcome to my actual front porch today.
It's so nice to finally be back outside. Yeah.
So today we are going to talk about what it looks like to be supportive of other women.
We have found the need for a support from a group of women.
And so really just want to talk, what does that look like?
(00:52):
And as a woman, especially who's been through divorce, divorce,
if you could have had exactly what you needed from beginning all the way through,
what would that have looked like for you? What did you need?
And how does that now make you see other women and want to be there for women in your life?
I don't know. I think, you know, and this is sort of an, I guess the old adage
(01:14):
is you literally never know what somebody else is personally going through.
And I think that like going through divorce has made me a bit more cognizant
of that and that I'm less quick to be irritated with people you know what I mean and.
And I, you know, we were just sort of pre-talking about this,
(01:35):
but like divorce tends, anything that anybody's going through,
we're speaking all encompassing here.
However, divorce still tends to be a little bit taboo in that unless it's like
close friends that you're talking with and crying with, people don't really want to address it.
You know, like you were saying, when somebody passes away, a lot of people are
(01:55):
like, oh, I'm sorry that happened.
Like it, you know, or I'm praying for you or whatever.
It's okay to do that with divorce too. You don't have to sweep the topic under
the rug because, you know, Bonnie, you said it earlier, it is like a death.
It's a death of your former life. It's a living death. Yeah.
And a lot of times I feel like people just don't want to address it, but it's okay to go.
I know you're going through a hard time right now and, you know,
(02:18):
I'm thinking about you or whatever.
You don't have to pretend it's not happening. I think it's, even though we're
in 2024, I think divorce is still a taboo subject. and people,
it makes people uncomfortable.
I mean, it's just one of those uncomfortable topics because we've talked about it before.
When you have a divorce, if you have a couple friends, they don't know what to do with you.
(02:43):
They don't know how to act around you. They don't know if they need to pick sides.
Usually they do pick sides, whether they want to or not.
It's very very unsettling in
the kind of shakeout period where people find out you
know i think most of us didn't really tell people what we were going through
until we were kind of way into the weeds in it and it's not a thing that you
(03:08):
want to talk about i was embarrassed and i felt like a failure i didn't really
want to tell the whole world you know i don't want to wear a name badge that
said Hey, I'm getting a divorce.
You can announce on Facebook, going through a divorce.
This is why I feel like crap every day. This is why I look terrible every day.
This is why I changed my name.
(03:29):
You don't want to announce it. You feel embarrassed.
Now you have to figure out how to live a different life and you have to,
you know, I had the whole, like, I was disappointed in myself.
I think that's what it was. I was disappointed in myself.
I wanted to shake myself and say, didn't you see this person was going to do this?
(03:50):
How did you miss the signs that this affair was happening?
How did you, you're a smart girl. You're smarter than this.
How did this happen to you? And translating that into your everyday life.
I had friends, very, very close friends that knew what was going on.
But only about one or two of them knew the actual everything that was going
(04:13):
on. Because it's not something you want to announce to people.
And now what has happened now that I'm this far beyond it is I can recognize things in people.
And it has given me much greater
empathy toward women that are going through this
we talked about this pre pre recording how
(04:33):
people you know you support mothers that are having babies or have had miscarriages
or have but you don't nobody really reaches out or ministers to or there's not
a whole lot of support for women who are going through a divorce there's not
it's a huge huge field that is lacking.
(04:54):
Well, it's such a humongous chain. Yeah.
Because we've talked financially, you've gone from two incomes to one.
And for some of us, like me, I mean, it was the first time I ever had to budget.
This has been the first time I've really lived on my own. I never really lived
on my own. I had roommates or I lived with my parents. I was in college.
I never really lived on my own. So all of this was just such a huge learning curve.
(05:19):
And then not only are we dealing with our emotions and this feeling of disappointment,
all of that, we're having to help regulate and support the emotions of our kids.
Like we're not, we just became 12 people. you
know we are therapists we are everything and we no longer
have that support of the
(05:41):
partner who decide that we had kids with necessarily right
to be making decisions and to figure out
how to budget and even just to decide what to watch on television at night like
we're all of a sudden down with decision fatigue every single day i mean there's
just so much and to just have that That one person that pops by with a quiche
(06:03):
in the morning with pieces of quiche or just, just, you know, hey,
here's something for the kids or I'm thinking about you text.
Just really kind of, I'm not in this alone.
Well, I think one of the biggest gifts I had a friend that came by was.
Took my kids for like three hours and
you know I wasn't at the point where I could get all dolled up
(06:24):
and go do something fun but it gave me three hours like
30 minutes I sat in the floor and cried then the
next 30 minutes I was like get yourself off the floor wipe your
face off get cleaned up take a shower do the
little things you can't do journal do whatever you need to do while your kids
aren't here to see you completely have a fall apart and then be ready when they
(06:46):
come back I think I think I spent a lot of energy kicking myself about being
disappointed that this is how my life turned out.
Yeah. I spent a lot of energy, like the majority of my energy,
acting like everything was okay.
So my kids didn't feel like the rug was pulled out from under them.
I mean, it was a lot of energy that I put toward that.
(07:09):
And then as I moved through it, then I realized my kids already knew half of
it and they needed to process. So we all started talking about it,
like truthfully talking about it.
Well, there's a lot of, I don't know, I feel like you just got to keep,
you're not going to get there overnight.
And you got to just keep moving forward. Because I remember especially when
(07:29):
I was, because I'm almost two years out at this point.
But that first year was so hard because I did feel guilty.
Not, I mean, you feel guilty because you don't set out to break up your marriage.
Like that you don't set out for your marriage to fail.
And so there's even if you are happy in it, there is some guilt that you're
not able to finish what you started.
(07:49):
Like you'll never go, oh, I've been married for 50 years. Like I think about
that at church all the time when people come down for their anniversary blessings.
I'm like, that's I'm never going to be able to say I've been with this person
for 50 years. You know, that's just something that's not that that was necessarily.
But I think about that. That's something I'll never do. Right.
Unless I'm 105, unless I live to be 105.
(08:10):
Anyway so but and I
you know the expectations that you had for your life change you know you said
you go from from two people's salary to one and I that first year was so hard
for me I know we had Carolyn on several episodes back to talk about finances
but there's a lot of guilt with me having to say no to my son about some things
like he he wanted I can't remember what he wanted to do,
(08:33):
last week but I had to say we can't afford that and he was like what I'm like
we can't afford Like, I'm not, I can't afford to go to everything that everybody goes to.
I can't afford to go out to eat all the time. Like, I have to be very,
very particular about those things.
And it took, I mean, there's a little bit of guilt about it.
There's a little bit of shame about not having the financial support.
(08:56):
Stability or not even just in the ability ability to
do to to say yes to to everything everybody else
does that's just it's the new you know and it's okay to it's okay to be cognizant
of that like whenever I ask somebody to go somewhere I am cognizant of how much
money they have I think about that you know I don't think I did that as much
before right does that make sense it does I think, you know, well,
(09:20):
on that note, my kids were used to a certain lifestyle.
And when we got divorced, it scaled back significantly.
So much so that, you know, no is the standard answer and we can't afford that as the standard answer.
But, you know, for the first couple of years, I was really harsh about that
(09:40):
because I was under the gun to try to keep the budget and keep us afloat during
a pretty difficult time.
And, you know, everybody that gets divorced has a bad time with that.
I also had in, I mean, and other people have circumstances,
my ex had to be institutionalized for a little bit, like the first,
(10:05):
right out of the gate, like within the first three months of being divorced.
So we had to deal with that. And then he was out of work for eight months.
So that was a lot of instability financially. And then, you know,
fast forward a couple of years, you know, we had the attempted suicide and then
he was out of work for another year.
(10:26):
And my financial stability, I am stable.
I am just not able to do a whole lot.
And from my kids standpoint, I felt really guilty that they went from this larger
lifestyle to a much smaller lifestyle.
But, you know, I think we also pregame talking about some expectations,
(10:50):
like especially for spring break and vacations and things like that.
You know, I tried to make the staycation the new norm at my house because it had to be.
We can't just take off and go and spend money, you know, on things.
But I tried to whittle it down and make it to be quality things versus quantity
(11:13):
of things that we're doing and memories and experiences,
even if it's a Broadway play or a music thing every once in a while,
or even just a movie every once in a while so that they're special. Right.
But, you know, all this keeping up with the Joneses and the over the top and
(11:36):
we have to take a cruise and we have to go here and, you know,
we have to go to the latest and greatest vacation spot.
That had to all go to the wayside.
And that was never really important to me. I could afford those things in my past marriage.
But we didn't always have to do those things. But I think my children,
(11:56):
I think I gave my children more power of disappointment than they actually had.
You know, because it was a disappointment that I had. It was an internal disappointment that I had.
Not necessarily. I mean, kids will be up or down for anything, you know.
So I think I was hard on myself about my expectation of what my life would look going forward as far as.
(12:21):
The first year or last year, last year, right after my divorce,
I was like, OK, I need to like establish some traditions with my son.
That's just us. and I he loves Disney
World so I was like I'm gonna plan a Disney trip and I've
been playing catch up since I paid for that Disney trip
so what I learned was I can't there's just
things I cannot do that I can't be expected to do either
(12:44):
you know like yeah I've got to pay up front for something next week I can't
really and then get reimbursed I can't really afford to do that you know but
so it's it's things like that like to be cognizant of and I did you feel I felt
this a little bit of disillusionment in the first year every once in a while where I was like,
wait, did I really do that? Did I really get divorced?
(13:04):
Did I really leave my husband? Do you know what I mean? Yeah.
And I just had to talk myself through it that like, no, this was,
it's okay that you did this. You're much happier now, but that is real.
I mean, like those are the things you feel when you're going through it. So yeah.
Yeah, no, I definitely, I definitely felt that way a lot, but you know,
we were separated for so long beforehand where he was in and out out of different
(13:26):
rehabs, trying to get a handle on his disease and all of that, that really.
Until he finally started moving on into another relationship and stuff like
that, did I finally feel like we'd made a solid break.
You know what I mean? Like, I felt like, oh, I can hand the torch of responsibility
for him over to someone else.
Now that relationship didn't last very long, but it did make me feel like,
(13:49):
okay, I'm good. You know what I mean?
But it, you know, a lot of it It was just like, are we just,
are we in a weird limbo? Is this, I don't know. It felt very strange.
Yeah. It was like the twilight zone. Cause I think how people, okay.
This I've never really cared how people thought about me.
I know that's not good, but had a heightened awareness of how people perceive
(14:13):
me through the, before the divorce,
through, you know, at the rocky part of the marriage through,
Through the divorce and after the divorce,
I think people's perception of me changed.
It was a feeling that I had, and I'm not too sure that I was...
In a lot of cases, like just how people treated me, looked at me,
(14:36):
how people went down on different sides of the marriage.
You know, I think things were said that came back to me that I thought that is not true.
Yeah. So like, so like for us as women, knowing how we felt and like staycations
and all of that for me to support me, a great thing would be,
(14:57):
hey, what do you want to do over spring break are you
staying home not this expectation that i'm
going on a european vacation right you know what i mean just sort
of that hey cognizant just accepting of
of whatever it is that we're doing you know
so instead of feeling so if we have new people
who are getting divorced and all of that it just i think
(15:19):
as a supportive women to be able to just accept
them them wherever they are and make sure we're not
saying things in a way that sounds
judgy on the other end or expecting yes yeah
like one of the things that i found right after
i got divorced is someone in the church came to me and said you know what about
(15:41):
your tithe and i thought dude i'm barely putting food on the table yeah i and
it made me feel guilty yeah it that happened about god but But also,
at the same time, I'm like,
I cannot squeeze blood from this turnip that I've been given.
Not yet. And it wasn't productive for me in a budgetary way or a spiritual way.
(16:07):
And I thought, you know, sometimes, you know, as a nurse, I try to meet my patients where they are.
And it really doesn't take that much to go, oh, she just got divorced.
Things are still shaking out. It hadn't been that long. How about skipping her?
I don't think 100% participation is equal to making this person feel welcome
(16:29):
spiritually and supported in the church.
You know what I'm saying? I think you have to extend a little grace,
and I'm terrible about doing it to myself. I do it for others.
I think when you recognize that somebody is going through a period of change,
whether it be pregnancy, having a baby, getting married, getting divorced,
(16:51):
dealing with the death of a parent, a spouse, a child, those are huge, life-changing events.
Some of them are happy and some of them are not.
But you have to recognize where a person is and not overshoot the mark. mom.
Even in asking if you can help, you have to recognize that some people need
(17:12):
a little more nesting and they might want the casserole, leave it on the porch.
They don't need to spend time with you for an hour and you witness them crying
or moping or they haven't washed their hair in four days.
Leave the casserole on the porch and let that be a good thing.
You just have to recognize what somebody's going through. Yeah.
(17:32):
And it's okay to recognize that it's big.
It's It's okay to recognize that it's not normal or that you have a new normal.
Or that it's not nice and presentable all the time. And every change is hard, even good change.
Even if both people wanted the divorce and everybody wanted it, it's still change.
Every breakup is the, you have to get, it's getting over a habit.
(17:58):
And there is a grief process. Yeah, and there's a grief process no matter who
you are, what you are, how old you are. Or if it's good. In most cases,
I mean, I think it's great when people can stay friends.
My sister is going through a divorce right now, and they're desperately trying
to get to a place where they can be friends.
And they both want that. I...
Probably never have that with my ex-husband and it's very weird
(18:20):
I mean not that I don't you know you get divorced
for a reason you don't get along anymore but at
the same time to be friends for the kid and just when you've had love someone
when you've had that long with somebody that you spent that much of your life
with somebody it is very strange not to know them anymore when they knew you
intimately you know well now that's one thing my ex-husband and I as much as
(18:43):
sometimes we didn't to get along after the divorce,
it's like we moved into this area where we considered each other extended family. Yes.
You did. Yeah. It was not. You are friendly, but not best friends.
We were not best friends, but I do. You're like, it was like you were cousins.
But if he called me in the middle of the night and said, I need something, I'd have been there.
Yeah. And if I did the same, and he, he came and picked me up off the side of
(19:06):
the road when I ran out of gas.
I mean, like, you know what I mean? It doesn't, he still be,
he was still, if I showed up at his family Christmas Christmas after divorce,
people weren't going to be shocked.
We still felt like family.
And a lot of that had to do with the fact that we'd loved each other for so many years.
And you can no longer love a person in that way, but can still respect the time you spent with them.
(19:29):
And I guess that's what I don't understand.
Well, respect the past love. Yes.
So then I guess that's because of my ex-husband's disease.
We were no longer in love with each other, but we did still have have sort of
a familial love for each other.
But I guess I just had, since that was my experience, I don't understand spending
(19:50):
10 or 20 years with someone and all of this love and emotion on them and then
having no respect for that on the other side. Do you know what I mean?
So, but that's, but like I said, I'm short-sighted and then I have no other experience.
Right. Right. Well, not, you're not, but that is your experience.
Well, I think divorce brings up a lot of negative emotions, anger, anger.
(20:13):
Disappointment in yourself and the other person and fear.
There's a lot of fear of how am I going to do this? How am I going to support
my kids? How am I going to support myself?
How am I going to move about in the world in my new role?
And I think people get lost in their feelings a lot instead of thinking it through,
hey, what is the best? This is my outcome.
(20:34):
What is the best way to get there? What is the best way to shepherd my kids there?
What is the best way to take care of myself and you you tend to dump all your
feelings and and you know react to your triggers instead of,
saying hey let's kind of rationally go about this because those are two different
(20:57):
camps how to rationally do it and how to feel your way through it oh gosh you
have to feel the feels but you don't necessarily have to act on the feels oh
i didn't want to feel the feels nobody wants to feel Because they're uncomfortable. They're horrible.
Yeah. But you do have to get through those.
And I do have to remind myself that anger is part of the grief cycle.
You know, I got stuck in that. No anger. I didn't want to be angry. I didn't want to be ugly.
(21:20):
I didn't want to. I wanted to be Grace Kelly. Do you remember?
And my therapist kept saying, you know, I'm going to have to send you to somebody
professionally if you can't be angry. I'm going to worry about you.
But, you know, I go through that. And I still go through waves of where I just
sort of distance myself emotionally from everything.
(21:41):
It's just a much more comfortable place to be, you know, for a while is to just
kind of go numb and then come, come back.
Well, I think if we treated divorced women like we treat women who have a baby
in that supportive and caring and nurturing kind of way, I don't think we nurture divorced women.
(22:04):
No, I don't think society does that. I remember going to my OBGYN right when
I was in the process of getting divorced and I have known her for a long time.
Um, and, uh, I was, they were like, okay, well, how's, you know,
X, how's your husband? I was like, actually, I'm getting divorced.
(22:25):
And she goes, oh, and I was like, no, it's good. She was like, oh, congratulations.
And I was like, yay. Like, it was like a little, a little happy party.
So. And I think that when it's talking about women and getting divorced,
part of being a friend, even with our friends, back when we had friends having
babies who were being supportive that that way.
You watch your friend making mistakes, but you know you can't say anything because
(22:51):
they're their mistakes to make.
Or you say something and they absolutely don't see what you see.
And the best way to be a friend is to just to stand next to them as they completely
destroy their lives for a minute and be there on the other side to pick it back up.
Not to judge or to yell or to be ugly about it, just to be like, they're where they are.
(23:14):
They're going to do this. There's nothing I can do to stop it.
But as a caring friend, I'll be here on the other side. You just have to love
and support. Yeah, to love and support.
And, you know, you can do that in many different ways.
Yeah. I had a friend that would call me.
It was pretty, now that I think back, I thought it was random,
(23:34):
but it was pretty much on the cycle of things. And she was my Al-Anon sponsor.
And it's like she just knew the days. Every time she called,
I'd be in the middle of a weep cycle.
It was so crazy that first year.
And I just think back on that. And I thought she didn't have to do that.
You know, I actually didn't even sign up for Al-Anon.
(23:55):
She just knew the situation.
And she supported me. I mean, my support came from random. Random,
when I say this, random people.
I had a friend who helps me with a lot of things around my house.
His wife and I were friends and she would send him over with all his brothers
(24:16):
to like, when I got so pregnant, I couldn't mow my yard.
He would come and do my yard or he would come and help me. He and his brothers
helped me lay a brick patio at my house.
Like, and it's like they knew.
You know, I would never ask for help, but they knew. And he would show up.
One time he showed up in my garage and I was in the garage.
I would go into the garage and sweep out the garage when I really had to cry.
(24:39):
So I was out of the house and nobody could hear me.
And he pulled up in my driveway and was like, it's going to be okay.
You just need to do this. You have days. You just need to cry.
But that kind of support, just the recognition went a longer way than if somebody
had dropped a casserole at my house. You know, I mean, I would have loved a casserole.
(25:00):
But I'm just saying the support can come in different forms and from people
that I didn't really expect that from.
So that was really good. One of the best supports I got when I was,
I guess really when even when we were getting divorced, it was when my ex was
at one of the rehabs he was in.
(25:21):
I became very judgy, especially of one of my dearest friends.
And she forgave me. That was the best support that in my weird grief stress
anxiety place I became incredibly judgmental and the fact that she.
Responded with grace and apology to me when I was being Kind of awful And I
(25:47):
was kind of calling her out for not supporting me When I never really even let
her know I needed support, you know what I mean?
And it's so for her to respond to me with grace over my terrible behavior was
will always mean the world to me.
And it's just different little ways that we can reach out and understand the
person going through whatever.
(26:09):
Right. So what are the ways that you would feel have felt most supported?
Like, what are two ways that during that time that you didn't get or that you
got that stand out the most?
I remember like.
My main job at the school where I work, all the women that I work with were
(26:30):
just very, and the men too, like,
honestly, everybody just was just very caring. And I would, I would cry.
I mean, like, it was a hard year. And I remember my department chair,
who is one of my favorite people on the planet, I remember saying,
listen, you're, you're, you're going to drop some balls, just make sure that
none of them are balls that will break.
And you know I mean they they just I mean there would be days I just had to
(26:54):
go in and process it like because you can't it's hard to do your daily routine
like you'd normally do it like going going to work can feel hard when you're
going through something as yes as grief honestly when you're grief stricken
and that's what part of it was or when you're in a difficult situation and my,
the whole year I was going through my divorce my ex-husband still lived in the
(27:14):
house with me and it was really difficult.
I was very depressed. And luckily, I worked for someone and with people that
would just let me come in and be in whatever state I needed to be in.
I love the analogy of the balls.
Yeah. And I made it through.
And they all knew I would, but I got to the other side of it.
(27:34):
And we joked that everyone has kind of traded off a difficult year because I
went through that. Then I had a colleague last year who went through something else.
And then another one of my my colleagues this year started. We're like,
what are we doing? We can't just trade off bad years.
But I appreciated that I could be like that. And like, not that you don't want
to, sometimes you can't, you can control your emotions to some extent.
(27:55):
And I'm pretty good at it. But, you know, I would go in and my students could
tell when I was sad or if I'd been crying. And.
It's not like I like went into detail with them about anything,
but they just kind of let me be in that place.
And they didn't, they were very kind to me. They were gentle with me and everybody
was, and that, that was really helpful.
And then I think just like, you know, don't expect your divorced,
(28:19):
don't expect your divorced friend to instigate everything you do together.
Like don't assume that they're busy or that they don't want to like reach out
to them to, to just say, Hey, you want to go grab lunch or want to go do something fun tonight?
Because sometimes like Every once in a while, I'll call Bonnie.
I'm like, you want to go to the store? I'm going to run an errand. Do you want to go with me?
Just because I'm like, oh, I've got this free time.
(28:42):
It might be fun to do that because sometimes we're alone in the house.
We don't know what to do with ourselves.
I've never felt super lonely, though. I've not had that feeling, really.
But, you know, do call them. Do call them. Get them to do something.
It's not like we're at home just putting puzzles together, happy all the time.
(29:03):
I think I have a couple of examples. One, when I found out that my husband was
having an affair, my child was less than a month old.
And in the next period of a month, I lost 30 pounds. Like I couldn't eat.
I couldn't concentrate.
My stomach felt like jello all the time.
And I had a very caring priest who called me and said, I'm on the way to your house.
(29:26):
Because he knew if he said, can I visit? I would say no.
And he called me actually from my driveway. way. So there was nothing I could
do about it. And I was a mess and he came in and fixed me scrambled eggs.
He, he was just that kind of guy. Like he knew exactly what I needed.
Scramble eggs are very easy to eat.
Also hard to mess up if you're cooking them for somebody.
(29:47):
And he sat down with me and it was like, Oh, there is somebody out there that is worried about me.
That's going to mother me when I can't even mother myself, you know, or my child.
That's one example. Another one One is when the divorce actually came through,
my youngest child was in a private school.
Luckily, it was a Christian private school because there was tuition to be paid.
(30:12):
There was a new uniform to be bought for the year.
I had no money. Like this was one of the times when he was not working.
And so I went to the headmaster because they give you this, this little thing
that says, you know, you need to let us know if you're coming back to school
and you need to pay X amount by this day, blah, blah, blah. Well,
I couldn't do it. So I got really upset about it.
And I finally got up the courage and I walked into his office to ask to speak
(30:37):
to him. I told him what was happening.
And he said, I hope this doesn't get him drunk.
He said, we know your husband.
We know he's good for it. We'll let you go upstairs and pick out a uniform.
There was a used uniform closet.
Go pick out whatever uniform she needs.
Just write down what you got. It'll be okay. And I thought it was like a relief
(31:01):
that my child would have a place. Mm-hmm.
But it was also a huge financial burden lifted off my shoulders,
which that can be crushing.
That has been very crushing to me. Y'all know money anxiety.
And it stems from all of that that went down during that period.
And so I felt like, okay, my child has a place.
(31:24):
So my child is squared away so I can breathe a little more. Do you know what
I'm saying? It just lifted a big burden off of me.
I had people that would ask me to lunch or ask me to do things or just support
some weird things that I had to, you know, I had to close my shop.
I had people that came and helped me inventory like for three days in a row
(31:46):
so that I could physically get out of the space.
Just those overwhelming big things that I had to do by myself.
It looked like I had to do by myself people would show up and
it it has been amazing I had people show up when
I wanted to move here even though they didn't want me to move I had
(32:07):
people that showed up to do that and interestingly enough
none of them was family it was all
friends that I had
made along the way and it was I had a
friend say Beth you you know you've done this and
this and this so now it's your time to let other people help you which
was also sort of embarrassing and sort
(32:29):
of very humbling so but
I am so grateful for all the support the unexpected and unseen and kind of out
of the blue weird kind of support that I got during that period that I would
have never never expected from people I would never have expected it from,
(32:50):
which was kind of interesting.
You know, my best friends did support me and in different ways,
but those are some examples of just off the wall, big things that I needed at
the moment, in the moment that I can only say were God things.
They were people that God inspired somebody.
No, he didn't just inspire him. He sent sent them to my doorstep to change the
(33:17):
outcome of what was going to happen if it didn't happen that way. So, sorry.
I think, all right, mine is not near as big, but the biggest impact on me was my mom and my sister.
So I have a tendency to allow a toxic person to destroy me before I walk away.
(33:41):
Like I would rather love to death than give up on love. That just tends to be
one of my fatal flaws, I suppose.
So my mom and my sister would see when I would start spiraling and they'd be
like, oh, no, no, no, no. know, and come up with creative ways to pull me out.
We had, they had me think of, you know, who do you, who do you want to be?
(34:02):
Like, what are the qualities of a strong woman that you, and so we'd list those
now, like, okay, now pretend you're her.
And then they, they took note cards and they each listed every single incident,
alcoholic incident, every single thing that was done to my children or said
to me, every single thing they could think of.
And they put it in a file folder, a little file box.
(34:22):
And they said, every single time you start, when you forget and you get that
idealistic and you feel like this is something that needs to be saved,
I want you to start going through this box. Yeah. Just remember.
And it just, I mean, just that one little, you know, little thing was just,
my mom would just pop over and be helpful.
(34:44):
They would go and look Look at houses with me. I mean, just these little things
that they would do, you know, just to try and pull me out of that strange,
toxic cycle I would pop myself back into.
So, you know, I guess that's it. Just that I would realize I was doing it and just, nope, nope.
(35:06):
So, you know. Anyway, I think that's one thing people are not taught to be supportive
to people in difficult times.
You are taught certain like funeral etiquette.
You know, you come by, you see
the person. What I realized when my mother died, people are very caring.
(35:28):
And this is not a slam. I mean, this is just how it works.
People are very caring. They come to the funeral. They come to the visitation.
They bring you food. And then after about two and a half weeks,
It's crickets and what I found because my mother died when I was young I was
at Alabama and had to go back to school,
I was like, okay at the like three weeks to a month mark I was like It was so
(35:54):
weird to me that life goes on.
Mm-hmm and your life is forever changed, but.
The world is just still going on. I think I told you, like, I would sit in the
lounge of the Kyle house and people were talking about their dates and what they were wearing.
And I was thinking, I don't actually give a damn about any of this.
This has nothing to do with me. I am in such profound hurt, loss, grief.
(36:17):
I can't even, I don't even know if my socks match today.
Like, it was just such a, it's like they were speaking a foreign language,
which a month earlier I had been completely caught up in that.
You know it was such a weird and
it happened to me at fall so of course i was worried about who
my ball game date was going to be before my mother died but it's the
(36:38):
same with divorce it's like you live in a
little microcosm for a little while
that first i say that first year because sometimes it's not really a year for
other people but for me it was a full year of living in this sort of alternate
reality of getting my stuff together and padding the way for my children and
(36:58):
trying to lay down things for my future.
It was just a weird, strange environment that I found myself in.
I knew deep in my heart it was going to be okay at the end because this was what needed to happen.
But it's sort of like you live in this alternate reality for a little while.
And I don't, people are not trained to take care of you or I felt not noticed.
(37:26):
They didn't know how to notice me or reach out to me during that period.
And that was a grief process of death. But I think it's the same in divorce.
People don't really know what to say. Well, it's not on their radar anymore.
At that point, it's off their radar because the funeral's done.
They've ticked off their boxes.
And I think, talk about where you were. I think it's funny. We've talked about
(37:47):
this a little bit before.
I think it's funny that now I can look, and sometimes I know when someone's
in a happy marriage marriage because they're paying such attention to ridiculous details on things.
Like the smallest things mean the world to them. And it's like, oh, they're happy.
They're in a happy marriage because they have all of this room to care about
(38:10):
all of these things that really have no consequence, you know, have no.
But I think also if you have a very firm base. Yes.
And trust. I mean, that goes back to Kubler-Ross, right?
You have that secure versus non-secure when you're an infant.
And people that have that springboard of security are free to express themselves
(38:32):
in a way that people that are trying to fight for that security.
All that is kind of frivolous because you're just trying to survive when you're in survival mode.
If you have a base space of security you
can blossom you can do this you can do that you're free
to think about these other things because you don't
have all that other stuff weighing you down yeah but i
(38:54):
don't think i mean people are taught how to do the grief thing
and be supportive during a death but not
during divorce and divorce is the death of a
marriage but you don't you just
feel like you're not support it's one of
those in the south it's one of those whispered words oh yeah
she got a yeah you know what i
(39:15):
mean it's not one of those and then a lot of people were getting
better i think but it's still you know there are
those concepts especially here in the south you don't talk about the ugly things
out loud if you say and they're like whispered under your breath and talked
in the you know what i mean it just and so yeah but you know it's one of those
things you see an area you that we can do better. We can be better.
(39:39):
We can be a better friend. We can support each other. We can be a better woman.
Or even a better acquaintance. Somebody you may not know. Well,
I had a coworker when I got divorced.
I had a coworker and I knew each other. We're in the same department and all,
but she stopped me in the hall one day and say, Hey, I want you to know I divorced when I was young.
It was, it was, we weren't married long. It was not near the same thing, but it was so hard.
(40:01):
So I can't imagine after how many ever many years you've been married that this
is so I just want you to know I'm thinking about you and I was like wow yeah
you know don't know her it was
it just it meant a lot yeah so just those little things so yeah I think.
Recognizing it in someone else is or where somebody else is in it as a woman
is a big thing you can't do anything until you recognize where somebody is in
(40:25):
their journey and then even if it It doesn't feel comfortable saying something or being supportive,
maybe not directly toward the divorce, but like your friend did,
you know, I've been there.
Yeah. Or even it's just, hey, hope you're doing well today.
That has nothing to do with anything, but it would still be,
it's throwing sunshine onto somebody that may need it.
(40:48):
Think it's important i think women do not support women sometimes in
the way that they need to be well in a
friendly non-competitive way yeah we're all a
big family yeah yeah all right so what are
y'all doing this week to live like you live
i start spring break tomorrow and i am doing exactly
what we talked about earlier having a staycation so i
(41:10):
am doing a lot of i've really been trying
to to live more simply i just i
don't want things and so i'm trying to get rid of a lot of things
like so i'm gonna just continue and i've done
a lot of of just purging and we've talked about this at length but i'm gonna
do that for myself at my house and in my office as much as i can just to get
(41:32):
rid of things i don't absolutely need or or really want to keep for you know
anyway that's That's what I'm going to do.
And then just, I don't know, eat lunch, make food, make food and go on walks.
And it's beautiful right now. So I'm excited about having a week with good weather
just to be, just to focus on what I personally need to do.
(41:55):
Because I've had a lot of work lately and Sunday we closed our show.
And so I'm kind of able to go because I'm a person, I can multitask,
like I'm a pretty good multitasker. But when I'm in a show mode,
it's like that's the only thing.
And then as soon as that's done, I can pay attention to other things.
Like I'm looking back yesterday, I calendared through January of next year because
(42:17):
I can. I don't have any show to work on.
I'm going back through and I'm like, oh, there's text messages that I haven't
responded to because my brain can now focus on that.
So anyway, so all of that kind of like housekeeping stuff.
Well, my daughter sold spring break this week and I contemplated I had an offer
to go to the beach. but I didn't really want to take the time off.
So we are doing staycation and we are enjoying.
(42:41):
I slept in for an hour today.
So luxurious. And so I am working from home mostly this week.
So that's kind of a change.
And I feel like I'm on vacation, even though I'm not, because I'm not traveling.
I had traveled one day this week.
So that's kind of a little mini vacation and I'm trying to enjoy the weather.
(43:01):
And I am trying to pick up my house. i need to
mow my yard i need to like sweep up
my porch get ready for spring because now it
feels like it's gonna finally gonna be here but i'm
trying to fix better food and eat better and be conscious of what i have for
my intake so and in all areas i'm trying to finish my book because i have to
(43:24):
host the book club next week so that's one that's my big goal but just kind
of have a a relaxing weekend.
This has been my spring break. I'm like, I'm like, wow, it is Thursday already. What have I done?
But I mean, I've spent, I've spent the week getting some stuff done in the house,
spent the first two days sick, sick, sick, spent 48 hours in the bed. It was terrible.
(43:49):
So glad to be on the other side of that, but I'm going to enjoy being in my
house and kind of straightening up and getting some things.
I got part of my son, he and I worked on getting his room cleaned out.
We hadn't cleaned it out since we moved in when he was in high school.
So there are things that That we needed to get out. And, you know,
when you move, you just find and shove things in the rooms and put them in places.
(44:10):
Well, in this life that he's living now, it's different.
So there's a whole bunch of stuff we were able to get rid of,
put in storage or give away.
Like we've got those piles I need to actually now take and physically do something with.
And so I think I'm just going to enjoy this. And then, Beth,
you and I talked about, you know, we're trying to branch out and actually go places and do things.
(44:31):
And create little mini adventures that may be going over to Huntsville on Saturday
and just kind of spend some time downtown, wander around a nice room.
Just kind of a... And we had a fun girls' night out. We did.
We did. We had a fun girls' night out last night. That was great.
It was kind of refreshing and a break. It kind of midweek that I never leave.
Which right now, this is now month two. We've stepped to our,
(44:54):
we're going to explore one new place to eat every month.
Yes. Woohoo! Yeah. And we'll have to pick the next one. Yeah,
when we put things on calendars, we do it. We do it. Look at there.
All right. Well, thank you, ladies. Y'all have a wonderful week. You too. You too.
Thank y'all for joining us for Champagne Sunday. See you next week,
(45:15):
girls. See you next week.
Music.
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