Prioritizing Self Care When You’re Getting Divorced
It may even save your life like it did mine
When I filed for divorce, I learned the state in which I live, Arizona, requires a 60-day “cooling off” or waiting period for divorce. Depending on your state, this period can range from zero to 365 days.
It was a strange time for me. Surreal. Emotional. Overwhelming. Honestly, it felt like a slow-moving nightmare where I wished someone would wake me up and things would magically go back to a time in my marriage before our relationship ended up in a wood chipper.
When I said, “I do” back in 1988, I meant it. To get divorced flew in the face of my values, but the sad realization was that it takes two people for a marriage to work. This was part of the emotional angst that felt unbearable.
I knew I needed to take care of shit, but doing so felt like I was betraying the man I had loved for over three decades. I didn’t want to do it. Don’t make me. La, la, la, I can’t HEAR you! Someone wake me up from this nightmare, for fuck’s sake!
Thankfully, my skills as a professional organizer provided plenty of muscle memory that I could draw from, even with a broken heart. I disassociated, put on my game face, took a deep breath and looked at what I needed to do.
It’s what I do for clients (without the disassociation!), but now I was doing this for myself. And instead of a decluttering a garage for a client, I was decluttering my life from a relationship gone toxic. And I was looking at my future as a divorced woman in her late fifties.
I was terrified. Especially since I spent my earning years as a homemaker and a homeschool mom. (Read: No pension, and only ½ of the social security that my wasband will receive.)
If you are waiting on your divorce right now, I am so sorry for what you are going through. Even if you’re happy the marriage is over, it’s still a huge life change and there are many practical steps to tend to. I’m going to cover just the basics of self-care in this article.
Ready? Let’s go!
First, focus on building a peaceful environment for yourself.
Start by assembling a care kit. I learned this trick from Bloom For Women, a site for women dealing with the aftermath of an affair. (I highly recommend this site if it is germane to your situation.)
What is the care kit? It’s a goody bag that you can reach for when you are overwhelmed. My kit included a cuddly throw, some dark chocolate, a scented candle, scented lotion, a favorite poetry book. You get the idea.
Next, focus on your environment. We were separated for nearly a year before the divorced so living alone made this easier for me. The year prior to the separation was rife with stress and walking on eggshells. I had not lived alone for most of my adult life and I’ll be honest…it scared me shitless more often than not. So yeah. This girl really needed to cultivate a calm environment.
Music was a powerful tool for me. I built a playlist on Spotify, I named “peace” and played it on repeat. (Lest you think I’m some Zen master, know that I also had a divorce playlist that included such memorable tunes as Fuck you Bitch by Wheeler Walker or Harry Nilsson’s You’re Breaking My Heart. Because… sometimes, a good rage fit was called for.
Poetry brought much comfort to me, especially Mary Oliver’s poem, The Journey. Thomas Merton’s prayer, hung on my fridge for that entire year. I can still barely get through it without my eyes getting leaky.
Got your place all cozy and peaceful now? Great. Now let’s talk about your physical health.
The time leading up to divorce is usually stressful. And if it has been years of tension, the long-term effect of stress hormones can seriously mess with your physical well-being. And if you’re over 50, the impact of stress on your health can be life threatening.
If you have fallen behind on your wellness visits, dental and eye checkups (like most of us did, thanks to Covid), now is the time to do so.
I am so grateful that I made this a priority because I had a suspicious spot in one breast.
The official diagnosis of bilateral breast cancer came 5 weeks after the divorce was finalized. By the time Mayo Clinic put me under a microscope, they discovered small tumors that had gone undetected in the other breast. The doctor told me the cancer was “slow and lazy” and had probably started nine years prior. I wasn’t surprised. That’s when the marital issues began to seriously snowball. I know I wasn’t even fully aware that my baseline stress level was red zoning.
But back to you. Let your doc know what you’re going through. And if you need anti-depressants or anti-anxiety meds, by all means, use them! I even got a small supply of “break glass in case of fire” aka calm the fuck down pills aka Ativan. When a panic attack renders all your self-soothing tools useless, a little pharmaceutical aid is helpful.
There was one coping strategy I used and it is one I don’t recommend… alcohol.
I’ve never been a heavy drinker, but during Covid my occasional weekly wine enjoyment morphed into a daily habit.
While going through the divorce, I would find myself at the bottom of a bottle of wine almost every day. I knew it was not good. I knew I needed to stop. But it was all I could do to function some days, and numbing the pain made that possible. Oh, I wasn’t fall down drunk but I would crack open my three buck chuck wine from Trader Joes when I got off work in the early afternoon and sip on it until I collapsed into bed at 7. Some days it was 6, so hard and heavy were the days. Wine would allow me to numb and fall asleep before shadows grew long.
And for the record, I have been happily alcohol free for some time now. I don’t miss it. Not even one little bit. (My budget it likes it too. Even low-cost wine adds up!)
These were a few of the most helpful steps I took before delving into the nuts and bolts of a marriage dissolution. Tending to your own physical, mental and emotional well-being will give you the fortitude and clarity you will need for making important decisions.
I’ll continue on this topic in my next article and discuss the practical things you will need to do when the one becomes two again.
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