Divorce Does Not Define You

ou are not defined by your divorce experience. Your value as a parent is not determined by a custody schedule. What your ex says and does is not a reflection of your worth.

Shared custody does not make you a part time parent or less of a parent. Having a high-conflict ex does not indicate any lack of worth in yourself. Their behaviors often reflect their disorders and not anything personal about you.

Your divorce story is not the narrative of your life. At most, it is a few scenes in a chapter and nothing more.

These people and situations do not define who you are. You do.

Transcript

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This is unapologetic parenting podcast dedicated to candidly and unapologetically discussing parenting, divorce and co parenting. We take on the topics most people don't want to talk about and offer support and solutions to help you be a better parent, co parent and human being. Now without further ado, let's get right to it. Welcome back this evening, we are talking about how the divorce experience does not define us. We are not defined as people. By going through the divorce process, we are not defined as parents, by having a custody schedule, or a parenting plan in place. We are not defined in any way shape or form by the opinions of our exes, especially when they are narcissistic and just spew vile things toward us, we are not defined by them. We are not defined by the courts, we're not defined at all by any of these things. So a lot of times we'll go through the divorce process, and that becomes our dominant narrative. I'm going through this I'm going through that I'm getting divorced from a divorce See, I have to fill in the blank on this stupid form that says divorced instead of married. And it's as if this is some sort of definitional category of what kind of human being we are. And then when we go a little deeper into custody and parenting and parallel parenting or co parenting, that becomes this dominant narrative for us, you know, I am a person who has been divorced, I am a person who has 5050 custody of my children, I am a person who this I am a person who that in we get wrapped up in all these definitional things that are just focused on divorce, that are focused on the ex that are focused on all these problematic areas. But these things do not define us we define ourselves, every single one of us gets to decide who we are, how we define ourselves. And the best way to get on the path of defining ourselves in ways that are self honoring and self empowering, is to develop that clear vision of what we want. So instead of looking at the divorce, and going through that with agonizing detail, and rehashing the past, and trying to dig into the past to figure out what happened in the marriage and performing autopsies on whatever happened with the ex, we need to shift our focus to the things we want to create. So it's Yes, I got divorced. Yes, this is the possession schedule. It is what it is. And now moving forward, I am going to create X, Y and Z and then start getting yourself into that space of defining what sort of life experiences you're going to have. What sort of life experiences will you have with your friends, with your family with your loved ones? What sort of travel? will you have? What sort of encounters with others will you have? What will romance look like? What will family time look like? What will family vacations look like? They really go deep into those things that are in front of you, those things that still are there to be created by you. From there, identify the values that you have within those spaces of the things you want to create. And then realize, Oh, I'm a person who values connection. I'm a person who values intimacy and vitality and love. I am a person who values peace and joy. and define yourself by the values that are revealed by your work on defining the things you want to create in life, discover so much about your core self, through identifying the values that are reflected in the experiences that you want to create. And then define yourself in those terms. It's not Oh, I'm a divorcee. And I'm just this and that. And I have this, you know, possession schedule. No, I'm a person who values connection and intimacy and love. And the time I'm with my kids, we're going to do things that are focused on intimacy and connection and love and joy. And we are going to do all of these things and you can spell out the experiences that you're going to create. And now you start identifying yourself in terms of what you were creating. You start identifying yourself in terms of one who values joy and love and peace and all these things. You identify yourself as one who is creating you identify yourself as one who is evolving and then from that place If you have to speak about the divorce process or any of that in any way, shape or form at all, it's in terms of, oh, that was part of my recreation. That's part of my evolution. That's part of going from one state to another as part of change, it's part of growth. And now everything is transformed. So do not allow the events of the past or the things that you've gone through, do not allow those to dictate who you are, your worth. What you're doing. Don't allow any of that. Instead, you control what you're going to create next, and you identify with your values and you move yourself into the future on your terms.