It’s important to acknowledge and properly deal with the brokenness that can come as a result of separation by focusing on spiritual healing after divorce. The earlier you start to focus on this area, often the better.
However, clients can sometimes struggle with this. Maybe it’s that you focus on how it was a religious event or ceremony that tied you legally together in the first place. And, if you happen to have strong religious beliefs, thoughts of your wedding vows can trigger feelings of shame or guilt when you begin divorce proceedings.
You may fear punishment for choosing divorce. After all, you made a vow for better or worse, in sickness or health, until death do us part. Or perhaps you’re feeling that your spiritual journey can’t start because you’re ashamed to be in your church community.
The main problem from a spiritual perspective is that everything feels out of control when you divorce. Your whole life is changing and, often, you’re changing too. So this spiritual healing guide will help you in finding inner peace after divorce.
How do I find hope after divorce?
Whether you’re looking for inner peace, hope or to get your power back, the first reminder is, God loves and accepts us all. That’s how we must think. A lot of times the shame we experience comes from a sense we did something wrong. But you need to remind yourself that you did the best you could to make your marriage work, but things didn’t work out.
You need to accept that negative thoughts will come and critics will come. Not everyone will understand your choice. To live with hope, you must make peace with your decision. So when you come up against people who criticize you or your decision, the confidence in what you’ve done and why you’ve done it will carry you through.
Heal the inside to get your power back, so you can deal with anything thrown your way – internal or external.
How do I heal myself after divorce?
Most people lose their sense of identity in a relationship. They may have entered the relationships feeling like they knew who they were, but they lose that sense of self by the time the relationship has ended.
It’s important to know who you are and have that sense of yourself, your values and your purpose. You have to rediscover who you are outside your past relationships and past and existing friendships.
The goal is to have your own life experiences, know your own worth and value, and survive no matter what. To be co-dependent means you believe you can’t live without that person. When you separate or divorce, it’s a wake-up call as you realize you have to do everything for yourself.
Here are 7 steps on how to find spiritual healing after divorce:
- Find a spiritual teacher or leader
- Connect with like-minded groups of people
- Create space to listen to your inner guide
- Learn forgiveness
- Use meditations to create space
- Use prayer
- Have a spiritual divorce ceremony
7 steps to spiritual healing after divorce
Here are each of the 7 steps. There is no particular order you need to do them in.
Seek a spiritual teacher or leader
Whether your higher power is God, Universe, Self or Science, seek out a spiritual teacher or a religious leader that you trust and can talk to. It’s good to find this person when you know you’re ready to divorce. These leaders are often great listeners and can provide spiritual advice for breakups that maybe you won’t get from a family member.
If you’ve never regarded yourself as religious or followed a spiritual path before, these guides and teachers can help you with getting in touch with your spiritual side and even experiencing your own spiritual awakening.
Find a like-minded group of people
It’s good to surround yourself with a community of people with a like faith or beliefs, whether through a church or group. These people can encourage you to grow as a person by tapping into your higher power.
This group of people can be a great strength for you when you doubt yourself, wonder why it’s happening to you, or struggle to connect to your higher power. And it will happen, trust me.
Surrounding yourself with a community of believers, even when they don’t know all the details of what you’re going through, can ensure you have people who will always steer you in the right direction.
List your values and beliefs
One thing I always encourage my coaching clients to remember is that the person you’re divorcing you once loved enough to commit to Holy Matrimony with. It’s important to remember the love, care and respect you had for that person, and maintain that through your divorce. It will make the process much easier when you seek to be fair and loving in your actions.
Often, you can dip into wanting to prove you’re right or giving away your happiness in order to get your point across. This only causes resentment and anger. And it’s fair to say that if your ex-partner is misbehaving, it’s going to hurt.
My advice is to let go of the emotion, and choose to be happy. You may have moments where you want to scream and yell, but do that inside your own head and choose the words that come out of your mouth wisely.
A good way to monitor what you should and shouldn’t say is to set yourself a list of values and beliefs you want to stick to. Coming up with 3-5 values is a good guide.
For example, you may want to always be kind and compassionate in your communication. You may want to always act with integrity and be the better person.
These then become the guiding principles for how you show up in the world.
Learn forgiveness
A big part of your spiritual healing after divorce is forgiveness. It can be particularly important for toxic relationship healing.
Hurt can easily turn into bitterness and hate. You can ask God or higher power to help you break the pattern for wanting revenge and open up space for forgiveness. That doesn’t mean you need to forget what the other person has done or even condone their actions. But holding on to hate only harms yourself.
Forgiveness isn’t about the other person and what they need. It’s about bringing light and joy back into your own life, by letting go of the things that create negative energy in your life.
Of course, it takes time, so don’t expect this to magically happen overnight. A coach can really help you through this or one of the previous mentioned spiritual guides can help you as well.
Meditate to create space
When you don’t open up space in your life either through meditation or just quiet reflective time, you can unintentionally lead yourself toward fear. It’s important to create space to allow yourself to listen to your inner guide.
To achieve inward reflection during any time of crisis, one of the most underutilized things in the spiritual approach is meditation and breathing.
Steps might include:
- Get quiet and connect to your source
- Breathe deeply
- Center yourself by remembering who you are in your spirit
- Connect with a sense of belonging, as you keep breathing
- Continue to breathe until you feel a sense of peace.
You can also use positive affirmations after divorce to repeat if you feel you need something to focus on during meditation. Simply repeat the affirmation in your mind.
If you were to take just one tip from this, it would be to breath deeply. It’s a great strategy to use if you’re feeling reactive during your divorce. Stop and take a deep breath and you’ll find you can respond in a better way.
Use Prayer
I believe your relationship with God or your higher power is an important relationship to foster, because it informs and instructs us on what to do. It gives us strength when dealing with challenges in life, like divorce.
You can do that through prayer. Often, you may look at prayer as a means of asking God for things, rather than seeing it as a way of communicating with the Creator. It’s a conversation.
Conversations are two-way arrangements – so you must speak but also listen.
Some clients choose to read passages from the bible or certain scriptures and repeat those words during meditation. Those words often hold a message we most need to hear. without us even realizing. It can provide a guide for us to discern what God’s opinion is of our situation, even if it doesn’t speak directly to divorce.
Have a spiritual divorce ceremony
You had a ceremony to marry, so why not have a ceremony for divorce? Often a ceremony, usually with close friends and family, will help with the closure you may need as the divorce proceedings come to a close. It’s the perfect final step in your spiritual healing after divorce.
There are no rules around a spiritual ceremony or divorce party. It can really be whatever feels right for you.
Your next steps to gain spiritual power?
Inside Privately Preparing For Divorce, we have a pastor who shares some of his wisdom having helped many transition through divorce. He provides tips and strategies you can use to connect with a higher power and spiritual advice for breakups.
Privately Preparing For Divorce also gives you access to advice from an attorney, counselor, mortgage broker, personal trainer and more. Access the program.
