We offer a 12-week divorce recovery class, which incorporates Dr. Allen Wolfelt’s book Transcending Divorce. By appointment only – call 817-495-8753 to schedule your private sessions.
How to Work Through the Grief of Divorce
It’s never easy when a marriage or other significant relationship ends. Whatever the reason for the spilt –and whether or not you wanted it – the breakup of a long-term, committed relationship can turn your whole world upside down and can trigger all sorts of painful and unsettling feelings.
Grief is a natural reaction to loss.
This means that you need to grieve if you are in the middle of a divorce with all its associated losses. Your children also need to grieve, and although you may not fully believe it, your ex (or soon-to-be ex) also needs to grieve.
Grieving divorce is complicated for many reasons.
For one, unlike what happens when someone dies, there are no traditions to support, direct, and encourage your grief (and eventual healing). When a loved one dies, people get in touch with you, bring you food, and join you at the funeral. Others share in your grief. When you get a divorce, friends and family often do not know what to say, they may “take sides” with or against you, and they often get angry with your ex. No one can truly share your grief. Your losses don’t bring special support though divorce. Instead, sources of support often slip away from you.
Grief is work, but it does a specific job, too.
It is hard work like other kinds of work, but it has a definite purpose, and it has no end. That’s especially true about the grief of divorce.
I had been married 33 years, and suddenly I was faced with a midlife divorce. I was unspeakably sad about the whole thing, the sick-in–my-heart, sick-to-my-stomach, deep kind of pain I was feeling was something I never experienced. What I discovered during my own journey, is that the grief of divorce can’t be hurried or sidestepped. Recovery takes more time then we think it should.
Keep in mind real grieving is a transformative process that allows you to feel the full weight of what’s happened, but also makes room for healing to begin and sets the stage for creating a future that is all you want it to be.
Rev. Dr. A. Tucker Davis
817-495-8753
