Divorce, Decisions and Healing in Midlife

Midlife is often a time of re-evaluating our relationships and transitioning out of a marriage can be a big part of that. Sharri combines 30+ years of legal wisdom with strategy, nervous system regulation, mindset coaching and subconscious trauma healing and energetics to guide women through relationship endings and divorce with calm. You can find out more about her here https://www.potomaccoaching.com/about/ and download her “Ultimate Guide To Avoiding the 6 Biggest Divorce Mistakes”  via this link  Ultimate Guide To Avoiding the 6 Biggest Divorce Mistakes

We discuss:

  • The two emotions that most often show up in decisions around leaving a relationship 

  • The role of safety in big decisions and an underestimated practice to calm yourself

  • Finances as a factor and costs both ways!

  • A different perspective of “staying for the kids”

  • Unhooking from patterns of behaviour and conflict

  • Stepping back from doing, doing, doing 

Prefer to listen? Get the podcast here: Divorce and menopause, a conversation with Sharri Freedman.

One of the things that I notice in the one-on-one and group work that I do with women in their 30s, 40s and 50s is that there is a recalibration of relationships, support, career, what's serving them and what isn't. And one of the things that often comes up in the work that I do as a coach is around close relationships, intimate relationships, whether those be friendships or marriages. And I've accompanied a fair amount of women over the last years through processes of decision-making of do I stay, do I go within my marriage? How does my relationship support my career? How do I feel partnered with or not? Can I create change here in our intimacy, in our trust levels?

Or does that feel like I'm alone and I'm not supported in who I am? And what kind of decisions do I want to make around that? So I see relationships both as a huge source of support as we navigate perimenopause and menopause, but also as something that is potentially something that is quite stressful and heavy and maybe is something that we're desiring change in.

So I was so pleased when Shari said yes to having a conversation with me as part of the series of conversations looking at perimenopause and menopause. Shari is a divorce attorney, turned divorce and relationship coach, and she works with women in this time of questioning, should I, shouldn't I, or maybe wanting to create change and feeling fear and guilt and worry and financial insecurity. She supports them through that stage with both a legal background and a coaching certification and style. So I'm so excited to have her here to talk to us about what might be useful to keep in mind if we are at points of reflection around our relationship and what she sees as underlying challenges and fears for women and some concrete next steps that you could take if you're somebody who has been circling around this topic in your own mind and heart for some time. Such a beautiful conversation to share. And I hope that it gives you some moments of peace and deep breath and clarity as you navigate whatever's happening in your relationship life. 

I am so excited to be sitting down to have this conversation with you around relationships, around being human together, around changes in relationship potentially, and the thoughts we have around that and the feelings and the actions. And so I'd love for you to introduce yourself and then let us know what work you do in the world.

Hi, I am Shari Friedman. I am a divorce attorney turned trauma-informed divorce and relationship coach. And I help women who are contemplating or in the process of divorce navigate that process, that journey, that decision with confidence, clarity and calm.

I was just sharing with you before we started recording that I came to you because I'm recording the series of conversations around perimenopause, menopause, this midline transition. And I've been looking at that from hormonal changes, diet changes, nutrition. Are we drinking alcohol or not? What are our behaviours doing? Are we working out? I work as a burnout prevention coach and a leadership coach for women. And one thing that I see over and over again is either stress coming into relationship and women coming to me because they're noticing that and wanting to shift how they're managing stress. And the other one is relationship actually being a source of stress. So relationship being the constant source of dysfunction or nervous system activation or stress. And I think we don't talk enough about how living with a stressful or high conflict relationship can really impact what our capacity is. And so I'm excited to talk to you about your insights on that. And I'm curious to hear when women reach out to you, what are the challenges that they're experiencing in their way of operating and their capacity and their relations.

It's such a great, great topic. And I think I've been seeing it come up more and more as women are facing these transitions, which typically come in midlife, empty nesting, ageing parents and kind of step back to evaluate where they are. And I think that for a lot of women, the thought of divorce may have been percolating for a really, really long time. And there's always something more important. And I put that in quotes. Let me just get through the middle school graduation, the high school graduation. There may be a career change, my father's sick or my mother's sick. I'll wait until they're on the mend. There's always something that takes precedent and we put ourselves on the back burner. And really looking at what is that. What is causing us to put ourselves last? And why as women, do we do that? And for many women, very successful women in their personal lives still tend to put themselves behind everyone else in their life. Did that answer your question?

I can't even remember where we started, but I know that what you're talking about is something that I see all the time in terms of baseline health, confidence, putting ourselves forward for job interviews, prioritising our health, our boundaries. I think what I was asking about or talking about is relationship almost instead of being a source of comfort and relaxation and support. Particularly in years where we need more support than ever before. Where our hormones are maybe all over the place, where we're handling big things at work, where we, as you say, maybe changing or transitioning out of parenting or into caring for ageing parents. And we're looking around and we're saying we may be not getting that level of support from our relationship. And in fact, our relationship has become another thing, another chore that we feel like we've got to handle or we've got to manage or we've got to pour into rather than being a nice place to go. Being a source of some kind of comfort and strength. I think the question was what challenges, particularly do you see women coming to you with? What are the main things going on for them at that stage?

So I think, thank you for clarifying that, I think there's two things that come up time and time again. One is guilt. The guilt of leaving a relationship. Maybe you still have kids at home?Because in that midlife, your children's maybe not fully flown and grown. So there's a lot of guilt. There's those thoughts which we can talk about. And then also fear.

Fear of the unknown. And this goes to what you were talking about, about safety and regulating the nervous system. Change happens at the speed of safety. And if you are not feeling safe in your system, in your body, no amount of mindset work, positive affirmations, none of that is going to help you to make those really difficult decisions and change.

So it's really important to be able to step back and regulate and recognise fear's been leading. And fear's probably been leading for many, many years, keeping you stuck, keeping you in that toxic relationship, keeping you from being able to make those choices that you know you need to make, that you know are better for you.

You know that maybe this is an unhealthy place to be, but yet you can't seem to get yourself to take those steps to make those changes. So creating the baseline is really starting out and creating that safety to be able to think about, okay, what do I want to do next?

This topic of it's better for me, it's better for me to be in a different relationship or it feels like it might be better for me to be in a different relationship. And prioritising self versus what we perceive might be better for others? Maybe our children or our extended family or our partner is such a big topic in general. Self versus others, where do I put my priority?

And obviously it's different in different cultures and in different times of our lives.

So it's a tricky one. Of what am I entitled to in my life? Where do I put myself first? And where do I prioritise the needs of young children or what I want? And it sounds like your feelings or thoughts of felt or should or I don't even know what's on the other side. I don't know if it's going to be better for me or something. Swirling around and around and around, you know, when you're saying it's often you're both cycles. When you say creativity is a way of maybe making a decision from a different place, how do you to start moving into a space that feels safe?

So from a purely nervous system regulation, it could be doing some breathing exercises. The deep breathing, it can be shaking your wrists, moving your body around, anything that will bring you from that sympathetic jacked up, stressed state to a more parasympathetic, relaxed, rest and digest state. Really starting with, I always start clients with breathing.

You can do box breathing or the flagpole breathing, alternate nostril breathing. There's lots of different breathing breath work exercises that are really simple. Most people are familiar with them or have heard of them and they're really simple, but we don't realise how much of our day we are actually holding our breath or we're shallow breathing. We're not doing those deep cleansing breaths.

And our system needs that. It's like a bomb to our system to soothe it because I think you mentioned something about that stress. That the relationship has become a source of stress. And we're not meant to live in a stressed state. Yet most of us are, for the majority of our day, living in a stressed state. And something that I recently learned from a coach that I was working with that she said that cortisol is more addictive than sugar.

And cortisol happens, when we're in that stress state. So our body is craving that cortisol, craving us to stay in that stressed state. So it's even more imperative for us to be aware and to take the time to just breathe periodically throughout the day to bring ourselves out of that stressed state into a more calm state where we can be responsive as opposed to reactive. And that will allow you then to be able to make decisions that feel confident, that feel more empowered than those reactive knee-jerk decisions that don't feel good and often lead to regret.

I'm thinking about...how underestimated breathing is.

It's something that I talk to clients to both one-on-one and the leadership course that I do are, you know, a break or sometimes we start our sessions by breathing and landing in the body and they realise, I haven't intentionally breathed, realising that I'm holding my breath. It's so simple. It's free.

I was also thinking about being in that stress state, maybe for 8 hours a day at work but then if we're thinking about coming home to something that also feels stressful and thinking about the amount of time we're then spending in that of being triggered, activated state of or needing to get in ourselves. That's a lot. It's a lot of time that we're spending in a stress state, which often as we can see over burnout phases is then leading to your lowered immune systems. You're getting sick,

Just taking a breath as I think about that. 

And it becomes your normal. So when you then start to change that, your system reacts as though it's something dangerous because it's new, because you're so used to it, you've normalised stress? So it's become our normal when we're not meant to be living in that stress state for four, six, eight, twelve hours a day.

So when we start to implement some of these tools and practices to regulate the nervous system, to bring ourselves into that place of calm, it's not unusual for the system to react to that because it's different. It senses danger because anything that's unfamiliar is dangerous to our system. So it's even more important to be aware of that and to be doing the breathing, regulating periodically throughout the day.

So one thing that I always suggest to my clients is setting breathing alarms on their phone at the top of every hour. And oftentimes the reaction that I will get is, that's a lot. I don't have time for that. And so that in of itself is interesting. Because we're asking 30 seconds, to just pause and breathe and all the beautiful benefits that come when you're able to do that.

That you're more responsive, that you're able to think more clearly, that you begin to feel better in your body and your mind. And yet we want to resist that. We're too busy. Or that's silly. Or I'm breathing all day long. What do you mean I need to pause and breathe? So it's really important to recognise the resistance, which is fear coming in to try to sabotage our ability to make it safe to change.

So interesting to be talking on a micro level. You talked about fear being something that maybe gets in the way when we start thinking about living our lives in a different way or leaving our partnership. Then the micro level of, I don't know this feeling of stopping to breathe or this feels strange. In both ways, I'm changing pace sometimes to a time peace. When you think about supporting women to make these big decisions and increasing safety where I can make these little decisions to start breathing or to change. And I have control over that. And you think the macro of making a decision to change my life, safety around that. You talked about financial safety as being a big piece of context that supports women to be able to have choice and to make those decisions from a point of view of, I feel safe either way.

Yes. So financial insecurity, fears around finances is a really predominant fear that almost all the women that I work with have, whether they're the breadwinner or not, whether there's lots of money in the marital pot or not, which was surprising to me in the very beginning. Because you would think that, well, if people have a lot of money, the fear around financial stability would be less, but it's all relative. So almost every woman that I work with going through divorce has that initial, if not longer, sense of that financial fear of, will I be okay? Am I going to be able to keep the house? Am I going to have to move? Am I going to be able to maintain the lifestyle that I've become accustomed to?

The work that I do, it's twofold. It's one, creating the safety in the system to be able to think about these things without completely imploding and shutting down completely, which so many times, we hear, I've been paralysed. I've been paralysed for years. And one of them is that financial fear paralyses you. So what I also help clients do is to figure out where can I gather that information? It may start with working with me where we begin to compile and I have worksheets where we can sort of look at what are my expenses? What does the marital pot look like? And then to then begin to think about what other experts might I need to bring onto my team or who might I need to talk to? Even if I haven't made the decision yet to move forward, when we gather that expert knowledge, it acts as a balm to soothe the system because knowledge is power.

And when you have that knowledge, then you can start to make decisions from a place of being informed as opposed to this big black hole of I don't know, I don't know, I don't know. And what I often see happen is when you get caught in that and then you finally reach your breaking point, a lot of mistakes are made because you haven't taken the time to A, create the safety in your system and B, to gather that information so that you can begin to make those choices and you always have choices. And when you don't see that you have choice, that's when you begin to unravel a little bit.

So useful to turn towards it. To actually look at me and engage quite a granular level. And I know that that's something that comes up a lot around the work that I do as well in terms of stepping back from work or taking on positions or not, or thinking about do I go to part-time? Overwhelmed by the admin or the finances.

And so it becomes something that's circulating on the side of their heads and kind of throwing shadows on everything. And looking at that and actually writing down numbers, having conversations, all this brings it into the core of the conversation. We can then say, okay, well, I'll choose that and there's a trade-off here I'm willing to make, why I can see it has consequences on that. So that sounds like something anyone listening who is feeling that - in that paralysis state could start thinking about doing a conversation or tracking an app or writing something down, getting the excel spreadsheets out.

Absolutely. Because right when you see it, when you can begin to see it, and then looking at, what does not moving, what does the act of not moving forward, what is that costing me? So yes, you might look at your numbers and recognise I might have to make some changes in my life from a financial standpoint. But if I don't, what is that costing me? From a non-monetary perspective, my happiness, my health? Because if you are in this constant state of stress in that toxic relationship, it takes a toll on your body.

At the beginning you talked about that, how it affects your body and your health. And it absolutely does. And I have seen this with clients where I will say to them, you your body, stores that. And so we can push it away and we can pretend that things are fine and we can not give ourselves permission to be the person we want to be. But eventually your body is going to push back. And so if we're not taking care of ourselves, it will come out and it comes out in ways that we don't necessarily always anticipate those chronic health issues.

The fatigue, maybe your symptoms of perimenopause and menopause are heightened because of that. The cost is more than just the financial. We have to look outside more holistically to the whole being.

Such an interesting exercise, I think, in all aspects to look at what happens if I don't move forward, or what happens if I don't make a choice, of almost seeing that as a choice in and of itself, the bigger picture.

And I think there's also something here about accepting, there are always trade-offs. There's always an impact of something else. And I think we've got a collective fantasy of one way is to be the right way and it's going to be perfect and everyone's going to be like the angels, they're going to be singing all over me. And letting of go of that illusion a little bit of like they might be tainted in this way, but there's also pain that way. Confidence or getting big and they fear judgment or setting boundaries. But on the other side of feeling resentful and overworked and frustrated and losing it a little bit, not everything is perfect now. It takes the step that it's going to be a negative consequence.

Sometimes all the negatives around going, the impact of me staying in this and how does that ripple out into my family or into my capacity or into my health or into my children?

100%. And so many times I've heard, well, I'm staying till the kids are grown. I'm going to stay for the kids. It is a myth or a misconception that it's always best to stay because if the situation is not a healthy one, if you are unhappy, if you are always stressed, if you are short-fused, if you're not able to be fully present, if you're not grounded, how is that impacting your children? What are we dripping onto our kids that we don't even realise we're dripping onto them? And when we give ourselves permission to say, I need to do this for me, it's actually the most loving thing you can do for everyone around you.

Because when you're whole, when your tank is full and overflowing, think about all that excess that you have to give. And when your tank is depleted and there's barely, if anything, left, how is that really being loving to yourself and to others?

I think we've got quite an outdated view of divorce. And I'm to be angry. Someone's going to be going to be throwing things around, you know. it's gonna be drama.

And it's been interesting over the last 15 years since Gwyneth Paltrow and Chris Martin's, there may be friendly way of divorcing or more conscious and intentional ends of marriage, which is a really interesting thing as we're in a time where women are financially dependent or are able to create career or are able to make decisions based on if you feel stuck in relationships due to societal pressures.

When you think about doing divorce differently, your website and in the work that you do, tell us bit more about how it could not be.

Yeah, so I think that divorce can be done differently regardless of what is happening with your partner. So in an ideal world, both parties are looking at doing it, being highly conscious, being amicable. And in many instances that can happen. There will likely still be some conflict.

And so learning how to unhook from the pattern that we so easily can get pulled back into because of years and years of living that pattern over and over. But I also believe that it only takes one person to be able to unhook from that, to align with their values, to really look at who do I want to be now moving forward? How do I want to show up throughout this process?

When I look back on it, how do I want to feel about my role and how I responded to whatever was coming? That's where your power comes from. So while it, again, in a perfect world, it would be beautiful for both parties to be on board with this conscious uncoupling, but it doesn't always happen that way. And I want all women to know that it is possible to choose differently. It's not easy. 

Simple, but not easy. It is work and it is doing that inner work of really figuring out who you are at your core and how you want to co-parent, how you want to be showing up and always coming back to that, always aligning back to that. Regardless of what is swirling outside of you, because you have no control over that, zero. As much as we want to control, control is an illusion. We have no control over anything except our own thoughts, feelings, and actions. And so when you can recognise that and start to let go of the judgment, what are other people gonna think of me? Or I'm gonna hurt somebody by choosing me.

And for those that are listening who are people pleasers, that can be a really difficult thing to let go of. The idea of my action might hurt someone, but your non-action is hurting you. So really looking at is it okay for me and making it okay for me to love myself enough to say, I need to do this and allow that person to feel what they need to feel and have their own journey.

When I hear you talk about this investigation into who we want to show up as during the separation and divorce. It's making me think about, often that question of identity within our years of 40s and 50s where we are transitioning out of a phase of who we were and into a different phase of who we are becoming and questioning. Habits or community or career or how we're spending our time and seeing is it fit for future me. Is it fit for purpose?

Maybe my relationship doesn't feel true and aligned anymore. And who do I want to be at? And I know that you've spoken about your own transitions and changes over the years in late forties and fifties. You've recalibrated and stepped into kind of this menopausal version of you.

So in my 50s, early 50s, I transitioned from attorney persona to coach. And that was a big transition in that I had never run my own business. And so really, I see myself more as an entrepreneur than a coach. I own a coaching practice, but I am an entrepreneur. So building my own business from the ground up and being able to do that at age 50 and beyond. I'm really proud of that and actually really celebrate that. And one of the beautiful ripple effects from that is my own daughter. So I have two children, a son and a daughter. My daughter who saw me reinvent myself and really step into something that I love doing and that I'm passionate about. And having her witness that and acknowledge that makes it all worthwhile, to be honest. It really is. And she's now in law school. She's just started her law school journey. So it's not as though she saw law as being something not to aspire to, but just really she saw me.

Recognise you can do anything you want to do at any age. And so it's so important for women who are at that crossroads, that next chapter in their life, to view it as not an end, but a beginning. And the same thing with divorce.

It is an end of a marriage. It is a death of the relationship and your hopes and your dreams, but it is not the end. It can be an opportunity. And when you talk about identity, the work that I do, the methodology that I teach, it's called neuro identity evolution. And I love this methodology for women in divorce because divorce is an identity evolution. And you can't go through divorce and not change. And so when you learn how to see it as an opportunity, as opposed to the end,

It's an opportunity for growth, for expansion, for really creating a life that maybe you had no idea was even possible. And then being able to step into that is really exciting. And while I myself have not been through divorce, I have worked with many, many women and men as an attorney, going through it from that perspective as a coach. Helping them through it in that perspective. And then my own personal transformational journey using all of that experience has really helped me to be able to support and encourage my clients to take whatever step they choose to take, whether it's to stay and grow and be happy in that relationship or to go and grow and heal and be happy in their next chapter.

I love the way you highlighted the people watching you, your children watching you, because I think sometimes when you have that story around, oh, I'm staying for the children, we think it can also benefit in showing children, you can do differently, can prioritise different things. Can start again, you can study again, you can start a business. As we enter these ages where we're in for longer and longer. So it's also a gift. To be able to model in a way in our families or in our environments.

The last series of conversations I've had were with women who worked and earned the same hours and more than their husbands and had children. So parenting and working at the same time. And that I saw or a consistency that I saw in relationships in the way they described their marriage is that it evolved. So there were conversations, things changed.

Women who were supported were doing amazing things in career and the relationships were close. Then there's the flip side - women who don't feel support and have conversations when it is high. And a lot of stress and that almost feels like that external stressor.

When you think about the primary drivers that women bring to you to say, I'm struggling, I'm thinking about this. What would they say here?

I think it's exactly what you just stated. It is that lack of communication. It is the feeling that they're not supported, that oftentimes there is this recognition of what they've been tolerating because of the children, lack of respect, doing it all. Recognising that their role in it, the perfectionism, the people pleasing, the trying to walk on eggshells to make sure that everyone…, keeping the peace and it's exhausting. And so there comes a point where, when oftentimes when they come to me where they know something needs to change, but they're not sure how to go about that, or they're maybe not quite ready to say it out loud, but they know.

There's an inner knowing of like, something's not right, and I've been tolerating this for a really long time, and there's a part that knows they deserve different. And then there's a part that questions that. Do I really deserve something different or is this what is meant for me? And so it comes into this two blocks that every human being has and that is self-worth and fear. And so we talked a lot about the fear and this is like the self-worth comes in with, know, am I worthy of a different relationship or is this all that's meant for me? Am I deserving of this? Being disrespected, not having the support, maybe there's something wrong with me.

You talked about being exhausting and I see that a lot in my work and I think particularly where we are in hormonal fluctuation. We don't have the same capacity for doing building as we've done in years before. So we're getting to streamline and simplify and rest and take care of these. And we're noticing that's not possible in the space or in this dynamic and in this relationship. And so it, becomes harder and harder to keep doing or staying in something like that. That becomes harder and harder.

Yeah, absolutely. And I would argue that the doing is our downfall. We need to really reevaluate the doing. I think as women, we've been brainwashed into believing we can do it all. We're super women! And the truth is, there needs to be more being than doing.

We need to give ourselves permission to be, to be in that rest. That rest doesn't mean you're lazy. That rest doesn't mean you're not worthy. That rest doesn't mean you're failing. Rest actually means you're giving life to yourself. You're refilling that tank. And rest doesn't have to mean doing nothing. It can be taking a walk, meditating, reading, but really looking at how much doing that is taking away from our ability to sit in the space of being.

I see like I wanna say so many things. I often talk to the women that I work with around these and other cycles of overworking. And it's so interesting when we start pulling back from the overworking, the over-efforting, the over-doing in a relationship context or friend dynamic. When we start over-delivering and we start noticing what happens in that space, sometimes people are able to step into it, sometimes people are brimming in love, sometimes we are able to receive and be nourished and sometimes there's nothing and there is a gap that opens up and that's useful information and data for us. But it really is huge challenge. 

Absolutely. What you just said about giving when you step back, when you allow yourself to be, and it opens up that opportunity for potentially your partner to step in or not and shows the gap that then might highlight, illuminates for you a different path forward perhaps, but part of that overdoing is the fear? The fear comes in and keeps us going. The fear of the perfectionism, the need to be in control, the not wanting to let people down. And when we can step back, it often does open up that space for really internally looking at yourself, but then also giving the other people in your life, particularly your partner, the opportunity to look at their role. And we sometimes find that we've been hindering them, preventing them from stepping in because we've been overdoing.

That was what we talked about earlier in the conversation. Easy to say, so challenging to be in when we're in the everyday of the trigger. If you're listening to this and resonating with some aspects of it, where would you recommend that they start? 

Thinking moments of pause and breathing and noticing body where can I regulate my stress so that I'm in a different state? 

Making lists of assets, finances in a different way, engaging with that. Is there anything else to suggest as resources or recommendations for women who might be feeling drawn to this?

Yeah, well, they could contact me. I offer a free consultation. So that would be a good start. I would love to chat with anyone who just wants to discover what that might look like. But really doing the things that we talked about is a really great place to start.

There are YouTube videos on the breathing. Tapping is another really beautiful way to bring yourself back to that place of balance, that parasympathetic state. So there's lots of free and low cost tapping resources. So tapping is that emotional freedom, technique.

It really is very, very helpful. I do a lot of that with my clients. I do a lot of that for myself, even just tapping on the collarbone and breathing and we're tapping on the karate chop point. And so these are all things that you can start to explore and do to bring yourself out of your head and into your body. But, anything that's going to get you out of your head and into your body is going to be a really good first step into figuring out what you may want to do with that relationship. So it could be yoga. It could be going to a breathwork class. It could be looking at some somatic work that maybe that you resource that is in your local community. Any of those things would be a really great way to start to reconnect your body to your mind and your mind to your body. 

What I recommend to clients often is dancing to one song. Put on one song and kind of move your body in a little bit. 

I love that you mentioned that because dancing is my go-to nervous system regulation. In fact, I was doing a little bit of that before for this podcast. I love to just put on a really empowering song and pop on the headphones and just dance like no one's watching. That really is a great, great way to just get yourself back into, okay, this is who I am.

And so I love that you mentioned that. I love that. 

Thank you so much for the time. Is there anything that you feel would be important for those listeners who are in that, should I stay or should I go or maybe in starting the process of divorce to remember?

That divorce is painful, pain is inevitable, but suffering is optional.

What do mean by that? 

So what I mean by that is suffering is a choice. Divorce is painful. There really is no way around it. There is heartbreak. There is loss. There is grief. So it is inevitable. You cannot go through divorce and not feel some kind of pain. It's a spectrum. But there is always pain whether you want the divorce or it was chosen for you. But it's optional to suffer. You don't have to be in that, or you don't have to become a victim to that. You can choose to evolve, to be intentional, to feel what you need to feel, and then make the choice. How do I want to be? How am I showing up? How am I moving through? Being more responsive as opposed to being reactive. Because when we are reactive, we are suffering. When we are the victim, we are suffering. But when we become intentional, when we take our power back, when we know we are making the choice, even if the choices aren't good ones, I always say there's always options. They just might not be good ones, but you always have options. And so when you can recognise that and then make the choices that you need to make, the power is there.

So in a way what I'm hearing is the pain is always pain and I think one of the things that is going to be pain either way. Maybe pain and relationships are painful. Maybe there's pain staying. Or maybe there's pain in going. 

Yes, exactly. It's a choice to stay ruminating in your thoughts. Your feelings are your feelings and feel those. We must feel those. But then we get to make a choice. What do we do now? So if you're unhappy in your marriage, but you're not willing to do anything about it, you're suffering. You're choosing to stay there. You can choose to stay and choose something different.

You could choose to stay and say, okay, I'm going to try these things. I'm going to be more intentional about putting myself first. I'm going to let go of some of the control. Let the dishes be in the sink. Let the dishwasher not be loaded the way that I like it loaded. Let the trash not get taken out. Instead of always being the one that feels like they have to be controlling everything.

You can start to make some changes, but when you talk about it and ruminate on it and feel sorry for yourself, that's the suffering. Same thing with leaving. When you leave, there's going to be pain, allowing yourself to feel that, and then being intentional about what are my options, what are my choices, how am I moving through this, getting the support you need, being willing to ask for the help that you need so that you don't get caught in that victim story. 

There's so much there. Stepping into power, stepping into choice there, which can feel both confronting and so liberating and so a beautiful place to close and food for thought, I think for anybody listening. What are we choosing, engaging with it or even not engaging with it. Thank you so much for your time. really appreciate it. Thank you.

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Maude Burger-Smith