A Guide to Getting Through the Emotions and Pain of Divorce. By Nora Boghossian

As you deal with the emotions and pain of divorce, there are actions you can take to address these feelings and begin the healing process.

The end of a relationship brings forth a multitude of raw, shaky emotions, feelings, pain, and when not addressed it turns into suffering.

We may be triggered by words, sights, sounds when we don’t do the work to release the emotions and pain of divorce fully.

A period of grievance is necessary to fully digest a divorce. Just as we would for any other passing, loss, end. So, too, is the process required to go through during the end of a relationship – divorce, separation, or the end of a committed relationship – in order to be in clarity and reconnect with ourselves again, in order to choose love again and to keep moving on our forward path.

It helps to know that we each have a path to walk on and through, that each of our path is full of lessons. The lessons come in all forms and experiences on all levels – physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual.

When our inward and outward is one, then we are in alignment, centered, grounded vertically, and what happens externally in our horizontal realm does not easily shake us out of our path. Yes we may still be challenged because we are human after all, but we don’t get sucked into so far deep so quickly that we can’t come to the light again. We will be able to rise again. Each time we fall, we will know how to stand again.

Acknowledge and Address Feelings Related to Divorce

So we need to work on ourselves on a deeper level. What does that mean? What does that look like?  Acknowledgement that something is off is key. So when we are aware, it is imperative that we honor that awareness.  The acknowledgment process allows us to address any and all of the feelings and pain of divorce.

The feelings to address may be anger, shock, guilt, sadness, doubt, loneliness, shame, feeling unlovable, lost, unworthy, insecure, loss of trust, disappointment, feeling like we’re not enough, and/or feeling like we’re a failure. These are all stemmed from our fears, conditionings, lack of self-love, lack of self-trust, as well as having dishonored ourselves, our truth, and self-compromise where the commitment to ourselves has been compromised.

One of the fears is that our identity as we had known it has fallen apart, or is no longer. So our mind doesn’t know its function anymore. So we don’t know what to do. This impacts us emotionally and mentally, which then impacts us physically. We feel like we don’t know who we are anymore. In truth, we have forgotten who we are. We forget that we are greater than our experiences such as a divorce. We attach who we are to our human experience instead of who we are at our core. Love. Light. Grace. We have forgotten that we are a Miracle, Blessing, and a Gift, that we have unique gifts to create, collaborate, and share. So having attached ourselves to the form of our external relationship, we feel lost once it ends. We don’t know what to do and what not to do. Constantly judging ourselves. The dialogue is on in our head. We fall into despair, downward spiraling, and the questions begin to swirl.

• What’s wrong with me?
• Why me?
• Why now?
• Why is this happening to me?
• Am I not good enough?
• How am I going to get over this?
• When is this going to end?
• Am I ever going to be OK again?
• Am I ever going to have my life back again?
• Could I have done more?
• Am I ever going to be in a relationship again?

It’s OK to have these thoughts. It’s part of being human.

Free Write Responses to Bring Yourself Clarity

In order to address these questions, one of the many exercises to practice is to free write your responses. This is a way to release what’s in you. Give yourself the sacred space answering these questions without editing, without holding back, without judgment. This helps you get the feelings out. Then you will become present and clarity will rise again. Repetition of this practice as many times as you need it is what carries you to clarity.

Practice Doing Nothing

As you process out the feelings, as they come up, it’s also important to practice doing nothing. This means sitting quietly with your eyes closed so that you may tune out the external more fully and tune into the energy inside of you. Practice being Silent. Breathing. Taking deep breaths. Silence brings forth wisdom, and wisdom unravels clarity. That’s the nature of wisdom. Silence is the frequency from which wisdom is birthed. Wisdom requires us to be quiet and pay attention in order for it to speak to us, and in order for us to hear it well, to tune in, and listen. When we do hear the words of wisdom come through, what comes next is Trusting. Trust is huge. We need to trust what comes through. To trust to the point to which we then begin to take steps towards that trust, that wisdom that’s been delivered to us.

Awareness Is Key

When we take one step, the next step is revealed to us in divine timing. Awareness is key here. When we are aware, our ears are in tune with our soul so we have a deep innate intelligence that’s awake and alert to guide us. As each step is revealed to us, we will acknowledge it. We are in a state of being connected and interconnected. There’s a circling of energy flowing with the higher consciousness.

What happens too with acknowledgement is that we are giving ourselves permission to feel all the gradients of our feelings. We are giving attention to each feeling, which is the beginning. To sit in the pain of divorce and to face it. The work of processing it all through us starts. Since this is deep and intense work, it is important to create a sacred, safe, private space wherein you can dive deep into all the range of emotions freely in a clear and open space, in order to bring them all to completion. So by creating this sanctuary we are able to allow ourselves to be in it, feel it, then we will be ready to release it, to clear it in order to heal it.

Face the Pain of Divorce

So again, in order to get to and be in freedom, first we need to acknowledge our pain. We need to clear our pain in order to heal our pain. We do that by sitting in our pain. Ride it out. Feel it through. Express it out. Giving it the time, space, and attention it needs.

The only way to flush out the feelings that do not serve us, the pain that is keeping us stuck, is to face it and give it the moment, the attention, the acknowledgment that is needed in order to work with it, process it through and out of us.

Otherwise, we leak it everywhere and on everyone since we are holding on to it, carrying it with us throughout our day, day in and day out. We carry the weight of all those feelings, pains, and when avoided and suppressed long enough, they turn to sufferings. The more you hold on to them, the harder it’s going to get to let them go. But with work, it is possible to release them.

This unnecessary hold, this grip will wear us out on all levels. It causes fatigue, aches, and pains on all levels – emotional, physical, mental, and spiritual too. The more you hold onto them, the harder it’s going to get to let them go. But it is possible.

So don’t be surprised, for example, when you wake up tired even though you slept. Sometimes the pain overlaps into our subconscious mind and we experience the pain while we are asleep. That is how we may have dreams of discomfort, sadness, pain, etc. The same feelings we have during our awake life. So, when we have incomplete unsettled feelings and pains we are facing in our wake hours, those remain within us as we go to sleep. So you wake up feeling the impact of it.

As we work on ourselves, we begin to dissolve and lighten ourselves from the feelings and pains energetically and mentally, physically, and spiritually. We begin to rise and reconnect with our higher self, our higher consciousness, and we begin to live from our higher potential.

It’s a matter of being aware of who we are – love and beyond our physical form – on all levels.

As we evolve and grow, new sets of challenges may arise for us to face and overcome. So, it’s an ongoing process. As you may know, the Universe is not concerned with our comfort zone. It works in such a way so that we are learning, growing, evolving, and transforming eternally.

A Different Way of Looking at Yourself and Relationships Will Come

With work, commitment, consistency, compassion and courage, a new and different perspective, a different way of looking at ourselves, at relationships, and at divorce and end of your relationships comes about.

This is what I have learned and I feel the calling to serve you with what I’ve learned, evolved, and transformed in my life too.

I was divorced. I had those feelings. I had those labels. I had those questions. And with the work, commitment, and consistently showing up for myself, I have a new outlook on myself, on my divorce, and end of relationships. So I want to offer the same for you. The two services that I have are a support group only for women on a monthly basis and private one-on-one sessions. When someone is interested in the private sessions, we have a conversation about it in more details.

Commitment: The Most Important Factor to Transform Yourself

The most important factor to transforming ourselves and getting through a divorce, or an end of relationship, is our commitment to ourselves, the consistency to keep committing and recommitting to ourselves, to keep showing up for ourselves. Not just for the sessions but in life itself. Once you have completed your sessions, you will integrate into your life all the wisdom and tools you come away with. This, too, is a process.

The work we are doing is finally giving our pain the attention it has needed in order for it all to clear out of us with respect to the divorce, separation, or end of a committed relationship, so that you may get to heal and recover, reconnect, rejoice, and be free and light again.

What stands in our way of our new possibility is really our own mind, false beliefs, and our limiting ways and what we see ourselves as, our limitations, our identity of who we think we are, our grip and hold on our identity. Our feelings and our collapsing into it over and over again is the vicious cycle, because we haven’t brought them to completion. So that pattern repeats, until we do bring them to completion.

We may feel like our feelings are who we are, but our feelings are just feelings and they pass. They are not who we are.

It may feel that way when you’re in it, living it, breathing it, the pain of it all, and doing so over and over again, cycling back to them again, or being triggered back to them again. And that’s what happens when we don’t clear out what’s there.

So what happens too is when we’re carrying those feelings unresolved we end up manifesting a relationship, a man, or a partner who reflects those unhealed wounds, which are within us and we are faced with them. So they become our lessons.

Be the Queen of Your Life

In order to invoke the King into our life, we have to be the Queen of our life. In order to do that, we have to be able to remove all the blocks within us, all the barriers which keep the man who is a King at bay. We also need to embody the Queen to invoke a king. That means once we’ve cleared our pains, sufferings, and we have healed our wounds, etc., we begin showing up in our own life fully by being and creating all that brings joy into our lives. We have to continue to give attention to our body, mind, and spirit in the way of self-care, and do do so even when we are not in a relationship. To look and feel our best, even when nobody is watching so to speak. To do so for us. Because that tells the universe I’m working on myself. I’m preparing. I’m getting ready. I’m open. I’m available for a relationship again. I am fully connected to the love that I am, again. And we know that – we are ready. We exude a magnetic energy as we practice being in our feminine light.

We practice acceptance, freedom, liberation, rejoicing, and reconnecting to the core and essence of who are – love, light, joy, blessing, and miracle.

The moment we decide we are going to work on ourselves, to get to our clarity, and to reconnect with our highest self again, to choose love again, up comes our fear, resistance, our stories, conditionings, patterns, and issues. It is important to know that this forwarding of our fear is part of the process. It is part of being human. It is our protective mechanism that’s been conditioned over the years. The challenge is to keep on. To commit and recommit to working through all the versions of our emotions and labels of our fears. No matter what shape or form it takes. WE have to keep committing and recommitting to ourselves, so that we are being and living our highest potential.

https://www.divorcemag.com/articles/getting-through-emotions-pain-of-divorce/

Retired and getting divorced? These are the extra pitfalls you need to know about

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/consumer-affairs/retired-getting-divorced-extra-pitfalls-need-know/

The number of people divorcing in retirement has risen in recent years, but this group needs to be aware of a litany of financial pitfalls as they divide a lifetime’s worth of assets.

Figures from the Office for National Statistics show that between 2005 and 2015, the most recent full year for which data is available, the number of women over the age of 65 getting divorced rose by almost 20pc, from 4,654 to 5,554. The number of men of retirement age getting divorced increased from 8,059 to 8,697, an 8pc rise, over the same period.

The ONS put the rise down to older people being “more connected, economically and socially, than they were before”. Internet dating and people continuing to work beyond the age of 65, and so being able to support themselves, are thought to be the other reasons for the increase. 

But those who divorce in retirement today will have more entwined finances than those who divorce at a younger age – partly because they have spent more time together, but also because of generational differences that typically saw more non-working women in households previously.

Large pension pots, state pension entitlements, splitting large properties and inheritance tax bills are just some of the pitfalls to look out for, on top of the usual financial wrangling of divorce.

Split the pension pot?

“Generally, older people will have more money in their pension pots,” said Mary Waring of Wealth for Women, a financial advice firm that specialises in divorce cases. She said the issue was complicated by the fact that many couples reaching the age of 65 today will consist of a husband who worked, and probably has a valuable final salary pension, and a wife who did not work. 

Pension assets can be split in three ways: the whole fund can be handed to one person, with the other spouse getting something of equivalent value from among the couple’s other assets; it can be “earmarked”, meaning that when money starts to be taken from the pension it is split between the spouses; or the pot can be split, known as “pension sharing”. 

Jon Greer, head of retirement policy at Old Mutual Wealth, said there were disadvantages with “earmarking” that had made it less popular in recent years.

 “For example, the pension scheme member gets to decide when to start drawing retirement benefits and the ex-spouse has no control over when this occurs. If the member dies the ex-spouse may receive nothing or receive less than they expected,” he said.

Ms Waring said it was often better to split the pension pot, rather than one party getting the entire pension and another receiving cash savings or the house. 

 “If the husband has a large pot it may really be in his interest to do a pension share, as it may be such a large pot that it will take him over the lifetime allowance,” she said. 

The “lifetime allowance” is £1m and any pension over this amount will be subject to a tax charge. However, if a pension pot of £1.5m, say, is split equally between the two spouses, the tax liability disappears.

Ms Waring said an overlooked area in these agreements was the cost of sharing the pension and any financial advice needed to invest the pension after it is transferred to the wife, which should always be included in any settlement.

Final salary pensions normally continue to be paid to a surviving spouse, but this benefit is lost on divorce. Anna Sofat of Addidi Wealth, an advisory firm, said she had had clients who were separated but chose not to divorce so that the wife received these benefits on the husband’s death. 

 “Another issue is the state pension, which is often not looked at in divorce,” said Ms Waring. Individuals must have 35 years of National Insurance credits to be entitled to the full state pension of around £8,000 a year. For every year they are below this they lose one 35th of their entitlement. 

 “If the wife is a non-earner, and stopped work at a reasonably early age, the chances are she will not have 35 years of NI credits,” said Ms Waring.

 “I say to all women to get a pension forecast before divorce, and if they have not got the full state pension but they have got to pay for some years of backlog, that will be paid for of the divorce pot rather than her money, as the chances are it was a joint decision for her to be a stay-at-home wife.”

However, Ms Waring said the major financial impact of divorcing at this age was that both spouses had fewer years left in which to work in order to make up any shortfall in their income. 

 “Even if both people are working the chances of building up very much over the rest of their working life will not be that high,” she said. “When there is less money in the pot, getting divorced at a later stage is really tricky, as they do not have much money to split.

 “I suspect there are lots of people staying married because there is just not enough money to divorce, given the need to buy a property, let alone provide an income.”

One house becomes two

Another aspect of late divorces is that at the age of 65 mortgage borrowing is difficult, meaning that the proceeds of selling the main home will need to fund the purchase of two separate homes, often outright. 

 “You may be lucky and have a nice London home that means you can buy two homes outside the capital,” Ms Sofat said. “Or there may be no way you can do that. How are you going to work out needing two homes and two incomes when pretty much all your life you have planned for one?

 “Even if you can get a mortgage it will probably be on a shorter term with much higher repayments,” she added.

Will I pay more IHT?

Divorced couples will receive the same inheritance tax-free allowances as if they were married. They will get a £325,000 allowance, with anything over this sum subject to 40pc tax. However, they lose the ability to transfer assets between them tax free, which could subject more of the estate to inheritance tax.

The new “residence nil-rate band”, which is currently £100,000 and will rise to £175,000 per person by 2020, protects housing wealth from inheritance tax if the main home is left to a direct descendant. 

Wealthy divorcing couples can actually benefit from the new residence nil-rate band, as the tax-free allowance reduces for any estates valued at more than £2m.  

Couples with an estate worth more than £2m who divorce and split their assets will be able to make full use of the allowance.

Rewrite your will

Rewriting your will is essential after any divorce, but is particularly key for older divorcees, who have lower life expectancy, said Rachael Griffin, a financial planner at Old Mutual Wealth. 

In particular, divorcees need to look at any life insurance policies they may have taken out years ago, and often forgotten about, and to change any beneficiaries on “death in service” payouts or pensions. 

 “Look for life policies that were taken out a number of years ago or pensions where you have nominated your previous spouse as the beneficiary. It is not just the obvious stuff to look at, but also revisit all historic information – you are going to be more entwined than someone who has been married for five or 10 years,” she said.

Ultimately, Ms Sofat said older divorcees should be more pragmatic in their approach: “They have lived a few years longer, so hopefully can sit down and work out a sensible outcome without it costing an arm and a leg by dragging it through the lawyers.”