For a long time, I thought the pain of my divorce was about what he did. I was so certain that if I could just get the other person to see things differently, the hurt would stop.
But what I really learned: slowly, uncomfortably, and eventually with gratitude: was something much more personal: our perspectives become our reality. And I had been living inside mine without even knowing it.
We fit into roles. Unconsciously. The helper, the one who holds it together, the one who gives more, the one who keeps score without realising it. In relationships, these roles calcify over time, and before long, we are not two people choosing each other: we are two people performing a script neither of them wrote consciously.
His feelings became my responsibility. My hurt became his fault. That dynamic did not start on the day things fell apart: it started long before, in the quiet accumulation of unconscious choices.
The shift was not dramatic. It came from three practices I had to build from scratch: taking time to recognise what my perspectives actually were, being open to seeing things differently, and being vulnerable enough to let those perspectives shift.
That last one is the hard one. Because it means admitting that the story you have been telling yourself: about what happened, about who was wrong, about what you deserve: might not be the whole truth.
When I could do that, something unexpected happened. We found each other again. Not as a couple. But as something richer: as soul-friends. Two people who had been through the fire together and came out the other side with genuine respect and care.
The work I did through my divorce changed how I show up in every relationship: with my son, with friends, with myself. When you stop looking outside for someone to blame and start getting curious about your own role in every dynamic, something fundamental shifts.
You stop being a passenger in your own story. You become the one who chooses.
If this resonated with you, Club Next Level is the space where this work continues: every single week, directly in your ear.
Club Next Level is a membership community for self-led women who know there is more available for them. Inside, you get weekly audio episodes, guided reflections, and a direct line to your own intuition, so that when life gets loud and doubt creeps in, you have something that pulls you back to yourself. The first 30 days are completely free.
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