Everyone wants to feel seen and heard, but during and after divorce, many women feel invisible. Despite the progress we’ve made as a society, divorce still remains a source of guilt and shame, and unfortunately, the stigma remains. The change in your relationship status can ultimately lead to feelings of fear, insecurity, depression and worthlessness.
In this first episode of the new show, I share my own experience of feeling invisible throughout my two divorces and what I did to work through the difficulties in order to feel seen and heard again. The solutions provided may not be easy, but they are simple and effective.
As with all episodes, I start the show off by spotlighting a woman from history in order to honor them, inspire courage, and provide a backdrop for the subject of the episode. More information on these women can be found on the website – The Refined Rebels
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Support Group – Refined By Divorce
The goal is to create a community of supportive women who are navigating divorce and want to both support and lean on other like-minded women.
Listen to the Episode
Episode Transcript
Welcome to the first episode of Refined by Divorce. This show has been in the making for several years and I can’t believe it’s finally a reality. My name is Traci Simkins and I like to say that I’ve been twice refined by divorce. I’m a mom and a bonus mom with over sixteen years of experience in the corporate and small business world where I worked in sales, marketing, event planning, day-to-day ops and so much more.
I was a Project Manager in the IT world and then my second marriage fell apart. I decided it was time to recreate my life to better suit me and my children so I started my consulting business where I use all of my professional and personal experience to help women leverage the transition of divorce. Also, begin to rebuild their life however they want. I love working with my one-on-one clients. They are some of the most amazing and talented women I’ve ever met. I’ve learned more from them than they’ve probably learned from me.
I want to reach a wider audience and help more women. That’s why I’m here talking to you. I wanted to reach out and let you know that I’m here to help. There’s so much negativity surrounding divorce and having been through it twice, I know how deeply depressed you can be. I know how messy, difficult and painful it is. I want to share a message of hope and provide you with support.
In a future episode, I’ll be sharing why I chose to name my business Refined by Divorce but for this episode, I’ll let you know the basics of how it’s going to go. It’s going to be a weekly show where I discuss all things divorce, business and everything in between, especially for single women or women who are divorced and women in general.
I want to offer resources and give tips, advice and encouragement. Some of the episodes will be just you and I talking. Sometimes we’ll have a guest join us. I have several lined up and each one of them has a unique perspective and specialty but the goal is to help guide all of us through this journey. With each episode, I’m going to start by spotlighting a woman from history. The purpose is to inspire courage and it will also serve as the backdrop for the episode’s subject for that week.
Refined Rebel - Caroline Sheridan
We’re going to kick it off with the very first Refined Rebel. She was a passionate and successful campaigner for women’s divorce and custody rights.
Her name was Caroline Sheridan and she was born in 1808 in London to a grand but impoverished family. Her father was an alcoholic and gambled away their fortune. When she was only eight years old, he passed away, leaving them nothing but a good name, just like in the Jane Austen novel.
Luckily, Caroline had a quick wit. She was outgoing, creative and beautiful. She was married off to George Norton. From the start, it was a mismatch. He was an alcoholic like her father, except he was also extremely abusive. They had three children but he beat her so badly that they would’ve had a fourth but she miscarried. She wanted to obtain a legal separation and custody of her sons but married women back in that day had no legal existence at all.
A husband and wife were treated by law as one person. The wife lived under her husband’s protection and men had exclusive custody rights. Women did not exist. At the time, there was a rumor going around that she was having an affair with Lord Melbourne, who was a friend of hers or colleague. George attempted to sue Lord Melbourne for criminal conversation, which is a civil suit for adultery and was seeking damages. He lost but Caroline’s reputation was ruined.
From there, she started a campaign to change unjust marriage, divorce, custody and property laws. She was able to contribute to the changes that we enjoy now but she was never able to take advantage of the laws that she helped put into place. She was able to separate him and lived alone but per the terms of their agreement, she was not allowed to date or have any male friends.
I guess she could have friends but not any male suitors or anyone close to her. Finally, in 1875, he died and she was no longer married to him at that point. She married a friend of hers, Sir William Stirling-Maxwell. Two months later, she passed away. She was a catalyst for change and there’s so much more to her story. I barely skimmed the surface.
If you want to read more about her, you can go to the website. Refined Rebels
Feeling Invisible
In one of Caroline’s pamphlets, she wrote, “I exist and I suffer but the law denies my existence,” which is what I want to talk about in this first episode. Divorce can often make you feel invisible. For me, I felt like an incredibly shrinking woman. I don’t know if you are from my generation. If you remember that movie with Lily Tomlin, she shrunk into this tiny teensy little thing. She’d be down there yelling and screaming, “I’m here,” and nobody could see her. That’s a lot of times how I felt when I was going through my divorce.
I wasn’t yelling, “Look at me, here I am,” but I do feel like I was reaching out in other ways, just out of depression, sadness, anger and all of those emotions that you go through during a divorce. Feeling seen by others is a basic human need to feel loved, accepted and secure. Evolutionarily speaking, if your tribe didn’t see you, you’d be left behind. We want to be seen. I can’t speak to your experience specifically but I do know that for myself and all of my clients, many of the women that I work with and talk to all had the same experience because divorce is a source of shame, frustration, sadness, anger and loneliness.
We self-isolate and then we feel isolated because we’re no longer part of the group. We have those feelings of depression. We feel worthless.
Solutions - Therapy is Key
My number one recommendation is always to seek professional help from a qualified therapist or counselor. I cannot overstate the importance of getting help from someone who knows how to help you.
If you are going through betrayal, divorce, separation or whatever it is, get out there and seek help. Your therapist or counselor will be your biggest ally. Don’t be afraid to find the one that works the best for you because everybody works differently. Find that right fit and sometimes, it takes a couple of tries but it’s worth the effort.
You can do it online. You can do it through BetterHelp or Ginger. There are many apps out there that offer online help. It’s my biggest recommendation because it will make the biggest difference in your life. Secondary to all of that, I have several recommendations that will help you feel seen. It’s all based on my experience and the experience of my clients. Join a support group.
There’s no better way to feel less lonely or less judged than to surround yourself with other people who are going through similar experiences. Whether you do it online or in person, it will help you get through. You’ll feel less lonely and less judged. You’ll have the skills to cope with the challenges that you’re facing and tips and tricks from others who are in your same situation. It helps reduce stress. It will open up an entire world of resources to you.
I’m putting together my own support group and it’ll be called Refined by Divorce. I already have it secured but I haven’t opened it yet in 2022. I’m excited to do so because I want to create a place where you feel welcome and safe and ready to meet the challenges head-on. Divorce is hard and getting help from others is going to be one of the biggest things that you can do to start to move forward.
Another thing that I recommend is getting in touch with your emotions and trying to understand why you’re having these feelings of invisibility. For me, you’ve gone from being someone who is part of a group, whether it’s your community, religion, your work or whatever it is. You’re part of that group and then suddenly overnight, you’re no longer part of that group. A lot of times people are afraid to reach out. They don’t know what to say.
Your friends and family are most likely there for you. They just don’t know how to help you and that’s where another recommendation comes in, which is using assertive communication. If you’re a people pleaser like me or you have trouble expressing yourself, journal it first. Write it down but express your point of view to others and tell them what it is that you need. Your friends and family want to help you but they can’t help you if they don’t know what it is.
During my first divorce, I moved in with my parents, with my three children. My parents are wonderful and they helped me through everything in life. Obviously, they’re my parents. I’ll never be able to repay them but as I was living in the basement, I spent a lot of time down there by myself, especially when the kids were at school or with their dad for the weekend or whatever it was.
My mom, who is an extrovert, the life of the party always wants to be out, having fun and doing and talking and all of that. It was hard for her to understand how to help me. I told her. I sat her down. She was concerned about me being alone a lot but I needed that time to process and think about my next steps and go through all of the things that were said and done and everything that was going on.
It was so heavy. At that point, I don’t think I could have explained to her all of the things that were going through my mind but it was draining to be around others at that point to try to explain how you’re feeling and act like things were normal because they’re not normal. I don’t mean that you’re abnormal. What I’m saying is the circumstances that you’re going through are so heavy. They’re not your normal day-to-day stresses.
It’s possible for you that it was a breeze and you walked right through but from what I’ve seen from the people that I talk to all the time, divorce is extremely heavy. It’s challenging. Not being able to express what you’re going through is hard. That’s why support groups can be a source of decreasing stress because when you’re around people who get it, all you have to say is, “I’m going through a divorce,” and they get it. They know because they’ve been there.
I’ve said it before and I don’t know if I’ve said it here but I spent many days on the floor crying in tears in the fetal position or in bed with the covers over my head not wanting to face the world because it was too hard. When you’re in that, that’s when you need to get that professional help but once you get past that initial horrible stage, you can start to face the world, at least a little bit. I hope that these things will help you.
I’ll go over them again. Support groups, get in touch with your emotions, try to be assertive and tell others what it is that you need. Once I told my mom, “I need this time alone to recharge. I have to go to work all day, help my children and get through all of that. When I have that opportunity, I need to be alone.” At that point, she understood and she said, “Yes, whatever I can do to support you.”
I know that I’m super lucky for having family and friends who have been supportive. That’s why I have felt that it’s very important that I turn around and help others. I hope you’ll join me next time for some more talk about divorce, business, parenting and everything in between. We’ll be touching on many different subjects and see where it takes us.
Thanks for joining me. I like to end things with the mantra that I like to tell myself that makes me always feel better and that is,
Love In, Peace Out.
Bye.
