It can be unsettling walking out of the courthouse after the divorce is finalized, knowing it’s really over. On the one hand, the life you knew and were accustomed is gone. On the other hand, it is an opportunity for a new beginning that you get to control.

Before you start trying to rebuild your schedule, your home, or your confidence, there’s one step that makes all the rest possible: taking care of yourself first. Here’s why that’s the foundation for staying present for your kids and for becoming someone who can actually move forward.

After The Divorce, First Take Care of Yourself

By Judith S. Wallerstein, PHD

Divorce is an end and a beginning. From the moment you walk down the courthouse steps, you’re going to need new knowledge and new ideas and most of all a new you. Even after the disequilibrium of the breakup is restored and you’ve found balance in the various spheres of your life, you’re a different person. But most of all, you’re a different kind of parent.

One of the many things I’ve learned is that parents can’t help their children until they’ve thought about themselves, about where they’re coming from. So let’s begin right there.

First you need to take control of your own life. I wish I could tell you that it’s okay to lie down and pull the covers over your head, but that’s not possible. You may feel like you’re the only person in the world who could ever feel this bad, but let me assure you, you have plenty of company.

Divorce Brings Change

Once you’ve decided that “it’s really over,” you’ll have set into motion the task of becoming a different person and, to your surprise, a different kind of parent. While your decision marks the end of a marriage, it’s also the formation of a new kind of family. It’s a new play with different characters in strange settings, changes in parent and child relationships, and predictable transitions that most parents fail to anticipate.

Most people don’t understand that divorce follows a long trajectory. What you feel today is probably not going to be relevant to your life three, five, or ten years from now. The quick fix that you want to put into place tomorrow won’t be of much use down the post-divorce road. You can take steps to ease your immediate pain, but the really hard work comes one day and then one year at a time with changes that ricochet into your life and into the lives of your children.

You’re about to undergo a metamorphosis. To succeed for yourself and your children, you’re going to have to create a self-image as someone who can cope with the demands set before you. You can’t become an effective parent until you’ve regained your footing and begun to repair the damage done by the failed marriage and the inevitable stresses of the divorce.

How fast or how well this happens depends on how you respond to the challenges and frustrations that lie ahead. There’s no way not to cry. Whether you left the marriage or you were the one left, crying is good for the soul. It doesn’t banish the hurt but at least you can get the pain out of your belly.

The Pitfalls of Getting Stuck in Your Pain

But if you’re caught up in the image of having failed in your marriage — because you were betrayed or you’re guilty of breaking your marriage vows or your judgment was just plain lousy — your parenting will be burdened. Nor can you muster the strength you need if you think of yourself as a victim. It may be grossly unfair if the person you trusted most in the world is the cause of all your pain, but that feeling must yield to the tasks before you.

As strange as this sounds, if you find yourself raging at your husband or wife, it really doesn’t matter if you’re right. What matters is that being enraged will eclipse your ability to be a good parent. It will cloud your judgment and make it harder for you to take care of yourself or see your children as being separate from you, with different needs and priorities in their young lives. Worst of all, it will make it much harder for you to be a compassionate, loving mom or dad.

If your divorce is like most, only one of you wants to end the marriage. Never in my thirty years of working with divorcing couples have I seen two people sit down quietly at the kitchen table and say, “You know, we both made a mistake, let’s go our separate ways.”

There’s almost always pain and palpable grief. At this point, the hardest thing you face is the need to avoid getting stuck in your pain. The decision to divorce requires that you focus on what lies ahead, unrelated to how or why the divorce happened.

If you are the one who wanted out and are feeling great relief and pride at having, at last, done what seemed impossible, you are to be congratulated. But you’re still going to face problems with your children. I assure you that you cannot expect instant support or even understanding, even if they’ve seen you suffering.

The Post-Divorce Transformation Begins

Unfortunately, the legal change noted on your divorce papers does not usher in this change in identity. You do. Divorce doesn’t happen in the courts, although the public record is what makes it official. It happens in the psychological changes that occur over time in both you and your ex-partner.

Most of the changes occur gradually, with the result that you wake up one morning and realize that you’re a different person. You no longer cry yourself to sleep, wake up angry, berate yourself for your poor judgment, obsess all night about whether you made the right decision, or feel like screaming much of the time. After weeks or months, indeed sometimes years, of feeling shaky and bewildered, there will come one psychological moment when you become this new person.

How can you tell? You’ll know that you’ve begun to acquire this important new identity when you finally excise your partner’s voice somewhere inside your head berating you, accusing you, pleading with you, or hounding you. You are a new person when you finally stop feeling like a failure who says, “I tried so hard but my best was not enough,” when you feel free, even hopeful, and can make decisions without trembling inside.

In taking these new steps toward a new identity, reward yourself with something real that makes you feel good. Try a massage, a night out, a new hairdo, or go for broke and get a whole new outfit or set of golf clubs. As it is after any shock, you may start out walking a bit unsteadily but then you will gather strength as you go forward.

Who Were You Before?

To begin the healing process, you might try this simple exercise. In your mind, go back over the years and try to recapture who you were before you got married. Are there earlier self-images that you can substitute for the sad ones linked to your failed marriage? Were you hopeful as a young man or woman? What happened to that hope? Did you have other choices when you chose your husband or wife?

One woman told me, “I was a very attractive and popular girl. I had several men vying for my attention. I’d already enrolled in law school but gave it all up when Jim came along and swept me off my feet with promises of everlasting love that turned out to be false from the honeymoon on. I look at myself in the mirror and can’t believe the worn, out image with dark circles under her eyes that looks back at me. Even my hair has lost its curl. What happened to the real me?”

So try to find your earlier self-images and use them to rekindle the hopes and strengths that you need to move ahead with your life.

At some point every man and woman, whether left or leaving, has to face up to the hurt and disappointment that go with a failed marriage and the continuing tensions of the divorce. Resolving grief means letting go. In divorce, it’s letting go of the memories collected over many years of being together. It means letting go of the hopes and dreams that led you to marry this person in the first place. You need to pull up the memories of your courtship and all the good times you had together, to mourn each recollection individually and put them to rest.

Many people find that therapy helps them in this process. A sensitive therapist can provide support as well as understanding that can break into your loneliness and restore your perspective. One man credited his therapist with restoring his sense of humor. “I was beginning to bore myself with self-pity,” he said. “Thank God she helped me snap out of it.” 

Copyright © Judith S. Wallerstein and Sandra Blakeslee. Their book, “The Unexpected Legacy of Divorce” provides important insight into the long-term effects of divorce on children who have grown into adulthood. Judith and Sandra are also the authors of “What About the Kids?: Raising Your Children Before, During, and After Divorce“. This is a book that tells parents in unprecedented detail how to help their children over the long haul — what to say, what to do, what to expect — every step of the way. This clearly written guidebook helps parents understand why children at different ages react the way they do to divorce and how to head off trouble before it begins. The book follows divorce chronologically so parents can find advice for whatever stage of the experience they are in, including how to help older children many years after the breakup.

Below are more articles to help you rebuild your life after the divorce: