Dear Divorce Diary: A Fresh Approach To Healing Grief & Building A Life Of Confidence After Divorce

Divorce changes your relationship with a lot of things.
Love. Trust. Safety. The future.
And sometimes… money.
Because money isn’t just money. It can represent security, freedom, worthiness, belonging—and whether or not you believe there will actually be enough.
In this VIP re-release, we’re digging into the subconscious money beliefs you may not even realize you’re carrying: scarcity, feeling ineligible for more, inherited beliefs about wealth, and the complicated feelings that can come with allowing yourself to actually have more.
We’ll talk about:
How “there’s not enough” becomes a deeply ingrained belief
The family, cultural, and spiritual messages that shape your relationship with money
Why part of you may not believe you're eligible for abundance
The connection between money, identity, belonging, and loss
Why being “realistic” can sometimes keep you from imagining something different
How to begin noticing and shifting the beliefs underneath your money patterns
Human Design as a tool for understanding how you naturally make decisions and move through the world
A guided practice to begin working with scarcity and your capacity to receive
Because after experiencing profound loss, it’s worth getting curious about what your mind and body learned from it.
Not just about love.
But about having, losing, trusting—and believing there can still be more.
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You can't think your way into healing 🥵 You have to practice your way there 👭If you're ready for the next step, learn more about  A Different D Word and apply here ✨

There are things you learned to carry because, at one point, you had to.
The responsibility. The mental load. Other people's expectations. Keeping everyone okay. Being the strong one. Being the woman who could handle it.
But just because you needed that version of yourself then doesn't mean you have to keep being her now.
This week, Dawn sits down with Alexis Contos, founder of The Breadwinners, a community redefining what it means to be an ambitious, successful woman—and creating spaces where women can put down the titles, roles, accomplishments and performance long enough to figure out who they actually are.
Which, hello. Divorce.
Because divorce has a way of forcing you to confront the identities you've accumulated—and decide which ones actually belong in the life you're building now.
Dawn and Alexis talk about:
What you carry vs. what you bring into your relationships and your life
The versions of yourself you never became because you got so good at being this one
Why divorce can feel like both falling and failing in public
The friendships, careers and identities we eventually outgrow
Why protecting everyone else can quietly become sacrificing yourself
The "egg" you're terrified to drop
What happens when accomplished women stop performing and start telling the truth
How to borrow someone else's belief in you while you're learning to believe in yourself
Because sometimes the next version of you doesn't need more.
She needs you to finally put something down.
So what are you still carrying that doesn't belong anymore?
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You can't think your way into healing 🥵 You have to practice your way there 👭If you're ready for the next step, learn more about  A Different D Word and apply here ✨

Dating after divorce is a whole different world.
Dating apps. Men holding fish. Men who apparently have never taken a decent selfie. Threesomes. Ethical non-monogamy. And the occasional man who looks way better in person than his profile would have you believe.
But underneath all of the chaos is a much more important question:
How do you know who you're actually dealing with before you get attached?
With Dawn away, Coach Tiffini and Joy are joined again by Christianna, Kelly, and Jo from our current A Different D Word cohort for a very unfiltered conversation about what it actually looks like to start dating after divorce.
And this one goes places.
We're talking about the questions women often don't ask soon enough:
What was your part in your divorce?
What does “I want a long-term relationship” actually mean to you?
How do I know you've done the work?
Are you actually ready for a relationship—or do you just think you are?
How do you talk about your ex?
What are you looking for five years from now?
Are we monogamous?
And how early is too early to start asking the really uncomfortable questions?
Plus, Jo shares what it's like to date again after nearly 50 years—and why she's asking about everything from STD testing and meeting the family to sexual boundaries, physical health and, yes… whether the pipes still work.
But the biggest conversation isn't really about finding the right man.
It's about who you are while you're looking for him.
Can you state what you want without shrinking it when someone attractive shows up? Can you hold a boundary and watch what he does instead of getting swept up in what he says? Can you walk away when something doesn't fit instead of convincing yourself you can live with it?
Because chemistry can make a lot of things feel negotiable that weren't negotiable five minutes before you met him.
Before you swipe right—or get attached to the next person who does—this is the conversation we want you to hear.
Ask the hard questions. Have a plan. Stick to it. And don't do it alone.
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You can't think your way into healing 🥵 You have to practice your way there 👭If you're ready for the next step, learn more about  A Different D Word and apply here ✨

What does it actually take to become yourself again after divorce?
Today, Dawn is away—which means Joy and Coach Tiffini have been left unsupervised. And they invited three women from the current A Different D Word cohort to take over the mic with them.
Christianna, Kelly, and Jo came into this year in very different places.
One was in free fall after the end of a 30-year marriage. One was already in therapy but felt like she spent every session catching her therapist up instead of actually moving forward. One says she felt like she was physically dying—her hair was falling out, she couldn't sleep, and she'd lost 60 pounds.
Nearly a year later, they sat down together to talk about what happened in between.
The fear of joining. The money. The resistance to needing other women. The hard work they didn't see coming. The boundaries they learned to set. The relationships that changed. The retreat moments they'll never forget. And the strange, beautiful experience of realizing that somewhere along the way, they had actually started to feel like themselves again.
This isn't a polished before-and-after story.
It's three women telling the truth about what a year of intentional healing really asked of them—and what became possible when they said yes.
And if you're somewhere near the beginning of your own divorce, wondering who you'll be a year from now, you need to hear what they have to say.
Because as one of these women puts it: the next 12 months are going to pass either way.
The question is who you might meet on the other side.
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You can't think your way into healing 🥵 You have to practice your way there 👭If you're ready for the next step, learn more about  A Different D Word and apply here ✨

Learn more about  A Different D Word and apply here ✨
Divorce has a way of exposing everything you were never taught.
Not because you're broken.
Not because you're "too emotional."
And certainly not because you're failing at healing.
The truth is, most of us were never taught how emotions actually work.
We were taught to push them down.
To "be strong."
To stop crying.
To get over it.
To keep the peace.
To believe that having big feelings somehow meant we were too much.
In this episode, Dawn, Joy, and Coach Tiffini unpack 10 powerful emotional lessons that most women never learned—but desperately needed long before divorce forced them to figure it out on their own.
From why suppressing emotions never works, to the difference between feelings and actions, to how childhood, relationships, and even faith can shape the way we experience emotion, this conversation will help you understand yourself in a whole new way.
If you've ever wondered:
 Why your emotions feel so overwhelming... 
 Why you bottle everything up until you explode... 
 Why you question your own feelings... 
 Or why healing has felt so much harder than you expected... 
...this episode may finally give you the emotional education you never received.
Because your emotions aren't the problem.
Understanding them changes everything. 
Support the show
You can't think your way into healing 🥵 You have to practice your way there 👭If you're ready for the next step, learn more about  A Different D Word and apply here ✨