Why Hope Changes Everything in a Toxic Divorce

Hi everyone, and welcome to the Music of Life. I'm your host Karen Portnoy. Before I get into this episode, please comment, ask questions, share some of your experiences, and don't forget to subscribe. Hi everyone, welcome back. Great to be here again. And I wanted to start off this episode by

What did you hope for when you were going through your toxic divorce? Did you think about what life would look like on the other side once you were done with your divorce? Did you, I don't know, think about what your money situation would be, where you would live, how your kids would be. Would your kids be with you or with your ex? What would you be doing for work? What's your dream career? What things could you do when you're divorced, that you couldn't have done during your marriage, and how does hope play into all of this? Because there has to be hope in your mind when you're thinking about the rest of your life, and now that you're getting out of or you got out of a toxic divorce, you really have to have hope because how else do you move forward into something else? How do you create the life that you love? And truthfully, how do you fulfill the dreams that you've had for your whole life? Maybe you gave up on those dreams when you got married to this person, and maybe your life took a different turn than what you always dreamed you'd have. So, it's never too late. You have to, you know, figure out what your new life is going to look like and take steps to make it happen. Because if you don't think about that, if you don't make a plan for your new life, new chapter, whatever it is, and don't kind of like create a plan for how you're going to move forward and take steps and and all that. If you don't do that, you stay stuck and stagnant, and maybe you stay the person that you were when you were married. I mean, it's it's a waste of a life. I mean, for all the reasons that it doesn't work with a toxic spouse, you want to put that to bed immediately as soon as the ink is dry. But then to figure out what to do next, it's like if you're still going through the toxic divorce, take that time while you're still in it to figure out how you're going to get out, what you're going to do once you get out, and how your life will look like because that's what you want for yourself. I pray for everybody listening to this, and everybody who you know who is also going through a toxic divorce or is on the other side of one. Hope is the greatest thing that I could wish upon you because it keeps you going forward. We had such big dreams as kids, and somewhere along the way, and I've said this before, some adult in our life, maybe more than one, maybe a family member or friend or a teacher or somebody, crushed our dreams, told us that we were dreaming too big, or who did we think we were, or whatever that is. But somewhere along the way, we dimmed our dreams and just accepted that they were never going to happen. They were too far of a reach for us. They were too big. They were too-I don't know-just too ambitious for what we could do. And we bought into it. We believed it. We did dim our light. We did dim our dreams. We did decide that you know we could never have that. I'm here to say, fuck that shit. Hey, I just want to take a minute and tell you about the It's your life. We all have this life to live, and time doesn't divorce mentorship program that I created. It's called Becoming drag on forever. So we have to make the most of it with the Whole Again, and I created it mostly for women who are either time we have left. Nobody knows when our time is going to be up, considering divorcing their toxic spouse, or they're in the and there's no time like the present. middle of a toxic divorce, or they're on the other side of a toxic divorce. At any stage that you're dealing with the emotional fallout from a horrific toxic divorce, you know what I mean. The texts, the triggers, the berating, the harassment, the threats, all. Those things, I've been there, and I know what you're going through. This isn't therapy. I promise. This is real hands-on support from somebody who has been where you are. I survived it. I thrived from it, and I've actually transformed from it. And along the way, I've gained so much wisdom from a spiritual healing journey that I am so happy to share with you and help you. It's not about fixing you. It's not about telling you what to do. It's about guiding you and guiding you back to yourself. There are so many people out there who need this. I promise you, I hear from them daily. Thank you for your support and thank you for listening. Okay, now back to the show. Nobody's saying that you have to go from A to Z overnight, but take one step. Take one step. Figure out what your dream was and resurrect it. Figure it out. Let it light you up once again as an adult. You will be honoring and respecting and cherishing your inner child when you do that, because this is something very profound that I I learned recently that who we become as an adult and who we like whatever path we take to follow our dreams and and live out the things that we always loved. It's like we were always meant to do that. Whatever we dreamed of as a kid, that was our path. That was our passion. That was our purpose, and that was the path we were always meant to go down. And of course, a million things derail us. But if you can get back on the right path, and the right path is whatever dream your inner child had, if you can do that, you are fulfilling your entire life's purpose, because whatever it is that that inner child, kid, teen, whatever age that is, whatever they dreamed of, that's what you're supposed to do. So think about what it would take to get back on the right path, and you can start with hope because hope will help get you there. And I'll go a step further and say, if you could sit in solitude for a couple of minutes. Close your eyes. Go within, and think about what your life would look like if you followed your dream. I'm in the midst of that right now because I'm at the beginning of following my dream, and I've taken many steps over the last year and a half to get me there. It has not been a straight line, but my focus has never wavered. It's always been on where I see myself ultimately getting. But there have been some zigzags along the way. There have been some setbacks. There have been some challenges. But I never took my eye off the prize. It's not like I ever said to myself,"Ah, maybe not. Maybe I'll do something else. No, there is no other else. This is it, and I'm still so passionate about where I'm going. But I'm also very aware of the things that come into my life that try to derail me. Try to put doubt in my mind. Try to put fear in my mind, or whatever. And look, it's work. It's effort. It's it's all kinds of things to make you push past all of that. But that's the point. It's like you have to do the work. You have to push yourself further than you think you can go because what's on the other side of that is so much more rewarding and fulfilling. So when I think about what's on the other side of my life and where I ultimately plan on going-it's a life that is so fucking unrecognizable to me. I could never have dreamt this just in my la dee da kind of everyday life, and for all the shit that I went through over my whole life to get to where I am right now, it's like I get why all that shit had to happen, and I'm so grateful for it now because now my path forward is so much more clear, so much more rewarding, so much more destined. I will even say, and I'm so freaking proud of myself for getting this far. And like I said, I'm still just at the beginning of it. There's so much more ahead of me. I can't wait for all of this to unfold, all in divine timing, of course. But I'm ready. I'm open. I'm open to receive. I'm open to whatever flow the universe wants me to be in. I feel very much surrendered to control. I was a control freak my whole life, and it got me nowhere. And I will just say that now that I've surrendered control and I just go with the flow, if the universe is pushing back in some way, I let it. If it's pushing me to do something, I do it. I follow my intuition like it's all that matters because it is. It is the thing, the compass, my my north star, my truth, what God coming through me, whatever you want to call it, it's my guiding light. It's the thing that I listen to above everything else. I know it's coming from God. I know that I'm meant to listen to it, and it it guides me every step of the way. And that's what I have to say about that this week. Anyway, thank you for listening. I'm going to wrap it up right now. I'll catch you next week. Have a great week and take care. Please join me every Thursday for a new episode. You can reach me on my website, which is podpage.com/themusicoflife. You can leave me a voicemail, a text message. You can leave your contact information if you want to be anonymous. No problem. I promise to honor that. And you can also find all of my social media platforms there as well, which is Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, and LinkedIn. Thanks again. I'll see you next week.