Divorce, Death, and Rebirth: How Somatic Work Changed My Life
I started getting into somatic work personally when I realized I was struggling to make one of the hardest decisions of my life—whether or not to leave my marriage of 12+ years.
This decision felt massive. I was essentially deciding to blow up my entire life—everything I thought was real, everything I had built for myself and my kids. I had two young children at the time, ages 4 and 7, and the stakes felt impossibly high.
I had a mountain of evidence—intellectual, logical reasons—as to why staying was unhealthy for me. I knew it wasn’t right. I’d been talking about it in traditional therapy for years, working on my codependency, attending Al-Anon meetings...but still, something wasn’t clicking.
Despite knowing all this in my head, my body was not aligned with what my mind was saying. I was stuck, and I knew it. But every step toward action felt paralyzing.
That’s when I first heard about EMDR and Brainspotting.
I’d heard enough to know they were forms of therapy that could work with the brain-body connection, so I got curious about how they might help me. I asked my therapist for a referral, and she kindly connected me with one of her colleagues who specialized in somatic work. And this is when my life began to change.
Through somatic therapy, I began to break free from being stuck and slowly move into action.
It felt like my body woke up. It was as if my whole system came online again, and for the first time in a long while, I felt in control. I was able to start healing past traumas—some from childhood, some from the patterns I had learned as an adult—that had held me back.
When I say “childhood traumas,” I don’t mean anything “huge” or catastrophic. I had a fairly normal upbringing. But as we all know, society can chip away at our inherent sense of self-worth from a very young age. I realized that I’d been taught to distrust my own inner wisdom, and this disconnect had kept me stuck for so long.
In my somatic healing journey, I was able to reclaim my power and sense of self.
I began to clear out all the past emotional baggage I had been carrying and started anew, literally and figuratively. It’s hard to describe, but after a while, it was like a lightbulb went off. I knew what I had to do, and I did it.
I’m not saying any of this was easy—it wasn’t. Divorce is like a death. It’s the end of a life you thought would always be there, and that’s excruciating. But for me, it was also the catalyst that transformed my life, setting me on a path to where I am today.
I’m a firm believer in the power of therapy and healing modalities of all kinds.
There’s no one right way to get to the life you’re meant to live—it’s about finding what works for you. And just as importantly, it’s about finding the people who can support you through it. I’ve been lucky enough to have that support, and I wouldn’t be where I am now without it.
If you would like support in this, watch my video on Building a Support Team & Using External Resources where I share a simple yet powerful somatic technique.