Kristen Miller’s Voyage: From Heartbreak to Healing through Solo Travel

Have you ever questioned societal norms or expectations? In an intimate chat with Kristen Miller, a licensed social worker, coach, counselor, and survivor of infidelity and divorce, we explore the importance of listening to our inner voice and the courage it takes to defy societal norms. Kristen opens up about her personal journey of love, heartbreak, and transformation - a narrative that will tug at your heartstrings and inspire you to see life's challenges as opportunities for personal growth. 

Discover the power of self-reliance as Kristen shares her struggle with societal expectations and how it led to self-fulfilling prophecies, conditioning us into people-pleasing habits. The conversation takes an emotional turn as Kristen recounts the arduous process of divorce and its impact on the entire family. This episode is an ode to the strength of everyone navigating through these challenging times, and a reminder to cultivate compassion for ourselves. 

Always wanted to take the road less traveled? Join us as Kristen recounts her solo kayak trip in Italy - a journey that became a stepping stone for her healing and self-discovery. Learn about the importance of processing grief, regulating emotions, and prioritizing self-care. Listen to Kristen's tale of transformation, healing, and self-discovery, and you too can transform your struggles into a journey of resilience and inner strength.

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:26

Thank you so much for being here with me today. We know that we live in some volatile times and we know that the world is changing, so let's create a bridge as we travel through one another's countries, removing all the labels, coming together as one people in one world, and that's why our signature talk today, letting go of the fairy tale is so important, and today I am so excited to welcome my guests Kristen Miller. Hi Kristen, hi Catherine, how are you? I'm doing great. How are you today? I'm great.

Speaker 2: 1:03

Thank you. Thank you so much for having me today.

Speaker 1: 1:07

Oh, we're so excited to have you with us today. I know that your podcast is going to be so impactful to so many people around the world, especially little girls if any little girls are listening because your message is just amazing. So, for the audience, you are a L M Well, you're like a L M S W, which is a licensed social worker, and you're a coach, you're a counselor, you're an educator, you're a mom and you're a lover of adventure. You also are specialists who help women move beyond just the surviving mode of infidelity and divorce. You help them transform by stepping into their own personal power and forging a life of full of love and excitement and adventure.

Speaker 1: 2:00

And I love all of that because I personally am divorced, so I totally get this language and I get that. So I wanted to, you know, just get started from the top, because you know there's so much to this idea of letting go of the fairy tale and I think so many women get wrapped up as little girls in this idea of this fairy tale. So share with us a little bit about your journey and how this got started, yeah, wow.

Speaker 2: 2:30

So I'm going to start sort of in the middle of my story. I met and married a, my prince charming, when I was 40. And I had this notion of just being whisked away and going on and living, living this wonderful, easy fairy tale like like. This was my happily ever after. This was my ending, right, this was. This was where I got to be happy in my story and and it was great, until things weren't so happy anymore. And I remember finding myself one day just in complete disbelief that my fairy tale was actually ending and I was in denial that I was looking down the path of my not just a divorce, but my second divorce in my life and it was daunting for me to think that at 47 years old, I was going to be starting over, I was going to be divorced for the second time and my fairytale was done. And where do I go from here and what does that mean for me as a woman in middle-aged where I thought my husband and I were going to be? You know traveling and spending these wonderful golden years together on these adventures, and you know raising grandchildren, watching our. You know having our kids go off and get married and live the fairytale. And all of a sudden it all came to a screeching halt and I was devastated. I was devastated and it forced me to take a look at myself Like how did I get here? Who am I now without my prince charming, without that, happily ever after? And where do I go from here? And you know, I just remember.

Speaker 2: 4:52

I remember sitting in my dining room floor. I was curled up in a ball on my dining room floor one day and thinking why is this happening? What is happening and why? And I'm a firm believer that everything happens for a reason. I think there's a lesson in everything and I think that everything happens for reason. It sounds cliche, but I myself have to hold on to that belief because without it I'm not sure I would have been able to get through this. But I also made a decision in that moment, when I was in the heap on my dining room floor, tears like ugly crying you know that ugly sobbing. Thank god nobody was home crying Because I decided in that moment that this wasn't going to be happening for no reason, that this pain that I was feeling was not going to just be there for no reason. So I made the decision in that moment that I was going to make something good happen out of this, and I didn't know what it was at the time, but I just knew that I had to find some meaning in my circumstances. So, fast forward a little bit, I found myself sort of packing moving, still somewhat in denial, but going through that whole process of separating and trying to heal. And because I made that decision to make use of this and find some positive out of this situation, and I knew it was going to be a long, hard road, but I was determined to take and accept every opportunity that was presented to me. Because I'm such a firm believer that everything happens for a reason, I knew that if something was afforded to me, if something was presented to me, I had to take the opportunity.

Speaker 2: 7:26

So November comes, I move out suddenly, quickly and rather unexpectedly that day and I got an email. I got an odd kind of one of those advertising emails to go on a to join a conference in Miami sometime in like February. And I was like and it was free, it was free. I was in the education system, it was free for teachers at the time and teachers public service workers. So I said well, all I have to do is book a flight. I had no idea what I was getting myself into. And I went down there and it was actually a business conference. And I found myself there Like I don't know what I'm doing here, I don't. I didn't know anybody, I didn't even know who the speaker was. I didn't even know what the content was. I think if I had known ahead of time that it was a business one, I would have been like I'm not going Because I didn't see how it applied to me.

Speaker 2: 8:35

And I started to meet new people and they were all asking you know, what are, what are you doing here? And I said you know, I honestly don't know. All I know is that this came across my desk and my husband just left and I knew I was on a trajectory for a new future and I didn't know what it was. So I just said, okay, well, I'll take it, it's an opportunity. And they were like wow, you know, you have such a story to tell. And I didn't really think of myself as having a story to tell, because I just thought I was going through this really horrific situation that many people go through. So I talked to people all weekend, I made some new friends and I still couldn't figure out what I was going to pull from this experience, other than people said you have a story to tell. And I was like, okay, all right, so I think I'm getting that part of it, that I have some kind of story to tell to help people. And when I was about to leave that last day because I had to catch my flight home, and the very last speaker was a speaker on telling your story, and I was like, wow, so I stayed and I was like this is why I needed to come here, because it just sort of set in motion what the next part of my future was going to be.

Speaker 2: 10:16

So when I how I came to the process and through the process of identifying, letting go of the fairy tale, is that I remember holding on so tight, holding on to my marriage, because I didn't want that fairy tale to end. Because in my mind I mean, I remember being a little girl thinking one day my Prince Charming is going to come along, he's going to whisk me away, you know. And that is when happiness begins, and I think we're groomed as little girls to believe that that's when your life begins. Your life actually begins, with the Prince Charming showing up, and the wedding, the babies and the family, and that's where life sort of begins and ends, and that's just where it is, and I was groomed to believe that.

Speaker 2: 11:27

But I found myself in a situation where, whoa, my Prince Charming just turned into a frog. Now what do I do, you know? And then I was thinking to myself my gosh, you know where do I go from here? And I have to decide now. Do I want to hold on to that fairy tale that I carried with me my whole life, that story, and remain in this unhealthy mindset, or do I want to decide for myself okay, what is my story going to end? This was a chapter and now I'm not going to let my life end here at this chapter, not with this tragic ending. This is just a stepping stone to my next adventure.

Speaker 1: 12:23

I love that idea of the stepping stone because I think that's so powerful and I mean, I know in society there's so many movies that wrap little girls up in that idea that you talk about where, literally, that's when your life starts. Like you, it's all leading up to that, and then there, there it is, there you go, and it is something you know that it's with the dolls that keep, you know the little girls are playing with, like they dress them up as you know, brides, or it's the talk that they have, you know, with their friends and things like that. It's like what their dream wedding would look like, you know, and all of these things. And I can say you know, for for even young adults today I see less young adults getting married, but the ones that do get married they still have that ideal idea of what the dream wedding looks like and, especially now with COVID, like a lot of these women are just shattered because they're not able to have their dream wedding right the way that they envisioned it or the way it looked like in the movies that they had watched. But yeah, there's so much that you're saying.

Speaker 1: 13:46

But I also love the idea of like just following that inner voice of you know what, I'm just going to go and I'm going to go in this conference and, yes, there it is, we're going to show you how to tell your story. So it's just really, really powerful and it's almost like, okay, I'm just going to, you know, do me, because all these years I've been doing everything else that was maybe counter to my inner self and what that voice said. But I mean, did you feel like your first marriage was? Were there similar things to your second marriage as far as, like how that looked, or is that something that looked completely different? Like what kind of what kind of roped this all you know up as far as how it ended?

Speaker 2: 14:35

Right so so, ironically enough, my my first marriage. I take full responsibility for that. I was young. We were high school sweethearts, I had just graduated college, so I was on that trajectory and we were following that path to where happiness is supposed to be. At the end I finished college, he proposed.

Speaker 2: 15:04

I said yes, there was a family expectation because my father and his father were friends when they were boys and my father was his father's best man and our grandmothers worked in the same store together and when we were born they would joke around and say, oh, wouldn't it be wonderful if they grew up and got married. So we had all of these layers of expectations placed on us that I think not even so consciously. They were there and became self-fulfilling prophecies. And we don't teach girls, especially we don't teach them to listen to their inner voice and follow their dreams. We are almost grooming them to just live in fear and not in confidence. You know I think to myself gosh, and if he listens to this, you know he and I have had these conversations.

Speaker 2: 16:12

My first husband and I. I knew walking down the aisle I didn't want to get married. I knew the day he proposed that I didn't want that. That was not the story I really wanted, but I was so in such a people-pleasing mode I was afraid of disappointing. You know, we are always grooming our little girls to do the right thing and be a good girl and, you know, follow the rules and directions. And that's what I was doing. That's who I was at that time, even though I knew in my soul that that is not what I wanted.

Speaker 2: 16:51

But there was no good reason for me to say no and not follow through with it, because he was a great guy, he was a good person, he had a great family. I loved his family. You know it was all right. He checked all the boxes and I went through with it and at the time, you know, I went in with okay, I'm gonna make this work. I don't have a reason other than this little voice inside my head that kept saying "'Kristin, don't do it'". But I kept quieting that voice. And then one day I woke up and I was going back to grad school and I just looked at myself in the mirror and I said you're a hypocrite Christian. You're going to help other people face their own fears and you're not doing the same thing. You have got to make a change and that, at that point, was the end of my marriage, but the beginning of me being true to myself.

Speaker 1: 18:05

Yeah, and that's powerful right there, what you just said, what you just said. I think sometimes that little waste in your head could be self-doubt, but if it's something that is consistent and it's moving through you consistently, I don't think it's self-doubt anymore. I think it's more your inner instinct, your intuitive self, is rising to the top and saying wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. There's red flags or something that's not right here. You know we need to correct it. So I definitely can understand that.

Speaker 2: 18:37

Yeah, yeah, it was, and it was scary. It was scary but for the first time in my life I really felt like I was connected with who I was. Yeah, but again it kind of carried with me that be the good girl. And that fairy tale still was there. It was still there. I was still found. The next 10 years I was still looking for that fairy tale and then my second husband came along and he just really seemed like the true Prince Charming. He even proposed under the castle in Disneyland, with our kids around us, you know, and it was perfect. It was like here it is, here is my Prince Charming under the castle with the fireworks, everything. It couldn't have been more perfect. And I thought that that was it, that was going to be the happy ending. And it wasn't. You know it was, but it was the step I needed to move into the future that I really was meant to go in.

Speaker 1: 19:58

Yeah, and everything about this fairy tale is outside of yourself. So it's like you are constantly going and searching for something outside of you and really you held the key the whole time just within you. That's where your happiness was. It wasn't at a castle with your children surrounding you with a proposal. It was all within you the whole time.

Speaker 2: 20:27

Right, right. And that's the message I want women to hear, and women to. You know and I speak specifically to women because that is who I made the decision to really focus on in my work but it speaks to men also, because it doesn't matter if you are single forever, if you're divorced two, three, four times once, or if you have never met your Prince Charming. The important thing to remember is that, yes, it is within you. We are conditioned to believe that happiness comes with the outside, external validation, and it doesn't. But now, as adults, when we go through this and we are thinking, oh my gosh, now what do I do? Or what is wrong with me? Because Prince Charming didn't come, or he left, or, you know, the fairy tale didn't pan out quite the way I thought it was going to, that it's not the external experiences that define who you are as a person or your happiness, and that's that conditioning that we grew up with, that we now need to recondition.

Speaker 1: 22:02

Yeah, and there's also this other side of it too.

Speaker 1: 22:07

You know, as a woman who's been through a divorce and as a mother, you know, with children it's really difficult because you go through this grieving process and it's not just you going through the grieving process, but you also have your children who go through this grieving process. And I know for myself I was hell bent that I was going to stay married and I was going to make this work and despite everything I tried, everything I did, it's like it just was to no avail and it got to a place where it was just like I just don't know what else to do. But you know, go go through that process of divorce and I just remember feeling so defeated by it in the time that I was going through it and recognizing that I was doing a lot of comparing of myself to my grandparents for example my grandparents met when they were children, literally they were six and seven years old, and they used to get on, you know, the wagon with the hail bit or the bays, or bails of hay is what I'm trying to say.

Speaker 1: 23:25

And you know, in the fall they would like sit on the bails of hay in the wagon and go through the fields of the farm and, you know, pick pumpkins in the pumpkin patch and as they grew up, they eventually you know, built a friendship, or a really strong friendship that turned into love and then marriage, and you know, they continued their life on their whole journey.

Speaker 1: 23:46

They were together, their whole entire journey. That generation, though, that's what they did, good, bad or indifferent. They didn't have their especially the women. They didn't have their personal freedom. They didn't have the ability to walk away from something and have that kind of freedom. And in today's world, both individuals have their freedom. They literally can create the life that they want.

Speaker 1: 24:15

And I think that's where letting go of the fairy tale is so powerful, because no longer are we living in a place and time where this is how you do things Right. It is something now where you can design it to be what you want it to be. But what I started off saying is like this feeling of like deflation, like I failed, like there was all of this feeling around it, and having to learn that it was an understanding in this process and this movement, you know, moving forward like don't sit in the past but move forward and move through it, and then release yourself from comparing to your grandparents for me personally, but I know so many people who've been through divorce and they go through this similar sense of you know, I failed my parents because of what you said earlier like they expected me to marry this person.

Speaker 1: 25:13

I mean talk to that a little bit, yeah.

Speaker 2: 25:16

So again it goes back to that conditioning, that belief, that story we tell ourselves our whole life that we, in order to be successful, in order to make it in the world, in order to make it in life, you have to have that successful marriage with the 2.3 children and the picket fence send the house in the hill and you know, in the career.

Speaker 2: 25:42

And now, with all of the women's movements have shifted and put even more expectations on that ladder for women, especially that now you also have to manage a career in the house and the family and, you know, maintain a healthy, happy relationship. And it's almost absolutely I don't want to say almost it is unfair the emotional strain and the emotional weight that women especially have to carry throughout their days Because somehow, if you aren't a successful business person and raising your kids and married and keeping it all together and happy, you're supposed to be happy through it all too and not exhausted that you're somehow a failure. And then we carry this burden of shame and guilt with us and that is something that creates this unhealthy mindset that there's something somehow wrong with us, like there's an inherent disconnect in who we are and who we need to be, because we're allowing again, all of these external expectations to determine what our happiness is going to be.

Speaker 1: 27:22

It's so true. I mean, I know for myself when I was going through this process, it was almost liberating when I let go of this idea that I had for myself how it would be. I mean, of course, you know, there was this grief, there was this grieving process and there was a sadness for my children. There was a sadness for this part of myself. But, like you, I got married really young and they didn't really know myself well enough. I didn't give myself the space to understand what I really wanted with my life.

Speaker 1: 28:01

And then, attaching this notion that this is the way it's supposed to be, because this is what everybody else does Like, I really denied myself an opportunity to really understand and evolve Right.

Speaker 1: 28:15

So I had to give myself forgiveness. I had to give myself compassion and empathy and just allow myself to move through it, understanding that I did the best I could in the moment that I had. But now, looking, you know, looking forward, it's like, okay, any relationship is completely different now because understanding, you know, we have our freedoms and we come together differently because of the maturity level it does, it looks different, it feels different, Everything about it is completely different. But I really want to ask you, like this inner voice, that like you had had with your marriages. I mean, you say things happen for a reason and you talk about the conference, but like was there anything else that came through that really like smacked you and was like you know what? This is the path I'm on, because I think this happens to a lot of people and they do ignore it until they're really hit hard with something that like okay, this is your aha moment, let's switch gears.

Speaker 2: 29:27

Yeah, have something like that I do. Actually, about six months into my second marriage, I, my husband and I, were going through exploring the opportunity of having a child. So I had an appointment with an fertility specialist one morning and I got in my car and I had this feeling it was snowing out. It's not always great to, you know, drive in the snow, but I could handle it. I didn't mind it so much. I actually enjoyed the snow. It was peaceful, it was quiet, not too many people are out on the road. I'm going, we're determined. This is, this is the process, this is the journey we think we want to take. So I get in my car but I have this feeling and it's the same feeling I've had in the past. Now I'm recognizing it, but I'm still not listening to it. I didn't know what it was. I'm like no, I just kind of like hushed it. Nope, it's okay, you'll be fine, just just go.

Speaker 2: 30:39

I'm about 15, 20 minutes away from home and it sits snowing pretty good. The roads are pretty slippery and I round this corner and I see this car starting to swerve coming in my direction and I was like oh, not so good. So I pull over as far as I could. But in the process of slowing down and pulling over myself, I see that this car starts to spin and it starts to spin and it comes into my lane and it hits me head on and then kicks around and hits me from the back again and I didn't didn't realize it until probably a couple of days later and again I was still not really wanting to listen to that voice. I go to the hospital. They check me out. I'm okay, I'm beat up, I'm sore, but no serious injuries show on my face. So I'm grateful.

Speaker 2: 31:41

We go to our appointment. It was in the same hospital. So I stick out, I stay with our our course and we sit down and the doctor says look, this is how it's going to work at your age, with where you're at, if we get six viable embryos, we're implanting them. And of course I was like, oh, I'm going to get a baby. Of course I was like, oh, dear Six, okay, so we go home. I said, well, let me think on it. I'm still sore, let's see what happens, transpires from these injuries. We go home and I'm thinking about it, and I'm thinking about it and I'm like you know, with my luck, all six would take it? I don't know that I want to be 45 years old with six little kids, six infants, you know, or you know toddlers running around.

Speaker 2: 32:37

So I gave it time and then, over the next couple of months, my injuries were not completely healing, turns out, I was more seriously injured than I thought. So time is pushing along and when you are well into your forties and talking to a fertility specialist, time is not really. Time is of the essence. And I just felt this nagging feeling that Kristen, you're not supposed to do this, you know you're not supposed to do this Ultimately ended up needing spinal surgery from the accident. It was like that's going to take me another year to heal from.

Speaker 2: 33:19

So it's that inner voice, that mourning of that again, if I had listened to it, what I had been in the accident? Probably not because I would have called to cancel and I wouldn't have been driving in the snow, but it was definitely now in hindsight, it was that reality that you know the universe was sending out. All right, mother nature, she's still going to this appointment. Mother nature, make it snow and I'm still ignoring it. And we're like, all right, she's ignoring this. Now, what are we going to do? And we're going to have to really hit her. We're going to have literally hit her to get her to stop going through with this. Well, because I didn't listen to that voice. It was part of the fairy tale that I was really trying to live out and create and make a reality, but it clearly now was not meant to be part of my story.

Speaker 1: 34:23

Yeah, and that is so jarring and I'm, you know, I'm grateful that you're okay for the audience listening, you're okay, so that's a wonderful thing. But how many times have we been in that same situation? But the circumstances look different, but you know, something's pulling you to go in a different direction and you ignore it and then something else happens and I, yeah, I'm just grateful you're okay. But, yes, I think anybody listening to this can understand that, and a lot of times, I think you know it's just like you said it's the universe, it's our angels, it's, you know, god whatever you want to put on it coming in and just trying to like, redirect us, because we're trying to save you from going down this road, but just help us, help you, right, help us help you.

Speaker 1: 35:19

So so, tapping into that inner voice, I mean, how, how incredible has it been since you've made this shift, like from ignoring your inner voice to actually tuning in and like moving through it and with it, like, how incredible has FN for you?

Speaker 2: 35:36

It has been amazing it I I have met more people from around the world since my husband and I separated, my ex husband and I have seen and experienced more places. Right before COVID hit, I traveled to Italy. I mean, that was, in and of itself, was one of the bravest things I've ever done. It was something I've always wanted to do and I made it happen and I went by myself and I I was nervous because it was. I was definitely pushing myself out of my comfort zone, but I made that promise to myself that I was not going to be the victim in my story, that I was going to be the hero, and in order to be the hero, I needed to step out of my comfort zone.

Speaker 1: 36:30

Yeah, so if I could just jump in. When you say you went by yourself, does that mean like okay, so you just sat down one day, you wrote out your itinerary, figured it all out, and then you just like jumped in and you did this completely alone, or how did that work?

Speaker 2: 36:49

Kind of, but not not no itinerary. So my ex husband and I had been planning a trip to Italy the year before the the affair was divulged and you know we had separated and it was something that I always wanted to do. I always wanted to visit Italy and then all of this happened and I was like, well, there I go, and I guess I'm going to have to put that on hold. And then, as I'm going through and I'm learning and I'm evolving and I'm transforming, I'm realizing wait a minute, why do I need to put this on hold and talk about, I mean, just the way the universe works so serendipitously for us? I got locked out of my house one day. My best friend has a key, so I coaxed her, I convinced her to come over and let me in the house. I made her dinner and she asked me she says, kristin, what are you going to do about Italy? I'm like I don't know. You know it's May at this point in time and I had the summers off and so I knew that time was. If I was going to go that summer. I needed to kind of figure it out. So she's like she gets on Google and she starts looking for like little tours and stuff. Knowing my interests, she's like here, what about this? You can kayak the coast of Italy? And I went oh, that's totally right up my alley. And I said we'll send it to me. So I reached out the next day. There was one seat left in the tour. So I said oh, all right, it's meant to be Okay. I got, I got locked out of my house. She found this tour, there's one seat left. I did it, I put it on a credit card and I said I'm going to make it happen for myself. So I did, and then I also was. I started thinking, if I'm going all the way, I better tax some extra time on. So I found a couple of Airbnb's and I said I'm just going to kind of explore and wander. And I had no itinerary. All I knew is that I was going to be in Italy from this state to this state, and there were five, six days that I was going to be kayaking. And while I was there, I, I wondered I, of course, the night before I left I was standing in my kitchen thinking, kristin, what the heck are you doing and what have you gotten yourself into? You don't speak the language, you don't know where you're going and but I was like, well, I'm all in now, I've paid for it and plain leaves at 4am. So you're, you're, you're going. And I went. I wondered. It was great, it was peaceful, I felt at ease, even though I didn't speak the language. I didn't know where I was, I was at peace, and it was one of those moments where I just felt that I was truly where I needed to be, in that very moment, like I belonged.

Speaker 2: 40:03

So the first day or the night before the kayak trip started, one of the other women that signed up for the the tour also connected with me. We went out to dinner, we got to know each other, telling each other our stories, and she was there for a very similar reason. She had had a great loss in her, in her life. She was grieving. She was there as sort of a. This is my starting over moment. I am here to redefine myself, reconnect with myself and start the next chapter of my life, and we were talking about grief.

Speaker 2: 40:48

Going back to what she said about grief earlier, she was grieving the death of her husband and I was grieving the death of my marriage. And I remember saying to her you know, but it's different. I mean, your husband passed away and she's like it's not any different. All of our feelings are exactly the same. We're grieving. I was like you're absolutely right.

Speaker 2: 41:14

No matter the loss, it's still a great loss and you have to honor the process of healing. You can't just pretend that it didn't happen. You can't just numb it when you can and many people do but then they usually just repeat their patterns If you just numb it with another relationship or substances or whatever it is, because you don't wanna feel that pain of the process. But if you allow yourself and this was one of the lessons we learned in the kayak when the water got choppy your first instinct is to hold on and resist. You don't want to because you're afraid you're gonna tip over. But really what you need to do is you need to let go and you need to learn how to roll with all of those emotions and all of those challenges and you have to be able to move with it and be fluid in order to go through it.

Speaker 1: 42:20

Wow that is powerful. What you just said, I think a lot of people you think of water and the white water, rafting and things like that and it scares them because the water is very intimidating. So what you just said, like kayaking through the water and just letting go and allowing to move through that Holy cow, that is amazing, amazing, and the fact that you meet another woman who's on a similar journey is definitely a divine intervention brought to you, for you, and I can't imagine you're still not in touch with this person and the beautiful friendship you've made.

Speaker 2: 43:05

We've become best of friends. She lives in another state in the Midwest and we took that summer. We became so close and so connected and I remember saying look at this, there's a reason we were brought together, if you really think about everything that had to happen in her life and everything that had to happen in my life in order for us to connect in Italy and become friends. Like talk about the universe bringing us together for a reason. So we took our stories and we are in the process of writing a book to help others going through the grieving process to heal and know that they will get through this and they will be so much stronger and better on the other side and that they aren't alone in their journey and their process. And all of the emotions and all of the feelings and all of the ups and the downs and the waves and the feeling overwhelm. It's all normal, but there is a way to tap into all of what is happening so that you can really actively heal.

Speaker 2: 44:32

And one of the things that people used to say to me in the very beginning well, kristin, you just need to let it go, you just need to get over it, and that is probably one of the worst things you can ever. Tell anybody Going through a divorce who has been experienced in fidelity, whose husbands have passed away, it's you don't just get over it. And it's a question I get all the time, kristin, how do I just get over it and you don't? And one of the mistakes I hear frequently is well, time will heal all wounds. Just give yourself time. And I think that's the biggest lie there is, because time doesn't heal anything. Time is just the space that is held for you to actually do the work to heal.

Speaker 1: 45:27

Yeah, that's powerful stuff right there. I mean, you're so on point because we don't have a guarantee of tomorrow and the past is already the past. You only have this single moment, right now, and you're right time. Is this space right here, right now?

Speaker 2: 45:48

it's what do you do with?

Speaker 1: 45:50

it. How do you navigate through it and work through it, right? I couldn't agree more. But there's probably a lot of people in the audience that maybe in a place with their relationship where maybe there's something else going on, and they're listening to this inner voice talk that we're talking about and not really sure how to tap into it, connect to it. Maybe they have been so congested with other stuff, quote unquote in their life, whether that's taking care of children or their jobs, career. There's a laundry list of things that could be part of this. So how do you help people connect to that inner voice, right?

Speaker 2: 46:38

so I actually have four pillars that I work with and I call it my hero system and it's really tapping into your healthy mindset and in there you have to really take inventory of your beliefs, of your core values, of what is important to you, and you have to get to know yourself so you're empowering yourself to know who you are and what you're really made of. Because once we start having kids or once we're married, we always think that the other person's needs are more important than our own. So it's really connecting. We do a lot of mindset work. We connect with your assets and your internal core values, Also learning how to regulate your emotions.

Speaker 2: 47:34

Many people think that regulating their emotions means stuffing them and ignoring them, and that's not the case. But regulating them is learning how to master them. And when you master your emotions, when you master your thoughts, you master your emotions. And then also don't put off. I'll do that when the kids are older or I'll do that later. Do it now. Do what you love to do now. You have to feed yourself before you feed other people. It's like the oxygen mask on the airplane the rule is put yours on first before you put somebody else's on, Because otherwise we get into a self-rejecting mode and that keeps us in a victim mode and it keeps us in that fear mindset. So it really is tapping in getting to know yourself, and that's the work that I do with people.

Speaker 1: 48:36

Yeah, that's beautiful and I know for so many people. Especially when you talk to people that are seniors or much older, towards the end of life, one of the things that they always say is they don't regret the things that they did do they regret not doing the things they wanted to do. Right, and I personally had an experience where I had traveled to many of the very large national parks within the United States and it was always something that I wanted to do and I had an opportunity to do it. So I was like you know what? I'm just gonna go and do it. And people were saying, well, why wouldn't you wait until you're in retirement, or this place or that place? And I don't think there's a right or wrong, but for me it was the right time Because, as you say, life provided me the opportunity to say yes. So I went all in, and it was unfortunate because I was talking to a family member. It was actually my uncle, and he was sharing with me that he had always wanted to see one of the national parks that I had visited, and the worst part of this story was that he was diagnosed a couple of weeks earlier with a cancer that was late stage and he would never have the opportunity, and he was sharing with me that he wished he could have done it earlier and younger in his life than waiting for the day that he thought would come that actually never came because he got sick and he ended up passing.

Speaker 1: 50:17

So anybody in the audience, if you're listening to this and this resonates with you, like, by all means, grab your yeses when you can. I think that's so, so on point. And one of the things that I like to do too is just have a vision board, you know, have something in front of you that when you look at it and you see it in front of you, then like you're kind of attracting it to your life, because that's something you're putting energy out for, that you want to come into your life. So I know that was something that you know was something that I did, that was helpful. But I also want to ask you, because you touched on a little bit but this element of this process of forgiveness. I think that process of forgiveness is so huge for most people because you really aren't taught how to forgive, like when you grow up.

Speaker 1: 51:15

It's just like, well, say you're sorry, you know one of those things, which is very generic, but then it really doesn't solve the problem. So how would you talk around that?

Speaker 2: 51:29

So that's one of the biggest questions that I receive from women all the time is how do I forgive? And especially when they've experienced infidelity or some you know betrayal of sorts. They hold onto that because they personalize it and I talked to them about look, you don't have to forgive the other person per se, but you have to forgive yourself for holding on to the messages that you tell yourself because of that betrayal. And I can speak specifically to that because when I found out about my husband's affair, of course the first thing I went to was what is wrong with me, kristen? You're not good enough, you're not.

Speaker 2: 52:23

All of those old wounds that came up from when I was a little girl, of not feeling that I was good enough for myself, all came back. You know what was wrong with me. Why is she better than me? That was the story I started to tell myself and I needed to really put the brakes on and say wait a minute. All you're doing, kristen, is re-traumatizing yourself and you're feeding that story as if it's true. But if this were my best friend going through this, I would never sit there and tell her you are not good enough, or it's because she's prettier than you or younger than you, or whatever message is that I was internalizing.

Speaker 2: 53:15

So I needed to forgive myself for talking to myself that way and I needed to forgive myself for holding on to that fairy tale and when I was able to accept and work on those messages within myself because that's another thing that when somebody goes through this, even if they're single and they never, you know, they get to be 40-ish or 30-ish and they haven't met that person they still tell themselves that story as to why they haven't met that person. And that's where the forgiveness needs to come in. And when you can do that for yourself, you can take a step back and not personalize that story anymore and not own the other person's actions and behaviors as if it was part of your own. I'm not saying that you have to go ahead and then be best friends with the person that has hurt you or betrayed you, but you do have to become your own best friend, and that's where the forgiveness comes in.

Speaker 1: 54:22

That's so true, so so true, and I couldn't have said it better. So thank you for sharing that, because I think that's something people struggle with quite often and that self dialogue is so powerful because what you tell yourself, I mean, you're like trapped within yourself. So unless you love yourself, you're going to be trapped with somebody you don't love. So it's really important that you love yourself. It really is. But I wanted to also ask you, you know, with the self forgiveness and everything, I mean, did you find that was very freeing for you? I mean, was that really like the first step for you, or did it take a little time for you to get to that place?

Speaker 2: 55:04

It definitely took a little time to get to that place because I had some work to do prior to getting there. You know there was still a lot of processing, there was still a lot of trying to make sense of what didn't make sense. And you know when you, when you believe that you have found your Prince Charming, when you believe that this is your fairy tale, and then all of a sudden, prince Charming turns out to be the frog, and you are looking at this person that you loved and you thought, loved you as like whoa, wait a minute, who are you? And this is? I'm stonewalled by this. You know it doesn't make sense in your brain and your brain creates.

Speaker 2: 55:48

Whenever we meet somebody, we have these story files in our brain and it's all based on patterns of behaviors and what we know this person to be like. And every time they do something it fits oh yep, that fits in the fits in the picture. Fix, it fits right, nice and neat in that file. But then something like this happens the betrayal happens, or you know, something drastic that just doesn't make sense. It doesn't fit in that file. Our brain actually doesn't know what to do with it and it's a phenomenon called cognitive dissonance. It's a real thing and it does not mean that you are crazy. It actually isn't even a diagnosable, you know disorder. It is just something that happens within your brain when you're trying to make sense of things that don't make sense. So I needed to go through that process of starting to create a new story and create a new file for this person that I thought I knew. So I needed to do some of that work first.

Speaker 1: 57:00

Yeah, yeah. So let me ask you because we're at the end of our time, but if and thank you, thank you so much for all of this because it's just so powerful and so impactful but if I were to pick up your earth angel feather off of the ground and you had a message for the world, what would your message to the world be?

Speaker 2: 57:24

I would say don't wait for your fairy tale to come before you live your life. Yeah, and it doesn't even have to be a fairy tale. You get to decide what your story is. If you want it to be an adventure, let it be an adventure.

Speaker 1: 57:42

I couldn't agree more and that's amazing, because I'm so with you. You have to live today, you have to be in your adventure, in the story you create. Kristen, thank you so, so much, so appreciate it.

Speaker 2: 57:56

You are very welcome. Thank you so much for having me. It was a pleasure.

Speaker 1: 58:00

Absolutely and for the audience. If you'd like to connect with Kristen, you can find her on Facebook at Kristen Miller Coaching. Kristen is spelled K-R-I-S-T-I-N and Miller M-I-L-L-E-R coaching. You can also find her on Instagram at divorcerecoverycoach, and if you'd like to join her private Facebook group, it's called Life Beyond the Broken Heart Divorce, separation and Infidelity Recovery. Again, thank you so much, kristen, and that's all we have time for today. This is Katherine Daniels, reminding you to live your authentic life with peace and, as always, retreat to peace and we'll see you next time. Thank you.