9 Ways You Can Reinvent Yourself After Divorce

First off all, if you have survived a devastating divorce, good for you! You might have just gone through one of the worst times of your life but you came out the other side intact and are now ready to reinvent yourself!

And reinventing yourself is one of the most important things to do after a divorce. To let go of the person you were in your unhappy marriage and embrace a new you – a new you who will go out into the world to live and find love.

I am not saying that you must totally cast aside who you were in the past but a few tweaks could make a big difference in what the rest of your life looks like!

Here are 7 ways that you can reinvent yourself after your divorce, tried and true ways employed by me and my clients!

#1 – Take a good hard look at who you were in your marriage.

No matter whether someone leaves or was left in a marriage, there were two people in that marriage all along, two people who brought it to the place where divorce was an option.

It is important that, after a devastating divorce, you pause and figure out who you were in the marriage and what role your behavior played in the end of it.

For me, my husband left me for another woman. I was destroyed by the fact that he walked out on me. For a while I played the wronged woman card, someone who was abandoned through no fault of my own. Eventually, however, the role of the victim got old and I had to take a good hard look at the woman I had been in my marriage and how that person influenced its demise.

What was I like? I always put my kids first. And the dogs. And my friends. I always wanted things my way. Instead of telling him how I felt, I was passive aggressive. I treated him with contempt. I stopped being physical with him in any way.

Gosh – looking at myself as a whole, I wouldn’t have wanted to be married to me either.

Of course, me being this way didn’t happen in a void – he was responsible, to some extent, for my behaviors –  but the reality was that this was who I had been and who I could very well take into my next relationship.  I really didn’t want to do that.

So, in order to reinvent yourself, you must start at the beginning – understanding who you were before the divorce so that you can understand what exactly it is you need to reinvent.

#2 – Once you see yourself, consider how you want to do things differently.

Many people go out into their lives after a divorce, hoping that things will be different for them. Unfortunately many people don’t know exactly what specifically being different looks like. They just move forward, living their lives and dating, without any understanding of what specifically they want to do differently.

Once you have recognized the role that you played in your marriage, it’s time to dig deep and identify how you want to be going forward. For me, I knew that I wanted to be the kind of person who put other people first, at least some of the time. I wanted to learn to speak up for myself. I wanted to understand why I struggled with physicality when I was upset. I wanted to make sure that I treated a new partner with respect.

With this consciousness about what how I wanted to present in the world, I was able to set out to do so. Instead of throwing things against the wall to see what stuck, I was aware of how I was in relation to other people – how I treated them and how I let myself be treated.

By living consciously, I was able to make the change in myself that I sought to make. It didn’t happen overnight but it did happen!

#3 – Reconnect with the person you were before you got married.

I am guessing that you are very different from the person you were when you got married. I know that, after 20 years of marriage and two kids, I couldn’t have been further from the girl who got married at 28.

That being said, that 28 year old girl, with her hopes and dreams, was still inside me. And, in order to move forward with my life in a meaningful way, getting in touch with her again was vital.

When I looked back at my younger self, I remembered how much I loved living in a city. I had been living in the country for a few decades and had forgotten. I was selling real estate at the time of my divorce but I remembered that I had always wanted to be a therapist. I had had dogs for 20 years but had always wanted a cat.

So, what did I do? I tried to revisit those dreams and see what I could do with them. To that end, I became a life coach. I moved to New York City and I got not one but two cats. For a while there, I felt like that 28 year old girl again, looking to the future with hopes and dreams, which set me off on the path to success at mid-life.

Are there things about your pre-marriage self that you might like to revisit? Do it!

#4 – Rearrange your space.

One of my favorite stories is about a client who, after her divorce, totally rearranged her house. If she had been in charge of the world she would have sold it but she couldn’t so she did the next best thing – she moved everything around.

First she got rid of everything that held any kind of negative energy from her marriage, even if they were things that she felt she “must” keep around for the kids. Then, she swapped the furniture in her living and master bedrooms. She bought herself a new bed and mattress and painted the bedroom walls a light pink, a color that her ex always hated. Before she knew it, she had a whole new space, one that was all hers. The vestiges of her marriage that had been bringing her down, something that she didn’t really realize was happening, were tossed out the door. Lighter and newly energized, she moved forward to get the life that she wanted.

#5 – Get out there and do something that you have always wanted to do.

When we are married, we tend to do married couple things. This isn’t a bad thing – it’s just often something that happens after years of marriage. What drops to the wayside are things that we want to do that our spouse might not want to or that there isn’t time for.

Now is the time to do those things.

What kind of things would you want to do? It can be things big or small. I always wanted to go to Peru. I did that. A client had always wanted to horseback ride. She did that. Perhaps its get a tattoo, or dye your hair blue, or pierce your nose (something my furniture rearranging client did). Perhaps its sleeping on the left side of the bed or sleeping later on the weekends.

Truly, doing whatever it is that you have always wanted to do, no matter how big or small, is a key part of reinventing yourself after a divorce. After all, part of your reinvention is being someone who has experiences that she didn’t have during her marriage.

#6 – Spend time with old friends and new.

For many of us, marriage leads to letting go of some friendships. Maybe it’s because a friend and a spouse didn’t get along. Perhaps its because of geographical distance. Perhaps its because of a lack of time. Perhaps its just apathy. For whatever reason, when we are married, we can let go of people who are important to us.

Now is the time to fix this!

Think about friends from your recent or distant past who it would be fun to reconnect with. I know for a client of mine, getting involved in a Zoom group of people she went to college with was life changing. They were people who she had shared a formative part of her life and reconnecting with these people put her in touch with who she was but also inspired her to think about what she wanted to do next. Outside of Zoom calls, she plays tennis with someone she didn’t know well in college but connected with in the group. She has traveled to Boulder and California to see other friends. She has plans for a girls trip to Mexico in the spring.

So, now that you are single and most likely have a little bit more time to yourself, make an effort to reach out to people from your past, and maybe make some new friends along the way.

#7 – Get yourself some professional support.

I know – none of us wants to get professional support, whether it be from a therapist or a life coach. After all, we are tough. We can get through these things on our own.

Unfortunately, in this case, reinventing yourself after your divorce might be nearly impossible without some kind of support.  Why? Because, more likely than not, you have never gone through a divorce before and, as a result, you have no idea how to manage it.

Of course, you have friends and family who want to support you and those friends and family love you but aren’t necessarily the best means of support. Friends and family are likely to tell you only what you want to hear, which isn’t always helpful. They might also bring their own experience or agenda into their support, like a sister who had a bitter divorce and wants to make sure that you do things the way that she did so that you can get a good outcome, even if its not the right outcome for you.

Talking to a life coach or therapist will help you get impartial, professional help from someone who has helped others through the experience. They will be supportive but they will also help you face some hard truths, truths that could be the key to you getting through the divorce and being able to reinvent yourself.

Look into finding some support. It doesn’t have to be forever – it just needs to get you through this difficult time.

#8 – Choose your social media carefully.

This is a really important one – really important.

When we are going through a tough break up, we often turn to social media to find support. After all, there are a jillion people out there who are willing to share their experience and their “expertise” with you. And it’s free.

Unfortunately, what you see on social media only reinforces how you are feeling or the way that you are thinking. It doesn’t give you an opportunity to learn or for growth. The algorithm will connect you with people who are feeling the way that you are now – angry, bitter or perhaps lost. And, when you see a TikTok video of someone ranting about their dysfunctional ex or read quotes that are angry and bitter, it will only keep you feeling angry and bitter and mired in your pain. When you see those things over and over, it won’t help you move forward.

Instead of spending time on social media focusing on the break up,  I would encourage you to seek out that which is inspirational; things that will give you hope for the future. By interacting with people who have survived a break up and are feeling positive, you will absorb their positivity.

#9 – Have faith in yourself.

I am guessing that, in the aftermath of your divorce, you are struggling with low self-esteem. After all, for whatever reason, your marriage has failed. You had hoped to live happily ever after but it just didn’t happen.

As a result, you are feeling pretty bad about yourself, your place in the world and your prospects for the future. And I get it – I have been there.

What I want to remind you is that you are still here. You have survived your divorce and, instead of curled up in a ball on the couch, you are reading this, figuring out what is next. You might be beaten down and exhausted but you haven’t give up yet.

I always tell my clients that, more than likely, this isn’t the first time you have been beaten down. That you have felt overwhelmed and depleted and maybe even hopeless. You have been through hell and come out the other side at least somewhat intact. Perhaps a little bit battered but you have still emerged.

You will emerge again. The person you are right now isn’t the person who you will be forever. You will do what you need to do to move forward and you will get to a place where you will be happy and self-confident again.

If you can have faith in yourself and take the steps you need to take to move forward you will not only survive but you will thrive. I promise!

I know that the idea of being able to reinvent yourself after your divorce is daunting.

And I get it! Many many women have been in the boat that you are in now, feeling like they have lost their paddle. But, I can promise you, you have it in you to pick up that paddle and move forward in your life.

So, get up off the coach, take a look at yourself in the mirror and tell yourself that you can do this. Because you can!