My love,

In this week’s episode I talk about something I’ve been turning over for a while now: at what point does telling our divorce story stop helping us heal, and start hurting us all over again?

Ep 38: Processing Your Divorce Story vs Retraumatising Yourself

I’ve been thinking about this ever since I did a little podcast about Lily Allen’s album West End Girl when it first came out.

If you know it, you’ll know why. So many of the women who get in touch with me say the same thing when they hear it. The cheating. The secrecy. The shame. The blindsidedness. The agreements you get to because you were just trying to keep your family together.

She’s written a whole musical of the end of a relationship, and it took me a while to recover from listening to it the first time.

My friend Jo came with me to see her live a few weeks ago, and honestly, I was a little scared to go in. I knew it was going to be triggering. I knew I would cry. And yet, it was incredible. It also brought up this real tension I wanted to sit with, out loud.

There’s advice that says just move on, cut the ties, leave everything in the past. We know that’s not always the best advice - this stuff lives in us so it’ll be there wherever we go.

However, there’s also the other extreme, talking about it constantly and never actually moving through it.

So where’s the line?

In this episode I go into:

* Why sitting with the truth of your own story, properly, with someone holding you through it, is different from just reopening the wound alone (or with someone reactionary)

* How sharing the stuff we’re most ashamed of is often exactly what sets other women (and ourselves) free too, even if the situation looks different to theirs

* The question I think matters most: what’s the intention behind sharing? Are you telling this story to process and heal, or because reopening it feels familiar?

👆 Listen to the full episode above

If you’d like to try writing your story, feel free to send it to me.

Whether it’s something you want me to share (anonymously or in your name) or just something you want to write down and send my way so you’re not holding it alone, I’m here for you. Just reply to this email.

You’ve got this. And I’ve got you.

Hannah XOX

PS Shownotes:

* My book: How to Divorce Sober

* Lily Allen’s West End Girl

* Ep 16: Secrets, divorce and turning pain into art - lessons from Lilly Allen

* Send me your story

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