Leah Hadley [00:00:01]:
Welcome to Intentional Divorce Insights. I'm Leah Hadley, certified divorce financial analyst, accredited financial counselor, and the founder of Intentional Divorce Solutions. I'll be your guide through the complexities of divorce finance and emotional wellness. Join me as we uncover practical tips and empowering insights to help you navigate your divorce with clarity and intention.
Leah Hadley [00:00:24]:
Hi there. Welcome back to Intentional Divorce Insights. Hi, I'm Leah Hadley, and today I'm going solo, no guest, just you and me and something that I have been sitting with for a while now. This episode is about the woman on the other side of divorce, not the one on the other side of the court courtroom, not the other side of the mediation table. I mean, the woman on the other side of this, the woman you are becoming right now through everything that divorce is putting you through. Because here's what I know. After years of working alongside women in the middle of this process, most of us are so focused on surviving the divorce, we never stop to actually ask ourselves what we're building. So that's what we're doing today.
Leah Hadley [00:01:14]:
I want to talk to you about who you are becoming. I want to talk about what gets unlocked when everything gets stripped down. And I want to give you a new way of seeing yourself, not as someone whose life fell apart, but as someone whose life is being rebuilt with purpose. So let's get into it. First, I want to start with a question, and I want you to actually sit with this for a second. When someone asks you what's going on in your life right now and you tell them you're going through a divorce, what story do you tell? You say that again. When somebody right now asks you what's going on in your life and you tell them that you're going through a divorce, what story do you tell them? Now, for a lot of women, it's a story about loss. That marriage didn't work, the family changed shape, the future they planned is gone.
Leah Hadley [00:02:07]:
And every single one of those things is absolutely true. But I want to offer you another layer, because loss is really only part of what's happening now. When I work with women in divorce, I see something I don't think gets talked about enough. I see emergence. I see women who have spent years, sometimes decades, making themselves smaller, deferring decisions they could have been making or maybe even should have been making, staying quiet in conversations where they had a perspective. And then divorce happens, and suddenly they have no choice but to step up. They have to understand the finances. They have to make decisions.
Leah Hadley [00:02:48]:
They have to advocate for themselves, sometimes for the very first time in their lives. And at first it feels terrifying. And then slowly it starts to feel something else. It starts to feel like power. Not power over someone, but power over yourself. Power over your own life. I have seen this happen so many times. A woman walks into my office and she tells me she doesn't know anything about money.
Leah Hadley [00:03:16]:
She deferred all of that to her husband. She's scared. And then we sit together and we walk through it. And by the end of that process, she knows exactly what she has, exactly what she needs, and what she's going to do about it. And the look on her face is something I will never forget. That is not just financial education. That's an expansion of her identity. That's the woman on the other side starting to come forward.
Leah Hadley [00:03:45]:
I want to talk about what this process is actually asking of you, because I think when we reframe what divorce demands, we can really start to see it differently. Divorce demands that you get honest. Can't stay vague about what you need. You can't stay vague about what you're willing to accept. Divorce, at its core, forces you into a level of personal clarity that a lot of people will never reach. You have to figure out what your non negotiables are. You have to know what kind of life you're building. You have to articulate your needs in legal documents, in mediation sessions, in conversations with professionals who don't know you and need you to tell them exactly who you are and what matters to you.
Leah Hadley [00:04:35]:
That is not a small thing. That is a profound act of self definition. And divorce demands that you get resourceful. I see women navigate things during divorce that they never imagined that they would be able to handle. They learn to read financial statements. They open their own accounts. They hire contractors and deal with real estate agents and negotiate with lenders. They figure out how to file the fafsa.
Leah Hadley [00:05:04]:
They figure out what a quadro is. They figure out how to put together a budget for one income. Not because they wanted to, because I had to. And in doing all of those things, they discover capabilities they didn't know they had. Divorce demands that you get honest about your relationships. Who shows up, who disappears, who says the right things, and who says things that make you feel worse. The friend groups and the family dynamics that were held together by the marriage, sometimes they fall apart too, and that hurts. But what emerges from that process is a clearer picture of who your people actually are.
Leah Hadley [00:05:49]:
I think about the women in my own life and the women I've worked with. And I can point to relationships that became deeper and more Real during divorce. Because when you're in that kind of pain, the people who lean in, those are your people. Those are the ones worth building the next chapter with. And finally, divorce demands that you get real about what you want, not what you were supposed to want, not the life you were building because it made sense on paper, or because everybody expected it, or because you had already invested so much into it. What do you actually want your life to look like? For so many women, this is the first time they've ever really asked that question and meant it. That's not a crisis. That's an invitation.
Leah Hadley [00:06:37]:
So I want to take a moment and get a little personal with you. Now. I've thought a lot about identity over the last few years. My own and the identities of the women that I work with. And I think one of the most underestimated losses in divorce is a loss of an identity that was built around a relationship. You may have been a wife for 10 years, 20 years, 40 years. That role shaped how you move through the world. It shaped your social calendar, your financial decisions, your sense of purpose on a Saturday morning, right? And then it's gone.
Leah Hadley [00:07:14]:
And you're standing there asking, so who am I now? I want to tell you something important. You are not starting from zero. I know you've heard me say that before. The woman you were before the marriage, she's still there. And the woman you've become through the marriage, through the motherhood and the choices and the hard seasons, she's there, too. Divorce does not erase your identity. It asks you to reclaim it. Now, there's a concept I come back to again and again, and it's the idea of kavana.
Leah Hadley [00:07:48]:
It's a Hebrew word, and it means intentionality, a sense of directed purpose and presence. It's the idea that what we do matters and how we bring ourselves to what we do matters even more. Divorce, when you approach it with kavana, becomes something different. It's not just a legal process you're surviving. It's a season of intentional becoming. Who do you want to be on the other side of this? What parts of yourself do you want to bring forward? And what do you want to leave behind? Because you get to decide that maybe for the first time, you really, truly get to decide. I think about the women I've seen come through this process with intention, and they have something in common. They don't look like people who lost.
Leah Hadley [00:08:42]:
They look like people who found something, found themselves, found their voice, found their financial footing, found out who they really are when no one else is defining it for them. That's who you're becoming. I want to give you three things today. Three things that I believe. The woman on the other side of your divorce, she already knows. And I want to offer them to you now so you can start moving toward her. The first thing she knows is that her worth is not determined by her marital status. Her worth is not determined by her marital status.
Leah Hadley [00:09:25]:
Now, this one may sound obvious when I say it out loud, but the messaging that surrounds divorce, the stigma, the questions, the looks, those things can really burrow in and make you feel like you failed, like your personal value is somehow tied to whether your marriage survived. And let me be very clear, it does not. It does not. Your worth is not located in your relationship status. It's in you, in your history, in your character, in your love, your work, your choices, your presence, and the lives of the people who matter to you. The woman on the other side of your divorce knows this in her bones. And every day you spend moving through this process with intention, get a little closer to knowing it, too. Second thing I want you to know is that financial clarity is an act of self love.
Leah Hadley [00:10:20]:
I say this in almost every room I'm in because it keeps being true. So many women come to me financially disoriented after divorce. They never fully engaged with the money. And that disorientation, it's not laziness and it's not a lack of intelligence. It's the result of a dynamic in the marriage that kept them from the information and the power they could have had all along. But here's what I know. The women who come out of divorce feeling financially grounded. They didn't just protect their settlement.
Leah Hadley [00:10:53]:
They protected their future self. They protected their ability to make choices. They protected their freedom. Understanding your money is not a chore. It is a love letter to your future. The woman on the other side of your divorce hasn't written that letter. Start writing yours. The third thing.
Leah Hadley [00:11:15]:
Asking for help is a strength, not a weakness. Asking for help is a strength, not a weakness. Divorce is not a solo sport. The women who navigate it best are the ones who build a team. A divorce attorney, a financial professional, a divorce coach, a circle of trusted friends. There is no prize for doing this alone. There is no honor and suffering in silence. The most intentional thing you can do in the middle of this process is surround yourself with people who know things you don't know yet and people who love you enough to tell you the truth.
Leah Hadley [00:11:54]:
The woman on the other side of your divorce asked for help. She got it. And she is so grateful that she did. I want to close today with this. Wherever you are in your divorce, whether you are just starting to think about it, whether you are in the thick of it, whether you're on the other side of but still finding your footing, I want you to know something. What you are going through, it is not a detour from your life. It is your life and the woman you are becoming through it. She's someone worth knowing.
Leah Hadley [00:12:29]:
She's clearer than she used to be. She's stronger than she thought she was. She asks better questions. She makes decisions with more intention. She knows what she's worth and she's building a life, actually hers. You are becoming her right now. Every hard conversation, every financial document you learn to read, every morning you get up and keep going. That's the work of becoming her.
Leah Hadley [00:12:56]:
And you do not have to do it alone. It is actually exactly why I created the Empowered Sisterhood. Because this work, the identity work, the financial work, the becoming work, it goes so much faster when you have a community of women doing it alongside you. Women who get it, women who are not going to look at you like you need to be fixed. Women who are going to sit with you in the hardest parts and celebrate when you take that step forward. Inside the Sisterhood, we have weekly coffee and clarity chats, monthly financial coaching office hours, and monthly masterclasses where we go deep on things that actually move the needle. It's the room I wish I could have handed every woman I worked with on day one. And if you are ready for that, I want you in there.
Leah Hadley [00:13:47]:
You can find all the details in the show notes. Come check us out. Come meet your people. I am so glad that you joined us here today. If this episode resonated with you, please be sure to share it with a woman who needs it. It may be the most important thing you do for her this week.
Leah Hadley [00:14:06]:
Thank you for joining me on Intentional Divorce Insights. It's a privilege to share this time with you. I hope each episode offers valuable guidance to navigate your journey. If you find our content helpful, please leave a review to help others discover the benefits of intentional decision making in divorce. Until next time, take care and continue to embrace your path with intention.
