UnYoked Living - The Divorce and Recovery Podcast

Split and Rebooted: Crafting Your New Identity After Divorce

Todd Turner Season 1 Episode 11

Welcome to UnYoked Podcast Episode 11: "Rediscovering Identity - Finding Yourself Post-Divorce," hosted by the compassionate and insightful Todd Turner. In this pivotal episode, we navigate the tumultuous waters of life after a Christian divorce, confronting both the anguish and the opportunity that come with letting go and moving on. (00:00:10)

Join us as Todd delves into the stages of shock, the reality of being divorced, and how to embrace the 'new you' season. (00:02:40) Hear firsthand how Todd grappled with guilt and ultimately found freedom and personal growth in his post-divorce journey. (00:05:15)

This episode is packed with practical encouragement, from resetting your life in singleness (00:10:20), sidestepping the social media comparison trap (00:15:30), to placing spiritual health at the forefront of your recovery process. (00:18:28)

Discover why "The Body Keeps the Score" is a pivotal read for physical well-being post-divorce (00:22:12) and why journeying with others can be life-changing. (00:24:50) Learn why meaningful friendships are a post-divorce lifeline (00:28:30), and how a simple handwritten letter can strengthen those bonds. (00:32:22)


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UnYoked - The Post Divorce Podcast: Navigating your divorce and recovery with grace.

Divorce and the new single life is hard but it is even more complex when you made a promise to God to "keep your marriage till death do you part." American Christian culture doesn't make navigating the decisions and ripple effects of divorce any easier. Christian marriage and divorce advice runs rampant yet often conflicts with the realities of pain, abuse, loneliness, and the real world.

God has a lot more to say than, “I hate divorce.” God gives a standard and then graciously restores and renews people even when His standard isn't met.

Those of us who are navigating the life changing event of unYoking from a spouse and/or uprooting a family have to journey through some dark, lonely, and confusing places. Our issues aren't frequently tackled from the pulpit and the advice we receive isn't always relevant to our current place.

The UnYoked podcast is just for you. A safe place to wonder, ponder, relate, and consider your steps of navigating a divorce, singleness, and the future. A place where we live in the tension between God's plan and the realities of living in a broken world with broken people and broken relationships. Buckle up... remove the mask.. and let's get real about discussing the ripple effects of divorce and equip ourselves to survive being unYoked as a Christian.

Visit ToddTurner.com/Divorce for more resources.


The unyoked podcast navigating the pain process and possibilities after a christian divorce. Welcome to what I hope will be an eye opening and encouraging discussion about creating the new you post divorce. This is going to be a fun conversation. I've been waiting on this, but let's start here. God saw you and your ex spouse as one. You were one, you were two, you became one. And now you're back to one again. Now you're crazy if you think that happens easily. It takes time. I mentioned this on a previous episode before, but there's sort of a season after your divorce. There's multiple seasons. First there's that crushing, just that shock, if you will. I call it sort of being in a fetal position in the floor of just being crushed in the reality. Then after time, you just feel divorced. You mention you're divorced. If you're ever on a dating app, you say you're divorced. Then over time, you notice that people just say they're single. So you're crushed. Divorced and then single. But there's a point even after that. I call it the new you season. It's where you're not just single, you are a different person and you have the opportunities to become that new person. Because you're no longer married, your prior priorities change. Now doesn't mean you don't have kids priorities. I'm just saying, when you're one with your spouse, things are one way. When you're single again, things change. Now, there's rarely someone who was a good husband or a good wife that has healthy individual legs straight out of the gate. It does happen. It's super rare. I would say those people probably had really, really good balance in their marriage and they already were very independent, knew who they were. Maybe they got married later in life, I don't know. But that's the 1%. But I'm going to tell you, just give you a real world example of how I struggled with this. One day I went on a date. Now I'm going to just say six months a year after I was single or post divorce. And there was a girl that I had known from elementary school and I saw that she was single and I really wasn't interested in dating. I was just sort of shocked. I haven't talked to her in decades and we met out for dinner and of course, you know how it is. You meet somebody that you're having a blast with and next thing you know, the waiter is cleaning up and the chairs are going upside down the restaurant and they're like, hey, we're closing down. But we weren't even near finished with our conversation. So what do we do? We just walked right outside, hopped in the car, and we just started talking and turned the radio on. Roll the windows down a little bit. Chatting, chatting, chatting.

I look up and it said, 02:

00 a.m. On my truck dash. I started sweating. I panicked a little bit. Little bit of anxiety. The

reason why I was in a car at 02:

00 a.m. With a beautiful woman. I felt guilty. Felt like I was doing something wrong. Was I? No. But it was ingrained in me. I had been married for almost 20 years. It just felt wrong. Well, let me tell you something. Ready? I'm going to fast forward this right from all these different stages. Here's where I'm at now. I took a vacation in another state and went to a restaurant, had a bar in it. We were just sitting there talking. The person behind the bar was so friendly and nice. We started talking. Well, next thing you know, the chairs all start going up. I'm going to make

a long story short. I was up till 03:

00 a.m. With the owner, the bartender, and a waitress singing songs with a

ukulele out on the patio of the restaurant till 03:

00 a.m. I didn't feel guilty one bit. I didn't even think about it. Matter of fact, I sort of love my lifestyle as an empty nester, single person, that I just can do what I want, when I want. I don't have to think about it. No one's at home wondering where I am. And I just really enjoyed the moment. I thought about how far I had come in five years. I thought about how far I've come from feeling guilty into being an opportunist, of looking for situations that are fun and need and things I can say yes to. But it took me a long time to get there. While unyoking. We all navigate this differently. We all have different various personalities, hurts, maturity levels, et cetera. And sometimes we're swinging the pendulum from our ex, right? If they were a certain way, we come into our singleness trying to fight that. If they were couch potatoes, we want to go jump out of an airplane. If they were outgoing and we don't like. So sometimes we become recluse. But what a great opportunity if you can fight the pendulum swing to reset yourself. And better than just going back to who you were before marriage. That's one of the baby steps. It's a great opportunity in your singleness to move forward faster than you maybe ever would have when you were married. It is a great opportunity, so you can start over. But now you're wiser. You have more life experiences. You know things about yourself. Sometimes you have to unlearn, unlearn a lot. You're alone, and you come in with a lot of these habits, and they don't necessarily have to be there. And it takes time to realize what behaviors you had that were birthed, if you will, of that relationship. And that relationship is gone. And you realize, I really don't like doing that, or I only like doing that when there's two of us, not when I'm alone. So let's say you sort of binged or swung the pendulum after your divorce. Well, one of the problems is, for us Americans, is it's so easy to get on social media and trying to find your center, your lighthouse. We live in an american hustle culture, and social media shows us what beauty looks like and what success looks like. And with what I do for a living, anytime I get online, the algorithms already know. I mean, I try to get sold every book, every course, every conference to get ahead and to be successful. And sometimes we as christians see God's blessing with our success. Not true at all. That's another topic for another day. But we are sort of given a lighthouse to road to. That's not necessarily a healthy lighthouse to go to at all. There's a funny wives tale joke. It's about a businessman who was out at the beach, and he saw this old fisherman just pulled his boat up, cleaning his net. The rich american guy just walked up to him and goes, hey, is this your boat? Yeah. They got a little talk, and he goes, what you ought to do is buy another boat, and then you should maybe hire another guy and pay him less, and you'll double your profits. And then maybe another day, you take that profit and buy another boat, and you could have a fleet, and then you'd have all this money. And, man, think about how great it is. And the guy looked at him and goes, well, then what would I do? And he goes, well, you'll take all that money and just do whatever you want. He goes, well, what do you like to do? And he goes, I like to fish. It's like, I'm already living a great life. I don't have to hustle. And we sometimes, as Americans and sometimes even in our christian culture, we're looking for success, and that's not necessarily where we need to aim. Other problem that we have, and it's a phrase I stole. I read this somewhere. It says, porn ruined men and Instagram ruined women. Social media puts pressure to show we have it all together and that we're living our best lives. It's just comical. We live in an age where reality is shown one way and it's a false reality and it's actually very, very dangerous. And we need to not swim to those lighthouses when we're trying to get our legs. Here's another thing, our spiritual health. Now, some of us were really hurt by our spouses and the church, and sometimes those stories really blend together. But don't confuse your relationship with your church or the people in your church with your spiritual health. Spending time in God's word and praying is huge. Though you may have, once again, pain in your churches due to your brothers and sisters. But don't confuse that with your spiritual health and relationship with the Lord that needs to stay strong before you start heading anywhere. You've got to have good, healthy lenses on yourself before you row anywhere. And you've got to do that by having a firm foundation with your relationship and your spiritual health. Don't worry about your financial and your physical until your spiritual is in check. Now, speaking of physical, there's a great book. It's called the body keep score. It's a bestseller. So many of you may have heard of it, but it's so true that with trauma and with big things in your life, sometimes we're exhausted, eternally exhausted. Sometimes we put on weight. Sometimes there's stress eating that takes over. But our bodies, there are true chemical imbalances that happen with stress. And there's a little phrase I like to use. You can't run a marathon, then take a nap. All the energy it takes to run a marathon cannot be fixed with a 30 minutes nap. And many of you have gone through serious, exhaustive trauma in your life. And this idea that when this sheet of paper is signed, it's all fixed, it's not true. Some of you need a season to breathe, to rest. And what happens is we all aren't able to because of finances. We have jobs, we have kids that we have to take care of. We're forced into dealing with realities. But going out on dates and trying to just go get in shape so you can find your next boyfriend or girlfriend is not super healthy. Sometimes breathing, a season of breathing and resting is really good for you. You've got the whole rest of your life to become the new you. But some of you aren't ready. And some people jump too fast, too quickly, too deep in, and you just weren't ready for even to find your success. Once again, balance. Sometimes we sprint to a solution, sprint to a feeling. But yoyoing is not healthy. You just literally unyoked from your spouse, and now you're all alone. And then you think, oh, well, I'm all alone. Therefore, I'm going to run this way right now. It's not good that yoyoing is not good. Center yourself. Take time, breathe, rest. Now, some people's motivation post divorce is to get a new mate. It's not sometimes front and center for everybody. Sometimes it's in the back. Sometimes it's in the front is you're trying to become an attractive person to someone else. But here's the deal. The best way to get somebody amazing is to have the best you. The best you attracts the next person. So don't just try to pretend to be a new you. Actually be a new you. Take time that does not happen overnight at all. One of the first steps that I tell people to do, besides keeping your relationship with the Lord healthy, is counseling. Now, I knew nothing about counseling at all. I probably secretly rolled my eyes to it a little bit during my marriage. Cris, I jumped face first into the deep end in counseling, and now I'm on this side of divorce. I maintain my counseling. It is so therapeutic, so good. I encourage everyone to do it. But not only do I do counseling couch sessions, I've actually spent time with celebrate recovery. I've been in church divorce groups. I've been in something called freedom groups in my church. And all these were just great birds of a feather. People that are going through things, and at least I can relate with them. We talk a lot about people who haven't been divorced, really don't know how to counsel. Those of us who have, well, jumping into professional counseling or groups built for that can be really helpful. I would just tell you, be a little careful. I knew better than to get into certain divorce groups because sometimes you come in early, everyone's bitter, everyone's hurt. There's a lot of venom flying around as people sort of navigating. They're in that fetal position, and if you're past that, sort of bad to go back through it. I've actually had someone break up with me years and years ago. They were so much further down living their life that they could hear my pain, they could hear where I was because they're so much further. And I would say a lot of us along our journey can look at people who are not as far along as we are, and we can smell them out. And so, yeah, find your group accordingly. But it's really good to have someone to talk to and not keep those feelings inside. You just don't grow from that internal conversation. Remember the phrase that I stole? And that is thoughts disentangle themselves over the lips and through the fingertips. When you talk, when you write, all that jumble stuff becomes clear. Or you can hear your hypocrisy. Or you could say, yeah, that's right. That's a solid thought. I said it out loud. I said it in front of other people. They heard me. They spoke back into me. Get into counseling, get into some good, healthy groups. First step. Now, this one's really interesting because now not all of you listening have my journey, but my unoking came about the time of empty nesting, or at least in that late season of juniors and seniors in high school. And people have cars and they're very busy and they're always gone. And so my free time was already increasing mixed with unyoking. So I had a lot of time. And one of the things that you can do well when you're in that little crushing area, sometimes it's netflixing, it's taking naps. But as I got out of that, I really got into hobbies. And there is healing power in hobbies. Giving your mind something to do, giving your body something to do, and giving yourself something to think of and plan of. Oh, I need to go to the store to do that. Hobies take a lot of time and energy, and they can be really healthy. Finding maybe a hobby that you like before you were married and rebirthing those things or starting fresh. Like, I've never played pickleball before, but now I do. Right? There's really power into that. The next one is what I call therapeutic hobbies, things that are really good for you, meaning if you build cars or collect comic books, that's a hobby. But therapeutic is like yoga, meditation. Now real quick, there is a small fraction. You hear the word Christian in yoga, your head explodes. If you haven't listened to the last podcast about know, don't hand me your list. Well, there are people with the list that yoga and meditation is of the devil. They don't want anything to do with it. Well, I don't feel that way. I have total peace. I'd be happy if Jesus sat down and did yoga and meditation with me, would invite him with no guilt. So for those of you, just hold that thought. For the rest of us, this has been so good for me, especially living in a busy world. There's always something to do, always something going on. I did crossfit for a while. I never ran. I hate running. But this has just been a great way to sit. Now I can pray, I can think. I can be thankful. There's a lot to do with meditation and yoga. Once again, I don't need to know the spiritual part of it. Just literally let me stretch my back and my hamstrings and get in these poses, go to yoga class, meet people. It's just been so good for me. So much so that when my kids started moving out of the house, I literally turned my son's room into a yoga meditation room. You open the door and there is a salt lamp, and there is a little fountain, and there's a little plant, and there's a circular rug on the ground and a little meditation pad that I just sort of sit and in style with, if you will. I'm sure there's a name for that. Don't know what it is. And I'll just turn on a little humming music to just drown things out. And I'm just telling you, maybe it's just because I'm getting older. I don't know. I just will say, consider this exercise of being quiet. In a culture we live in. We've lost the art. And I'm going to get into the weeds here. Many of you know this, and you'll probably laugh because I'm going to keep it too simple. But grounding, I try. Not every morning as much as I can. I wake up, I go barefoot. I get off the floor, off the concrete. I just stand on grass. I try to look at the sunrise. I just. Earth. You ground yourself to the earth. Now there's test about the electrons that go up and down you. And there's health benefits. If you don't know anything, look into it if you do know. Sorry, I butchered it. But just that feeling of we were built to be on this earth. Some of us literally live in places. Our feet have not touched the earth in years. You live in a metropolis. You wear tennis shoes everywhere you go. When is the last time you took your shoes and socks off and stood in dirt and grass and just sat there like God made a beautiful earth? And some of us don't get out in it enough. If you live near a park, get out. I'm lucky just to have enough of a small patch of grass behind my house. I try to do it. This morning I went to go check my mail. Literally stood in the front yard and did it because I was just already on the way out there, and I'm sure people drove by, like, what is that guy doing and staring at? But I was just sort of stretching and letting the sun hit my body. And it's. Check into it if you haven't done it. It's therapeutic. Give it a shot. Okay, now, this one's really interesting. Crafting your new identity. You are new. You can have a new identity. You're not. You divorced. Who do you want to be? Now, there's an exercise that I've heard of before, sort of cool, and that is somebody mentioned, pretend you were at your own funeral and everyone got up and spoke about you. What would you want them to say? What would you hope they would say? And then do a little self analysis on yourself. What did you have to do to become that person? I mean, I know as christians, our goal is to be christlike, right? That's what we would want to say. It's, this guy loved the Lord, sought after him with his heart. But I'm just saying little things like, if you want to be known for x and you're not that kind of person, then become that person. Right? I'm talking character traits here. But sometimes it could be like, hey, I love to travel the world. Well, then why don't you speak Spanish? Why don't you learn another language, figure out who you want to be, and then craft that identity and march to that identity. I do feel like I need to say something here. And for those of you who listen to every single episode, you're going to hear a theme here, and this is going to underline it and bold it. But there is a giant difference between God, the church, and your church. Sometimes, not all the time. Many times the church keeps you busy begging you to volunteer and you want to be, or you are a people pleaser who is trying to just serve in the local church and keep the church rolling. You're one of the gears. But there's a difference between God and the church. You may need to unvolunteer. Take a break. I'm not saying abandon. And if you love what you're doing, do it. If you feel like you're called, do it. I'm just saying sometimes in our healing, we need to take pauses in seasons. And once again, I'm giving you permission to take a season away from something that may be taking a lot of your energy and maybe needlessly. All right, now here's another practical thing. I'm going to personalize this walking. I have been walking so much, I'd love to know how many miles I've walked since my divorce. I used to walk three to 5 miles a day. I'd walk in the morning, walk in the evening. But vitamin D, getting out is wonderful. Walking on a treadmill secondary for me. I love being outside. None of you live somewhere where you can, but just moving, getting out, fresh air, sunshine, sometimes walking with a friend, conversations. It's also a great place to do double duty. Read your bible. Listen to your bible when you're walking. Find your favorite podcast. Kill two birds with 1 st. I sometimes make my phone calls during walks or backwards. When I get a phone call, I'll just take a walk. I'll just put on my shoes and walk. I actually think better. My personality type, I think better, and I'm more creative when I'm moving. You don't have to go to a gym. You don't. To get in shape, to stay in shape. Yoga, stretching, walking. There is some advantages for those of you who hate gyms or a personal trainer, is that accountability? Like when somebody's going to knock on your door to come work out with you, if somebody's going to wake up and be somewhere and you're not there, there is some real advantages for that accountability. Maybe you need that, but maybe not. All right, listen, you can tell I'm a dad bod. I'm not a six pack guy. And it's not like I'm a health expert, but I have done a lot of studying and I've been actually executing some of this stuff. I know we all know we're supposed to drink a lot of water. I've done a lot of research on drinking salt water. Check it out. Go look. Go look at natural water. The water we drink out of our taps has been so filtered, so purified that it doesn't have a lot of nutrients. And so I put ancient salt water. All the minerals that are in there are so great. Keep some in your house. Put some salt water on there. This is really good for you. Eat real food. That's another thing I've learned. I know many of you are laughing because you're like, yeah, I already know this. But a lot of you don't walk into a grocery store. Look, everything that's not on the edges is all fake food. Everything. If it's in a box, if it has chemicals, if it's in jars, it's fake. It's not even real. Buy your food from the edges. Eat real food. Here's another thing has nothing to do with nutrition. Read a lot, study. Read for enjoyment, but read in a day where we just turn on the tv and we numb or we go to movies. I'm not saying I watch tons of movies, but reading is so good for your brain, it expands your mind, and your mind, once expanded, can't regain its original dimensions. Put information in. Read. Buy books. Where I live, we have a place called half price books. I don't even know if that's a national chain or not, but it's cheap. There's no reason to spend a lot of money to read. I walk in there probably every month or two. I walk out with a pile of books under my arms. I don't spend 20, $30. Read a lot. And don't just Netflix. Don't just sit. And if you catch yourself doing it, work out. Do squats, do something, move. This sounds crazy for some of you, but I know some of you listening need motivation. You need a lighthouse to row to, and I'm trying to give you one, because sometimes you're just existing, and you're not going to be your new you without some healthy habits. So in our desire to get the new you, we've been talking about a lot of good things to do. And let's talk a little bit about what we don't want to do. The Netflix, the sitting, and just coming home exhausted from your day and just being numbed, entertained. Not good. We live life sometimes of numbing or that dopamine rush. It happens with pornography. It happens with a lot of things that we do in our life that, once again, swiping and have someone match with us or being in these conversations, knowing someone's interested in you. Don't look for the dopamine high and don't numb. They're not good for you. And if you catch yourself doing it or you're in a cycle of it, get help. It's hard to beat by yourself. First you have to acknowledge it, then you got to beat it. But don't live that life of the dopamine rush or that numbing. It's so easy to do, and people are addicted. It affects your life way more than you think it does. Also, don't be eternally bitter. I mean, it's okay to have seasons of sadness, but I know some people have this idea of, like, life threw me a bad curveball, and now I'm doomed, but I'm existing. I actually ran into a girl's profile, and literally, your profile is where you're supposed to be talking about, here's who I am. Here's what I'm looking for. She literally put life, threw me a curveball. Didn't want, let's just go make the best of it. That was her profile. I thought, why would I want to swipe on this person? Why would I be interested in somebody who's just mad and bitter and just thinks, let's all just live with plan C, and let's just march to our grave slowly. Don't be that person. Don't be eternally bitter. Go listen to the episode on Grace. Go look on the same episode. Talks about forgiveness. And when you learn to give grace, it'll eliminate some of the bitter thinking in your life. We do live in a broken world, but God gives us grace. And this world is ours. He gave it to us. Have fun, travel. Make plans. Try to be the best you you can be. God encourages that. Now, it's really interesting. I've had a lot of conversations about traveling. It's not as simple as men have it easy, women have it harder, though I believe that is true. But I know plenty of women who travel all the time. They don't blink an eye of where they go or when they go. They just go. And there's other women that I've talked to that are very hesitant. They would never travel alone, and there are certain places they would never go. And I think it's some bit of a personality issue. It's not just men have it this way and women have it this way. But there are challenges and there are probably some prudency, but find a partner. If you can find another group of girls, I mean, me and some of my co ed, we go co ed. We rented a big house in central Texas and went, and there's probably four girls or guys and four girls and four guys. And we went. We all traveled together. We all had our own bedrooms. It was no big deal. Like, once again, if you don't like that, don't hand me your list. But it was wonderful. And you can do it, too. Get out. And the other thing is, too, as I learned to have my legs as a single person, your circle gets tight, your friend groups get smaller, and family is everything. It is everything. And I do feel sorry for those of you who maybe lost your family or don't have an extended family. I'm blessed that I do. But it's so much easier to decide what to do and how to spend your energy in life when you have someone or someone to pour into. Family is absolutely everything. And once again, my friend group has shrunk. I do something. I don't know if anybody else does this, it's probably 1000 people do. But I know who my friends are. Like, when I say I know who they are, I can not only count them and I not only think about them, and they not only occupy my time, but they literally are in my office. I take a picture with me and my best friends and I put them in a gold frame and they sit in my office. Some of them have multiple people in a picture, but I'd say there's eight to ten frames in there. Some of those have more than one person, but they're my ride and dies. They're the people that I care about. They're the people who inspire me. They're the people that if I need anything, they're there for me. Some live nearby, some live in other states, a couple of them actually live overseas. And I keep that as a reminder of who I live for, who I will do anything for. And it just puts a smile on my face. Every day I walk in my office, first thing I see there are my ten friends, and I have my family, obviously, in there as well. Another thing I like to encourage you on is something I started doing probably a year or two ago. I actually had some really good people in my life who do something like this, and they really inspired me. We live in a world where we send emails and text, but have you ever got a handwritten letter? When somebody writes you, they took the time to write you a real letter, maybe put it in an envelope and mail it to you, and you open the mailbox and it's not junk mail. Somebody wrote you a letter, you're going to read that before the bills, before anything. You're going to read that letter. And then you think, who took the time to write me a letter? Well, what I've been doing, it used to be once a week, maybe once a month, I pick somebody. It may be somebody in my frame, it may be somebody who's been on my mind, but I write them a letter, and here's what I do. This is good for me. I hope it's great for them. It's supposed to be a blessing for them, but it's been a giant blessing for me. I just thank them for being my friend. I remember how we met and I reference that. I remember the first time I saw you or whatever. I remember something, a funny story or something that happened that was monumental in our relationship. And then I tell them here, 1234 big traits I see in your life, like, you were so good at this, or you handle this situation better than anybody I've ever met. And then I just encourage them, like, may you continue to do the thing, whatever it is that's driving them. I just write them a personal letter and I let them know that somebody's thinking about them. And once again, good for me because it jars memories. And then I think, yeah, what a great trait they have. I wonder if I could work on that in my life. And I've had a lot of good responses. I've had people call crying. I've had people say, you wouldn't believe how well timed this was. I was literally trying to make a decision and praying, and your letter literally swung me to the decision I was going to make. I've only had two people not respond. Out of all the ones I've done, only two people. They probably didn't. Probably thought, what's this guy writing me that letter for? I was weird, but whatever. So they didn't respond. Everybody else has, very favorably, and some have been out in tears right now, then sometimes you need motivation. I used to think it was weird when people put like three by five cards. My mom was notorious for three by five cards and little postit notes all around the house. Drove me nuts. Open the refrigerator. Wherever you went, there was postit notes. They should need it for memory. But I've learned to love the thing you hang on the refrigerator by your bathroom sink. Hang that phrase, hang that picture. Be motivated. If you want to go to Bora Bora, put a picture of Bora Bora. If you want to look a certain way or grow your hair out a certain way or name it live somewhere, hang your picture. Hang the phrase, hang the picture. Be motivated. I'll tell you what mine is. I probably have multiple ones, but I have right by my sink. If you listen to this podcast, you've heard this story. I have the Bible verse of love. My argument is God created love. He gets to define it. I don't get to say what love is and what it looks like. He owns it. He created it. And he was generous enough to define it for us. I want that to be my definition. I want it to be how I love my kids, my family members, my friends, strangers. I certainly want it for my next spouse. I want to love them like God defines love. So when I say I love you, it means something. When I show love, it's authentic. And I'm five years in, I've dated multiple people. I've never said I love you. To anybody. I hold the word with such high value that I can't even say it. Like, I don't even like saying I love pizza or whatever. It means something. And I've hung the poster. I've hung it right by my toothbrush. Every morning I see it. I think it's just good. All right, now remember, nothing good happens overnight. It's a marathon. Grow slowly. But start today. Start today. If you're been in that crawl or you're jogging and it's time to run but work on a new you, it's okay that you didn't start the day you signed the divorce papers you weren't supposed to, but find that new you, the better you. The you 2.0. Not back to where I was before I was divorced, back when I was single. You're not just single, you're post divorce. You've learned a lot. You've experienced a lot. You've grown. You can now grow further and faster than you may ever have when you were yoked. Okay, thank you so much for listening. Please share this episode with a friend, rate and review it. It means so much. And of course, as you know, always you can visit toddturner.com divorce for more important resources. Thank you very, very much for listening. Blessings.

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