Don’t Rebuild While You’re Still Broken

You can’t build something healthy on top of something broken.

 But after divorce, that’s exactly what most of us try to do.
 We date before we’ve healed.
 We force peace before we’ve processed pain.
 And we expect a fresh start—without doing the hard work of letting go.

In this episode of the UnYoked Podcast, Todd Turner sits down with Don to talk about what it really takes to get emotionally, spiritually, and relationally healthy after the divorce papers are signed.

Together they unpack:

• Why emotional health is the first step to peace—not a new relationship
• The dangers of rushing into dating or rebuilding before you're ready
• How to stop bleeding into your next chapter
• What real closure looks like when your ex has moved on
• How God uses seasons of solitude to reshape your identity

This conversation is raw, honest, and for anyone who's trying to heal while still hurting.

https://mycoachdawn.com/divorce-podcast/

Dawn’s Bio:

Dawn Wiggins became a marriage and family therapist because of her own experience as a child of divorce. About 10 years into her career, she thought: “This doesn’t work. This sucks.” At the same time, she became trained in EMDR. And that was a game changer. She saw her clients healing so much faster and more deliciously.

She expanded her practice to integrate multiple modalities from EMDR to EFT tapping, journaling, and energetic remedies for the mind and body—because you can’t heal one without healing the other. As a top-ranked therapist, she garnered a waiting list and top-secret “who’s who” clientele. But it’s her mission to deliver life-changing therapy in an accessible, scalable, affordable way and make waves in the world of mental health with the same enlightenment that happens in her office: part science, part essential oils, pure magic.

She helps people tear down their illusions with a candid approach that sometimes inspires frustration. Because being in reality can feel terrifying. Parts of you that you didn’t know existed reveal themselves. Past traumas you’d buried or never even knew you had come to the surface. And the thing is, once you cra

Transcript

Todd Turner (00:03)
There's a moment after divorce that no one prepares you for. It's not the paperwork or the argument. It's the first time you realize your old life and habits and dreams are not yours anymore. When it sinks in that life has moved on without you. So how do you find closure in a world that does not wait for you to heal? Today, I'm joined by my friend, Don Wiggins, as we talk about what it means to let go emotionally, reclaim peace,

and stop chasing what's already gone. Don, thank you so much for joining me today.

Dawn Wiggins (00:37)
Thanks for having me. I have been so excited to get back together with you.

Todd Turner (00:41)
Our first episode was so great and I remember hanging up saying, we're going to do that all the time. And then I think it's been a year. Then life got away. So that's my fault, but we're both here now and this is great. So here's how I like to lean into this topic. And that is, I always tell people there is what got you divorced. There is the divorce and then there's the after divorce. They all have their own trauma and a lot of

Dawn Wiggins (00:46)
Yeah. And then life life. Yeah. Yes. Yes. Okay.

Yeah. Yeah. Sure. They do.

Todd Turner (01:10)
The first two are unique, the one we're talking about, the post divorce is really common with all of us is that you're not only living with your new life and just trying to manage, but you're also living with the death of not only the relationship, the death of your dreams and your lighthouse. I took two minutes to explain it. Is there a term for it? What do you call this? Do you have better words to put around this phenomenon of that?

Dawn Wiggins (01:26)
Identity. Yes. Yes. Your identity.

Todd Turner (01:39)
depression or that feeling of just immense sense of loss and not knowing where to head anymore living in the past.

Dawn Wiggins (01:47)
Yeah, I think what I hear most women calling it is not fancy. They call it lost, right? It's not fancy. ⁓ But we've been talking about this a lot on Dear Divorce Diary lately, my podcast. And I think that we really don't talk enough about the loss of identity. And I think a lot of people who are getting divorced already lost their identity within the sort of

Todd Turner (01:52)
Mm.

Dawn Wiggins (02:13)
vastness of marital destruction. You know what mean? There's a level of like losing oneself already in the marriage. And then in the divorce process, it's so dysregulating, so destabilizing in the legal phase. And then you're in this aftermath, and you've just been literally in fight, flight, freezer, fawn for months, if not years at this point, there's ⁓

a letdown effect, right? You've had adrenaline surging for a very long time. Now it's over and I think there's a crash. And I think that what I see most women, people, people really struggle with is they have not yet really internalized, accepted, learned, understood that life is now going to unfold based on your beliefs. And as a result of everything you've been through, you've stopped believing in love.

Some of us stopped believing in God for some period of time, stopped believing that you can have the things that are promises listed in the Bible or wherever else. And now you are more focused on the past than you are on the future because your beliefs are fundamentally cutting off sort of your capacity to visualize. Now beyond that, I'm going to take it a step further into my favorite zone, which is what the body tells us about how the mind and the heart recover from things.

Todd Turner (03:10)
Mm-hmm.

Hmm.

Dawn Wiggins (03:35)
When you're heartbroken, your heart is literally, physically, physiologically affected. When you are chronically angry, your liver becomes stagnant and sluggish. Our heart is responsible for allowing us to live out our loves and our joys and things like that, but if the liver is clogged,

Todd Turner (03:42)
Hmm.

Dawn Wiggins (03:58)
It's the thing that powers the heart. It's the thing that drives the heart and its dreams and its goals and its aspirations. If your liver is sluggish from anger, from resentment, from cortisol, from panic, from all the things, right? You literally cannot see your future. You can't visualize it. You can't imagine it. So your heart is literally, how could I say this? Well,

Todd Turner (04:11)
Mm-hmm.

Dawn Wiggins (04:22)
not optimized, right? It's like your heart itself is broken and needing like up regulation energetically, your liver is sluggish. So we have the literal letdown effect that we're talking about, the sort of mental emotional things in the way we're used to thinking of them. But on a physiological level, at this point, post divorce, you're literally impaired.

Todd Turner (04:24)
Okay.

Okay, hold the thought, because I love that and I could go in a hundred directions, but I have been, I've had this recent concept, this epiphany, and I'm going to go grab it right here and put it here so you can combine it with what you're saying. I did a podcast of the day on this idea of telescope versus microscope. And when you're healthy,

Dawn Wiggins (04:55)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

⁓ Hmm...

Mm-hmm.

Todd Turner (05:05)
you,

most people keep a telescopic view. It's life is big. It's goals. It's aspirations. It's all that. And when you have crisis, you fall into microscope view. It's just like, did I even take my pills today? Can I even make it through today? And as we heal, we go up and down and up and down and up and down. And then the more you heal, the longer you stay up and the less you go down. And that, that whole concept of

Dawn Wiggins (05:14)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. That's right.

Todd Turner (05:31)
of sometimes I feel myself having a moment. I just, I categorize it. I'm having a microscope moment. Isn't that a neat thought? Well, that it sort of ties into what you're saying is that when you're, when you're not in a healthy place, you can't be healthy. You're not, you're not in the right frame of mind to do it. And you've got to, I suppose this is why you're on this podcast. Cause you know, these things is what, what

Dawn Wiggins (05:37)
That's beautiful. It really.

There's not capacity.

Todd Turner (05:58)
tricks, what exercises do we do, where do we put in the work so we can get out of the microscope funk and into a healthy view of life.

Dawn Wiggins (06:05)
Yeah, yeah.

You know, so I don't remember if we talked much about homeopathy on our first pod, maybe like a smidgey smidge, right? But think about, OK, if your heart is depleted and your liver is clogged and then you're working so hard in therapy and you're trying to do all the things, but you feel like your progress is really slow, right? What if first we focused on restoring the body?

Todd Turner (06:29)
Hmm.

Dawn Wiggins (06:30)
So what if first we look at like, okay, how can we fundamentally start to detox the liver and get it optimized, right? And so this is where I've started ⁓ because now that I am a fully trained constitutional homeopath and we're getting ready to launch a retail website and whatnot, ⁓ but I've started helping women in this grief phase, right? Detoxify their liver using homeopathic remedies, or you could use herbs or just really like, you know, milk, thistle, various things, right? But let's look at the liver first.

Todd Turner (06:48)
Love it.

Okay.

Dawn Wiggins (07:00)
Then let's look at how we can support the heart from a grief perspective. So, you know, there are so many ways we could do that, but there are ⁓ flower essences, like you can get them on Amazon or whatever. can put the link in the show notes, right? That will help support the release of grief that literally is going to upregulate the heart. But when we think about grief teas, they have a lot of rose petals and things like that in there. ⁓ We think about flower essences for grief. They're literally going to help optimize your heart. They're going to help restore this depleted heart.

We detox the liver like now you're going to have literal physiological capacity to have more telescope moments. You'll get more out of your therapy. You'll get more out of your meditation, your fitness, all these other ways. I know people are trying to get well. They really are. And I think people get on this hamster wheel where they're not making progress and they're like, I guess I'm not meant to get better. I guess I'm permanently damaged. guess something's wrong with me. And it's not true. If you are stuck on a hamster wheel of healing, you're not using the right tool for the job.

Todd Turner (07:44)
Right.

Dawn Wiggins (07:58)
Like there's, you're missing a piece.

Todd Turner (08:01)
And

I want to dig in right there again. And I don't know if I'm hard headed. I don't know why this is true, but I probably grew up with the mindset that everything is a spiritual battle, which I'm still agree with in general, that we are spirits living in a body. Right. I believe that, but sometimes it's easy for us theologians just to call everything a spiritual battle. we also, God put us in this world and we have bodies.

Dawn Wiggins (08:08)
Okay.

Ooh, yeah.

Yeah.

We have bodies. Well, and he gave us all the things we need. Like, why did he give us milk thistle and dandelions to detoxify the liver unless he knew we'd need them?

Todd Turner (08:30)
and we have trauma.

That's right.

That was that this is my whole point is I as I get older, I'm learning that one the body keeps score of trauma and then I also realized that the Bible is true, but not all truths in the Bible and that there's all these tactics and stuff that most of us don't hear a thing about these things at church and we have to go to somebody like you.

Dawn Wiggins (08:54)
Yes.

Right,

herbs and homeopathy, it's in the Bible. It's in there. I wish I could, had all the scriptures, like, this would be a fun assignment to, you know, gather up all those scriptures and be able to outline them, right? But where it talks about how we were given every plant or whatever for a particular reason or the way the energy moves or, you know, it's absolutely all in there.

Todd Turner (09:07)
True.

Right?

Well, you we are, that's the beauty of AI, a supercomputer, a supercomputer does the whole Bible. can ask it questions that aren't theological, but practical. We probably get those, those really fast. So yeah, I guess what I'm saying is it's new to me. am learning the power of knowledge about the body and about how to take care of it. And it's not just exercise and drinking water. is being very specific. I believe.

Dawn Wiggins (09:28)
I know we could have it curated. ⁓ Yes. Yes. Yes.

Very specific. Yeah. Yeah. OK. Come on. That's right. That's right. That's right.

Todd Turner (09:53)
I'm learning about energy. didn't know. No one's ever told me a thing about it. I'm having to learn it late in life. And just like acupuncture, you touch here and it affects here. Well, same with parts of the body. And

I believe what you're saying is a hundred percent right. I would just say, I'm going to make up a number. 95 % of us believers don't know much about it. It's sad.

Dawn Wiggins (10:12)
That's right. Well, and I'm going to take

it a step further. A lot of believers have been taught that things like kinesiology or muscle testing and homeopathy are satanic.

Todd Turner (10:24)
That's right. It's sort of like a yoga is from the devil. And if anybody tells you to take whatever that witches brew, then they really don't know their Bible. Just pray, read this verse over somebody and everything's going to be fine. And that's just not true.

Dawn Wiggins (10:26)
Yep. Yep. Yep.

That's not true. And I think that when I found homeopathy and in general energy and just natural healing, because God designed the body to heal itself. And so I was like, ⁓ this is God's medicine. Like you could go to doctor and take a prescription. That's not God's medicine. I'm not anti-prescription, right? But we're over-prescribed, generally speaking.

Todd Turner (10:55)
That's right.

I totally agree. Okay, I'm going to ask another. It feels like this is an end question, not a middle question here, but you definitely in your practice focus on women. But is there that much of a difference between if I literally bought your book, listen to your course, you know, listen to your podcast, would I learn something or are you really honed in on women and men ought to be doing something totally different or is it 80 % the same 90 % the same?

Dawn Wiggins (11:04)
Okay.

So

in my podcast, I focus on women, but that's not because that's my intention or that's my desire. Like, I think in marketing, you have to pick someone to speak to because if you try to appeal to everyone, you appeal to no one. So I'm maybe used to, a podcast context, saying women. But in my therapy practice, I absolutely have like 50-50. ⁓ So that said, do I think that they're that different? I think they're not that different at all. I think that at the core, right?

Todd Turner (11:33)
Okay.

Okay.

Okay.

Dawn Wiggins (11:52)
The core issues are not that different. I think the context wrapped around those core issues, we get really bogged down as people in saying, what, this is my story and my version and my whatever. And ⁓ at the core, we're all struggling the same struggles. It comes down to our belief systems and how fractured they get when we go through traumas. Yeah.

Todd Turner (12:12)
Okay, okay, great,

great answer. So you're saying both men and women need to focus on the liver than the heart. It's not like it's a womb issue versus something else. Like it's not that much difference between men and women.

Dawn Wiggins (12:20)
Absolutely.

No, I think that if

we were talking about like divorce when there's really young children, I would say that there are some maternal issues that really need to be addressed differently, like around, you know, time sharing and that kind of thing. Like you can't separate really young children from the mother and at a very early age and not expect to have massive downstream effects from an attachment perspective. But I think outside of that, like it's pretty, pretty similar.

Todd Turner (12:50)
care.

Okay. So let's go back five minutes in our car or eight minutes probably in the conversation. So you're saying that even to begin healing of probably any topic, but at least where we started this topic is, is you got to let go. You've got to deal with your, your body first. it's your mind second.

Dawn Wiggins (13:09)
Being able to let go. ⁓

⁓ I think that we're used to thinking about the mind. So I would tell most people like, have you really looked at the body? ⁓ I'm not necessarily saying separate them. I think we need to get better integrating how we address it, right? And so if you're struggling to let go, you probably haven't looked at your liver and you probably didn't realize how profoundly it's related. And I would guess that the bulk of people getting divorced

probably are putting substances in their body that are clogging their livers as well. And so it's, yeah, yeah, it's part of how we're coping. Yeah.

Todd Turner (13:50)
You know, no, fair. They're numbing and the numbing

is taking you in the totally wrong direction.

Dawn Wiggins (13:56)
Correct,

because it's like literally physiologically blocking your capacity to let go. Yeah. Yeah.

Todd Turner (14:01)
Okay,

so I want to stay on this for a minute because this is really deep and it's worth the time. So homeopathic remedies to work on the body, move that into exercise, move that into yoga, move that into energy. tell me if you could snap your finger and every American or just call anybody in the world will stay on American.

Dawn Wiggins (14:25)
Yeah, okay.

Todd Turner (14:27)
would have a healthy practice. What would that look like when it comes to food, supplements, exercise, meditation? Like what is, if you could just make every one of your clients do what, what would you tell them to do about this, about getting a healthy body?

Dawn Wiggins (14:47)
Mm.

So we would start with the idea that we have completely become divorced from. So talk about divorce, right? We have become, yeah, we have become divorced from the truth, which is God designed the body to heal itself and he gave us every tool we needed to heal our disease when he designed the heavens and the earth. We have been told by so many marketers, basically, somebody that has something to sell, right? Myself included, that the body has lost track of knowing what to do.

Todd Turner (14:56)
Pun intended.

Right?

Dawn Wiggins (15:19)
And that none of that is true, right? But man, it'll help you sell your product. So we have started to fear symptoms. We have started to fear feelings. And so the more we can listen, we can see our symptoms, not as something to feel crisis around, but as God's designed to tell us there's something that needs our attention. That's what feelings are meant to do. That's what symptoms, physical symptoms are meant to do.

Todd Turner (15:31)
Mm-hmm.

Okay.

Dawn Wiggins (15:49)
And so we have become so accustomed to not being able to tolerate a symptom. We've tried to optimize our lives to the point that we suppress every negative emotion or painful whatever with a pill or a scroll or a drink or whatever, right? To the point that we fried our bodies and our minds with an inch of our lives. And where that does affect women differently than men, because this is another place where I would say, okay, two roads diverge here.

Todd Turner (16:03)
Yeah. Right?

Dawn Wiggins (16:18)
is men can sort of hustle and grind from a physiological perspective, because that's how God designed it. Women cannot, but we have been. And so right there, we are profoundly more depleted than men because we've been trying to do a man's job. Hashtag feminism is bullshit, right? So women...

our bodies were designed that our adrenals will pick up the slack for our hormonal system when we go through menopause. Our adrenals are all shot because we've been living in the red zone already. So then we're going through menopause and we're becoming profoundly depressed. We are gaining weight like nobody's business. We're becoming suicidal. And then Western medicine is just throwing medicine on top of it, right? So it's like, let's get back to the basis of God designed it in a particular way where men provide and protect.

Todd Turner (17:00)
Right.

Dawn Wiggins (17:09)
and women are their muses, right? Their ⁓ extension of the Holy Spirit, if you will, right? Or their God partner. And women are meant to be muses and inspiration and feminine and emotional and all the things, right? And our bodies, when they have pain, we're supposed to listen to that pain and look back into God's design. What is available for me to address this particular pain?

Todd Turner (17:17)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah, you know, you are your my brain is going 900 miles an hour because I've had these conversations recently that this is your you're poking in these areas that I've had these big conversations and stare at the ceiling moments about and one of them was God's design for men and women. I've always been really confused of it and we and I was talking to some of the other day about how divorce I think I I'm this

Dawn Wiggins (17:39)
Did I answer your question? OK.

Todd Turner (18:08)
thought is not mature yet. don't kick me in the shin yet. ⁓ But I think women have a harder time with the repercussions of divorce than men, because my argument was that men can continue on being men and now women have to be women and a man at the same time and they don't know how to release from it.

Dawn Wiggins (18:10)
Okay, I love the way you said that. Yeah, okay.

Yes, yes.

Yes, both. That's right. Spot on.

Todd Turner (18:32)
So they brag about being independent because their affirmation that I can get through this and I'm over here trying to build a relationship with somebody who's independent and I don't want to date an independent woman. I want one that wants to lean into me and it causes this friction and then we all just go our separate ways, very unhappy.

Dawn Wiggins (18:36)
That's right.

That's right. Yeah. Yeah.

Well, I actually think that women, we want to lean in. I think that there's a shift happening. There's a shift happening. But it's going to get uglier before it gets cuter. ⁓ Well, because I think that we are so divided in the US. ⁓

Todd Turner (19:00)
Ooh, tell me, tell me.

Dawn Wiggins (19:09)
everywhere, but especially in the US, right? We are so tribal right now, so us versus them. And I do think the themes we're discussing tend to lean more, you can't even say left and right anymore, because they don't even mean what they used to mean anymore, okay? But generally speaking, I think that the left owns sort of women's lib and all of that. And the right,

Todd Turner (19:24)
Correct.

Dawn Wiggins (19:36)
whatever these words mean anymore, right? Generally speaking would lean more towards women in the kitchen or whatever, right? Now I own multiple businesses. I am a boss babe for sure. I work too much, but my husband and I are actively in the conversation of how we can rehab that. And I can spend more and more time in my feminine. think that we...

Todd Turner (19:38)
Right.

Dawn Wiggins (20:02)
In our country, there is a conversation happening where we are realizing that we have been sold a lot of lies. The lie of feminism was sold by the Industrial Revolution, wanted more employees and it's whatever, know, ⁓ war, the Industrial Revolution, you name it, right? We wanted more women in the workforce because then we could produce more things. And it's eroded family values and it's eroded the design. ⁓ I am by no means saying women shouldn't work per what I just said, right? But it's, yes.

Todd Turner (20:29)
But you're doing it.

Dawn Wiggins (20:31)
But it's how can we do it in a way that is more honoring of the design? How can we be in the conversation about moving it this way, right? But I do think that there is a constituency in this country that really is going to fight this, that is really, really, really feeling like.

we can be anything we want. Women can be men and vice versa and all the things, right? So I do think that those tensions are going to get uglier before we see a real recalibration back to the truth and our roots and the core of what's real.

Todd Turner (21:04)
I so echo everything you say. totally agree. Yeah, there's that's another layer to the onion of what we're talking about. There is the societal issue, what you're talking about. And there's also just the individual of post divorce, living on your own. A woman is having to survive and be independent. She has no partner. And so she, I think what happens is it creates a hard shell around somebody. And what I experienced as a man dating women who are

Dawn Wiggins (21:23)
Yep. Yep.

Absolutely. Yep.

Todd Turner (21:34)
pretty much inter-nesters, not all of them, and they're divorced. They're like, well, I've created a life for myself. I'm very independent and you better fit in it or else I don't want you. And it's like, well, but that's not a relationship that I want. And they, in their defense, they don't want to drop their walls because the last time they were dropped, they got hurt.

Dawn Wiggins (21:43)
Yes. Yes. Yes.

Well, but I think that we've had to function masculinely for so long. And I say we, I think it's most of us, right? Most of us, we've had to function in our masculine. And so when you talk about what they want or don't want, it's like, even if I wanted it, Todd, let's go back to the body and the physiology. We're estrogen dominant, we're progesterone depleted, our literal adrenals are fine. Like we don't know how to relax.

Todd Turner (22:03)
Yeah.

Hmm.

Dawn Wiggins (22:23)
And even

Todd Turner (22:23)
Yeah.

Dawn Wiggins (22:24)
if we wanted to, or someone taught us how to on a mental and emotional level, we're having this beautiful nervous system conversation these days. It's wonderful. But I've never seen any other tool other than homeopathy go as deep as it can to rehab the body of a woman who has been in her masculine for so long as quickly. Now back to your question earlier about how to see the body and how to treat it, right? I wish I could.

Todd Turner (22:43)
Yeah.

Dawn Wiggins (22:51)
help more people understand that if they're not making decisions today based on their future self, they're missing a massive part of everything, right? So it's like for someone who's in that post divorce phase and they're feeling very, very stuck and it feels very, very hard and they're having trouble letting go and they're literally sluggish on many, many, many levels, right? If you are not making decisions from your future self perspective, like what 10 years from now you will want.

what 20 years from now you 30 years now from you will want if you are not choosing your foods, choosing your fitness, choosing your chemicals that you're putting in your body based on what's going to happen down the road. Like it's big trouble sooner than you think.

Todd Turner (23:37)
Okay, so I, yes, yes, yes. So I'm gonna re-ask the question, because I think we got into the why and the crisis that is going on. But I'm gonna re-ask the question. So like, I know somebody right now who fits into this, they have a six pack abs and they're in great shape, but they would probably tell you they're all out of whack. So it's not just your body looks great. That's not the only score here.

Dawn Wiggins (23:44)
Good.

Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah.

No, no, no.

Yeah, that's right.

Todd Turner (24:04)
So what do

you want women to do? is it not just food? Is it supplement? Is it in this crazy world we live in, you better sit down on a mat and do some yoga or have some ⁓ meditation time? Is it time in the word? Is the answer a little bit of this or that? Like, pretend you can snap your finger and every woman in America did what you said. Like, what is that? I know what you do is deep.

But it could even be an elevator speech of like when it comes to the body, what do you want women to do? What do you want men to do?

Dawn Wiggins (24:37)
⁓ I do think it's both, I always come back to, we can talk about the various avenues and the specific tactical strategies, but it comes down to self-acceptance. The woman who has the six pack abs, or the man who has the six pack abs, quite often, is relying very heavily on external validation to drive their sense of worth and esteem, and even their sense of security in the world. Their sense of security, right? And so to the person who is perfectly put together and curated,

probably your level of self-acceptance and your faith, your level of security, isn't as great as you would have us all believe. Now, the flip side of that is the person that's really overweight and not very well put together. Same problem, different expression.

Todd Turner (25:27)
Yeah.

Dawn Wiggins (25:28)
So it's back to this conversation of, I listening to my body? Am I listening to the design? Am I finding alignment? Because the body, when it's asking for the body mind, right, you can't separate the mind from the body. It's all one big macro organism, right? And then there's little micro aspects to it, to your telescope versus microscope thing, right? Are we looking at it in macro or micro, right? But.

Todd Turner (25:44)
Right. Right.

Yep.

Dawn Wiggins (25:53)
really all of it requires this to be optimized level of self-acceptance and acceptance of God's design and those two things together create harmony, right? So so much of our striving to have a particular physique or to use so much botox or whatever it is, right? Is a lack of self-acceptance. It's a lack of ⁓ faith that I can have what I want unless I'm perfect or

Todd Turner (26:22)
Hmm.

Dawn Wiggins (26:23)
the opposite, right? It's, it's, it's really about back to the roots. I am I answering your question?

Todd Turner (26:29)
No, no,

don't what you are because I have so many questions with my layers of this that I'm eating all of this up. ⁓ Yeah, you're also you're explaining why I think some of us get out of whack and you explain how sometimes you can hyper fix a problem without fixing it or you can under ⁓ fix it. I guess what I'm really going to keep poking at is is is there a level of just

Dawn Wiggins (26:32)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Todd Turner (26:58)
Well, yeah, I'm creeping into it. I'm forcing your answer. I believe that there is something to here. I'm going to spoon feed you something. I believe there's something to the culture we created in America, the hostile culture and the keeping up with the Joneses. It's so unhealthy. Forget divorced or not.

but especially when you're divorced and you're trying to find your mate, you're trying to find your way, you're trying to pay bills, your life has been probably financially uprooted. It's part of the identity. And we just want to keep up with the Joneses and we, ⁓ I want to go to this concert. want to go on this trip. I want to drive this car. want to live in this house.

Dawn Wiggins (27:30)
which is part of identity.

I was so

in that in my post divorce life stuck in that. Yeah.

Todd Turner (27:45)
Yep. And, and

I think God made us to take walks and just breathe and just be, and we don't have to be there's, there's an old joke. I probably told it before on this podcast and it fits right here in my mind about the businessman who went on a trip and he saw this old fisherman cleaning his nets in a boat on the, on the, on the beach. And he's like, Hey man, you know, how long you been doing this? They picked up a conversation. goes, well, you ought to buy another boat.

You can hire one these young men to go fishing and you can take his profit and then you hire another another. Next thing you know, you'll have a fleet of boats. And that old man, which I goes, why would I want to do that? He goes, well, then you could retire. He goes, what would I do? He goes, would you go fishing? I'm already doing, I'm already living this great life that I want to live. And us Americans just always are thinking of how we can. Yeah. And it's like, how about we just be just.

Dawn Wiggins (28:29)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Consumption, consumption, more.

Yeah.

Todd Turner (28:42)
Be and love your neighbor. Love God. Love your neighbor and just be. And I think that's what throws us off a lot of time is we chase the wrong thing. Even we chase in Christianity of building the church, serving a church and doing all these things for church and for God. And God's like, I didn't ask you to do any of that stuff.

Dawn Wiggins (28:59)
100

% I got totally burned out on church this year because we went in hot serving on the coffee team and then like a year later I'm like we're not going to church for church anymore now we're going to church to serve on the coffee team and I have this power struggle all the time about whether or not to show up from a shift and I just want to go to church sometimes absolutely that's it yeah and

Todd Turner (29:12)
Boom.

That's 100 % right. So

I guess what I keep asking is there's something to me that when I sit down and meditate, and I don't even know what that word means, to me it means be quiet and sit on a mat in the Indian style versus sitting on the couch and meditate. Like getting into position, sometimes it means stretching, sometimes it means yoga. It just means

Dawn Wiggins (29:39)
Good.

Todd Turner (29:45)
I'm not doing anything. I may pray a little. I may do some affirmations. I sometimes put on sounds, know, like a, you know, vibrations and stuff. I'm learning that. I still don't know what gigahertz does what, but I, I know I feel differently when I'm hearing that energy and you could probably speak to that, but I, I need those moments. I do so much better when I take my shoes off and ground. And when I

Dawn Wiggins (29:53)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yep. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yes, yes, yes.

Todd Turner (30:14)
just sit with no other purpose than to just be. I guess what I'm asking you is like, is that right? Is it part of what you recommend? ⁓

Dawn Wiggins (30:24)
It's spot on right.

However, I will say to you that as a woman who's, you know, lived in this culture, I didn't know how to get from where I was to what you're describing. Like that transition, that transformation was very challenging and it took a lot of modalities, a lot of healers, it took a team of people.

Todd Turner (30:47)
Okay.

Dawn Wiggins (30:48)
And it's, and I do think that it's because, and this is an interesting nuanced conversation we're having right here. I do think it's because of how depleted my endocrine system became as a result of how we live. We live. And, and I don't think that that happens the same for men. I'm not saying it doesn't happen at all, but fundamentally the impact of marriage and divorce and working.

Todd Turner (31:07)
Okay.

Dawn Wiggins (31:17)
as a single woman hits the female physiology differently. And so I do think that getting to the point where I can just sit quietly in a room was a profound journey for me. Thank God I'm here. ⁓ Because it was literally killing me. But I think it's easier for men to sort of turn the page and decide that's what they're gonna do and boom, like within weeks or months you're there.

Todd Turner (31:18)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, interesting. I was telling some of this in the day in a personal discussion that I said, I don't know if I'm in a season. I don't know if I'm older. I don't know if it's because my son moved back in with me. And so it throws your rhythm of life when, you know, you're not alone. was, I was an empty nester for, for a couple of years and now I have a roommate and that just does throw your, your routines off.

Dawn Wiggins (31:56)
Hmm... Mm-hmm, mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Todd Turner (32:08)
but I used to stay busy quite a bit and I watched myself. made sure I wasn't always numbing by staying busy, but so I just like being. like going to concerts. I like live music. I like traveling and I have spent more time alone in the last six months that I ever have in my life. It's like a Friday night and I'm like, I'm not doing anything tonight. I'm going to work and go for a walk and I may go work out. May watch a movie and I'm going to bed. I didn't even try. I don't even try.

to put people in my life.

Dawn Wiggins (32:39)
So that's beautiful in one sense, right? It's absolutely beautiful from one perspective. And then what I would say to you and to all of our listeners is, now I want you to search your heart, search your soul, search your subconscious mind, search your reticular activating system, which is the part of the brain that interprets the belief systems, It scans the environment to confirm or deny the belief system, right? Do you still believe in love?

Todd Turner (33:00)
Okay.

Hmm.

Dawn Wiggins (33:07)
Like if you really got honest with yourself and if our listeners really got honest with themselves about do they still believe they qualify, they're eligible, they can find it, it exists, it's for them, whatever it is, right? And so, and I think these are the questions we need to be asking ourselves because getting still and getting quiet and spending time with God and.

Todd Turner (33:09)
Okay.

Uh-huh.

Dawn Wiggins (33:27)
you know, finding harmony in our routines and time alone and time together and all the things, right? But can you check with yourself about where you are with your belief system? Because that is what's going to dictate whether or not your routine and your healing journey is actually healing or if it's just sort of space holding.

Todd Turner (33:45)
Don, I love talking to you. You poke in the right places. So I'm gonna ask this question. Tell me what it looks like if I tell you my answer is no, I don't believe in love, if I'm honest. And tell me what it looks like if my answer is yes, I do believe in love. What manifests itself both ways? Give me both answers. If I told you, yeah, you're right, I do not believe in love, that is honest truth. Then how is that gonna make me behave in my life?

Dawn Wiggins (34:03)
Mm. Mm-hmm.

I'm gonna need a moment to organize my thoughts.

So not believing in love is gonna look like the things we talked about earlier where I'm either striving for perfection because I believe I have to look a certain way or function a certain way in order to be accepted. Or it's gonna look like under-functioning, like what's the point? Because I don't even believe in love, right? It's probably gonna look like a lot of numbing, a lot of blaming.

a lot of ⁓ where are the good women? Where are the good men? A lot of these apps are terrible. ⁓ Everybody's a liar, right? A lot of externalizing my results. A lot of there's a reason I'm not getting the results and it's external to me. So probably there are a lot more examples.

but that's probably enough to at least get someone started, right? I think anytime we're externalizing our results, there's a really good sign in there. There's a negative belief lurking. Yeah. Someone who really does believe in love, you're going to see a level of positive expectation.

Todd Turner (35:16)
Right?

Okay, yeah, I buy that. Yep.

Dawn Wiggins (35:35)
embodied faith, embodied faith. There are so many people that are going to say things that sound faith filled, but ⁓ do you see them really being able to let go? Right. ⁓ So I think anytime we see, I'm sort of circling back a little bit, jealousy or envy. ⁓ Those are signs that I don't believe I can have the thing that I want. So those are really good, really good things, right? Sort of a living out loud that I believe in alignment and timing.

Todd Turner (35:46)
Mm-hmm.

Dawn Wiggins (36:05)
⁓ We would see a capacity for risk taking. We would see ⁓ open-hearted behavior. So a lack of defensiveness. It would just feel really good to be around that person. ⁓ There would be evidence of patience and trust.

openness, non-defensiveness. They would be able to find love sort of anywhere they looked. You would see evidence of that. Like they would be able to connect with the grocery store clerk or a dear friend. You know, there would be a lot of warm relationships sort of anywhere in life.

Todd Turner (36:36)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, no, I love

that this is good. You're putting a hat on this. I'm going to touch this a little different too. Just like God tells us, love God, love your neighbor, right? That's all the commandments wrapped up. I still believe that if you don't have a this relationship, you're not going to have a good this one.

If you don't understand God's love fully and you don't love well this way, you're not going to love this way. And so when you ask that question of, you believe in love? Here's what I heard. How's your relationship with God? Therefore, how's your other relationships?

Dawn Wiggins (37:24)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

It's bang on. And you know, I think one of the most popular topics within the context of divorce is loneliness. It's one of the profoundly most popular things we talk about.

And loneliness is truly, truly, truly evidence of having divorced oneself and divorced God. And then divorcing your spouse just was a symptom of that. And so how could we not be divorced from ourselves when we...

⁓ sort of grew up suppressing our emotions or our needs or whatever. And I say that on every level, right? Whether it's because you and I are of a similar age at least, right? And we know that our parents were suppressed and disassociated from their feelings and their, right? And so we grew up doing the same thing. And... ⁓

Todd Turner (38:09)
That's right.

Dawn Wiggins (38:15)
And then we grew up in a culture where there is a new prescription for everything that ails you. And every time we layer in a pharmaceutical, we are suppressing even further. And then I'm going to pull the big guns out and say, and then not only did we find a pharmaceutical, but we found a vaccine for everything. And that suppressed, we suppressed the vital force even more. And so now we are so hollowed out versions of ourselves and we don't realize how much even just pharmaceuticals led to that. We don't know how to recover our bodies from that. Well, I do. I know, I know how to do it, but.

Todd Turner (38:31)
That's right.

Dawn Wiggins (38:45)
And then we sit here and we're lonely and we cannot even conceive of the layers to which we've divorced from God and from self. And then we say we're lonely and it's about the connection with people, but it's not.

Todd Turner (38:53)
Thank

You've nailed, I am stealing that, the divorcing from God. Yeah, that is a brilliant line and it's a brilliant concept. And I would say in my life, that is 100 % true. Like I feel what you're talking about and how my divorce from my wife and all my feelings can all trickle down from that, relationship with the Lord. Like there's no doubt about it.

Okay, you and I are gonna have a hopefully way more episodes, but one of the ones I wanna talk about is some practical stuff, meaning right by my bed, my one book I have by my bed is essential oils. I'm learning how to make concoctions. So my question to you is, do you have your supplement Bible by your bed? Like, how do you, where could somebody like me go learn of...

Dawn Wiggins (39:38)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Neato.

Todd Turner (39:51)
things that I need to make sure are in my food and my supplement routine. Like, where's the chart that I can merge my cheat sheet?

Dawn Wiggins (40:01)
Yeah, okay. That's a really good question. I'm two things. am on the one hand, the best person to ask on the other hand, I'm the worst person to ask. Let me say why. Let me say more. So because I don't there are there's a fantastic app and I can't remember what it is, I can go back and find out and I can get it back to you. can put it in the show notes. But for scanning like your food labels that tells you you can ask Chachi PT, right? There's a there's a fantastic new app that's scanning the food labels to talk about what toxins are in there, right?

Todd Turner (40:11)
Yeah.

Hmm?

Dawn Wiggins (40:31)
So you can sort of be aware of what brands you're choosing in this kind of thing. I love essential oils for ⁓ like support, maintenance, and just gentle, gentle, whatever. For most people, essential oils aren't gonna go deep enough to really rehabilitate things enough, but they're an excellent tool for whether it's cleaning supplies, nervous system, health. ⁓ Essential oils have been an essential part of my recovery process, right?

Todd Turner (40:47)
Okay.

No.

Okay,

good to know.

Dawn Wiggins (40:58)
But if you're

using essential oils and you're not getting the results you need, that doesn't mean they don't work. It means everything is dose and potency. Your intervention has to be slightly more powerful than your disease state, whether that's loneliness, or it's depression, or it's anxiety, or it's hormonal imbalance, or it's ⁓ detoxification. Your intervention has to be slightly more powerful than your disease state. And we can use a lot of things to really help tip the scales.

on intervention to disease state, right? So I, when I, if it comes to health, right, I go all in. like my entire, I have an entire office over here that we call the Apothecary where I have almost every homeopathic remedy you can own and almost every essential oil there is to, right? Like every supplement there, like it's not, that's why I'm the wrong person to ask. Cause I just have it all and I know it all inside and out.

Todd Turner (41:28)
Okay.

Wow.

Right.

Right. Well, what's the baby step? you've already, you've already, before we get on another episode, like you started with the liver and you used, I think I wrote down, uh, was it milk thistle or something like you wrote down, I wrote down something, but like, what are some things to start with to say, okay, let's aim at these organs. Let's baby step our way into something deeper. What would, what would be a first step of somebody who's listening to you right now saying, Oh,

Dawn Wiggins (41:58)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah.

Todd Turner (42:17)
She's speaking my language, where do I start?

Dawn Wiggins (42:20)
⁓ Sleep, more sleep, more nature, less supplements, way less supplements. Pick a couple and make sure one of them is minerals and make sure one of them is.

helping support your liver detox. Gently. I'm not a fan of big offensive detoxes because there's a reason your body isn't doing it and your body isn't ready for that massive detox yet. So do not force detox on your body. Gentle detoxification.

Todd Turner (42:53)
Yeah, no, don't

don't kill a fly with a sledgehammer. It's not going to fix it. Yeah.

Dawn Wiggins (42:58)
because your detox pathways are not prepared, right? So

minerals, water, walking, bare feet on the ground, sleep, and gentle lever detox, and add some flower essences. You can Google flower essences. You can throw it in ⁓ Amazon. I'm a big fan of Bach or Batch. I've B-A-C-H. I've heard people pronounce it batch. I've heard people pronounce it Bach.

But this is just entry level, like 101, right? There are so many different brands, but sometimes people trust what they can find on Amazon and trusted whatever, right? So BACH flower essences on Amazon, really freaking great start. Less supplements, more minerals, more walks. Yeah.

Todd Turner (43:35)
Right.

Okay. I love that. And when you say

minerals, I put sea salt or Celtic salt in my water. Is that, that's what you're talking about?

Dawn Wiggins (43:50)
Great, yeah. I love trace

minerals. Yeah, we usually especially, we need more than that, right? But yes, it's a great, great, great, great start. That's the basics, right? I love some trace minerals. ⁓ I would also say...

More sun. Less sunscreen. Less sunscreen. More sun. Less sunglasses. Less sunscreen. More sun.

Todd Turner (44:13)
Vitamin D.

10.

It's funny you say this. I moved, I was facing west in my house and I lived on the fourth floor. moved to the second. Now I faced east and I almost every day, I can't say every day, I walk east. I take my glasses off. I stand on grass and I just stare towards the sun, not at the sun. Just to start my day with the sunlight into my natural eyes because

Dawn Wiggins (44:40)
Yes. Yes. Yeah, that's right.

That's

right.

Todd Turner (44:48)
No one wore sunglasses forever and that's a new phenomenon.

Dawn Wiggins (44:51)
No, there's

a link between sunglasses and sunburn because there's a built-in part of the body there that knows, I am exposed to sun right now, so I need to turn down my absorption or whatever. The body knows what it's doing, so it's brilliant. So there's actually an app called the D-Minder app, and it's not the most elegant well-working app. But it's...

Todd Turner (45:08)
does.

Dawn Wiggins (45:15)
we'll track if you're getting enough vitamin D in the day. And it's fascinating because there are times of the day that we absorb more than less and poor women of all people, right? We're the ones that lather on the sunscreen more than anyone and it's hurting us. It's not helping us. ⁓ yeah, I'm a piston people off today. Todd.

Todd Turner (45:19)
Really?

⁓ I totally, I, before we wrap up because no,

we, we, we, didn't derail derail and plasma went somewhere bad. We went so many great places that now we have so many more follow-ups, I do want to ask this practical because you're so knowledgeable vibration machines are yes, no gimmick. it good? You know, the little, yeah. What do you think about those?

Dawn Wiggins (45:51)
Like a vibe play to stand on. ⁓

They're fantastic, but huge, huge, huge, but.

Todd Turner (45:59)
Okay.

Dawn Wiggins (46:00)
It is so easy, probably especially for a woman, but for people to overdo it out of the gate and do very real damage.

Todd Turner (46:09)
and what define too much because I was doing 10 minutes a day and then I read something that said, no, no, no, like 30 a week tops. And I thought, well, I've already going over that.

Dawn Wiggins (46:15)
Probably too much. Correct.

Yeah, yeah, exactly, right? And so, okay, you have very resilient lymphatic system. Excellent. But let's say somebody else has weaker, weaker. ⁓

good thing your fancy machine is going to edit out all this fluff. ⁓

weaker vascular walls or just weaker cell walls in general, right? And they get on that vibe plate and they could rupture some things. And now we have some very big problems down the road. I am a much bigger fan and vibe plates, they're cool and they're relatively inexpensive these days, right? And you can add one, but like getting outside and walking and sweating is going to do a lot for your lymphatic system. ⁓

Todd Turner (46:44)
Okay.

Dawn Wiggins (47:05)
without the risk. that's just to say, right? We hate going outside and sweating in the summer very often, but it's what we need to do because how else are we getting that liver detoxified so that we can let go of our old life and we can visualize our new life, right? We got to detoxify the liver to do that. Well, guess what? Like, you know, sweating is a really, really, really good way.

Todd Turner (47:26)
My sister and I get in this argument all the time because she loves walking on a treadmill in the gym. And I want to walk outside and we argue all the time. And I'm like, I get it. No one wants to sweat and take extra showers and whatever. But at the same time, I'm like, I feel like it's the walking is one thing and the sweating and the heat is a whole nother and you're adding a whole nother level to your exercise.

Dawn Wiggins (47:44)
Correct. And the sunshine.

Yeah, yeah. The sun is literally one of the most powerful things we can do to regenerate.

our cells, our wellness, our mental health, like you name it. And so when we are talking about that third phase you referenced at the very beginning, right? This post divorce phase where we are struggling to move forward. It sounds so counter to what we're told in every mental health space there is, but the focus on the body in these ways, it will make the mental emotional aspect so much more approachable.

Todd Turner (48:18)
Love it. This has been so great. Thank you. Thank you for letting us pick your brain and you're not near done yet because we got way more of this to talk about. All we'll add all of the links as we go back and listen to the show notes. So anybody that can click on this and they can get to your website as well. Thanks. And we will talk again soon.

Dawn Wiggins (48:27)
Awesome.