Episode 18: Tera Wozniak Stortz; Self-Compassion and Resistance
In this episode of the Queer Divorce Club, Tera provides an update on the club's progress and shares insights gleaned from her own divorce and rebuilding journey in 2023. Those lessons include how self-compassion has been such an asset to her and other lessons about how to function post divorce with kids.
Music in this episode is from Bungalow Heaven. You can find more music from Bungalow Heaven and singer/songwriter Gretchen DeVault at gretchendevault.com.
Tera Wozniak Stortz
Tera is a queer writer and coach. After decades of living the heteronormative “perfect” life, Tera decided to lean out, getting divorced and building a queerer life. Today, Tera is writing, running the Queer Divorce Club, and leading peer coaching circles for individuals looking to build the lives they want outside of the mainstream. She lives in West Michigan with her partner Carlie, their three boys, two cats, and two bunnies. Tera and her family love taking outdoor adventures, flowing around a bonfire, playing hide and seek on the regular, and occasionally raising monarch butterflies in their bathroom.
Show Transcript
Hey hey hey Queer Divorce Club welcome to 2024. It's been a little while since I've had an episode, and today I'm going to start off the new year with an episode. Of just me. I want to give a quick update about what's happening with the Queer Divorce Club and give you an update on my life and where I have been in my divorce journey and healing.
I'm hoping that sharing my stories will help you all find maybe a little bit of yours in it and encourage you to share yours as well. Because we're all here waiting to support you and connect with you and love you through the most difficult parts of [00:01:00] divorce, going through the actual divorce, rebuilding and healing.
So let's get on to the episode.
For all of you that are here for the first time, I'm Tera, co founder of the Queer Divorce Club. I am a queer divorcee myself, and I am learning to build and navigate this post divorce life with all of you right beside me. If you haven't had a chance yet to listen to episode one, please go back and do that.
You can do that before or after this episode, but it does give you a good glimpse of my life and story and history of my divorce so that you can get an update today. for joining me. [00:02:00] That makes maybe a little bit more sense after listening to that. It's just a good overview of my life. But today I'm here to talk about what I learned in 2023 and what I hope to continue to learn in 2024 and do with the Queer Divorce Club.
I'm so excited that the Queer Divorce Club is growing. The Facebook group is growing and more people are listening to the podcast and connecting on social media, asking questions and sharing their stories. And it's really awesome to have such a. Big group growing and connecting around the shared humanity that we all need during tough times.
So thank you for coming back or being here for the first time for the Queer Divorce Club. I am going to share with you what I learned in 2023. So I am now post divorce. About three years out, and I honestly didn't realize at this point that I would have so many emotions. Still, it's wild. In the last half of 2023 really brought some [00:03:00] high emotional times as well as some high growth in the areas of self compassion, particularly, particularly for me practicing self compassion has given me the opportunity to grow more than I thought I ever could.
And loving myself and giving myself so much needed space has been really it. truly life changing for me. That doesn't mean it's been easy. None of it is ever easy. Healing and growth and co parenting post divorce and rebuilding post divorce is freaking hard, people. It's so hard. You all know that.
That's why you're here. But now that I've opened up my healing post divorce, I'm getting to see that some things could be easier than before, but also That I'm never going to go back. And so the only option is to heal. And the emotional journey of healing has been a roller coaster. Sometimes it feels like the emotions are a fire hose so much that I can't shut down.
I can't turn that crank and it just keeps coming and coming. And I'm trying not to resist that, but sometimes it's really hard, you know, growth is [00:04:00] here. I'm forever learning how to. Use new tools to help me through it and to find the emotional space that is necessary to heal in this post divorce world.
I'd love to read a couple paragraphs quick for you from Kristen Neff and Chris Germer. They are experts in mindful self compassion. I took a course with them earlier in 2023 and Oh my gosh, it was seriously life changing. But here's what they say about resisting the change and resisting the healing.
I know I haven't really talked about what resistance means, but I think you might, you might all know that it's that moment where you're like, I just don't want to do this anymore, or I don't think I can do this anymore. Why am I doing this? Or I just want to go back. It's like those moments where you just can't feel the feelings.
You don't want to do the healing. You're over it. You're sick of it. All of those things. But here's what they say. Life isn't easy. It often brings challenging situations, and with them, difficult [00:05:00] emotions, such as anger, fear, worry, and grief. By a certain age, we learn that it doesn't help to run from our problems.
We need to deal with them directly. When we turn toward difficult emotions, however, even with mindfulness and self compassion, our pain often increases. At first, in our natural instinct, is to turn away. But if we are to heal, we must face them. The only way out is through. We must have the courage to be present with emotional pain if we are going to live healthy, authentic lives.
Still, does this mean we need to face all of our difficult emotions in their full intensity? Luckily, no. Oh my gosh, thank goodness. That's the truth. Someone once asked the meditation teacher, Chik Nat Han, I may be pronouncing that incorrectly, how much emotional distress we should allow into our practice and his answer was not much.
He says, experiencing discomfort is necessary for self compassion to arise, but we only need to [00:06:00] touch emotional pain to cultivate compassion and we can go slowly so we don't overwhelm ourselves. The art of self compassion includes inclining gradually toward emotional discomfort. When it arises. So, well, that's good news.
We don't have to deal with everything all at once, but it also does mean that we do have to deal with it. Like one of the, the core pieces of self compassion and what they teach is that if we turn towards the emotion, if we feel the emotion, we're going to be much more likely to move through that emotion and move through the healing process.
And if we don't deal with things or manage things like we should. Everything always comes back to haunt us later. And if you're like me, you realize that after 13 years of marriage, you put a lot away that you couldn't deal with. And so now here it is coming back at you ready to get to work. I highly recommend exploring the idea of self compassion and what that could mean for you as you transition through divorce and after divorce and combining that with [00:07:00] therapy and support groups and all the things that you need to feel supported because it's seriously, I know I already said it.
It's been a life changer. Sometimes it doesn't hurt to repeat things. So self compassion, that's the number one thing I've learned this year. And I really want to walk through some other things that I've learned. Here are some of the nitty gritty things that I learned in 2023. And honestly, I appreciate it.
Like I was saying, three years post divorce, I didn't think I would still be learning stuff about divorce and how to co parenting, co parent, but guess what? Kids change and life changes and all of those things keep coming with you. But the good news is as long as we're learning from where we've been and putting a solid foundation in place, we can all get through it.
All right, so here's my list. The first thing is It's related to co parenting. So in co parenting we've been finding a balance with both our exes. That's me and my current partner now and trying to figure out how to balance holiday time and share some of that time with our [00:08:00] exes. The schedule for us is going really well.
And most of the time we have 50 50 custody, seven on, seven off, and we split the holidays evenly, working to have some time together during birthdays, Christmas, and Halloween. We spend some time with. All of us together during those times. And that's been really great for the kids. It's not always comfortable with the X's but we really work to try and make it as comfortable as possible.
And every time we do try, it gets easier and easier. So that's amazing. The second thing is related to the kiddos. Our kiddos have been healing and changing right alongside us and. Honestly, with the divorce and the opportunity for me to heal, they've gotten the room to do that now more than ever. My partner and I are both working so strongly on healing, and that's giving our kids space to do that themselves, and that has been both beautiful to see and difficult to navigate.
Now a year and a half into living together, we are all working [00:09:00] more as a team and supporting each other's growth. And this doesn't mean to say that there isn't tough times, because there definitely is just like any parenting journey. There's times we break down and we need cuddles and crying with kids and everything is all out on the table sometimes and it can feel exhausting.
But more often than not, we're working together and supporting the kids together. Talking to each other, giving each other grace, and really allowing the other parent to have their space and build a relationship with the kiddos too that aren't their biological kiddos. So, that's been really good. Some things that have worked for us are really Just sharing our emotions with the kids.
We have a healing break space in our house that's been supportive of some strong emotional times. And Carly and I connecting consistently and encouraging each other consistently about our parenting. So that's been really awesome. Yeah, I can't say we've done it perfectly, but I feel really good about the way we're heading with our blended family and the kids healing.
And yeah, we're heading in [00:10:00] the right direction. That feels awesome. The thing that's been coming up here the most for me, this other, this next one is the healing that I've had to do from toxic patterns in my marriage. There's so many things that happened in my marriage that both my ex and I created that weren't healthy.
He had a lot of mental health struggles and I had some bad patterns and mental health struggles from my complex PTSD as a kiddo. And the two combined Honestly, we're not a good combination, hence why we got divorced but I'm still learning a lot and things are continuing to unpack about, you know, what things were emotionally too toxic for me and what things I really do need to heal from And I'll talk more about that full story someday but just know that therapy, writing, and self compassion have been key for me, along with working on healing through my new relationship.
And one of the great lessons I've learned this, this year is that despite the pain coming [00:11:00] from past relationships, the healing has to be done in new relationships and connection. With relationships, with friends, with family, with partners, all healing happens through reparative experiences in relationship.
I never thought about that before. Honestly, I thought I had to do everything myself and I do still have to find a balance of supporting myself, giving myself compassion, doing my own coping mechanisms and regulation, but the big healing comes from connection with others. That's been really profound to find out.
And then the last thing I've really learned this year is the fact that I really need to own my own needs more often. I was terrible at this before, codependent as hell, for real, like a people pleaser number one. And starting to own my own wants and needs and voice those out loud and set boundaries out loud feels so good.
I didn't realize this feeling could exist. It's wild. I'm still safe even though I put a boundary out there or I told my truth. It's really hard though. This has [00:12:00] been one of the hardest things for me being such an amazing people pleaser, but I'm moving really along well and I'm thankful that I've been able to do that.
So excited actually about some of the times that I've been able to actually share what my needs are. It's really been working out so great and I hope to be able to do it more. So y'all, that's really just some of the highlights of what I learned in 2023. There's so many things I've learned and grown and I'm so excited for and sharing them with you to let you know again to that you can do it too.
I can. You can get there. It's encouraging to hear that other people get there. I get excited when I hear anybody else in the Queer Divorce Club say, I learned this. Can I share it with you? It's really awesome. So I hope to continue to share my stories and I hope that you do too. And if you want to share your story on the podcast, please, please, please reach out.
I'd love to talk to you and hear about your divorce journey. Please know that if you do want to share, we'd only talk about the topics [00:13:00] that you feel comfortable with. You could even share your story anonymously if you would like to if you think it's important to get it out there, that you, other people will need to hear it and you're not ready yet to share your name, then let's do it.
I think everybody wants to hear everybody's story, and I'm excited to hear from you if you're open to sharing, um, if you need. support and want to join in more of the conversations about queer divorce, join the Queer Divorce Club Facebook. And if you are wanting some one on one time coaching or some conversate more conversations in person, in person via zoom, that is, join a virtual gathering over at QueerDivorceClub.
com. And We hope to see you there in the future. There's lots of upcoming events over the next few months. We're doing one a month right now, and if they fill up, we'll do some more. So I'm really excited about that. And before I leave you in this quick short episode, I just want you all to know that I'm sending you the most love and to remind you that It's okay to start [00:14:00] this year off for yourself and you're doing your best and Choosing yourself and supporting yourself whether you choose chose your divorce or not Choosing your own healing is the right journey to be on and you're doing it and if you're not doing it yet, you will and I love you, and I'm so proud of you and There's lots of love coming from the entire queer divorce Club Thank you for listening, and I hope to see you back here for our next episode.
Thank you for joining us for the Queer Divorce Club podcast. We hope that our discussions have provided you with valuable insights and support throughout your journey. If you're a member of the LGBTQIA plus community and find yourself contemplating divorce, currently going through the process or in the process of rebuilding your life after divorce, we invite you to join the Queer Divorce Club.
Connect with others who have similar experiences and find a sense of [00:15:00] community by visiting QueerDivorceClub. com. There you can join support groups tailored to your needs and connect with individuals who understand the unique challenges you may be facing. Before we wrap up, we'd like to ask for your support.
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We're here to provide you with the tools, knowledge, and support you need to live a healthy and vibrant life, both during and beyond your divorce. And as always, remember that each day you are doing your best for yourself and your family. And that's nothing short of amazing. Thank you to Bungalow Heaven for providing the music for this podcast.
We'll see you all next time.