Episode Description
How to Find Yourself After a Relationship Ends: Grieving the Roles, Rituals, and Identity You Lost
Host Laura Mangum Broome explores how major relationship losses can leave women grieving not only the person but also the roles, routines, future, and identity built around that connection, quoting “How empty of me to be so full of you” from Louise Hay and David Kessler.
Drawing from five major losses in five years (her teenage son, breast cancer, a heart transplant, her father’s death, and a sudden divorce after 27 years), she explains how women gradually “disappear” through over-giving and lack of boundaries across marriages, friendships, family dynamics, death, and even workplaces, noting that “grief is grief” regardless of the source. She introduces Radical Acceptance, the first phase of her iCope2Hope System, beginning with “face the truth,” and offers three starting points: grieve without a deadline, ask who you were before, and don’t refill the empty space too quickly.
00:00 When You Lose Yourself
01:00 Welcome and Free Resource
01:46 How Empty of Me
03:23 Grief Is Grief
04:04 The Layers You Lose
05:07 How We Disappear
08:00 Grieving the Old You
09:33 Radical Acceptance
10:34 Three Places to Start
13:32 Recap and Closing
- Free Resource: Reframe the Spiral: 5 Quick Coping Strategies to Shift Negative Thoughts and Reclaim Your Day: https://www.icope2hope.com/reframe
- iCope2Hope 3-Step Resilience Framework: https://bit.ly/FrameworkRoadmap
- Website: iCope2Hope: From Hardship to Hope: https://www.icope2hope.com
- Move Beyond Adversity Blog: https://www.icope2hope.com/blog
- Free Newsletter: Wednesday’s Resilient Recharge: https://www.icope2hope.com/newsletter
- Schedule a free 15-minute Clarity Call with Laura: https://bit.ly/15mincallLMB