My Business Helped Me Heal from Divorce

I'm preparing to do a podcast interview with the wonderful owners of Zynnyme.

I want to talk about how starting a private practice can be incredibly healing, and in my case it helped me heal from a painful divorce.

In preparation I've been delving into the past, into the realms of a painful relationship. I don't want to go back there in my mind, but I do want to more deeply understand how starting a private practice was such an incredibly transformative process for me, and how it might be for you, too.

In order to have healing, there needs to be a wound or a pain point. For me, some of the main ways I was hurt showed up in my thinking and beliefs. At the time, I grappled with negative self-referencing questions, and some basic global questions, like:

  • Am I making bad things happen?

  • Will things ever be good again?

  • Am I safe?

  • Who am I now?

  • Can I trust myself/can others trust me?

  • Am I worthy of good things happening?

  • Which boundaries do I set?

  • Will life ever feel in control?


Luckily, within the (virtual) walls of my practice, I found answers.

In building a website, I found a sense of creativity and control.

In creating contracts and policies I found boundaries.

In generating my own income I found some safety.

In building relationships with clients, I found myself trustworthy.

In registering a business, I found I could make good things happen.


. . .and so much more was discovered and healed in doing a photo shoot, creating business cards, pitching myself to universities, reserving office spaces, setting fees, starting a Facebook group, seeking clinical mentorship, doing solid documentation, finding a business mentor, starting a business bank account, and on and on. Except paying taxes- no healing has come from that (yet). :)

I'm not saying we should always rely on accomplishments or outward achievement to restore us, but I guess I am saying that healing comes in all kinds of weird, unpredictable ways, and for some of us, it comes in the process of building a business.

So if you're building or growing a private practice, or just thinking about getting started, I hope you know that healing is a possibility.

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