198. When Your Kids Don’t Support Your Healing After Divorce

Before We Begin: A Moment for You

Before we dive in, take a breath. You already did something for yourself by clicking on this episode. So let's make it count from the start.

Breathe in through your nose — let your ribs expand, your chest expand, your belly expand. Then exhale through your mouth, letting that breath travel all the way down and out. Do that a couple more times. Notice the colors around you. Feel the texture of whatever is in your hands. If you are driving, feel the steering wheel. If the sun is on your skin, feel the warmth of it.

Say hello to your body. It may have been a while since you checked in.

About This Episode

This episode originally came from an earlier recording on my other podcast, The Choose To Be Podcast, with my co-host Alana Gordon. I went back through the archives, found this conversation, and knew immediately it needed a home here — because it speaks directly to something so many of you are navigating and not talking about enough.

We are covering what happens when your kids don't support your healing after divorce. When they don't understand the dynamics that led to the divorce in the first place. When your post-divorce choices — including dating again, building a new life, doing your healing work — are met with confusion, resistance, or outright rejection from your children.

This happens with kids of every age. Five-year-olds. Teenagers. Adult children in their fifties. The ages change. The attachment wounds underneath do not.

A few things to hold before we start. Not everything in this conversation will match your exact situation, and that is okay. Take what resonates and set aside what does not. These are not blanket rules — they are principles and starting points. The nuances of your specific family, your specific kids, your specific divorce are yours to work through with your own coach or therapist. This is a place to begin.

The Instinct to Explain Yourself — and Why It Doesn't Work

One of the first things most of us do when our kids are not on board with our healing is try to get them to understand it. We over-explain. We defend ourselves. We present evidence. We want them to see what we are doing, why it is healthy, and why it is good for them too.

And it makes complete sense that we do this. The pain is real. The need to be heard and understood is real. And when the people we love most — our children — are not seeing us clearly, that pain needs somewhere to go.

But over-explaining is almost never about convincing our kids. It is about the deep, aching part of us that so badly needs to be heard. And when we can recognize that, we can start to address it at the source instead of chasing it through our children.

Here is the other piece: think about how many times you tried to get your ex to understand your experience. To really get it. To see things the way you were seeing them. How did that go? The same energy applied to your kids produces the same result. You cannot do their work for them. You cannot think your way into their healing or talk them into yours.

What Is Actually in Your Bubble

The most important and most liberating principle in all of this is the controllable bubble. Your children's thoughts, their feelings, their perceptions, their timeline — none of that has ever actually been in your bubble. And the painful reminder is that it never was.

That does not mean you do not matter to them or that your relationship does not matter. It means that real healing — for you — has to start with you. Validating yourself first. Loving yourself first. Not looking to your children to fill a need that only you can fill from the inside.

When you get to a genuine place of accepting what is and is not in your control, it is freeing in a way that is hard to describe until you have felt it. But getting there is terrifying. And that terror makes complete sense through an attachment lens.

Understanding the Attachment Underneath

If you are divorced, your ex was your primary attachment figure. That attachment is now gone or severely disrupted. Your children are likely the next strongest attachment in your life. So when they pull away, or resist your healing, or seem to be rejecting you — your nervous system reads that as a threat to survival. Not metaphorically. Literally.

Attachment is wired into the same part of the brain that handles survival. So the thought of losing your children's closeness can feel life or death, even when logically you know it is not. And what does a threatened nervous system do? It grips tighter. It tries harder. It over-explains and over-convinces.

And when you grip tighter, human nature is to pull back. When someone is pushing against us, we push back. So your child pulling away is not actually rejecting you — they are doing exactly what they are hardwired to do when someone is holding on too tightly. Which means the grip itself is creating the distance.

The antidote is not to stop caring. It is to loosen your hold — a little at a time. Just a little. That is the practice.

When the Kids Who Are Closest to You Push Back the Hardest

Here is something that can feel confusing but is actually worth celebrating: kids often direct their biggest emotions at the parent who is safest.

Think about those videos of little kids who have been perfectly behaved all day at school — and then the moment they see their parent at pickup, they completely fall apart. They were holding it together for everyone else. With you, they do not have to.

The same thing happens with teenagers and adult children. When your child is coming at you hard — angry, distant, refusing to engage — it can feel like you have done something terribly wrong. Sometimes it means the opposite. It means you have made the attachment strong enough that they are not afraid of losing it. They are not performing for you. They are being real.

That does not mean you accept abuse. It means that underneath the behavior, there is a child — at any age — who still has that hardwired inner part looking to you as the safe person. And the way you show up in response to their big emotions is some of the most important parenting you will ever do.

What Not to Do: Correcting Their Perception

One of the most common and understandable things parents do in this situation is try to correct their child's perception of what happened. Your child has a version of the story. It may be incomplete, filtered through their age and their relationship with the other parent, or just plain wrong. And the temptation to set the record straight is enormous.

But when you lead with correction, you lose connection. Every time.

What your child needs in that moment is not the full picture of what really happened. They need to know their experience is real and valid, even if their interpretation is incomplete. When you correct them, the message they receive — even if you do not intend it — is that your experience is more important than theirs.

Think about it in terms of learning. If your child is doing basic addition and you are doing calculus, you do not hand them a trigonometry textbook. You meet them where they are. When they are ready for more, they will ask for it. And if you have created enough safety for them to come back to you, they will ask. They will get curious. They will say — maybe years from now — Mom, what was actually happening during that time?

That is when you open your mouth. Not before.

When Adult Children Struggle Too

Do not assume that because your children are adults, this will be simpler. It is often not.

Adult children carry their own grief around divorce — not just the divorce itself, but the loss of a version of you. When you were single and they were your primary focus, you were available in a specific way. When you start dating, when you start building a new life, they can experience that as another loss layered on top of everything else.

This is not about you doing something wrong. It is about them having their own real, valid grief that they need to move through. And the more space you can give them to have that grief without making it about you, the more room they have to actually process it.

You are not responsible for managing their grief. You are responsible for staying present without disappearing into it with them.

Boundaries Are Not Walls

There will be situations where your child's emotions — at any age — cross a line into emotional abuse. Big feelings are normal and expected. Being a target for those feelings in harmful ways is not something you are required to accept.

You can love someone and need space from them at the same time. You can leave a door open while also saying clearly what it looks like to walk through it. A boundary is never a wall — it is an invitation. It says: here is how you can be in a relationship with me. Here is what that looks like.

Keep reaching out. Keep the door open. Not with gripping or convincing — just with consistent, low-pressure presence. A text. An invitation to grab food. A door that stays open even when they are not walking through it yet.

Consistency matters more than intensity. The steady presence is what they will walk back toward when they are ready.

What Your Kids Are Actually Watching You Do

Here is the thing your brain may not give you enough credit for: your kids are watching you.

They are watching you do your work. They are watching you get back up. They are watching you choose yourself, maybe for the first time. They are watching you learn how to feel hard emotions without being destroyed by them. They are watching you repair when you get it wrong.

They may not be able to articulate what they are seeing. They may not even be conscious of it. But it is landing. And it is teaching them something that will shape how they move through hard things in their own lives for decades to come.

Your children do not need a perfect parent. They need a parent willing to grow. Willing to feel the hard things. Willing to repair. Willing to stay connected to themselves instead of disappearing into fear or shame or the desperate need to be understood.

The greatest gift you can give them right now is not convincing them to understand you. It is showing them what it looks like to stay grounded, to remain compassionate with yourself, to hold your shape even when things are hard and messy and unresolved.

If You Are in That Painful Place Right Now

If things feel uncertain or disconnected with your kids right now — keep going.

Keep doing your work. Keep becoming the chooser in your life. Trust that healing planted in truth tends to ripple much farther than you can see from where you are standing.

You are not failing because this is hard. You are learning how to love without controlling. How to stay open without abandoning yourself. How to create safety from the inside out.

That work matters. You matter.

Journal Prompt

Where am I still looking to my children to validate my healing instead of validating it myself? What would it feel like to trust that my work is enough, even when they cannot see it yet?

Resources

Work with Amie: amiewoolsey.com | lifecoachingwithamie.com

The Choose To Be Podcast — available wherever you listen