This is painful but I’m going to share it anyway.  

I’m going to tell you about my $500 meltdown… so that you get a glimpse of what NOT TO DO.  

I was meeting my husband for a session with the mediator to begin going over details of our divorce.  

I did not trust him with our children at the time because he felt too unhinged.  I was scared.  I was unhinged myself– if only I could have seen that then.

So we meet with the mediator and the ex starts attacking me, berating me, scaring me–  and my brain couldn’t regulate.  

I brought a psychological evaluation that the ex had taken years prior and I threw it on the table and went off about how he was not fit to be a parent like I was in some procedural television drama.  The was-band started yelling and screaming, I shut down, suddenly the mediator was playing referee and coaxing my ex to return to the table which he refused to do.  I was crying, sobbing, broken, scared.  The whole event took about an hour, maybe more.  The mediator billed me $500 for the time spent.  

It was a costly mistake and this is the lesson I learned from the absurdity of the ordeal:

Investing in self-care saves money.  

If I had been able to regulate myself, prepare properly for the session, understand the law a little better, then perhaps I would have been able to avoid this costly meltdown.  

Learn from my mistake:  Invest in you.  Take care of you.  I created resources so that other divorcing humans wouldn’t make the same bonehead mistakes I did.  

Investing in yourself will save you money down the road.

Do whatever it takes to heal your grief, to heal your trauma– believe it or not, that healing may pay off in your emotional, physical, and financial health and this mistake I made is a profound example of how.

If I had gone into that session more clear-headed, more aware of my rights, and more able to communicate what I needed, I would have saved far more than $500— I might have accomplished something in that meeting and subsequent meetings and calls that weren’t much different.  It could have saved me thousands of dollars on attorney’s fees.  

So if you’re feeling guilty for spending money on self-care, think again.  It might be saving you far more than you realize.