“You owe yourself the love you so freely give to other people”. This reminder is one of our favorites to share on Instagram, and it always makes us feel amazing when you show us how much you love it too. You’ve also let us know that you want to hear stories from women who were the ones to make the decision to end their marriage. That’s why we’re doing this episode about how it’s okay to want a divorce.
Nicole Amaturo is here to talk about how this was a part of her own life, and to share how she became a Personal Growth and Love coach to help other women realize this as well. This episode is really about being able to love yourself, to forgive yourself for wanting your best life possible, and celebrating how liberating self-love can be.
Audrey: 00:00:00 Welcome to Divorce & Other Things You Can Handle, a branded podcast from Worthy. I’m Audrey and I’m your host. You owe yourself the love you so freely give to other people. This reminder is one of our favorites to share on Instagram and it always makes us feel amazing when you show us how much you love it too. You also let us know that you want to hear stories from women who were the ones to make the decision to end their marriage. That’s why we’re doing this episode about how it’s okay to want a divorce and there’s nobody better to do it with than our friend Nicole. Nicole Amaturo is here to talk about how this was a part of her own life and to share how she became a personal growth and love coach to help other women realize this as well. This episode is really about being able to love yourself, to forgive yourself for wanting your best life possible and celebrating how liberating self love can be.
Make sure you stay tuned to hear Nicole share the amazing story of her relationship with her kids today and why they still love her after she divorced their father. Divorce & Other Things You Can Handle is a weekly podcast so make sure you subscribe to keep up with new episodes we’re curating to help empower and uplift you as you embrace your fresh start. This podcast is for you, so join our Facebook group, Worthy Women and Divorce to let us know what you think and what you want to hear. You can also get more at worthy.com/podcast. We’re going to take a quick break and then we will be right back with Nicole.
When you sell a piece of jewelry, you can’t control how much it’s worth, but you can make sure that you’re selling smart with a team of experts and advocates behind you at Worthy. Your engagement ring can be a financial asset that allows you to embrace a new and fulfilling life after divorce. Let us help you get the best deal possible for the jewelry you’ve outgrown. Go to Worthy.com/podcast to learn more. We have been hearing from you guys about how you want to talk more about what divorce is like when it’s something that you chose and we have the perfect person to talk about this discussion. So we’re going to unpack all of that with our amazing friend, Nicole. So welcome to the podcast, Nicole.
Nicole Amaturo: 00:02:20 Hi, Audrey. I’m so excited to be here.
Audrey: 00:02:22 I’m so excited to have you here. When we had our call last week to kind of figure out what we were going to talk about, we had this moment where I was like, ” Nicole, we have to get off the phone. We have to save it for the podcast,” because we were just having so much fun and I just think that your insights are amazing and I’m really excited about this episode, so thank you so much for taking the time to talk with us.
Nicole Amaturo: 00:02:42 Yes, of course. I said, I felt like you were like a friend. I’m like, [inaudible 00:02:45]. I really have never met you.
Audrey: 00:02:48 That’s right. But this community is beyond normal friends and here we are connecting with one another and empowering each other. So I’m really, really pumped. So why don’t we start. You can maybe introduce yourself, a little bit about your personal background and your professional background, so people who don’t know who you are can get a little bit of your background.
Nicole Amaturo: 00:03:08 Okay. So my background story is that I was married for 16 years and it was like I had it all, the beautiful house, a great husband, a provider, he was a great father. I had my dream career as a teacher that I always dreamed of since I was a little girl. On the outside it looked like I had everything I had ever wanted.
Audrey: 00:03:28 Right.
Nicole Amaturo: 00:03:30 For a long time I kind of beat myself up like, “Why are you not happy? What is wrong with you? You should be in love. You should feel this.” I started to not feel the same way I did about my husband and it was heartbreaking because we had a cute little family and we were very close knit family, honestly. It took a long time for me to honor my soul. So I went with the path of least resistance and after about three times of trying to get the courage to get a divorce, the third time I finally did it and honestly it was harder to hang on at that point than just let go and see where I was supposed to go. Then that’s where it all took me. So after I got a divorce, I started to realize that I was taking me wherever I was going. So I knew that I had to work on self love and I didn’t understand why or even really what that meant at the time, honestly.
But I just knew that I had pieces of me that were incomplete and broken and needed to heal. So in that, I started to work with a spiritual teacher and I started to learn about self love and I started to learn about relationships is our mirrors for what’s going on within ourselves. Basically, everything just kind of made sense as to why I chose that partner, why I was in the position that I was in, why I was feeling the way I was and then what really started to happen was when I started to date, it’s like the shit hit the fan.
Audrey: 00:05:06 Right.
Nicole Amaturo: 00:05:06 I was like, “Okay, what is going on within me because why am I attracting these guys that should be chasing me and I’m the one panicking and getting anxiety and chasing them?” Then that’s when it all really starts to come together and I started to put what I was learning and it was really putting it in action now. I ended up healing so much. I mean, we’re always a work in progress.
Audrey: 00:05:30 Totally.
Nicole Amaturo: 00:05:30 That’s something [crosstalk 00:05:31] to remember. That it’s like in layers, right? We’re like onions, right? You just peel back different layers and we’re always uncovering different pieces that need to be healed. I finally did what I needed to do and then I attracted my love into my life today and now I teach other women. So I got my masters in holistic health. I was trained and Gabby Bernstein’s spirit junkie masterclass, Mike Dooley’s infinite possibilities programs and all different other programs. Now I just help women all around the world and it’s the most gratifying thing to see women stepping into their power, following their heart instead of what society thinks is right for them and their family, and that’s me in a nutshell.
Audrey: 00:06:15 So we’re going to unpack all of that because you basically just told the whole story.
Nicole Amaturo: 00:06:20 Sorry.
Audrey: 00:06:21 No, don’t apologize. It’s your story. It’s great. I think it’s also nice for people to kind of see the whole picture because I think so many people can relate to so much of what you just said, this pressure to stay in something and to make it work and then being able to identify yourself as somebody who is worthy of more and deserving of big love and all of that. So I think we’ve got a lot to talk about here that people definitely want to know more about and you’re so special because you have been through it, but you also are trained in it now and you’re helping other people. It’s just this amazing kind of full circle thing that I think will really inspire a lot of our listeners. So let’s start by talking a little bit about that beginning of your marriage and I know you were young, so why don’t you tell people a little bit about how you ended up in this marriage.
Nicole Amaturo: 00:07:15 Okay. So I was 19 when I got married and at the time I was pregnant and … Okay, so it’s funny. Prior to meeting my ex-husband, I was in an abusive teenage relationship and in that relationship, it was so abnormal and there was so much dysfunction, right, that when I met my ex-husband, he was like normal in quotes, like that normal family. They didn’t throw dishes across the room. They were happy and that to me it was like such a turn on, honestly. Like “Wow, you’re hot, you have a normal family.”
Audrey: 00:07:54 Right.
Nicole Amaturo: 00:07:54 This is amazing. Because for me, my family was your typical New York Italian family. You didn’t know what to expect. There was chaos all the time. I didn’t know what I was coming home to and I just recreated that in that relationship, my teenage relationship with my ex-boyfriend before I got married. So then when I found myself dating my ex-husband, it was so nurturing to be in a stable, like stable environment to just know what to expect, to know that he loved me, to know that he wasn’t going anywhere, he wasn’t going to leave me. I had emotional abandonment issues. That in itself, I was just so grateful for. But what happened was he kind of needed me to be broken for us to work.
Audrey: 00:08:43 Yeah. It’s interesting. I mean, you were talking about how your family fostered this different kind of energy and I think those formative years and the behavior that we have modeled for us, it really shapes who we are and the choices that we make. So you had this relationship in high school then and then you were able to identify that that’s not what you wanted. So then you met your ex-husband and it was like he was healing in those ways for you. But it was temporary because it was dependent on you needing him.
Nicole Amaturo: 00:09:18 Absolutely. That was in a nutshell. You’re right. What we create in this world is through our beliefs that we formed before we were even seven years old.
Audrey: 00:09:27 Yeah.
Nicole Amaturo: 00:09:28 So when you think about that, you look like an adult right now, right?
Audrey: 00:09:28 Yeah.
Nicole Amaturo: 00:09:32 But you actually have this little person running your whole entire life with her fears, with her insecurities, with her beliefs about men, about love, about money, about success, about what she’s capable of everything.
Audrey: 00:09:46 Right.
Nicole Amaturo: 00:09:47 That’s what we create and we just give our power away because we think, “Oh, there’s just some greater force that has our life planned out for us and we can’t change it.”
Audrey: 00:09:56 Yeah. Right. This is how things are. Or even being able to say, “Who am I to want more than this?”
Nicole Amaturo: 00:10:03 Oh, yes, definitely. The big part to me it was like, “Who am I to think I can have this?”
Audrey: 00:10:08 Yeah. It’s interesting though. I mean, you did have this great life and actually I have this quote from this first piece that you wrote for us. So you wrote into Worthy in response to a campaign that we did, and you wrote this article that was called I Choose Me and it was kind of all about like, here you were, you had found yourself in this perfect from the outside marriage, and in many ways it was healing for the things that your life had been missing before and in your childhood. So here’s what you wrote. You said, “I couldn’t shake the nagging empty feeling I had, which I now know was a messenger telling me somehow I wasn’t where I was meant to be. Until I realized this, I blamed myself for awhile thinking I didn’t know how to be happy or there must be something wrong with me. I must be crazy. I insisted. I fought it for a while, but the more I tried to fight it, the more I suffered in pain. The more I tried to hold on, the more of my soul was being whisked out of my body.”
Nicole Amaturo: 00:11:08 Just hearing that, I get chills.
Audrey: 00:11:10 Yeah, well I think for people who have read it on our blog, they also get chills. If you want to read, by the way, if you want to read this whole piece you can go to Worthy.com/podcast and we’ll have this article available for you and some other things that Nicole has written for us as well. But I think this is a really great piece and I’m sitting here thinking and it’s really interesting to me, we were talking about how you have these formative years and how it shapes what you’re thinking, but then at the same time there’s these kind of adults expectations that we have. So yes, there’s this small child inside of you who has already developed what’s normal and what’s good and what’s bad but at that point in your life you saw that you had what is considered to be the perfect life and still you weren’t happy.
Nicole Amaturo: 00:11:59 Right. One of the hardest parts was not caring about the judgements of everybody else.
Audrey: 00:12:08 Totally, yeah.
Nicole Amaturo: 00:12:09 I had close friends of mine that were judging me, and saying that, “She’s gonna ends up going back to him. He’s a good guy, she doesn’t know what she’s doing.” I had to really be strong in what I felt because when you’re feeling so weak and unsteady, all those comments is what makes some people run back and just think that, “She’s right.”
Audrey: 00:12:09 Right.
Nicole Amaturo: 00:12:33 I’m doing the wrong thing. I should just be happy. There’s something wrong with me. I’m just not lovable. I did that for a long time. I was kind of like, “I’m just not lovable. I just can’t accept love. There’s something about me that just can’t accept love. I don’t know what it is.”
Audrey: 00:12:46 That’s so sad.
Nicole Amaturo: 00:12:48 Yeah, isn’t it?
Audrey: 00:12:48 That you’re living like that for so long.
Nicole Amaturo: 00:12:51 I just stressed it.
Audrey: 00:12:52 Yeah. So you had three children in this marriage and you talked about how you, on your third round of deciding that you wanted to end your marriage was when it finally happened. So tell us a little bit about what was going on there. What happened the first and the second time and what was that like for you?
Nicole Amaturo: 00:13:12 So it’s funny, there’s a book written, it’s called The Big Leap and it’s by Gay Hendricks and he talked about like these upper limits we have, right?
Audrey: 00:13:20 Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Nicole Amaturo: 00:13:22 It’s just what I’ve read after the fact. But when I first tried to leave the first time, “Oh, there was the hurricane.” Okay, so it was like a natural disaster.
Audrey: 00:13:31 Oh my gosh.
Nicole Amaturo: 00:13:33 Forced us to be in the house together and talk and try and work things out and all these fears. So we ended up getting closer again in the hurricane and trying to work it out because it’s a natural disaster. So you’re clinging together.
Audrey: 00:13:47 Yeah.
Nicole Amaturo: 00:13:49 So we tried. Then the second time was my ex-husband got very sick. What happened was actually he got a flu virus and the virus actually had started to attack his own body. So it was like in his nervous system. I believe very spiritually in Louise Hay with how what’s going on physically is just a manifestation of a lot what’s going on emotionally. There was so much to the sickness that he had, but a lot of it was suppressed anger on his part. So the reason I brought up the book about the upper limit was because it talks about when you’re ready to do something big, it’s like we create something to stop us.
Audrey: 00:14:30 Yeah.
Nicole Amaturo: 00:14:31 The natural disaster, my ex-husband getting really sick. I was so scared.
Audrey: 00:14:36 Yeah. I think, you talked a little bit about this before, but I think there’s the stigma from your friends, but you obviously also were kind of putting that on yourself. You didn’t feel you had the right to end the marriage and so you were obviously feeling really guilty about it.
Nicole Amaturo: 00:14:55 Oh, absolutely. That was spot on. So what happened was because I had these own insecurities, like I said, right? Life is a mirror.
Audrey: 00:15:03 Yeah.
Nicole Amaturo: 00:15:03 So what did I attract? But I attracted people to validate my doubts.
Audrey: 00:15:08 Wow.
Nicole Amaturo: 00:15:09 Yeah. So it was like everything that I always had going on in the background, that’s just what I was attracting, right?
Audrey: 00:15:09 Yeah.
Nicole Amaturo: 00:15:15 So it keep me stuck in that same position. So for the third time what happened was I basically was going to work, I was doing what I had to do and I just accepted, I’m doing this for my family, I’m doing this for the kids. He’s a good guy. I should just be happy. I tried to just find the positives and everything and I was really trying hard to just be and accept. So I would go to work. I would come home, do what the kids had to do, cook dinner, eat dinner, and then I’d go up to bed by 8:00 at night. The faster I can get to bed, the better, to just lay there. Then my daughters would come in and hang out with me at times.
I started to just realize that’s where I said where my soul was being whisked out of my body. I lost my desire to want. I lost my desire to do things. I lost my desire to live, honestly. It was just kind of like I was existing. I had met someone actually in the nail salon which is just a really funny story. I was getting my nails done, right? She just kept staring at me and I was like, that happens to me. People always think they know me. I have a familiar face, I guess.
Audrey: 00:16:29 Yeah.
Nicole Amaturo: 00:16:29 So I was just like, “Oh, hi. How are you?” We started talking because we were at the drying table together for nails and I just learned that she was about 10 to 15 years older than me and she had just gotten a divorce and she was saying how she wished she had done it sooner and she’s kind of explaining the way I was feeling, right? She was looking at me after I learned, like I had it all together. She was like, “You’re well dressed. You have a beautiful girl. I was looking at you like she has a perfect life.” So we were both like kind of like a mirror for each other.
Audrey: 00:17:02 Right.
Nicole Amaturo: 00:17:03 So we ended up meeting for lunch actually and talking and you could just tell she was just supposed to be part of my life path. She had a bracelet at the time. I felt like a very strong angel around me, Rafael.
Audrey: 00:17:16 Wow.
Nicole Amaturo: 00:17:19 When I met up with her at lunch, on her wrist was a bracelet and guess who was hanging from her bracelet. It was Rafael, the angel.
Audrey: 00:17:26 Oh my gosh.
Nicole Amaturo: 00:17:27 So it was just like, yeah, it just was like, “Oh my God, this is too weird.” I’m like, “Okay, so you’re meant to be in my life for a reason.” Through her, just seeing that I’m wasting time. Like you’re not happy, Nic. [inaudible 00:17:41] honor yourself, you deserve this. I was like, “I don’t know what the hell I’m doing, but I need to feel alive again and I’m dead so I’m not living. So this isn’t healthy for my kids to see. It’s not healthy for my ex-husband. He deserves to be happy. He’s a good person. You deserve to be with somebody that adores you and loves you and wants to share life with you.” I deserve that. You know what I’m saying?
Audrey: 00:18:04 Yeah. I think that’s one of the things that I think is such an amazing reflection of who you are as a person, that you’re not just saying I deserved that, but he deserves that too and my kids deserve that example and it can be so hard to get to that place when you’re in it. But I think that your story and what you’ve managed to do with your life since then is just the most amazing example of why it’s okay and even necessary. So that’s amazing that you met that woman at the nail salon too.
Nicole Amaturo: 00:18:34 Yeah. That was not a coincidence. I was like, “Okay, somebody’s guiding me,” and that’s when I started to gain faith, Audrey. It was like, I started to gain faith in what I couldn’t see and that I was just being directed and if I just let go and follow, I was going to be okay.
Audrey: 00:18:50 That’s such an amazing feeling.
Nicole Amaturo: 00:18:52 Oh my God. I didn’t feel alone anymore. I was like, “Hey, somebody’s watching out for me.”
Audrey: 00:18:57 Yeah. What do you think? If somebody is listening to this who is in a similar situation to where you were that, say, that you were getting your nails done, you met this woman. I mean, do you feel like you’ve found the sign or the sign came to you? Or if there’s somebody who’s struggling with that, how do people let this kind of thing into their own lives?
Nicole Amaturo: 00:19:18 You mean like faith and synchronicities and being open, right?
Audrey: 00:19:23 Yeah. Or if there’s somebody who is … Let’s say they’re going through the exact same motions that you were at that time in your life, so they are going to work and they come home, they check all the boxes of the things that they need to take care of and they go to bed and they just feel empty and their soul is disconnected from the experience of living their life. But this woman at the nail salon is not showing up. How do you have this in your life if this person hasn’t crossed your path?
Nicole Amaturo: 00:19:53 Very good question. So I’m going to say what I basically did without realizing it, okay? What I tell my clients to do today is this, that we have freewill, okay? So nobody or nothing can really intervene unless we ask for it, right? Unless we need help, we say, “I need help.” So at the time I had let go of everything and I was just like, “Okay, I’m going to do this, but I need help, guide me and show me where am I supposed to be.” I left it at that and I just let it go and I honestly forgot I even had to ask that. I got my signs, okay? So I got what I needed to show me that I was on the right path.
So if you are in this position right now and you don’t know where to turn, all you need to do is literally either say it out loud, say it to yourself, write it down, but help me. I need help. I need support. Please guide me and show me where I’m supposed to be and show me that someone is here with me and you can ask for a specific sign. I didn’t ask for a specific sign at the time. I just needed some help. But you can ask for a feather. You can ask for a butterfly. You can ask for whatever your sign is. I have two crazy stories at the time when I finally decided to get a divorce. I was going in for some kind of procedure that I was just nervous about and I was like, “Okay, somebody show me that you’re here with me, guiding me. I’m scared.” I literally walked out of my front door and a white feather just flew off of the sky.
Audrey: 00:21:35 Wow.
Nicole Amaturo: 00:21:35 Literally, Audrey, landed on my shoulder.
Audrey: 00:21:38 Wow.
Nicole Amaturo: 00:21:38 I was like, “Where did that come from? Holy shit.” I’m magical.
Audrey: 00:21:44 Nicole, listen. One of the things I like to do every once in a while on the podcast is end with kind of a fun question and you just answered it.
Nicole Amaturo: 00:21:44 I’m sorry.
Audrey: 00:21:56 It was what’s the craziest thing that you have visualized and manifested and you just did. I mean, unless you could top that. But well, I guess we could come back to it at the end. But I mean that’s just amazing.
Nicole Amaturo: 00:22:07 I actually do have something even better.
Audrey: 00:22:08 Oh my gosh. Okay. Let’s save it for the end then. We’ll save it.
Nicole Amaturo: 00:22:13 Okay.
Audrey: 00:22:14 Okay. But okay, so I guess I want to know because I do believe in energy. I think what you put out there, you get back and if you … I think the energy that you consciously decide to let be a part of your life kind of dictates how things go for you and I believe I’m not a psychologist, but I believe that’s called neuroplasticity. You can kind of rework the way that your brain interprets things and then make actions based on that and that’s a step away from your feather story.
Nicole Amaturo: 00:22:46 Right.
Audrey: 00:22:47 But I also believe that but there are people who don’t believe in manifestation or the power of the universe or a god or anything like that. So I mean, I guess, for them maybe hearing this podcast is going to change that because this is their sign-
Audrey: 00:23:00 … hearing this podcast is going to change that because this is their sign.
But how do you think somebody who’s not quite there in terms of spirituality can adopt these same kinds of things into their thinking about what kinds of choices they can make for themselves?
Nicole Amaturo: 00:23:17 So in other words, where people that don’t have the faith yet in something higher?
Audrey: 00:23:21 Yeah.
Nicole Amaturo: 00:23:23 They have more control than they realize?
Audrey: 00:23:25 Right.
Nicole Amaturo: 00:23:25 So what I always tell my clients to do is, because a lot of times my clients come to me and they’re like, “You know, I get it. I’m not really buying it yet.” And I start to say, “Okay, tell me something in your life that fell into place that you could not see how it was going to fall into place. Tell me something that you couldn’t see and a lot of times they’re, “Finding you.”
Audrey: 00:23:51 Right.
Nicole Amaturo: 00:23:52 Because they’re in a marriage that they’re struggling with and they didn’t know how to get out and they didn’t know what next steps to take and they found me randomly or a friend recommended me or however my energy got into their lives. And other times it might be like the way that they ended up going to college or the way they ended up getting a house. They couldn’t figure out how it was going to all fall together but somehow it actually came together, the stuff that they were picturing and wanted.
I call that anchors, right? What’s your anchor? What’s something that you can fall back on and say? For me my anchor was when I was 19 and pregnant and getting married. I had no idea where I was going to live or how I was going to afford anything. For me, we were looking at apartments and I was like, “I don’t want this.” I didn’t want to settle. I was like, “I really would love to just get my own house.”
We started to look at maybe we could buy a house. I was looking and looking. We were looking and I couldn’t find anything that was good enough for my little baby, my family. I kept going into this one development and I was like, “I really want to live here.” But it was out of our price range. I was like, “I really want to live here,” and I didn’t get it out of my head. But I started to look at other places and then all of a sudden my ex-husband’s aunt was like, “If you stain my deck for me I’ll give you guys $25,000.”
Audrey: 00:25:16 Oh my God.
Nicole Amaturo: 00:25:18 Yeah exactly. I didn’t even know he had an aunt that had that kind of money that was that generous. I didn’t know anything about that and all of a sudden she was like, “Just stain my deck and I want to give you guys $25,000 to start your life.” There you go. I got into the price range that I was able to be in, the place I wanted to live, and I couldn’t figure that out, I couldn’t dream that-
Audrey: 00:25:38 Right.
Nicole Amaturo: 00:25:38 … that up if I wanted to.
Audrey: 00:25:39 Yeah you can’t plan for something like that.
Nicole Amaturo: 00:25:42 No. It’s not like, “Ooh, I hope your aunt gives us money.” No, I didn’t have that. So for me that was one of my biggest anchors. Another anchor was when I was a little girl and used to lay in bed and just dream of my dream life: to have a husband, to have a boy and a girl, and to be a teacher. I would literally lay in bed in Brooklyn and I would picture going to work, being a teacher, coming home and stopping at Jerry’s meats, at the time it was called, it was a butcher in Brooklyn, and getting chicken cutlets. Chicken cutlets is like my family’s sacred food, you know? And making chicken cutlets for my family and blah, blah, blah. I played that life out. I created it.
So I’m like, “Okay, something is to this.” I knew when I was pregnant, I knew it was a boy. I knew when I was having my second it was a girl. I’m like, I created this-
Audrey: 00:25:42 Wow.
Nicole Amaturo: 00:26:25 This is what’s happening.
Audrey: 00:26:26 Yeah.
Nicole Amaturo: 00:26:27 And those were my anchors, you know? What are you anchors? What are your things you couldn’t picture but you just knew was going to happen or that you couldn’t picture but it fell into place somehow, you know?
Audrey: 00:26:27 Right.
Nicole Amaturo: 00:26:40 And those are your anchors. Then I tell my clients, “Ask for sign.” Like I just had said before. Ask for your sign. Ask for a butterfly. The other day I asked for a butterfly and I walked out of my house, I went to the beach. I forgot I even asked and I haven’t seen a butterfly at the beach in I don’t remember when. All of a sudden this butterfly, a monarch beautiful butterfly literally came swooping down next to me and then away.
Audrey: 00:27:05 Oh my gosh.
Nicole Amaturo: 00:27:06 I was like, “Oh my god. I asked for a butterfly, I forgot. There’s my butterfly.”
Audrey: 00:27:10 That’s amazing.
Nicole Amaturo: 00:27:10 So this is where I would tell you to start. To just play around with it. Let it kind of like tickle you a little bit, you know?
Audrey: 00:27:10 Yeah.
Nicole Amaturo: 00:27:19 Get curious with it.
Audrey: 00:27:20 Yeah.
Nicole Amaturo: 00:27:21 And then start to implement little pieces into your life and you’ll see, I’m not alone.
Audrey: 00:27:27 That’s amazing and I think that feeling of not being alone when you’re in a difficult situation and being able to almost make the crack that is going to let that butterfly or that feather or whatever it is for you in that is going to help you know that you’re not alone, it’s a real game changer and I think it can really help people connect with these feelings of self worth that we’re talking about so that’s amazing.
Nicole Amaturo: 00:27:57 Right and that’s what got me through.
Audrey: 00:27:59 Right. So I want to know, we’re talking a lot about spirituality and I want to know how much a part of your life that was when you were growing up and also self-love because you talk a lot about self-love in your writing and that’s a lot of what you do as a coach. So tell us a little bit about where that came into your life and how it developed into what it is for you today.
Nicole Amaturo: 00:28:26 So my mom was very spiritual growing up and I just thought she was a nut job honestly. I was like, “Alright she’s crazy.” What is she conjuring up now, you know?
Audrey: 00:28:26 Yeah.
Nicole Amaturo: 00:28:39 And then as I started to get older I was like, okay maybe she’s on to something here. You know? Maybe she knows something that I don’t know.
She would play around with tarot cards and things like that and she went to her own spiritual teacher when I was younger and I just remember thinking that it was scary to me. I remember being scared of her spiritual teacher. She’d come over and she’d sleep over and stuff. I would be like, “She knows something about me that I don’t know.” She could see through me.
Audrey: 00:29:07 Wow.
Nicole Amaturo: 00:29:07 I was just scared of her. But I was so curious at the same time, okay? So it was always kind of like inbred in me, you know?
Audrey: 00:29:07 Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Nicole Amaturo: 00:29:17 About spirituality and about life. But my mother was more hidden with it. It wasn’t as cool as it is today, you know?
Audrey: 00:29:25 Yeah.
Nicole Amaturo: 00:29:25 It’s like new age now. It’s cool to say you meditate, you know?
Audrey: 00:29:25 Uh huh.
Nicole Amaturo: 00:29:29 It’s cool to say you play around with your chakras and things like that.
Audrey: 00:29:33 It’s at least more mainstream.
Nicole Amaturo: 00:29:35 Yeah, exactly. So it wasn’t like that back then, you know? So I just thought my mother was a little wacky. So that’s where it came from within me, I believe. I was always very curious. I’d ask her a ton of questions all the time and as I went to college I remember just sitting down and having discussions with her and talking to her. I remember her actually telling me one time she was in a laundromat and she felt what she used to call ‘Mother Mary’ come to her, right?
Audrey: 00:29:35 Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Nicole Amaturo: 00:30:08 I’m not big into religion. I was just like, “Okay, whatever that is.” Then one day when I was meditating I was looking at my vision journal and all of a sudden I got this wave of like energy all flooded throughout my body.
Audrey: 00:30:23 Wow.
Nicole Amaturo: 00:30:23 It was like, the best way to describe it, which it sounds funny. It was almost like multiple orgasms. Just going down your whole body like waves, you know?
Audrey: 00:30:33 Yeah.
Nicole Amaturo: 00:30:35 I was like, “Whoa, what is this??” My eyes were open and it just kept coming and kept coming. With it I got the message that it’s all already yours. It’s all here. It was when I was looking at my vision journal. I was like, “Okay what just happened?” Then I talked to my spiritual teacher. I was talking to her. It was a connection to source and my high self. I had spoken to my mother probably a year later and I asked her, “What was that experience that you had when you said we were younger?” She told me and I was like, “I had that. That’s what happened.”
Audrey: 00:31:09 Wow.
Nicole Amaturo: 00:31:09 So it’s the way we interpret it.
Audrey: 00:31:10 Yeah.
Nicole Amaturo: 00:31:11 You could be religious and you’re connected to God. You’re connected to who you believe. Mother Mary. If you look at it on the more spiritual side, you’re connected to source energy, universe. That is God. It’s all the same.
Audrey: 00:31:11 Yeah.
Nicole Amaturo: 00:31:27 It’s just how you believe it.
Audrey: 00:31:29 Yeah and I guess how it manifests in your life.
Nicole Amaturo: 00:31:33 Exactly.
Audrey: 00:31:33 Yeah. That also I think is empowering because it sort of puts you in the position where you get to decide what’s going to lead you and what’s going to influence you and that’s beautiful.
Nicole Amaturo: 00:31:47 You don’t have to follow anybody. That’s why I ask my clients, “What do you believe?” God. What do you want me to say?
Audrey: 00:31:52 Yeah.
Nicole Amaturo: 00:31:53 I meet them where they are, you know? Because it’s all the same.
Audrey: 00:31:57 Yeah. What about self-love? Is that something that was a part of your life or is that new?
Nicole Amaturo: 00:32:04 Oh that’s new.
Audrey: 00:32:07 Okay so what was self-love like when you were 19 and you met your ex-husband?
Nicole Amaturo: 00:32:13 Self love was kind of not a thing, honestly. I didn’t even know what it meant to honor myself, to step into my power. I didn’t know what it meant to meet my own needs, to be supported, to be emotional heard, to be seen significant. Those weren’t even things that I even knew of then. It was just kind of like as long as I married somebody that will take care of me, then I did right.
Audrey: 00:32:37 Wow.
Nicole Amaturo: 00:32:38 That I’m living what I’m supposed to live.
Audrey: 00:32:40 Yeah. I think it’s interesting ’cause you were just talking about how meditation and stuff. It’s like it’s so much more normal or mainstream now. I think self love also. I don’t remember hearing the term self-love ten years ago. It’s almost like an avenue that allows us to build a better life for ourselves.
Nicole Amaturo: 00:32:59 It is the avenue. It really is. That is the avenue. That’s like … What is it, Park Avenue, in the city? That is the avenue to take.
Audrey: 00:33:10 Yeah.
Nicole Amaturo: 00:33:10 That’s where everything is hiding behind is when you start to honor yourself, listen to yourself, see what that little person, that little girl inside of you needs because she has been hurt. She’s been neglected for so long that when you start to actually ask her, “What is it that you’re feeling?” You go back to that energy. One of the first things that I have my clients do is take out a picture of the little girl and instantly, as soon as they see that little girl, they instantly cry.
Audrey: 00:33:38 Aw.
Nicole Amaturo: 00:33:40 Yeah and what they cry about is they see this poor little girl. She was so innocent. She needs me. She’s hurting.
Audrey: 00:33:48 Yeah.
Nicole Amaturo: 00:33:50 That’s instant connection to the energy of their little person.
Audrey: 00:33:50 Right.
Nicole Amaturo: 00:33:55 But that little person needed a lot that she didn’t get.
Audrey: 00:33:59 Yeah. That’s true for everybody, I think.
Nicole Amaturo: 00:34:02 Even if you had the best life in the world.
Audrey: 00:34:04 Yeah. Yeah.
Nicole Amaturo: 00:34:04 Yeah.
Audrey: 00:34:04 Your struggles are your struggles. Even if you had a great childhood or a great marriage. You feel how you feel and that’s real and that can hurt even if there wasn’t abuse or something that really crossed a line. You feel how you feel.
Nicole Amaturo: 00:34:22 Yeah and that’s what you said like you feel how you feel is perception and the way a little girl interprets her environment right?
Audrey: 00:34:22 Right.
Nicole Amaturo: 00:34:31 Or a little boy interprets their environment. You could be busy on the phone. Let’s say you’re working, right? Your son or daughter comes up to you and they’re asking you something and you’re like, “Oh give me a minute. One second. Mommy will be with you in a minute.” You don’t have time for them in that moment. The little boy or little girl could walk away thinking mommy has other important things besides me.
Audrey: 00:34:51 Right.
Nicole Amaturo: 00:34:51 Let me stay out of her way. She’s busy.
Audrey: 00:34:54 Right.
Nicole Amaturo: 00:34:54 This little person learns to just stay in the background and stay out of the way because mommy can only handle so much. You’re not meaning to hurt this little person. You just tell them-
Audrey: 00:35:02 Right.
Nicole Amaturo: 00:35:02 I’ll be with you in a second but it’s how you’re interpreting your environment.
Audrey: 00:35:05 Right. As you get older you learn that’s not something to be hurt about. But as a child, you perceive it differently.
Nicole Amaturo: 00:35:14 Exactly. So on a conscious level we look at it like, I shouldn’t feel that way.
Audrey: 00:35:19 Yeah.
Nicole Amaturo: 00:35:21 I shouldn’t be that way. My father was just working two jobs that’s why he wasn’t around.
Audrey: 00:35:25 Yeah.
Nicole Amaturo: 00:35:25 Your little girl took that as emotional abandonment, as physical abandonment you know what I’m saying?
Audrey: 00:35:30 Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Nicole Amaturo: 00:35:30 So it doesn’t mean that your childhood was so messed up that you have to be fixed. No, you can have a great childhood but still have things-
Audrey: 00:35:39 Right.
Nicole Amaturo: 00:35:39 … that need to be worked out. The kinks.
Audrey: 00:35:40 Right and life today, too. So we’re going to take a quick break and then we’re going to come back and we’re going to talk about being able to identify what your life is like and what you deserve and what can be different. I want to hear more about the avenue that we all need to be taking and moving forwards with our lives on so we will be right back.
Speaker 1: 00:36:04 Moving past divorce is hard enough without your old engagement ring staring you in the eye every time you open your jewelry box. Worthy provides the smart solution for women looking to safely elevate their rings from dusty relics of hard times to financial assets to help you embrace your fresh start. Worthy covers the cost of insurance, shipping, grading, and more. So, if you’re going to sell, sell smart with Worthy. Go to Worthy.com/podcast to get started. We’re ready when you are.
Audrey: 00:36:38 We are back with Nicole and I hope you guys are enjoying this as much as Nicole and I are.
Nicole Amaturo: 00:36:44 I love it.
Audrey: 00:36:46 Yeah so basically, we talked about how you take this avenue of self-love and this is the way that if you lead with self-love, you’re going to create the kind of life that’s worth living. Our time on Earth is so short and you don’t want to waste it living anything besides your best life.
So you had ended your marriage, and was it awesome right away? What was it like? What happened?
Nicole Amaturo: 00:37:14 It felt awesome at first in the sense that I freed myself and I let go of all that pressure, okay? The release of pressure felt so good?
Audrey: 00:37:23 Yeah.
Nicole Amaturo: 00:37:24 But what didn’t feel so great was judgments of people and hearing from others that this one said that or that one said this and that was probably the hardest part in the beginning was me really stepping into my power knowing that I was doing the right thing for me. I was doing the right thing for my family which a lot of people would still disagree on and walking with my shoulders back and my face forward and just stepping into that power of knowing that I’m doing the right thing. It doesn’t matter what anybody else thinks.
Audrey: 00:37:58 Right. So I mean we love to talk about the stigma of divorce on the podcast and on our blog and our social channels because that’s really the reason that we created the podcast, too, is there is so much to say. I can’t tell you how many times I see somebody write on one of our Instagram posts, “God hates divorce” or something like that.
Nicole Amaturo: 00:37:58 Right.
Audrey: 00:38:22 It’s you know, it’s just so loaded with judgment and it’s just so unfair. We really want to be able to provide conversations and to reinforce to these amazing women that they are making a smart choice and they’re taking care of themselves and that’s really important. Anyone who’s judging them is just noise that they should block out.
Nicole Amaturo: 00:38:47 When someone’s judging you, what you have to also remember is it’s coming from their own stuff.
Audrey: 00:38:53 Right.
Nicole Amaturo: 00:38:55 Perfect example was when I was at this party one time and I was just getting comfortable with the dating world and I was like, “Okay, this feels good.” I’m like, “Okay, my kids are doing great. I feel good.” I was at one of my best friend’s parties and it was her mother-in-law came up to me and was just like, “Oh how are you doing?” I said, “Great. I feel good.” She was like, “But I don’t understand why you got divorced. He was a good guy. Don’t you know everybody else, everybody’s the same. You’re just going to get that again. You’re only going to find another guy that’s going to be the same way. They’re all the same.”
I was taken back at first ’cause I was just like, “Whoa. That’s a whole lot of stuff to unpack on me.”
Audrey: 00:39:39 Yeah, not super nice.
Nicole Amaturo: 00:39:41 Yeah, it wasn’t very compassionate, you know?
Audrey: 00:39:43 Right.
Nicole Amaturo: 00:39:45 But then what happened was, I just had a shift and I was like, “Oh my God, this poor woman.” She never left because she didn’t feel that she could find any better or that she could do any better or that she could honor herself. I knew that was true because I knew from my friend that that’s what the relationship was like for her in-laws, right?
So I was like, “She’s just putting her own things on me.”
Audrey: 00:40:11 Right.
Nicole Amaturo: 00:40:12 For that, I’m just going to send her love and wish her well.
Audrey: 00:40:15 You’re such an amazing person.
Nicole Amaturo: 00:40:18 It’s really hard at first.
Audrey: 00:40:19 Yeah. Yeah.
Nicole Amaturo: 00:40:21 But it was nothing about me.
Audrey: 00:40:23 Yeah. I think a lot of people can relate to that feeling. It’s almost like she decided that there was nothing better out there for her and so there was nothing better out there for you and it’s like she’s leading with fear and I think it’s exactly what you were saying before that if she was leading with self-love, that wouldn’t have been what had stopped her and I do want to come back and talk a little bit about people’s reaction to your divorce in a little bit but I also want to jump ahead to like, was she right?
Nicole Amaturo: 00:40:56 That I couldn’t find anybody better?
Audrey: 00:40:57 Yeah.
Nicole Amaturo: 00:40:58 No, she was absolutely wrong.
Audrey: 00:41:00 So why don’t you tell about us about what has happened for you in the last few years?
Nicole Amaturo: 00:41:05 So it’s funny. I wasn’t finding anybody better. I didn’t even know what was wrong with my ex-husband at the time that I left because I was like, “What is wrong with me?” You know? Then when I started to go down the avenue of self-love, I realized what was missing in the relationship, right? I started to give that to myself. First and foremost, I wasn’t being emotionally supported, right? I wasn’t being emotionally heard. Okay. Well where was that not happening in me? So I started to be there for me. I started to listen to me and be there for myself and put my needs first. Honestly I started to have to allow myself to be vulnerable if I was going to attract somebody that could be vulnerable. So we all like to blame it on the other person, right?
Audrey: 00:41:55 Right.
Nicole Amaturo: 00:41:56 Like, well he’s just not this and he’s not doing that. Where I learned, okay, well what do I need to fix within me that-
Audrey: 00:41:56 Yeah.
Nicole Amaturo: 00:42:02 … if I’m attracting someone that’s emotionally unavailable.
Audrey: 00:42:05 Or like, “What am I not fully aware of?” It’s like your little girl, right? What is my little girl bringing to this relationship?
Nicole Amaturo: 00:42:15 Absolutely.
Audrey: 00:42:16 Yeah.
Nicole Amaturo: 00:42:16 Think about it. In everybody’s marriage, everybody’s relationship there’s you and there’s your husband and your partner and there’s your little girl and there’s this little boy.
Audrey: 00:42:24 Yeah and all the people that hurt both of you-
Nicole Amaturo: 00:42:28 Yes.
Audrey: 00:42:28 … up until the day you met each other. Or judged you-
Nicole Amaturo: 00:42:28 Exactly.
Audrey: 00:42:32 … or told you that you weren’t going to be able to find someone better than your ex-husband at your friend’s party.
Nicole Amaturo: 00:42:38 Yes.
Audrey: 00:42:38 Everything. It’s all there with you all the time.
Nicole Amaturo: 00:42:42 So what I did was, I started to listen to myself and allow myself to be vulnerable which was a really scary thing to let someone else into my world.
Audrey: 00:42:52 Yeah.
Nicole Amaturo: 00:42:53 To let someone, let my guard down. ‘Cause I thought I was. I was like, “Well I talk about my feelings. I talk about this. I talk about that.” But I wasn’t. I wasn’t letting people in to see the part of me that was fearful and the part of me that was scared and the part of me that felt insecure and the part of me that was hurt by something that somebody else did like a guy.
Audrey: 00:43:13 Yeah.
Nicole Amaturo: 00:43:13 You know? I just acted tough all the time like I can handle this. This doesn’t phase me. Blah, blah blah. I allowed myself to kind of come down and step into my feminine energy, honestly ’cause I was very-
Audrey: 00:43:25 Right.
Nicole Amaturo: 00:43:25 … much more my masculine energy of like doing and being-
Audrey: 00:43:29 Yeah.
Nicole Amaturo: 00:43:29 … and going to get something, you know? I stepped more back into my feminine energy and started to love myself and hear myself and meet my needs and break down my walls with people that necessarily I was scared to do it with.
Audrey: 00:43:44 Right. You know, I think it’s interesting because you use the word tough. You said, “I stepped away from that into my feminine energy.” But I think something that I think we’re all learning and I think society is kind of embracing right now, which is quite a beautiful thing, is that that feminine energy when you’re kind of taking down your walls, it might not be tough in the sense that it’s not maybe aggressive or defensive, but it’s still strength and it’s a beautiful kind of strength.
Being able to kind of open yourself up in that way and say, “Okay you know what? This is the core of who I am. This is the pain that I carry with me. These are the high points of my life that I carry with me and this is the sticky, vulnerable part of who I am. But once you’re able to do that, I think that’s when you can connect with somebody in the best possible way. We are all about saying that you don’t need a relationship to be a full person but there is something really magical about companionship especially when it’s those deepest parts of who you are, the good and the bad. That’s strength, I think.
Nicole Amaturo: 00:44:57 I just love you Audrey.
Audrey: 00:44:58 Oh my God.
Nicole Amaturo: 00:44:59 I really do. I just adore you. You’re so right. Yes. There’s a difference between being tough and being powerful.
Audrey: 00:45:07 Right.
Nicole Amaturo: 00:45:08 There’s a difference between acting like you don’t care and being a tough guy but being powerful and stepping into your strength.
Audrey: 00:45:18 I think it’s bravery, too. That’s another word that maybe you wouldn’t have been able to identify as female energy, but it’s powerful. It’s strength. It’s bravery.
Nicole Amaturo: 00:45:29 Totally and that’s what I started to do. That was really hard because let me tell you as a little girl, I made a deal with myself that if I didn’t act tough in my environment I was going to die.
Audrey: 00:45:41 Oh my gosh.
Nicole Amaturo: 00:45:42 So you know what I’m saying?
Audrey: 00:45:43 Yeah.
Nicole Amaturo: 00:45:43 I had to be thick skinned and I had to be a tough guy instead of being vulnerable and saying how I felt because that wasn’t going to get met where I was.
Audrey: 00:45:43 Right.
Nicole Amaturo: 00:45:56 So as a little girl I thought I needed to be tough and I was the little girl that would go back at my mom and answer back all the-
Nicole Amaturo: 00:46:00 I was the little girl that would go back at my mom and answer back all the time, and so I put on this exterior to the whole world. I mean because I felt like this is who I needed to be to survive, and that’s like a long time to take that armor off. Even to this day me and my boyfriend will joke and he’ll say or do something, and then he’ll be like, “All right, you’re acting like a porcupine. You have to like not go into those old habits.” I’m like, “Oh, you’re right. Yes, you’re right. I just really want you to hug me and love me right now.”
Audrey: 00:46:35 That’s exactly it. I think when you embrace that real core of who you are, the good and the bad and you can share it with a person, they can point it out to you. That’s not just self love, that’s being able to share yourself love with somebody else and they can build it up for you. After you’ve been through this kind of relationship where you were able to recognize that it wasn’t working for you. If you’re going to spend your life with somebody, it should be in this way. It should be somebody who sees the pieces of you that are a porcupine, and then find a way to hug you anyway. That’s the point I think, and if that’s not what it is, you shouldn’t feel bad about stepping away from it.
Nicole Amaturo: 00:47:18 It’s like I’m aware of his little boy in our relationship and he’s aware of my little girl in our relationship, and we know what’s being played out when we think we’re arguing about something silly. It’s really not about that, it’s about what this little boy is feeling or my little girl is feeling, and it’s such a beautiful different relationship. You avoid so much drama honestly, just knowing that and like you said, lifting each other up when you need that little extra boost of a reminder and like you said, yes, it’s great to be on your own, but oh my God, it’s just so beautiful to have like a companion that you share that with and you share you with them.
Audrey: 00:47:59 I think for anybody who’s listening that doesn’t have that, I think that doesn’t necessarily have to be romantic. It can be the relationship that you have with your kids or your parents or your friends or a romantic partner. Actually, now that I’m saying that, I’m thinking that it relates also like you have your friends, but then you have your friends who they don’t just love you, they know your little girl and they love your little girl too and that’s the point, right?
Nicole Amaturo: 00:48:27 Absolutely.
Audrey: 00:48:27 Those are the relationships that make life worth living, and you want to surround yourself with people who see all those parts of you and love you for them.
Nicole Amaturo: 00:48:37 Right. You know what the key is, is first you seeing them and accepting them. First you seeing that you’re imperfect and that you’re vulnerable and allowing other people to see that, that’s where you make that connection. Like one of my high school friends, I’ve been friends with her since I’m freshmen in high school, and she’s seen every stage of my life. She’s been in my house when I got into a huge argument with my mom, since I’m a little girl. She was the one that was there, we were about to leave to walk out of the house and all of a sudden my mother threw me with, “Did you do the laundry?” She helped me fold the laundry.
Audrey: 00:49:14 You guys have been through a lot.
Nicole Amaturo: 00:49:16 She’s been through all the stages and it’s such a beautiful thing that like now she knows me in an out, and that’s such like you said, it doesn’t have to be just an intimate partner. You have these friends and you also have friends that you don’t know a lifetime that just are so good at things that you instantly feel like you could be naked in front of them, you’ll bear your soul. That’s what connection and vulnerability is.
Audrey: 00:49:40 When you are making that decision to leave a marriage or you just left a marriage and you’re surrounded by that kind of judgment. People are going to say something even like, you have this story and you made the right choice. When there’s so much judgment, it can be hard to feel there are people like that at all, but you shared this really beautiful article with Worthy. It’s called Why My Kids Still Like Me After I Divorced Their Dad.
Let me start just by thanking you for sharing this story and for writing it because I see all the comments that people write on this when share it, and this article means the world to people. There are so many people who are in the middle of making this decision, and they’re so afraid of how it’s going to affect their children, and it’s one thing for your friend’s mom to say something to you or your friends mother-in-law, even good stuff like the woman at the nail salon, but at the end of the day there’s you know that your divorce is going to impact your kids.
We actually have been talking about this, this whole episode, how you have like all these little things, whether it’s intentional or not, kids carry experiences with them forever. I think that for so many people, this is the hardest part, and what you wrote I think is so liberating for people who are worried about this. I’m going to read a little piece of it and then I want you to tell us about your amazing kids and your relationship with them.
You wrote, Most would think I was crazy to leave the life that I had. It looked great on the outside. What I did after my divorce is what I wish for everyone else out there. I created a life that finally feels good on the inside rather than looks good on the outside, and quite honestly I think I did even better. I created both. It looks and feels damn good, and that right there is how I managed to raise kids that actually like me after a divorce.
You also wrote, my daughter told me that my spirit is different today. I am genuinely happy now, I am at peace. I find love all around me and in everything I do. My son comes home from college now, and he tells me how he manifested this and manifested that. He began to seek his own truth and find his own power without me shoving it, his throat. He grew up with me in that environment in the past few years. He now understands me and thanks me for being who I was for him.
My other daughter told me that she still likes me because she knew I would always love her no matter what. She knew just because we weren’t a nuclear family. She was still always loved by her mom and her dad and her needs were always met. My kids still like me even after a divorce because through me, they are truly finding themselves. They’re owning their own power, seeing that nothing is impossible. Dreaming in amazement as they watch all of my dreams come true. They are truly learning how to love themselves.
Let’s all wipe our eyes.
Nicole Amaturo: 00:52:41 Oh man, I love those little people.
Audrey: 00:52:47 That piece that you taught your kids to love themselves and take care of themselves. I can’t even imagine a better lesson than that.
Nicole Amaturo: 00:52:57 I don’t know if it was this article or another one, it might have been this one where I got some feedback on it, like you said, from people that were scarred from their own parents divorce basically, and we’re staying in a marriage that they weren’t happy with because that’s what God says they should do. It struck me how lucky I was, to not listen to the outside, and trust what I instilled in my children. Trust that we would always be okay, and just trust that I was doing the right thing because now my kids, I mean I don’t know anybody that has a better relationship with their kids honestly.
I absolutely adore every single one of them. They’re so different. They all have their own little personalities and like in the article I wrote about my son. When my son was about 14, he’s 19 now. When he was about 13 or 14, I think he saw me crying in the kitchen because I was very torn, I didn’t know what to do and he was around, like you said, kids see things, they hear things, they know things. He just came over to me and he’s a boy, he wasn’t as emotional. He had always struggled a little bit with his emotions, and he just came over to me and he hugged me and he was like, “Mom, I’m going to go away to college in a few years. You have to be happy.” I could cry thinking about it.
From that moment I was like, “I need to teach my kids to go after what they want and to make themselves happy.” If my little person is telling me like, “Mom, you have to be happy.” How do I show him no, I’m not going to be happy. I’m not going to go after my happiness, I’m going to settle. How do I do that? From that moment I was just like, ” I’m doing a good job, my kids get it.” Yeah, it was shocking, to my little ones.
My daughter was, how old was she? She was about seven, my youngest when I got divorced and my other one was about 10. It was shocking to them, but I talked to them every step of the way. I listened to their feelings, I acknowledged them. It wasn’t always perfect because I was doing my own healing, at times they were sometimes being supportive for me, but we went through it together. My daughter just had her sweet 16 and even for her candle that she wrote me, “She doesn’t know anybody stronger and more powerful, and seeing me go after my dreams has done nothing but inspired her and she admires me.” I’m just like, my little one, she’s like the spiritual little being and she puts me in check sometimes. We’re like a team.
Then when my boyfriend came into my life I was just like, “How is this going to fit in? This is my team, these are my little people. You have to be really special to come into my world, my life.” When he came in, at first there was resistance, from two of them. My little one welcomed in right away because she sensed the energy. Actually, she said to me, she was like, “Mom, I feel he has such great energy, he’s such a nice person.” My other two were a little more resistant, but slowly but surely he’s our world now. I sit on the couch at night sometimes I see him holding my daughter’s hand and my other daughter’s hand and they’re just sitting there watching TV and he’s holding both of their hands and I just sit back and I’m like, “This is what I dreamed of. This is what I’ve dreamed of.”
Audrey: 00:56:47 It never would have happened if you hadn’t had the courage, and the self love to say, “I want my life to be more than this.”
Nicole Amaturo: 00:56:58 Exactly. It’s not me, it’s not my fault. I don’t have to settle, I had a belief that I don’t get what I want. I had to reverse that belief big time to get what I wanted in life.
Audrey: 00:57:12 Right. Thank you so much for sharing all of those details about your team. I mean, it’s so sweet and I know that there are so many people who need to hear that living a life that isn’t as good as it could be for you, is raising the bar that your kids are going to set for the rest of their lives as they make their decisions of what they want to do and who they want to be with.
Society might tell us all the time that the best thing that we can do for our kids is to stay married or to model that kind of devotion. I think there’s, this is a real family with a real story and there is so much value here, and if you’re feeling guilty about it, just remember that you’re modeling strength and power and bravery and it’s an amazing gift to give to your kids even if there are hard moments of it.
Nicole Amaturo: 00:58:12 Totally. This sums it up, this little story of my daughter. My daughter was talking to her aunt, so it was my ex sister-in-law, and she said she wanted a Corrie bracelet or a ring, I can’t remember which one it was. My ex sister-in-law said, “Oh, you better marry rich, then Tour.” My daughter Victoria said, “Marry rich? I’m going to get it.” I was like, “Damn, I did it.”
Audrey: 00:58:36 That’s the best, that’s amazing.
Nicole Amaturo: 00:58:36 I did it.
Audrey: 00:58:42 Well, you did it. You’re doing it. You’re about to do it again, right?
Nicole Amaturo: 00:58:47 Yes. I’m seven months pregnant.
Audrey: 00:58:50 Which is just the best news ever I think because you are obviously such an amazing mother, and such a wonderful presence to have in a little child’s life and I’m so excited for your new baby.
Nicole Amaturo: 00:58:50 Thank you.
Audrey: 00:59:02 We’re running out of time and I really want to make sure that we talk a little bit about your coaching business and the different ways that people can interact with you aside from listening to this podcast and reading your articles that you write for us, because you do so much. I want to make sure that you have an opportunity to share that with everybody.
Nicole Amaturo: 00:59:24 I have my group with amazing, amazing, amazing women that are all like you are, and it’s called Manifest Love Through Self Love. There’s free trainings in there, and there’re different courses you can take.
Audrey: 00:59:37 This group is on Facebook, right?
Nicole Amaturo: 00:59:39 This is on Facebook. Yes. I’m connecting with other women and not feeling alone is one of the biggest things, and I provide an outlet for all of you to come be yourselves. Strip down to your soul, talk about what’s going on with you. I can’t tell you Audrey, how many people come to me and say, I’m in an unhappy marriage. I don’t know where to start. How did you do it? That was what I needed to provide for other women. That’s Manifest Love Through Self Love on Facebook. You can also follow me on Instagram at Nicole Amaturo. Facebook, you can also follow me at Nicole Amaturo and make it very easy.
Audrey: 01:00:22 We’ll actually link all of your channels on Worthy.com/podcast. You have a website, right?
Nicole Amaturo: 01:00:31 Yeah. My website is nicoleamaturo.com.
Audrey: 01:00:34 I want you to talk because you’ve got this, you have the FLY Girl Academy, you have all these different things that you’re doing to help people realize the power of self and heal so that they can manifest the same love that you have in your life now. Tell us a little bit about the things that offer there.
Nicole Amaturo: 01:00:53 I have always my one on one coaching, which allows you to go deep within your yourself and get that individualized attention. Then I also have Loving 21, which is a manifestation of love course, which would come after you do the healing part. When you’re ready for it, to manifest the love into your life and that’s a digital course. I have Healing 21, which is another digital course if you don’t have the ways to work one on one with me, those are your options.
I also have FLY Girl Academy, FLY stands for First Love Yourself and it’s an experience. It is a group coaching program that’s extremely affordable for everyone to get into, whether you’re working through being in a marriage that doesn’t work for you, you’re trying to figure it all out. Whether you’re single and you’re trying to heal and manifest love, but first you know you need to heal yourself. This is all through FLY Girl Academy, we talk about vibration, energy, feeling your little girls, but I don’t want to go too much into it because there’s so much exciting parts of it that I want you to experience it yourself.
Audrey: 01:02:01 Great. We will link to you. Also, I mean I know you have a baby coming that we’re going to have to have you back on the podcast because I have had a blast.
Nicole Amaturo: 01:02:11 I’d love to.
Audrey: 01:02:11 You have so much wisdom to share and I think your story is just so relatable, and you are just such a beautiful example of a woman who really did embrace her fresh start after divorce and you show what life is really about. It’s not the car that you have in your driveway or the house that you have. It’s how you feel and the way that you interact with yourself and other people and it’s just such an amazing thing. Before I let you go, we have that final question that we tease before, and now I’m dying to know. What is the craziest thing that you have visualized manifested in your life, Nicole?
Nicole Amaturo: 01:02:51 Well, it actually changed from what I was going to tell you.
Audrey: 01:02:54 Well, you can tell us both.
Nicole Amaturo: 01:02:57 Okay.
Audrey: 01:02:58 We’ll go crazy.
Nicole Amaturo: 01:03:00 We’ll be wild today. I love it. One of them was, when I was looking for my signs I had been seeing 444 which are angel numbers, and I went to the Mac machine to take out $400 one day, and I think we all know you can’t take out like singles at a Mac machine. I typed in four, I literally typed in $400. Guess what I got out of the Mac machine? $444.
Audrey: 01:03:28 Oh my God.
Nicole Amaturo: 01:03:30 Isn’t that insane?
Audrey: 01:03:31 It gave you singles?
Nicole Amaturo: 01:03:33 It gave me singles.
Audrey: 01:03:35 That’s wild.
Nicole Amaturo: 01:03:36 I looked at my receipt and it said 444.
Audrey: 01:03:39 You’ve changed my mind about literally the whole universe in this episode. Wow.
Nicole Amaturo: 01:03:45 I was mind blown.
Audrey: 01:03:47 That’s wild. Wow.
Nicole Amaturo: 01:03:49 That was that, and then honestly, right now my little baby, my little baby inside of me is one of the biggest manifestations that I didn’t even realize how powerful I was being. When we first met me and my boyfriend, we had a name picked out for my little man, our little man before he was even into existence. What we would do is, we would call him by his name all the time, we’d be like, when I’ll just announce his name, his name is going to be Nolan Parker. When we would talk about Nolan and we’d be like, “Oh, Nolan’s going to, when Nolan is here.” Then I’d looked in the backseat of my car and pretend Nolan was there, and we would go to the mall and my boyfriend would be like real a carriage and if he would call, he would pretend the baby was in there.
Then we went to this little town and there was a Christmas shop, and we saw that the ornament that said Nolan and we bought it. We were like, “Okay, we know we’re going to have him. It’s just like, when?” Right? At night, I would lay in bed, and my boyfriend would just have his arms around me and be on my stomach, and I would picture like, “Oh when we’re pregnant, this is what it’ll feel like blah blah blah.” Sure enough, my little man came into existence.
Audrey: 01:05:07 I love that name. It sounds like an expensive brand. I love it. It’s great, and it’s such a beautiful story. I’m just so happy for you and I’m so happy for our listeners who have the opportunity to work with you and find their happy too because there is a bright future out there for everybody, and we all have the same ability to create the life that we truly deserved for ourselves.
Nicole Amaturo: 01:05:33 Yes, yes, yes.
Audrey: 01:05:34 Nicole, thank you so much. We’re going to have you back soon.
Nicole Amaturo: 01:05:36 I can’t wait Audrey.
Audrey: 01:05:39 Again, go to Worthy.com/podcast to find all things Nicole because we know that you are as big of a fan of hers is we are.
Nicole Amaturo: 01:05:47 Thank you so much.
Speaker 2: 01:05:50 Thanks again to Nicole for joining us and to all of you for listening. Next week, we’ll be chatting with Lauren McKinley and going deep into her personal story of infidelity in her marriage. Lauren is an incredible example of a strong and sweet woman who managed to create an amazing life for herself after a traumatic first marriage. We’re especially excited to bring you this episode because so many of you have reached out asking us to talk about infidelity.
It’s one of the reasons we opened our new Facebook group, Worthy Women and Divorce. We love to hear from you and want to keep giving you the content that will best help you embrace your fresh start. If you haven’t joined yet, you can find a link at Worthy.com/podcast. Make sure you subscribe so you can catch every new episode of divorce and other things you can handle in your feed weekly. If you like what you hear, rate and review us to help other women like you find us.
Thanks for listening to divorce and things you can handle a branded podcasts from worthy, dedicated to celebrating women like you as you embrace a new beginning after divorce, separation or whatever. Worthy is an online auction platform designed to help you sell valuable items like an engagement ring or wedding set. When you decide to send your ring in, we pay for the shipping and insurance to ensure that it arrived safely to our New York office.
Once we received the ring, we have it professionally graded and photographed, which helps it sell competitively in our buyer network. One of the best parts of working with worthy is that you get to set the minimum on your item. After the grading, our gemologist will give you a recommended selling minimum, but at the end of the day you get to decide how much you want to sell the ring for. If the highest fit comes in below that threshold and you decide not to accept it, we’ll send you your ring back and we’ll even cover the costs of the insurance shipping again. Let us help you get the best deal possible for the jewelry you’ve outgrown. Are you ready to embrace your fresh start? Us too. Go to Worthy.com/podcast to learn more.
Divorce is the end of one chapter, but it’s also an opportunity to create the life you always dreamed of. You are the author of the story of your life, get some inspiration from “Divorce & Other Things You Can Handle!” The divorce podcast that will keep you thriving as you embrace your fresh start!
©2011-2024 Worthy, Inc. All rights reserved.
Worthy, Inc. operates from 25 West 45th St., 2nd Floor, New York, NY 10036