Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Kimberly Novosel Revereza. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.
Hi Kimberly, really appreciate your meeting with us today to talk about some particularly personal topics. It means a lot because so many in the community are going through circumstances where your insights and experience and lessons might help, so thank you so much in advance for sharing. The first question we have is about divorce and how you overcame divorce and didn’t allow the trauma of divorce to derail your vision for your life and career.
Ooph. I could write a whole book on this experience (and, actually, I’m working on it!).
A little over a year ago I found out my husband was having an affair. I did not even know he was unhappy before he began acting strange just a couple of months before that, and I grew increasingly sick and anxious as my intuition picked up on the shift and began to know that something was really, deeply wrong.
When I found out, a few things happened: I knew I could ask him to leave and begin the divorce process or that I could stay and try to make things work and find a way to forgive him. I didn’t have immediate certainty in which way I wanted things to go, so I kind of did both. I hired a divorce team and I worked to sift through the damage to see what, if anything, was worth saving. I saw him with empathy, and I put up boundaries to protect myself from being continually hurt, lied to, and abused.
The most important thing I did was within those first few days. Despite the pain and shock and disembodiment I was experiencing, there was a moment I caught my reflection in the mirror. I stopped and said to myself: “I know you, and I’ve got you.”
And that knowing lit my path forward through everything that was to come. I trusted myself to know when it was time to make a decision. About three months after finding out I officially filed for divorce. I trusted myself to plan what my new life would look like: I moved with our daughter to Portland, Oregon, my favorite city. I trusted myself to guide myself through the healing process (and still am, though to a much lesser degree these days), knowing that it takes the time it takes and that everyone’s grief and healing looks different.
How did I overcome divorce? I trusted myself. I listened to my inner voice. I honored my intuition. I leaned deeply into what makes me, me. I created a life where all of that has the soil and space to flourish.
Let’s take a small detour – maybe you can share a bit about yourself before we dive back into some of the other questions we had for you?
I am a longtime entrepreneur who came to meditation as a way to heal my anxiety and addiction to busyness. I found the practices of meditation and mindfulness to be so life-changing that in 2017 I retired from my 17-year entertainment industry career to share meditation with others who are seeking healing, a slower pace, and a deeper connection with themselves.
In January of 2019 I founded Flourish Meditation where I teach meditation teacher trainings, personal growth workshops, retreats, and one-on-one sessions. My classes and experiences are reflective, purposeful, and – sorry, not sorry! – challenging.
As a lifelong writer, former columnist, and published author, I love working with written words, a passion and skill that adds an additional layer of soul to my work. I write weekly essays at Substack and hope to release a second book in the next couple of years.
On a personal note (though all of this is personal to me!), I am just finding myself on the other side of the grief of betrayal and divorce. Without the practices I’ve developed for myself all these years, this season would have been far harder to navigate through than it was, and now more than ever I seek to guide others into themselves and their own healing through my work.
I absolutely love facilitating conversations whether between myself and one student or in a group workshop setting, where people have the space to be vulnerable, to hear and support each other, and to learn something new about themselves. It is not uncommon for someone to spend two hours in one of my workshops and call it “life changing” – what an honor it is to do this work.
At Flourish we have several offerings that people can access from anywhere: my one-on-one sessions are on Zoom plus we have several online video courses in meditation and guided self-inquiry. You can also subscribe to my Substack where I publish a new essay every Thursday, and listen to my meditations on Insight Timer.
There is so much advice out there about all the different skills and qualities folks need to develop in order to succeed in today’s highly competitive environment and often it can feel overwhelming. So, if we had to break it down to just the three that matter most, which three skills or qualities would you focus on?
The three most important things I’ve learned or done are patience, unbecoming, and truly committing to the ongoing work on myself.
The first important skill or quality in any field of work or life is patience. Then more patience than that. Then even more. Oh, how I expected to have life figured out by thirty. Then by forty I realized that not having it figured out is actually the only way to be. There is no figured out. There is no timeline. There is only patience.
Second is the ongoing stripping away of everything you aren’t. Whether it’s something that no longer serves you or an expectation put on you by family or society, we should be doing more unlearning than we’re learning. We should be doing more becoming who we truly are rather than trying to make someone new out of ourselves. I have a student who loves to travel and she can do her work from anywhere, and she’s in the process releasing the pressure she feels to “settle down” and sign a lease somewhere. Just because that’s what “people do” doesn’t mean that’s right for her. Find your inner voice, the one that speaks gentle loving truth to you, and listen to it all the time.
Third: do the work on yourself, always and forever. I had a lovely upbringing and yet as I’ve worked on who I am now and how I’ve become her, I’ve learned that the habits taught to me by my religious schooling for many years are not in service of my wellbeing. Things like not speaking up for myself to avoid conflict have actually put me in danger many times over the years, for example. I’ve also learned from monitoring my stress coping-mechanisms that I’m autistic. I learned this at 35! Knowing, now, I can learn from a set of tools that I didn’t know before applied to me. It’s changed so much for me. The questions we never stop asking are: Who am I? How do I behave? Why? What do I need to let go of? What would help me most? How do I feel? Where does that live in my body? How do I become more me? What is my truth? Again, and again, and again.
Awesome, really appreciate you opening up with us today and before we close maybe you can share a book recommendation with us. Has there been a book that’s been impactful in your growth and development?
The book Tiny Beautiful Things by Cheryl Strayed is somewhat of a bible for me.
In it, she answers letters from people about their pain, losses, struggles, or hopes with an almost unbearable amount of raw, vulnerable truth. As “Dear Sugar,” the advice she gives is universal and profound.
A favorite that I come back to again and again are when she references the not-to-be lives – the jobs we don’t get, the people who don’t love us, whether to become parents or not, whatever it is – as the ghost ship that doesn’t carry us. “There’s nothing to do but salute it from the shore,” she writes.
In other words, it’s a beautiful reminder to let go of what isn’t for us.
The book is full of these moments.
I hope my writing is too. Please come read it!
Contact Info:
- Website: https://kimberlynovosel.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/kimberlynovosel/
- Twitter: https://www.threads.net/@kimberlynovosel
- Other: My business, Flourish Meditation: https://flourishmeditation.com/ Flourish on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/flourishmeditation/ My writing: https://kimberlyrev.substack.com/ My meditations: https://insighttimer.com/kimberlynovosel
Image Credits
Kati Hoy, Anna Haas
