A woman raised watching her mother sacrifice everything for her family internalized the same pattern in her marriage. After divorce, she confronted the emptiness of that identity and began asking who she was beyond being a self-sacrificing partner, determined to break the cycle for herself.
But I modeled a lot of how I showed up in my first relationship after how I saw her showing up in her relationship with my dad and in her relationship with us. Because Mom was always— Mom always took a, took a back seat. It was first, it was my dad and then the kids. It might have been the other way around, maybe her kids first and then, you know, my dad. But she was never part of that equation because she always put other people first. So I always thought that the way for me to be a good wife was to put my husband first, to put his needs first, to help him grow his business, to do all of these things. And when I came out of my divorce, I was like, who am I and what do I want?
