Break the Cycle of Toxic Love for Good | Sheleana Aiyana

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You have an amazing book, Becoming the One, that is taken over the world by storm, an amazing community at Rising Women. And you have this really interesting story that I started to read more about where you were in and out of foster care for a while. Is that right? Up until you were 16, I think.

Yeah.

You grew up without a father.

Yeah.

And your mother was also kind of having some challenges, so it felt like an intermittent mother. Yeah. Kind of off and on.

Yeah.

How does someone who grows up in foster care, has to work multiple jobs at 16 to survive, and doesn't really have the mother that maybe they desired, how does someone turn out healthy, conscious, and in a loving, committed relationship with a beautiful child? How does that happen?

Well, you know, part of it I can explain and part of it I feel like is just grace. I often wonder that myself because I think so many of us go through these things. And I wonder, you know, what's the difference between a person who experiences just as much or more trauma and doesn't make it out versus a person who does. And sometimes I feel that it comes down to knowing that we were loved because even though I went through so much pain and I experienced a lot of abandonment and abuse and all of these things, there was this part of me that knew that I was loved.

Really?

Yeah. Like I knew that my mom loved me. I knew she couldn't care for me.

When did you know this? How old were you?

Like your whole childhood?

I think I always knew. You know, even though there's a lot of wounding and a lot of relational rupture and virtually no security at all, I still knew that she loved me. And so that, I believe, is one of the most important things that we carry with us is to know that we are loved. And so I always carry that as a relational principle as well. It's like how we remind people that they're loved and that they're cared for, even if we go through hard things together or we have traumatic experiences. Just having that as a base, I think, is what allows us to survive it.

How did you— I mean, so you knew that, like, in your core, you knew that you were loved even though your father wasn't around, your mother was off and on, and you were in foster care. You still knew it. Yeah.

You know, there's something about growing up with a single mom, and I think most people who have experienced that dyad know it's a very deep, intimate relationship. I mean, all relationships with our parents in some way are very deep and intimate, even if it's just in our own hearts and minds. Um, but I had this very deep relationship with my mom and because she experienced mental illness and all of these developmental issues, it was more like having a friend. So when I look back at my history with her, there are a lot of good memories with play because she was more like my age, so we could have a lot of fun together. She just couldn't care for me or create a safe container or boundaries or be consistent in any way because she wasn't able to do that for herself. And so we did have a lot of fun in those moments where, you know, we were being kids together. And I knew that she had a lot of love for me. And also I saw a lot of suffering. Like there was a lot of self-harm and a lot of her having to be in somewhere else so that she could survive, right? And so that helped me build a lot of compassion once I moved through it.

But I mean, how old were you when you started to understand how to have compassion for your mom?

True compassion, I was probably 28 years old.

Okay. Yeah.

Yeah.

It took a while.

Oh yeah.

You weren't like, I'm 12 and I need my mom to be there for me and I have compassion that she's emotionally unstable in this moment or suffering. Yeah.

I mean, I knew that she was, but it was more painful for me. So I remember, you know, packing my whole world into my backpack and running away in the middle of the night from foster homes and walking for 3 to 4 hours in the middle of the night to show up on her doorstep.

Really?

And sleeping outside on her doorstep, wanting her to let me in. Or her, you know, she was in the hospital a lot, and so often she wouldn't even be there. So I was just a kid looking for the love of her mom, you know, and I loved my mom a lot. And so eventually that sort of turned into bitterness and a really rough exterior. Which is how I started, which is a lot of anger.

So you were very angry kind of your late teens, early 20s?

Even really as a kid, that was my main defense mechanism. Emotion, yeah, yeah. Like I was much more comfortable sharing anger than sadness. We all have this, it's either anger on the front or sadness on the front, and what's underneath it is the opposite emotion. And because of the environment I grew up in, vulnerability wasn't safe. And then as I hit 12 years old, I was drinking, sleeping on couches, hanging with people who were 5 to 10 years older than me, in and out of jail, doing drugs. So being vulnerable was not safe. And so anger was all that I knew how to show. I really didn't know how to let love in at all.

Wow. So you were craving love, but you didn't know how to let it in because it wasn't there consistently. Also, maybe it was there when you were playing with your mom from time to time, but it wasn't a consistent feeling. Yeah, it wasn't safe.

It wasn't safe. And as I got older, I represented a lot for her too, and she wasn't mothered past probably 9, right, at all. She was never mothered.

But so she was looking for you to help her a lot.

Exactly.

And be strong for her and help her. That's a lot of weight though on a child.

Yeah, yeah, it was. Yeah. And it was also sort of a gift in disguise now, you know. She said to me when she was visiting last, she said, how do you love me? Like, why do you still love me after everything that I've done and put you through? And I joked with her and I said, well, Well, now I have a blossoming career, you know? But the reality is, is who knows who I would be without the gifts of those lessons. And I always felt, even at a very young age, that these lessons were experiences for me to gather so that I could be of service. Wow. Not so that I could just sit in suffering.

You had that feeling like, I'm going through this pain, this is gonna help me one day.

Yeah.

Really?

Yeah, I had visions of it when I was very young.

I never had that thought literally until maybe 5 years ago. Where when challenging things would happen in my life, I was sad, frustrated, you know, anxious, depressed, whatever it was, upset, angry, all these different things. I wasn't thinking this is happening for my future self to like serve in a greater way. That wasn't until about 5 years ago when I, when I kept going through breakdowns and I was like, every breakdown I've had in my past has helped me now. Like it's given me some wisdom or lesson or experience or something. Or compassion or whatever it might be. And so then I started looking at every breakdown in the last 5 years as this is exactly meant to help my future self serve greater, understand more how to take care of me or others. And I stopped fighting those moments. But you knew this at an early age. That's crazy. Yeah. But who taught you this?

Spirit. Wow. Yeah.

Yeah.

And I always loved to write, so that's where I channeled it. You know, it was my thing. And so I think in some ways, as that artist archetype, I would enjoy some of those moments of suffering because it would make me very creative.

Yeah, you're like, okay, I'm in my pain, let me draw, let me write something.

Yeah, when I was like maybe 17, 18 in this really situationship that's lasting many years, very hot and cold, but I kind of loved it because I was like, ooh, this is good writing.

Wow.

Yeah. You know, you have to work through some of that stuff.

Sure. The suffering artist. Yeah. Now, how did you learn? What were your relationships like with, I guess, men in your teens and 20s without having your father really there at all? Your mother hot and cold, being in foster homes. How did you have relationships early on? Were they healthy and conscious or were you attracting people based on a wound?

It was complete chaos.

Really?

It was complete chaos. Well, when I was a kid, I was actually really scared of men because my mom came from a lot of abuse and she didn't have a healthy template. And so the things that she said about men were not good.

Scary.

So I didn't hear any good things about men. And I never had a dad that came home at the end of the day. So I would be at a friend's house and the moment the dad would come home, I would be terrified and I would always leave.

Really?

Yeah, I was really scared. Like, like as if they were some sort of wild animal. So I couldn't be in the room with them. And so what I realized later is that because I grew up without a father archetype in my life at all, didn't even have someone holding that role—

no dad, he was never there.

No dad. Never met him, never seen a photo, don't know.

Is he alive?

I don't, I don't think so, because I had a dream. I asked Spirit to— I asked Spirit to put a dead butterfly in my hand if he was passed after I had a dream while I was in Hawaii a few years ago that he had died. And in the dream, I was grieving a lot. And that's strange for me because I never dream about my father, and I never knew him. But in the dream, he had just died, and I was very sad. So I woke up and I said, okay, Spirit, if this is true, if he's passed, put a butterfly in my hand. And 2 days later, we were walking down a pathway to the beach, and I found this dead monarch butterfly. And I put it in my hand and I took a photo because I was like, ooh, it's such a beautiful butterfly. And I didn't think anything of it. And then when we got home later, I was looking through my photos and I saw it. And then I realized that I had asked that question. And so for me, that was as much confirmation as I could get. And Lewis— Right.

But your mom doesn't know if he's around or—

No. And he was a lot older than my mom. They were really just, it was a very brief—

Yeah.

Unsafe encounter. So I don't know. Wow. Yeah.

So what did that feel like then, not having a, you know, a healthy father figure in your life? And then how did you learn to trust men?

Initially, when I was really young, the father wound was quite deep, so I always carried this feeling of not being good enough. So I created a lot of separateness between me and other people.

Men and women, everyone.

Yeah. You know, we grew up very poor, had no money. I'm a very small— I'm always the smallest person in every room, and I didn't have a father. There was so many things that were different about me, and so I didn't feel like I fit in. And so I felt quite insecure about whether or not I belonged anywhere. And over time, that turned into the defensive survivor mask, that ultra-independent mask. You know, that many of us end up putting on. And my learning happened through really painful, unsafe relationships.

Really?

Yeah. Well, I was really looking for someone to affirm me from a very young age, and so all of my relationships up until my early 20s were very abusive or really unsafe. And there's one particular relationship that I was lucky to have survived.

Wow.

But it was in that relationship where I actually remember looking in the mirror and I didn't recognize myself. And all of a sudden I had this opening and I just saw myself on stage speaking to women about abuse and healing and recovering. And this was like almost 10 years before I ever began Rising Woman or started anything like that. But I had this feeling and I remember telling the guy who was, you know, he was my abuser and I said, I'm actually going to be speaking on stage one day about these experiences, and I'm going to be helping women.

He was like, okay, while you're with him?

Yeah, that— it ended with him for a little while.

Why do you think people attract someone that can be abusive and then stay in that type of relationship once they've been abused? Yeah, where does that wound come from?

I mean, it's almost— it's almost harder to leave once there's been abuse, because when you look at the brain— and this is just the science aspect of it is the brain changes when there's abuse, and it's sort of like these highs and lows that create deeper bonding. So the more ups and downs we have with somebody, the deeper we bond, which is like the trauma bond that we all hear about, and like this toxic relationship, which is why so many people are like, oh, well, you know, the sex is so good, or we're just so passionate together, but everything is chaos. And the deeper we go, the harder it is to get out of that. And on top of it, a lot of us who have experienced abuse have sort of normalized chaos and dysfunction. I grew up witnessing abuse. I grew up witnessing domestic violence, you know, in homes that I was in, you know, or around me because I didn't grow up in safe areas. And so for me, I knew that it wasn't a good thing, but it also wasn't that different from what I had known.

It was familiar.

It was. And that was a nervous system pattern that I was working with.

Wow.

And so a lot of the work that I've done has been to reclaim my own inner mother and father and to heal my nervous system, to actually be able to feel happy and comfortable in safe, secure situations. Rather than actually unconsciously craving the chaos and dysfunction that I was so used to.

Yeah, I think I was very used to that as well. And I don't— I wasn't looking for chaos, but I somehow always attracted it.

Yeah.

And I don't know what it— why, why that was the way, why I kept repeating that cycle until I really said, okay, this does not work. Like, when I meet someone, I shouldn't have these crazy emotions or these crazy butterflies anymore. I should have a feeling, but not some crazy feeling.

Yeah.

It should be more of a conscious approach to getting to know someone and seeing their total behavior, like how their, their words meet their actions, meet their behaviors, and how the whole package. And as opposed to going into something super fast and explosive. Yeah, I go slow and conscious.

Yeah. Falling into relationship versus consciously choosing it.

Yeah, exactly.

Something that I really never did until I met my husband.

Really? Yeah. I never did either.

Yeah.

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So how— when did you finally wake up and say, okay, I've been attracting these types of men that are chaotic, or maybe some are abusive, or they have abusive tendencies, or explosive. And when did you finally wake up and say, okay, I need to do things differently?

I was in my mid-20s, and I ended up actually marrying somebody, uh, from another country. It was American, and we didn't want to get married. It's just that we were together for many years, and in order to try to make the relationship work, we needed to both be in the same country. And so we got married and quickly, right after that, things just turned for the worse. It wasn't good already. It wasn't an abusive situation. We were both in our mid-20s, we were very immature, both had very deep mother wounds and deep father wounds. Neither of us had a father. So you wanna talk about projections? Wow. We were just projecting all of our parental wounds onto each other. I don't know if we knew each other at all, truthfully. And in that relationship, I was deeply betrayed. There was a lot of betrayal, and it was as if the rug was ripped from underneath me. At the time, I lost all of my money. My cat, my soul cat, ran away. He left with another woman, and I gained like 20 pounds in a month. My hormones stopped producing because I had experienced so much stress. From my abandonment wound being triggered. I went and tested my hormones and I— all I had was cortisol. I was physically sick. My body physically just stopped. Everything stopped. And I remember a moment where he had come. He had been back and forth very sporadically, not in communication. We had shared a home, obviously we were married, and he came to get some things. And instead of being vulnerable, because of course I didn't know how to do that. I just yelled at him and chased him out into the road without my shoes on and said, "No, don't ever come back. I never wanna see you again," which was not true at the time. And as he drove away with his new girlfriend, I remember feeling like I was 3 years old. And all of a sudden I had this flash of when I had been dropped off the first time at a foster home when I was 3. And I saw my mom's headlights pulling away. And I remember screaming and crying. And all of a sudden this relief washed over me and it was just like, this is not about him, this is not about them, this is about you and your mother wound and this is what you need to heal. This is about your own inner stuff. And even though it was so painful in that moment, I was so grateful because I knew that I could get through it. 'Cause the pain was so deep that if it had been about him, I might not have survived it in my mind.. But because it was about me and my inner work, I felt empowered. And so I just dove in and that's kind of what kickstarted my healing journey.

Yeah. Cuz you'd been essentially abandoned or betrayed by your father who was never there. You've been betrayed by your mother. You've been betrayed by friends and, you know, foster individuals. Yeah. And boyfriends in the past.

Everyone.

And then now your husband you're being betrayed by.

Yeah.

But it sounds like you realize you were betraying yourself as well. Yeah, I was just repeating by making unconscious decisions based on wounds as opposed to based on a vision of what you wanted, a healthy vision. And there's no, you know, I'm not, I'm blaming you. That's something I did most of my life too.

Yeah.

Um, and it's really cool that you've, that, that you've got that awareness then, because a lot of us, myself included, repeat these patterns over and over again until the pain is so deep, until it's like, ah, I just feel like I've ripped open everything in my body, I have nothing left.

Exactly.

Then hopefully you can wake up and have some clarity. What happened for me, and it sounds like it's what happened for you, what was the next step after that so that you could get to a place of conscious, healthy relationship?

Most of us hit that wall in crisis, and that's the opportunity. We can go down the path of bitterness, or we can be like, okay, you know, this sucks and I never want to experience this again. So let's feel all of the feelings that I've never felt before. And that's probably what you experienced. I know it's what I experienced. All of a sudden, this hardened, ultra-independent survivor mask was just ripped off. And all of a sudden I had feelings that I had to feel and vulnerability that needed to be expressed. And I had no idea how overwhelming that was going to be. And at one point I just laid face down on my bed and closed my eyes and I felt like I was on a psychedelic journey just from the pain. You know, I would go to bed at night and think I might die in my sleep tonight because this hurts too much. That's how deep the abandonment wound had been ripped open. And so I started doing deep mother work. I started doing a lot of transpersonal therapy, you know, kind of Jungian style. I did a lot of medicine work, a lot of medicine ceremonies, uh, over and over and over again. I spent all day in nature. I did breathwork. Every week, and I just worked through it. And it was hard and so painful, but that was my only option. It was like the thing that I had to hold on to was this belief that eventually the pain would go away.

Wow.

And I remember writing a date on my calendar and telling my friend, like, I'm going to be done grieving by this date.

Good luck. Good luck.

And I kept having to move the date and eventually I stopped setting a date, you know.

Healing is a journey. Yeah, it's not like this destination, like it's gonna happen by now. I've, I've said the same thing to myself in the past. I'm like, I'm gonna make a decision by this, I'm gonna be fine by this time, and it just keeps getting pushed, right? And I think it comes to you when you're ready for it, when you're ready and willing to fully receive all the lessons, and you're willing to surrender, you're willing to drop your ego and feel all the emotions. And keep making consistent daily good decisions that are based on a conscious vision of what you want as opposed to a past pain. And, and so how long did it take until you said, oh, I'm starting to feel some relief of all this deep healing work, of all this stuff? And were you doing it alone or were you doing it with therapists and guides and coaches?

I was doing it in a combo. I was seeing therapists, I was seeing shamans, I was doing medicine work with myself and in community. And then I was creating a lot of processes for myself because I was just 24/7 in my feelings. I was not getting breaks because I hadn't felt any of my childhood. So people would always say, how are you so normal right now? Like, how are you not just living homeless and addicted to drugs with everything that you've been through? And I would say, I'm just fine. Like, I'm fine.

You were numbing it.

I didn't know that, but yeah, I was. I just completely denied that I had any pain around it, you know? And so all of that I had to feel, all of it. And that was a lot. And so I started creating processes for myself to get through the long nights when I couldn't sleep, you know?

What's a process look like?

One of them was I created a little meditation for myself to listen to over and over. Another one is I wrote a letter to myself from my inner mother telling me that I was gonna be okay and just saying like, I know that you're in pain right now. Everything's gonna be okay. I promise it's not gonna feel like this forever. Just loving myself. And I actually put it on my wall, taped to my wall so that when I would look in the morning over at my wall, I would see it. And because I needed it, I needed that anchor. And there's many other things like writing about the vision of who I wanted to be in partnership with, how I wanted it to look. But also it was really about deep accountability for how I had shown up in all of those relationships, which was not good.

Not blaming, but also taking responsibility.

Yeah. I mean, there's a difference because blame is more about judgment and taking responsibility is about action.

Yes.

So for me, I had to take responsibility for the reality that I had never been vulnerable in my partnerships. I wasn't showing up authentically. I wasn't being very loving and I wasn't really being open. Mm. So anyone who entered my field had no clue who I was underneath it all. And I certainly didn't know who they were because I wasn't vulnerable, right? And so we have to take a look at those things if we want to get to the conscious partnership. And that part is hard too because it's easy to go down the blame train and be like, Oh gosh, I did this all. It's all my fault.

Or they did this all to me.

Exactly. But you don't get anywhere that way. That way, that lane, if you get into the blame lane, that means you have to go back and start over in another relationship that's gonna repeat the pattern until you keep hitting the wall. And then you're like, okay, I actually have something to do with this.

Right.

The other way is I'm gonna take responsibility for my role. Yes, the how they showed up is about them, But how I show up also matters, and it's about me. And if I want to create something different, where do I need to grow?

Yeah, and how we respond to people that maybe aren't doing things out of integrity to us that we don't want, how we react, or, you know, why we stayed as opposed to saying, hey, this doesn't work for me anymore, this cannot happen, otherwise we're not going to be together anymore. Creating boundaries.

So we're even entering the relationship to begin with.

Yeah, if it's not a conscious entering, then why are we doing it?

Yeah, I remember the guy that I entered the relationship with when I was 19. I was very young, not a conscious person, but I've always had intuitive hits and visions. Like, I do know when something is right or not, or if there's something gonna happen. And I sat on his couch and I got a message and it said, "This guy is gonna be abusive." Oh my gosh. And we weren't even living together yet. And you know, I just moved in with him, right? And so—

Why do you think you moved in with him?

Well, because I was— because there wasn't a part of me yet that felt integrated in her inner woman, inner mother. I was just a kid, you know. I was this immature, wounded kid starving for love, and I was addicted to the chaos. And we had very much a passionate, strong sexual connection, and I wanted that feeling, right? I wanted to experience that rush. And so we often do this where we just choose the thing that feels good over the thing that's actually going to get us where we wanna be. And we do that so much in relationship and we don't trust ourselves. And then in the end when it goes bad, we say, oh, well, I can't trust myself because, you know, I always end up in this mess. But I always say, well, did you ever get an intuitive hit or some sense that something wasn't right, but you just dismissed it or pushed it down because you can trust yourself. You just don't listen sometimes. And that's the difference. So I had to just learn how to listen.

Because you knew it, but you weren't listening to it and acting on the knowing.

Exactly.

Interesting.

Yeah. It takes a long time for us to learn how to trust our intuition and act accordingly. Yeah.

And not go against our traumas or wounds or our desires. Yeah, but going after a vision instead. So how long was this process until you met your husband? From like the day your former husband was like running away with his girlfriend, car lights, you know, and you're— who—

she was at my wedding too. Oh my God, I have a photo of us sitting on a bench and his arm is around me and he's looking at her and I was like, it's a prophecy. And you know, my gosh, some things are just meant to be.

Well, It's probably good that you guys didn't stay together.

Yeah.

So, so how long was it since that moment of you running out barefoot screaming like an angry, you know, betrayed woman, uh, scorned woman, and, uh, until you felt you had a sense of inner peace?

Yeah.

And, and, and a relaxed nervous system where you were able to see people differently, to see yourself differently, and make a decision to be in a conscious relationship? How long was that period?

Well, with the context of the fact that I was doing medicine ceremonies almost every night, breathwork every week, and seeing a therapist twice a week, and doing all of those things, within a couple of months actually, I started to feel different. I started to feel, okay, you know what, I'm actually good with this whole single thing. I'm feeling empowered again.

I love—

yeah, I wasn't better or healed, but I was feeling like I had my footing. And I decided not to date anyone, and I was going to be single for 3 years. That was my plan.

I had a similar plan.

Yeah. And within 7 or 8 months, I met Ben. And I remember people telling us, oh, you have to meet Shelina. Oh, you have to meet Ben. You're going to love each other. And I was like, well, you don't really know me that well, so How do you know? And anyways, we ended up trying to coordinate a date multiple times, and eventually, after me blowing him off, I bumped into him at a coffee shop. I was in my PJs, hadn't brushed my hair, and I was like, are you Ben? And we just had this knowing, this remembrance of each other. And I'm not really the type to just get physical with a person right away, but I couldn't help but like wrap my arms around him because he was cold and warm him up. And so at first I was very much in denial. Nope, this isn't going to be my partner. Not— we're not going to date.

I still need 2 and a half more years until I date you.

You know, and it felt really fast too. I was like, is this okay? But inevitably we couldn't— we couldn't write history a different way. That's how it was meant to be. He also had a plan to be single until he was 35, but he ended up getting married to me when he was 35. Wow. So That's, you know, how it happened. And it was also a journey and it still is for us. You know, I would say that I had done enough work to know how to qualify him. And so we moved quite slowly and we had lots of sleepovers, but we didn't sleep together for quite a while.

Similar to me.

Yeah, well, 'cause you just psychologically, you need that time. Otherwise you bond once the hormones get going.

The chemical sexual bond is so hard to break.

It is.

Once you go there.

Yeah.

Because the feeling is so intense. It's so intense emotionally and physically, and you're bonding each other to these heightened states of emotion.

Yeah.

It's so hard to say, okay, you know, that's why it makes it— that's why it makes it easier to overlook someone's challenges or red flags. When you bonded.

Exactly.

Well, I want to get that feeling again. So if they're lying over here, if they're mean to people here, if they're abusive to me a little bit here, let's just go back to that feeling. But when you create a space of a relationship without that feeling and you get to see the full person— yeah, for which I think the longer you can do that, the better.

And have a friendship, right?

A friendship. And see, could I spend 10,000 meals with this person? Would I enjoy my time with this person over 10,000 meals? Would I want to spend time with them if we didn't have a sexual intimacy? Yeah. If so, okay, cool. I wonder what it'd be like with that as well. And I never thought that way until I started the healing journey. So, but it gave me a lot clearer sense of direction once I felt like a sense of safety and peace within me to make those steps as well. That's so interesting. You guys did that.

This podcast is supported by Ring. With Ring, it's protected. You know those moments when you're expecting a package and you're not home and you're thinking about it all day, wondering if it's just sitting out there? That's something I think about, especially with how often we're ordering things for the house. And this is where Ring comes in. Keep track of packages and see more at the front door with Battery Doorbell. And honestly, Ring has been a game changer for me. I like being able to quickly check and see where my package shows up and just know it's there. And beyond that, I'm also keeping an eye out on the yard with the Outdoor Cam Plus. You get a wide field of view and clear Retinal 2K video so you can see what's happening around your home even at night. You can also upgrade to 4K cameras and doorbells with Retinal Vision, which gives you ultra clear footage and lets you zoom in without losing important details. And for me, it's that extra peace of mind, whether it's making sure a delivery arrived or just checking in on things outside. It's simple and easy. Your door, your yard, your home. With Ring, it's protected. Shop cameras, doorbells, and more right now at ring.com. You know those moments when you're ordering everything to your house from groceries, gear, random things you didn't even realize you needed until the last minute? It just makes life a little easier. And now you can add internet to that list. Get same-day delivery for T-Mobile 5G Home Internet powered by DoorDash. No store visits, no waiting around for technician. It shows up, you plug it in, and you're online in about 15 minutes with one cord. T-Mobile has the fastest 5G home internet. For me, working from home on the podcast, that simplicity matters a lot. I'm on video calls, uploading episodes, researching guests, and sending emails. And when everything just works and I don't have to think about it, I stay focused. On what actually matters. It fits right into my workflow and it keeps things moving throughout the day. Visit t-mobile.com/homeinternet to check availability and get your home internet delivered today. Same-day delivery for most internet-eligible customers. See if it's an option during checkout. Fastest according to Ookla Speedtest Intelligence data, second half 2025. All rights reserved.

So how long were you together until you got married?

About 4 years.

4 years?

Yeah. And when we were about 2 or 3 months in, we right away started doing therapy and tantra groups.

Shut up.

We did.

That's amazing.

We started therapy too. Yeah, it's amazing.

Necessary.

I recommend it for everyone starting a relationship.

Yeah, it's incredible.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Not because something's wrong or broken, but because you want to create agreements and connection and communication early on.

Yeah. When you learn how to be intimate and you really put it all out on the table. There's no holding back. We joined this conscious relationship circle where you're doing group shadow work and processing your ego in front of a room together, and then you're doing these deep tantric exercises with your partner. And so I remember inviting him and he was like, well, you know, it's pretty new. And he, he was the opposite of me. I always had long relationships that lasted way too long. And he had a lot of short relationships over the last 10 years. So he was like, well, how do— what if we're not together still? You know, like, that's pretty big commitment. And I was like, we're gonna be together.

Wow.

And so he, he said yes, and he's often a great sport, and we dove in. And it was because of that work that we were able to deepen and heal and do so much work together. And the nervous system stuff has taken years, years and years. It's not like, oh, we found each other, now we're in a conscious relationship. Yeah, no, it's not like that.

Do you think it's possible to find love, lasting love, if you haven't healed yet?

I do. And I think there's degrees, there's degrees of healing, because I don't think any of us are healed in terms of we're perfect, but we can be on the journey and be self-aware enough and to know how to qualify a person for willingness. And if we meet a person who has the willingness and the core values match, and both people say, yes, here's my baggage, here's your baggage, I see you and I acknowledge that this isn't gonna always be easy, but I'm willing to do the work along the way, that's a great sign that the relationship has potential because that was Ben and I.

You know, we were both on a healing journey.

We were on a healing journey together. We weren't like, oh, we've done our work and now we're gonna fade off into the sunset together. We're like, okay, we're committed to being together. And soon we quickly realize there's no better match than each other. And yet it's still gonna be difficult. So when it gets difficult, what are we gonna do about it? That's the thing you need to clarify. Because if you're the person who says, well, relationships should be easy, if we have to see a therapist, or if we need to do inner work, then there's something wrong, which is the belief system of many people out there, then you don't have a chance. But if you're both aware enough to say, yeah, I've got some stuff, you know, I'm avoidant or I'm anxious and I'm going to work on that and I want to work on it with you, great.

What I think is interesting, you know, listen, I don't have kids yet, so I know I'm gonna get a ton of comments about this. Wait till you have kids, it's going to get harder, it's good, all these different things. I get it. And I'm not discounting anyone's experience, um, but my personal experience has been if you're willing to do the work together up front and be willing to consistently work on yourself and together throughout the relationship, I believe the relationship should be easy or easier because you're constantly doing— you're putting an effort on growing.

Yeah.

Individually and together. Then it should be, yes, there's going to be challenges and adversities and breakdowns, but because you're in it together, growing together, taking responsibility and accepting of one another, then it's going to feel a lot easier. That's my experience. But I understand kids, this, this, I get it. People say this all the time and I'm not discounting that. It's, I'm sure there's going to be challenges, but I think when you're both in it together, willing to do the work consistently, it should be easier.

It should be easier, but that doesn't make it easy. And I think for all of us, we have a different level of tolerance, mm-hmm, and nervous system capacity, mm-hmm. And desire to be with that person is the foundation. So I have couples in my sphere who had deep attachment wounds, were clearly a perfect match for each other in every way, and yet their attachment wounds were so strong that the first 3 years of their relationship was just absolute chaos. But they had tools, they had therapy, they had somatic work, they had processes, and they just kept going because they loved each other. And they did get to the other side. And so I've seen both, and sometimes it just depends on your personality. If you're a really fiery person who's very expressive, and so was your partner— you know, this is Ben and I— there's going to be more outward conflict than the type of couple who's maybe more inward and avoidant, or just non-confrontational in conflict. When you get two scrappers, even if they're doing the work, you know, when there's, when there's something coming up, it's going to look different than the other couple who's perhaps more muted in terms of their expression. Neither is right or wrong, it's just going to be different. And we have to assess what we're tolerant of, what our boundaries are, and make agreements for how we're gonna navigate conflict so that we don't destroy the relationship along the way, which we can easily do. We have to say, okay, well, these are the boundaries, this is the agreements. And we have to lean in a little bit and honor our partner, even if it's hard, do some things that we maybe don't naturally do to create safety. So that we can get there.

I think— I can't remember if it was the Gottman Institute that talked about like one of the number one factors of deciding if a relationship's going to work or not is how you fight together. Yeah, it's like how you argue or communicate when there is a disturbance, when there is a frustration, when there's a breakdown. It's how you have agreed to fight, essentially. And I think that could really hurt relationships more or hurt feelings more if you fight in an unfair way that's not agreed upon.

Yeah.

If we cross a line too much, if you say, oh, that's a little too abusive, that's a little too dismissive, that's a little too— that's not nice. We can disagree and argue, but you can still be kind.

Yeah.

You don't have to scream and yell and call names because that doesn't feel good.

Yeah, exactly. And that's often what happens is we continue to go down these pathways, these nervous system responses that we're used to And even though we love our partners, we destroy the relationship, and then we, we can't repair because there's just too much damage done. And then we end up in the inner work.

Why do you think people are so reactive when there is an emotional trigger? Where for some people that trigger may not matter at all. They may say, why are you so explosive? Why are you so reactive or so hurt over this little thing? When other people are— there's a button inside of their wound and it's just like, ah, they explode, they react. What will it take for people to overcome that, and why do they stay that reactive as adults?

It's body memory from obviously early childhood, but sometimes not so obviously when we're teens or in our earlier years where, you know, we've been deeply hurt or betrayed by somebody, and that button gets pushed and that old familiar feeling and that story that I'm not loved or I'm not safe or I'm being taken advantage of or I'm gonna be left alone or attacked. All of these stories, those, those get activated in the body memory. And so it's often an unconscious thing when we get triggered or activated in a relationship. All of a sudden we're blowing things out of proportion 'cause the mind is saying, you're not safe, defend or run. You know, those two options. And those are nervous system patterns. And so we can't really think our way out of it. And it's helpful to have tools, it's helpful to have self-awareness, but meditating isn't going to be the answer. The answer is going to be working with your body to reorient to what it feels like to be safe and secure inside of you, so I can be in relationship with you while being present with my own body, so we can have multiple relationships happening at once— my relationship with me, my relationship with you, the relationship we share together. There's this ability, once we have a regulated nervous system, to know the difference between my emotions and your emotions. And we don't have that when we're coming from that wounded inner child that gets very thrown off kilter anytime something is disturbed in, in the safety, or, you know, any thing with the security is threatened, which can be as simple as, for some people, as their partner going out for dinner with their friends.

Interesting. Or it could be such a threat for some people. It's like, you're going out too late, you're going with these guy friends, or I don't trust you going to this place. It's like such a threat for that.

Yeah, for somebody who's experienced betrayal or abandonment, or perhaps their parents got divorced and then their mom or their dad remarried and they felt replaced, that's gonna be the kind of situation that will cause deep jealousy or feelings of insecurity and worry. And so again, it comes back to working with the body memory and being able to recognize in those moments, oh, I'm having body memory that I'm not safe, but actually I am safe. I'm here now and it's okay for me to let go of this story right now. And I'm gonna do something to regulate myself let my partner go and live their life, perhaps I can go and live my life, right? You know, but that takes work for somebody who's experiencing anxious attachment. They'll more likely sit on the couch and stew and wait for their partner to come home and then create a fight than they would to think to call their own friend and go out and just have a good time. Not in a revenge way, but to just actually nourish themselves on a social level or do something that's important to them, like pursue one of their hobbies or get something done that's needed on their to-do list. And that's what it means to come back to center and to mature in relationship so that we can live lives as individuals and create interdependence.

What do you think is the biggest mistake people make in relationships?

Oh my gosh, what a big question. I would say one of the biggest mistakes that people make is confusing their partner for somebody from their past and not being aware of it. Usually that's a parental figure, the mom or the dad, and then acting from that wounded inner child rather than bringing their adult self forward and seeing their partner as an enemy. Because if you look at people's relationship histories, myself included, there's a lot of chaos and us versus them and people becoming enemies in the end. And isn't it strange that we go out into the world looking for somebody to share love with, and then more often than not, we just hurt each other repeatedly, and then we blame each other, and then we go off and try to find somebody new, and we just keep repeating the cycle? And that's not love. That's not healthy love. That's just wounds repeating the cycle. And so what we have to realize is that often we are actually in relationship with a projection of the person who hurt us that we didn't heal with.

Wow. Give me an example.

For me, it was always my mom, right? Even with my past marriage that I talked about, you know, that projection for me was my mom. So I was projecting all of my anger, all of my disgust, all of my sadness and my hurt onto this person that I was in relationship with. And he me. And so on an unconscious level, we didn't have trust, we didn't have safety, and we were on opposite teams because we were punishing each other for the ways that we had been hurt.

From the past?

Yes.

Not from what they were doing?

Well, there were obviously things that we were both doing that were out of alignment, but the ability to recognize why we were doing those things wasn't there. We all do things when we're reacting from a past wound, but it's coming from somewhere, and it's often that past shadow figure, that person in the unconscious mind that represents the mom or the dad or the caregiver who didn't show up for us and didn't provide the security and the love and the safety that we needed to develop that whole sense of self. And so we have to go back and do that repair work and then grow up. We have to mature.

Yeah. Like our— we have to emotionally mature and go back into the wounded psychological phases of our childhood and mend those phases. Yeah. And create new meaning around what those memories were so they can support us now as opposed to hurt us now. Is that right?

And recognize in those moments when that inner child, that wounded, scared child is coming to the front and center. And be able to access our inner mother, inner father, and self-soothe them, self-soothe in a healthy way.

Yeah, not through numbing or alcohol or addictions or whatever it might be.

Exactly, shopping, Netflix, whatever, you know. And then once we have that relationship built, we can actually start doing the deeper work with our partners. I don't know if you've ever heard of Imago work with Harville and Helen— Harville Hendrix, he, uh, he and Helen Hunt, they wrote the book Getting the Love You Want, and They're elders, I've studied with them.

I've heard of that book, yeah.

Yeah, and you know, them and the Gottmans, those are sort of the elders that we owe so much gratitude to for all of this work that we now access and even many of us teach. And their whole model is about working with the inner child, which they don't really say it that way, but it's that hurt child and the parent figure and seeing how much we choose our partners based on an exact template of who our parents were, both the good and the bad. So for example, when Ben and I went, we went to an Esselen retreat years ago before we had our daughter, and we did a retreat with them. And one of the questions was, what is the thing that excites you most about your partner? What drew you to your partner most? And what is the thing that your partner does that hurts you the most?

Same thing.

Different, but also they ask you that about your parent. Oh, and so when I looked at the thing that I loved most about my mom was the exciting spontaneous adventures we would go on, right?

The playtime, so we're now in them.

And the things that I didn't like the most or that hurt me the most was her emotional unavailability and abandoning me when I needed her. And then when I looked at how I had related to Ben, it virtually the same, you know, because we were playing out some avoidant anxious patterns early on. And it was stunning to see that I also fit the exact template of his childhood where I was critical of him.

And he had a critical mom or something.

He had a critical parent who he didn't feel seen and appreciated by. And that was the thing that I would do and sadly sometimes still do, you know, if I'm not being my best self. I'll get critical. And so we fit these exact templates of each other's parents. But if we're aware of it, then we can also say, what is that thing that you really needed? What is that thing that you really needed to feel loved? And then we do that thing every single day. And so we're healing each other's wounds, healing each other's child selves by essentially reparenting our partner's inner child.

So you're reparenting his inner child and he's reparenting mine.

Really?

And we're reparenting ourselves as well.

Because if, if we only do it to the other person and not to ourselves, is that going to support us long term?

No, of course not.

Those doing it ourselves and supporting—

yeah, yeah. Because, you know, there's this— especially in the conscious relationship realm, we hear a lot of this, these memes and, and this kind of rhetoric that We should be ultra independent, and it's not said that way, but it's like you are responsible for your own emotions. Nobody can make you feel anything, and you are only responsible for you and them for them. And it's not your partner's job to heal you. And while that's true that it's not your partner's job to heal you, when you enter into a partnership, you become each other's allies and you both bring wounds to the table. And it actually is a gift to your partner to say, hey, what's something that I could do to nurture and nourish your inner child? And here's what you could do to nurture and nourish mine. And that's a gift that we give, and it's not about expecting it or demanding it, but if we truly wanna heal in relationship, then we actually do take on each other's baggage as a team. And that's not something that a lot of people talk about these days. Because we're in this far swing to the other end of the pendulum because we've gone from these like very enmeshed relationships. Now we want to go to this total ultra-independence. But somewhere in the middle lies the beauty of doing the dance together and saying, you know what, I'm your ally in healing. I'm going to be your partner in healing. How can I love you better? Here's how you can love me better. And let's do this thing.

I think it's wise to do that, whether it's daily or weekly. You know, it doesn't have to be every day for everyone. I, I, every week probably I ask Martha in some way about that. And I like to say, you know, do you feel seen, celebrated, and supported? If not, what can I do to support you in feeling seen, celebrated, and supported more?

Yeah.

She always says yes, she does. So it's like, it's being conscious on top of mind, whether it's daily or weekly, but just being actively supporting and a teammate to someone and an ally, not an enemy, I think is really powerful.

This podcast is supported by Ring. With Ring, it's protected. You know those moments when you're expecting a package and you're not home and you're thinking about it all day, wondering if it's just sitting out there? That's something I think about, especially with how often we're ordering things for the house. And this is where Ring comes in. Keep track of packages and see more at the front door with Battery doorbell. And honestly, Ring has been a game changer for me. I like being able to quickly check and see where my package shows up and just know it's there. And beyond that, I'm also keeping an eye out on the yard with the Outdoor Cam Plus. You get a wide field of view and clear Retinal 2K video, so you can see what's happening around your home even at night. You can also upgrade to 4K cameras and doorbells with Retinal Vision, which gives you ultra clear footage and lets you zoom in without losing important details. And for me, it's that extra peace of mind, whether it's making sure a delivery arrived or just checking in on things outside. It's simple and easy. Your door, your yard, your home with Ring. It's protected. Shop cameras, doorbells, and more right now at ring.com. You know those moments when you're ordering everything to your house from groceries, gear, random things you didn't even realize you needed until the last minute? It just makes life a little easier. And now you can add internet to that list. Get same-day delivery for T-Mobile 5G Home Internet powered powered by DoorDash. No store visits, no waiting around for technician. It shows up, you plug it in, and you're online in about 15 minutes with one cord. T-Mobile has the fastest 5G home internet. For me, working from home on the podcast, that simplicity matters a lot. I'm on video calls, uploading episodes, researching guests, and sending emails. And when everything just works and I don't have to think about it, I stay focused on what actually matters. It fits right into my workflow and it keeps things moving throughout the day. Visit t-mobile.com/homeinternet to check availability and get your home internet delivered today. Same-day delivery for most internet-eligible customers. See if it's an option during checkout. Fastest according to Ookla Speedtest Intelligence data. Second Half 2025. All rights reserved. What are—

why do you think we repeat these negative patterns in relationships so frequently? We, you know, we have a bad experience in one relationship, we look for someone new, and then it repeats, and then we do it again and again. Why does that happen for people?

We're looking for a resolution in the back of our minds. We might not even be aware of it, but we're looking for resolution. To that thing that happened, or to that story that said you're not lovable, or that story that said you have to fight to earn love. And so somewhere in our minds, we're looking to prove that story true, or we're looking to complete the process. And so we look for somebody who matches the template, right, like we just talked about, so that we can perhaps do that work. And typically it hasn't worked out because what we don't realize is that our partner's doing that exact same thing.

Right.

But with the self-awareness and the willingness piece, if we're both aware and we're like, okay, we both do have some stuff to work on here. Here's what I've gotta work on. Here's what you wanna work on. Do you wanna do this together? With that frame, then we really can get on the same track together and team up and do that healing work. Otherwise it just does repeat. Endlessly. And it's easy to just blame the other person. Well, there's something wrong with you. I'm just going to get rid of you and go and find my, my soulmate.

Right. The next person. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Exactly.

Interesting. What was the, the best thing you did before getting married the second time?

Yeah.

And that really supported entering the marriage. And then what was the thing you wish you would have done before getting married the second time around that maybe, oh, we didn't have this conversation or create these agreements or Yeah, the thing that I love that we did was we created shadow vows. Shadow vows.

Yeah, and those were sort of— we also call them ownership vows. So we wrote our sacred vows to each other, but then we also did ownership vows. And so at our wedding, we had a different type of wedding where we had everybody actually sat in a circle on the floor. Only the elders in our community sat on chairs. And we had all of these plush rugs everywhere and we did a cacao ceremony and a group meditation. And then we, you know, we stood in front of our community and we had spent a month negotiating our shadow vows. And essentially we were calling out the parts of ourselves that were not yet healed or some of the worst things that we're bringing to the relationship.

Things you don't like about yourself or whatever.

Or the ways that we show up in a crappy way with our partner. Which there's always ways, you know? And so we did that. We wrote it down and we shared with each other, and we also allowed each other to give feedback before we did this.

Oh my gosh, it's amazing.

Is there anything here, you know, that I— is there anything that I do that you want me to own? And, and we use that. We did that in front of our community. We stood and we, we owned, you know.

Holy cow.

You know, I own that I'm gonna project my unhealed father wound onto you sometimes. You know, and I promise that I'm going to always come back to love. That's the kind of vows that we said. And so it was very vulnerable and intimate, but everyone in our community got to witness, this is the true Shelina and Ben. These are the things that they're working on. We're not painting this perfect picture. And then they vowed to hold us through that. And then every year what we do is we take our shadow vows, and we go through them together and we say, oh, I think I've actually worked really well on this one. Maybe we should take this one off the list. Maybe that one has been completed, or maybe we need to add this to the thing.

You know, right?

Maybe we need to work on this one. And so we actually reassess our vows. We sort of use it as like a template to check in, do a temperature check. And, uh, that has served us very well and we've guided other couples through that as well. So that's the thing that I loved. The most.

What's the thing you wish you would have done before marriage that you didn't do?

Definitely would have been more somatic work, more nervous system work. Uh, that's something that I started the year that we got married, and it was because when we got married, 4 years in, all of a sudden I started feeling like I needed to escape. My ego was like, oh God, I'm not committed, get me out. Yeah, and what have I done, right? Because what if this was the wrong decision? I'm gonna look like a fool.

I should have waited 3 years and this and that, right?

Yeah, yeah. Well, we had already been together 4 years and I was like, we should have waited 7, you know?

Right.

And, um, the funny thing about that is because, like, you know, the 7-year itch— have you ever heard the 7-year itch thing? Well, in Canada, maybe this is a Canadian thing, but they talk about the 7-year itch where a lot of couples break up after 7 years. But then my friend told me that actually that has been proven untrue and it's been proven that it's actually the 4-year itch. And we got married at 4 years. So I had all that stress for nothing.

Oh, maybe this is the time to leave.

Yeah. But my nervous system didn't know how to stay. And so—

Because you'd never been in a safe, committed, fully committed. Yeah.

And not in a relationship where I had all of the things, like we had good chemistry and we had the spiritual connection.

It was healthy.

It was always one or the other. And so my body was starting to freak out and I wanted to run in the other direction, even though I was trying to tell myself I'm safe. And so I had to do some deep nervous system reworking to get into a place where I no longer felt like I needed to escape all of the time, even though I knew consciously that it was good to be where I was in this relationship. And that work is sort of what I ended up going and training in over the last 4 years because it was so powerful for me. I realized this is the thing that we all need to do is create security in our bodies and our nervous systems.

Yeah, you can't— you can only outthink so many things. Yeah, you cannot think emotions and stress and the body's memory. You have to process, feel, heal, and integrate this healing consistently. And it's not just a, oh, I had this like experience of an hour session, I feel a sense of relief, and I process some things. If you don't integrate that lesson consistently until the next trigger, it's going to keep coming back. And so what was the somatic healing therapies that you practiced in the first year that really supported you?

A lot of it was somatic experiencing.

And what is that for people?

So Peter Levine, he's now in his 80s, he's a wonderful teacher. He's, I would say, the godfather of somatic experiencing work. He created it. He wrote Waking the Tiger. It's a very old book. Um, I shouldn't say very old, but It's old.

Older.

Yeah, it's older. And, uh, so it's this body of work that where you're literally working on the most subtle level with the organs and with the nervous system to help the body move out traumatic experiences and memories.

It's kind of like a raking experience, or what is this, like a body talk experience?

You know, you could maybe say that it's similar in terms of what it looks like, where you're laying on a table. If you have someone who's trained in touch work, you can also just do it with yourself. You know, I have online stuff where I take people through in their own bedroom somatic work. But working with a practitioner is ideal. And, you know, maybe they place a hand on your kidneys or on your arm, and it's wild what happens.

The releases, right? Yeah.

Yeah.

You feel the energy moving and releasing.

Cool. And your body might start shaking.

Yeah.

You could actually start feeling triggers arise in your body, and the practitioner is trained to help you move it outta your system. So for example, if that's like a fight response that you got frozen in, they might allow that response to come up, and then they'll hold their hands out and say, okay, now kick and say no. And you're actually completing that process so that it can move through your system. Because when we're holding that fight in our system, we're either going to freeze or we're going to be in fight mode all the time in our relationships. And so that's just one example of how powerful it can be, because that's the body memory that we can't outthink. And so if we move it out of the system, our behavior changes because we have the capacity to change.

Because our body has completed that cycle, it's created new meaning, it's released it, it's processed it, it's moved through it. It's interesting, I did this, I did a thing called BodyTalk. I kind of want to do it again because it was so powerful for me. I did this like 10 or 12 years ago. I only did like a handful of sessions and the practitioner at the time, wasn't even touching me. And I remember I was like, I would— I was wide awake, but then within 10 to 15 minutes, I somehow fell asleep. And I would wake up like an hour later, I guess, with my whole body shaking. And I'd be on my back. And it was almost like I was just rocking like this, my whole body. And it was my heartbeat out of my back, pushing my body off the table. I was just laying there and I'd just be rocking like this, my heartbeat. And I just felt all this energy moving through my body. And I was like, wow, this is fascinating. Someone's not even touching me and how this is happening and processing. I don't think a lot of men typically would hear this and think, I want to try this. You know, I was pretty open-minded at that time, but before then I wasn't open-minded. It was kind of like, nah, just give me a massage or, you know, I'll work out and toughen it out.

You know, not into that stuff.

Yeah, but I think it's, you know, it's powerful for, for men as well as women to be open to trying some of these things, especially if you have emotional triggers or wounds that have caused you a lot of anxiety, pain, or relational issues. That's beautiful. So you're doing that for like a year and you're still doing it, but that's what helped you really heal. You wish you would have done that before marriage.

Absolutely. Yeah. I started out doing sessions with a practitioner And after a year, I realized how powerful it was. And so then I began to train in it so that I could actually facilitate this work with my, my readers, because it's just amazing how potent it can be. And it's so subtle. You're like, did I just do anything in there? You go for a session, just holds your kidneys for an hour, and then I'd go home and sleep for 3 hours. I would just pass out because my, my nervous system was integrating. It was just wild stuff.

That's amazing. What do you think are the key distinctions to conscious relationship and healthy love?

Willingness. Again, you know, being willing because we're not going to be perfect and we're going to fall off track and we're going to fall into old patterns. But the willingness to repair, you know, the Gottmans, they talk about this a lot too. Repairing is so important. Being able to take ownership, being able to apologize, and, you know, being willing to see our part. Being willing to see the ways that we are contributing to the breakdown of the relationship and also acknowledging that to our partner, you know, sort of revealing our vulnerability underneath the defensiveness. And that's one of the things that I tell people when they say, oh, you know, you and Ben must just eye gaze all day and, you know, have these sacred practices. And, you know, I'm like, well, sometimes we do that. Now that we have a daughter, we'd never do that right now. You know, we have a baby. But it doesn't really look like that. It's really just about being present in each moment and doing your best and doing your best to love your partner as much as you can. And remember that they were once a child. Like we have little photos of each other as children on our altar in our bedroom. Nice.

Wow, that's beautiful.

And that helps when you see the little, you know, for your little Martha, you know, you have a little photo of her on the fridge If you're having a moment where you're feeling butthurt and then you go and look at little Martha, like, oh my gosh, how can I be mad at this beautiful being? You know, this beautiful innocent being. And it takes work to come back to that innocence over and over. And to me, that's what conscious relationship is about.

What is the skill you wish you could have mastered by now that you haven't mastered yet?

Oh my gosh, a skill that I Like a relationship skill or just any skill?

Relationship skill.

Okay. I was gonna say like triple axel. A relationship skill I would say would be mastering the art of always being present. I still don't have that down. And that's the thing that I'm most drawn to mastering is presence. Even as a new mother, presence is the most beautiful experience for me. And anytime I am in deep presence with my partner, everything else fades away, you know, the ego, any, anything that's in the way. So that's what I would love to learn in this lifetime.

That's beautiful. Why do you think so many people are struggling today in relationships? Is it wounds? Is it they haven't healed? Is it they have a bad model of relationships from their parents? Probably all of it, you know. Social media. What do you think is hurting people today in relationships?

Everything you just said. Social media is a tough one right now. We have these human meat markets right, where you're supposed to go shopping for a partner and you're grading them based on what, their photo looks? And so much of it is bioenergetic, right? And you don't know who this person is. I'm the kind of person who— I don't care if you're a supermodel, unless I can feel you, I don't actually even know if you're attractive or not. And so for me, it's really about that deep spiritual bond. So, so many of us are— we're shopping in these human meat markets for people, and it's not working. And it can even become addictive. There's, that's a real thing.

Addictive, just like swiping or like, yeah.

Yeah, dating app addiction. And of course, you know, we don't have many templates for healthy relationship. We don't see it much in the media at all. It's a lot of chaos. And we also, many of us don't have elders anymore either. We don't have those people who can support us and guide us or who can remind us how to come back to love when we need help in our relationships. So, so often something gets hard and we just throw the relationship away because we don't know what else to do. And so my hope is that through this work that I'm doing, that you're doing, that we're all aiming to do, is that people feel that they have a container they can step into so that they can stop glamorizing the idea of the perfect relationship and just start learning how to be happy.

Why do you think so many people struggle with feeling loved and lovable?

It's the age-old question, isn't it? I think we're born and all of a sudden we have these human fallibilities where we struggle to believe in ourselves. We struggle to believe that we're good enough. And it seems that it's built into the human condition in some ways. That we come in with these stories and, you know, some traditions believe, you know, you cut the umbilical cord and you're separated from spirit or from God or whatever you'd like to call it. And so in the human realms, you know, we're gonna be experiencing these, this type of suffering. And I feel that a lot of that can be nurtured in childhood. And it seems that no matter what, we all come out with some sort of insecurity or pain story or trauma or life lesson to work with. And I sort of imagine there's this celestial team, you know, in the cosmos with stamps and they're just choosing, oh, this group of babies that's gonna be born, here's your life path, here's your life path. And they're just spitting them out. It sounds funny, but that's kind of the cartoon that I've made in my mind because it helps me remember that we all come here with a path. We all have something to learn. And we're not here to interfere with people's paths so much as we are here to just encourage and be loving along the way. And that goes for being a parent too. We can't change their life path, but we can interfere with it. And so the most loving thing we can do for everyone that comes into our lives is to honor their experience and to do our best to be kind while we're on the journey.

What do you think is going to be your biggest shadow challenge while being a mom?

My biggest shadow challenge— well, I'm only 6 and a half months in and it's already been such a deep ride. I've experienced so much heartache over the impermanence, uh, of this new life. You know, everything just changes so quickly. And one of the things that I've noticed is that it's very easy to want to just save her from everything, like just keep everything perfect for her and like never have a bad moment, you know, never express my own anger, you know, never have a snappy moment with my husband, just be the perfect loving mother where she never experiences any discomfort and pain. And I also know that that's not human. And so that's actually been confronting for me is to see my own sometimes innate desire to just save her from any pain and having to let go. So it's a bit of that devouring mother archetype where I just want to like keep her close.

Yeah, yeah.

So I'm working on that.

That's good.

That's good.

That's great. Well, I'm really excited about this. You've got an amazing book called Becoming the One and an amazing community called Rising Woman, which has, you know, taken over the internet. And has an amazing community and message empowering people to really learn these strategies of healing and overcoming the trauma and creating a new vision for your life and having deeper relationship with self and others. Uh, so I want people to follow you over on social media, Rising Woman, and also Becoming the One book, which has been a massive big, uh, big bestseller. Um, how else can we be of service to you and support you?

Thanks. I mean, reading my book is great. Be of service to your families. That's the legacy that I hope to leave behind is helping people be more loving in their family systems. 'Cause I've always felt overwhelmed by how much pain there is in the world. And I always have this drive, like I wanna save everyone from their pain and I wanna feed all the children. And I'm starting to really get how important it is that we just do that on a community level. And so the greatest gift that anyone can give is to take something from my work or my book or an interview that I have done and say, you know, I'm going to just be of service more to the people in my life around me.

Yeah, that's great. It's beautiful. Got a couple of final questions for you. This one's called the Three Truths.

Okay.

So imagine a hypothetical scenario. It's your last day on earth, many years away. You get to live as long as you want to live in this world, but then you got to turn the lights off and go somewhere else. And you've accomplished all your dreams and you've got the family, the relationships, everything you wanted to create, it's happened. But for whatever reason, you got to take all of your messages with you, all of your book content, information, it's got to go to the next place.

Okay.

So no one has access to anything you've ever shared before when you leave. Hypothetical. But you get to leave behind 3 things, you know, to be true, 3 lessons that you'd share with the world from all the things you've learned. What would those truths be for you?

One of those truths would be that love truly is the only thing that matters when we go, that the greatest gift that we can give the world is to love our families. And That presence is all we have.

I would acknowledge you, Shalene, for everything you've overcome, for your journey, and for your courage to, to talk about it, to use the pain and the trauma and the challenge and share these lessons with the world. You've helped so many people heal and grow, understand the chaos of their life, get out of challenging relationships, uh, you know, do the work to get into healthy, conscious relationships. So I really acknowledge you for your entire life story and using it for good, using all the pain, all the trauma, all the sadness, all the darkness for good. And I'm so grateful that you're in a healthy relationship now and got a great guy with you. Uh, I'm so happy for the family you're building, and I acknowledge you for the light you bring to so many. It's really beautiful to watch. Final question: what's your definition of greatness?

These are great questions. For me, my definition of greatness in terms of like what I see as greatness is integrated humility and praise and the capacity to celebrate and enjoy life, and also the capacity to feel the grief and the pain of the other side of joy and love.

I hope you enjoyed today's episode and it inspired you on your journey towards greatness. Make sure to check out the show notes in the description for a full rundown of today's episode with all the important links. And if you want weekly exclusive bonus episodes with me personally, as well as ad-free listening, then make sure to subscribe to our Greatness Plus channel exclusively on Apple Podcasts. Share this with a friend on social media and leave us a review on Apple Podcasts as well. Let me know what you enjoyed about this episode. In that review. I really love hearing feedback from you, and it helps us figure out how we can support and serve you moving forward. And I want to remind you, if no one has told you lately, that you are loved, you are worthy, and you matter. And now it's time to go out there and do something great.

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