Reclaim and Rediscover You: How to Stop Feeling Lost in Your Marriage

Okay, we're going. Okay. Three, two, one. If you have ever felt like you've lost yourself in your marriage, first and foremost, you are not alone. Secondly, There are over 69 million Americans that are married in 2023, and so many are guaranteed to end their marriages in divorce because of the root issue being they feel like they lost themselves and they believe their spouse took something from them. Now, here's the good news. We get to rediscover and reclaim ourselves without making divorce the solution and learning how to be the best of who we are. Getting back to a place of knowing, loving, and trusting ourselves and showing up as the version of who we've long to be, who we've missed. And from that place, and from only that place, should divorce be on the table. The place where you know yourself, you found yourself in your unshakably whole again. That is the place. Unless, of course, we're in an extremely abusive scenario where you're actually in danger and it's a safety issue. I want you to have divorce be the last step, not the step to getting back to you again. It could be the last step because you found you your spouse has had the opportunity to grow, reinvent, and transform, and it's just not happening. Do you hear the difference now? Please allow me to introduce myself. I am Rebecca Silence, Relationship and emotional healing coach. I've been named the national marriage and Family Specialist for a reason. I want us to have the most divine relationship with ourselves that our kids get to have modeled a healed parent. I want more households to have two healed parents for the children. I want more parents healed so that our children aren't seeing being an adult as an extremely daunting and upsetting and unattractive destination inevitable for them. We don't make marriage, we don't make adulting look attractive. And I'm not here to shame anyone. I'm just here to call a spade a spade. I'm here to have the cards on the table, face up, having the conversation that we need to be having, which is adulting should be delicious. It should be glorious. It should be absolutely whatever we want it to be, instead of just a little bit better than what we saw growing up. So today I'm here to introduce myself and to talk to you about how to re discover and reclaim you, even when, and especially when circumstances that are beyond your control haven't changed and might not change yet. Welcome to the healing is possible experience. This is a show where every single week, I take you on a journey back to you and I'm quite certain this is the most important episode to date and we've done hundreds that I've recorded so far. This is such a timely and essential conversation. We have to stop blaming our spouse, our role as, you know, wife, husband, partner, parent on why we can't recognize ourselves anymore. When we look in the mirror, we have a right to feel gloriously alive, free, fulfilled and enjoying our days not as the exception, but as the rule we live by. If you would do me a favor, go to the Rebecca Silence YouTube channel. Click subscribe. Click that notification bell. That would help us so much in spreading the word. And that not just is healing possible, it's possible for you. It's not promised, but it's possible for you. If and only if you will take on a commitment to rediscovering and reclaiming you even when nothing externally has changed, even in the moments that are so not your preference. We want you subscribing. We want you getting the latest and greatest content. And please do comment on this episode. Let us know you're watching. Let us know where you are. Let us know what takeaways are filling you and nourishing your soul. And if you feel called and you know someone that you feel would benefit from this content, share the YouTube channel and share this episode. So without further ado, let me explain what we're going to get in here and unpack and unveil and explore together today. Number one. Number one sign that you've lost yourself in your marriage, in your life, but particularly in your marriage, is you're focused on pleasing others and you've stopped prioritizing your own status faction. Okay, now let me give you a little bit of backstory. Why is this topic so important to me? Why is my focus exclusively on helping high performing, high functioning, service driven leaders like yourself reclaim and rediscover themselves? Here's why this is so important to me. So I have a journey of losing myself and finding myself and reclaiming and rediscovering my life. That is a turbulent journey. I grew up in the most severe abusive environment imaginable. I don't say this for pity. I don't say this for comparison and, you know, compare and contrast purposes. All of our journeys have brought us to the moment we're in. We know that conceptually. But have you ever considered no one is immune to trauma. Have you ever considered no one is immune to heartbreak. Have you ever considered that no one is immune to having their journey of love, self, love, love with other people, including some turbulence along the way? So I grew up very early on. The most severe abuse that I experienced started at age 4 and it went on for years and continued to iterate until I understood, wait a minute, it has to be better than this. Love has to be better than this. Family has to be better than this marriage adulting me as a woman. It has to be better than this. I went from deciding at a very young age, literally likely age 4, that I would take the abuse because then maybe other people wouldn't have to. I decided so young that my worth, my needs, my desires, my heart, my healing, that was the last thing we should focus on. Because what was more important was putting out fires and trying to manage chaos, abuse and my own self loathing that started very, very young. Now, I'm not sure what your version of this is, but what I'm certain of is there was a moment in time decided I don't matter as much as the pain, the trauma, the abuse, and the chaos in front of me going on around me. I need to learn how to live in spite of all of this, which unconsciously likely meant abandoning yourself in the name of love. Self betrayal in the name of love, I think is the number one most important epidemic and crisis that in our American society. We need a movement around to knock this crisis in a new direction, to one at a time having each of us that are aware enough to understand we haven't been careful with our own hearts and in the name of love. And we have every right to take back the permission slip our inner child has given us to betray ourselves in the name of love, to back burner who we really are, what we really need, want and desire because of our carefulness and concern with the hearts and lives in front of us. You're likely here because someone wasn't careful with you growing up, just like what happened to me. But here's the big bold statement I want you to just slowly let yourself flirt with and maybe even begin to digest. If you as an adult are not careful with you, it's on you. The good news about this is your whole life can change just from taking the time to watch this entire episode and just from making a decision that you're no longer willing to betray yourself, abandon yourself, back burner yourself in the name of love, or for any reason or for anyone ever again. We saw it modeled and we survived our childhoods going pleasing other people and trying to make sure other people are good, solid, happy, not upset, not going into whatever spiral that had collateral damage, whatever that looked like for you growing up. It's so real that what you grew up with and how you grew up and how not careful people were with you and your heart, this is all undeniable, this is all valid, this is all understandable. But have you considered that the root of your dissatisfaction is likely how not careful with you and your own heart you've become? Our childhood prepared us. Our childhood prepared us for actualizing our dream of what love and family could be. And if you're in my community, if you're here with me, you care about family, about love, about people, about service, and about making a difference. I see you. And how often have we served at the expense of. Of pleasing ourselves, at the expense of our own heart's desire, at the expense of the truth of who we are. And let me just explain. Today we're going to talk about three things, okay? Number one, what happened? Where and how and when did we lose ourselves? Because I guarantee you it's not in your marriage. It happened long before and it just showed up in your marriage because this is already how you've been treating you, how you've been seeing you, how you've been speaking with and caring for you. And now it just escalated, okay? So we're going to talk about how and when and why and where did it happen that we lost ourselves really? Doesn't mean your spouse is in a pain in the ass, doesn't mean your spouse isn't behaving badly. But I promise you, they're not the reason why you lost yourselves. So we're going to get to the root of what happened. Then we're going to talk about what does it mean to rediscover and reclaim you. And for today, we're focused on the very first sign. I've got five. And by the end of today's episode, if you're interested in getting my my PDF that explains all five signs that you've lost yourself in your relationship and what to do about it. I'm going to tell you how to access that information. But today we're just talking about the sign. You've lost yourself because of your commitment to trying to please everyone but yourself. And again, that started really, really young. So. So how did it happen? And then what does it mean to rediscover and reclaim you in the face of your need to people please. Instead of caring for honoring and respecting the truth of who you are. You don't want to miss the beat of this episode. I guarantee it is worth your time to stick around all the way until the end. And I'm so glad you're here. I'm so grateful that you're a leader who wants better for yourself. I'm so grateful you're a leader who wants to be as healed and fulfilled and free as possible so that you can model that for your children. I am so grateful you're someone who has imagined what life and love and family could be. You've imagined what marriage could be. You haven't given up on that dream if you're here with me now. And I just want to celebrate and honor the strength and the courage it takes to not let your dream of love and marriage and family die because it's not the way you imagined it. Now I help people exceed their dream of what love could be, not just need it. And back to who am I and why is this topic so important to me? I've already shared a little bit about how I grew up. If you want to hear more, best next step is buy my book Coming Back to Life, A Roadmap to Healing from Pain to create the life you want. Where I share completely, vulnerably and transparently and raw where I come from and how I used where I came from to learn how to master the art of using trauma to my advantage. Because ultimately that's the conversation we're in. How do we use heartbreak and trauma to our advantage? How can trauma be an empowering and liberating conversation? And I'm not saying this because I miss toxic positivity. I'm saying it's possible to have our past liberate us or we can be defeated and discouraged and less alive because of our past. And I don't know about you, but I don't want the villains from my past to keep the power over me and my right to live and lead my way. I want to take my power back. And that's the beginning of reclaiming right is taking our power back, getting our facts straight about who and what actually gets to limit us, hurt us, have us living in a way where we're less alive or where worse, we're just surviving our way through life. So. So my story is I went from my childhood into recreating in different, you know, ways, the same dynamics. It was different characters in different costumes, but the same dynamics of how I grew up as an adult. Early on, I ended up with eating disorders, abusing alcohol, amazed, emotionally, mentally, spiritually, physically, a shell of a person. I used to say to my friends, I feel half alive. I was going through the motions in my first marriage. It was a domestic violence marriage it was my childhood on repeat and me experiencing life and love and marriage and family all over again. Even with the most pure beautiful intentions. Very similarly, eerily similarly to what I had seen and experienced growing up. Somehow I had the support, I had the strength to get out of that domestic violence marriage with a 2 year old. Not knowing how on earth we were going to make it, knowing I likely wouldn't ever get child support or help from my child's father, which didn't happen. It was me. It was me and it was her. My oldest is just my ultimate dream come true and success story. We made it. She calls the Gilmore Girls. I didn't know how we were going to do it. I was working three jobs for many years to support us. Scraping by, scraping my way up out of the darkness into the light. I had to go bankrupt after foreclosing on my home. But we made it. After that I decided, okay, okay, I can teach empowerment and inspiration and living a life that's yours. And I did. I did for a while. And life was a dream come true. Got married again, got pregnant with a second child. Life was beyond my wildest dreams come true. But here's the thing that was off that I didn't recognize. And what I want you to understand is that we know when something's off on the most whisper subtle level. But what we often do, and this is what was happening for me was I was ignoring the whispers. Something's off, something's off for me. What was off was my lack of self care, my lack of prioritizing, listening to and connecting to my body, my intuition, my spirit. I was uber achievement driven. But what I didn't understand was there was no achieving my way out of not knowing how to stop focusing on pleasing others above paying attention to my soul's needs, wants, direction and desires. So I'm pregnant with my second baby in my dream come true marriage. My business is thriving and I got a cancer diagnosis. I was coaching a plastic surgeon and his beautiful wife helping them reclaim and reinvent their marriage. And they asked, please, I know you're here to help save our marriage and our family, but I need you to come in at 7am tomorrow so we can take this mole on your arm off and get it checked. This doesn't look good, Rebecca. In a blink, my whole life changed. 34 years old, 7 months pregnant, vibrant, healthy, no symptoms. I didn't feel sick. I in fact felt unstoppable. But again, my focus was only on achievement. What external results and achievement can I create to prove I Have worth and value to prove that I can beat my past and live and lead in spite of it. I was still living in spite of my past. I didn't know I could use it to my advantage. I ended up with a 5 to 10% chance to live. That was it. And it was only in my season of cancer, which I describe as and also write about in coming back to life. My book, the best seminar, the best seminar I'd ever had the privilege of participating in. And I have participated in hundreds. I've facilitated hundreds of seminars. I have participated in hundreds of seminars. I'm not the coach and facilitator and author and teacher that doesn't have my own team, that doesn't do the work day in and day out myself. Nothing could have prepared me for cancer. But cancer ended up being a diagnosis that I refused to identify with and that I refused to have power over me. On some level, I knew the more aligned I am, the more free I am and the more equipped I am to. To listen to my body and my soul's guidance. I knew cancer wasn't me, and I knew it wasn't more powerful than me. Now, again, I don't know your story, but I know if you've lost yourself in any way. I know that if you at home, feel like a shell, feel like you're going through the motions, feel unfulfilled, dissatisfied, drained, exhausted, whatever it looks like for you, we've got a power problem going on. And here's what I mean by that. You're giving your power away without meaning to. Just like when you were growing up, you felt powerless to circumstance, trauma, heartbreak at the effect of the choices of the adults on around you, and felt like you had to, on some level, whether it was conscious or not, make the best of, in spite of. So my story is that it took almost dying and being told there's no way you beat this, especially without chemo. And then the results of the chemo and the side effects of the chemo, which is what I have spent almost a decade now healing from. It was more the chemo than the cancer that I've had to heal from and reinvent, you know, not in spite of, but certainly because of. This is. This is the hard truth I want you to all hear. The statistics didn't matter more than my commitment to rediscovering and reclaiming myself and my life in this season. It took cancer and me having to make such courageously brave, bold decisions one after another, Being my own advocate, being my own healer, me in union co creating my healing and transformation journey with God. To be able to learn how to regulate my nervous system. To be able to learn what it meant to be powerfully relaxed, no longer focused on achievement, focused on alignment. And I don't want you to have to go through such a turbulent dark journey if we can avoid that for you. I want to give you everything I've learned over the past 20 years. I have been helping people heal since 2002. I want to give you the secret magic sauce formula to what I describe as Aligned Intimacy. I've created the Aligned Intimacy method as a result of who I became. See, it's so much more than what's your next strategy? What is it that you need to do? It's about alignment and from there you're just guided and it's about who are you being? And no longer about what do I need to do? And no longer about the grind, the hustle, you being drained again because you're so focused on pleasing everybody and anyone other than you. So how did it happen? It happened because your survival self took over in your childhood. And the second you got married, the second your spouse became family and you became a parent, we unconsciously default back to our survival selves and our limited possibility and expectations of what happens to us experientially in marriage and family. So think about what's one word? You can write it down, you can meditate on it, but just let it come to you. What's one word to describe what hurt the most? Growing up in your family dynamics, Maybe you felt abandoned, maybe you felt shame, maybe you felt rejected, betrayed, abused, unseen, unimportant, unloved. What's the word? And now ask yourself, is that the same word to describe how I feel now in my marriage and in my family, even though I love them, even though on paper I beat myself up because I know I should be so grateful. I should be so grateful for how good I have it. I'm successful, but I'm not happy. I should be more grateful. My problem is I should be more grateful. No, take that pressure off right now. Let's in the name of Snoop Dogg, drop it like it's hot. That pressure is unnecessary and it's unhelpful and it's emotional cancer that you don't have to invite into your life for another second, that you don't have to tolerate for another second. Understand, all that happened is you became who you thought you needed to be unconsciously. Not your parents fault, not the circumstances fault, not even God's Fault the universe. It was unconscious, it was innocent, it was the best you had. You became a survival self, a survival personality, a version of you committed to survival, believing in order to survive you had to back burner essentially what pleased you to survive. And then now you're just that version of you again, at home with your family that you chose, that you love. And again, divorce, not the next step. That's just you trying to find a way to rescue yourself because you don't know how much more you can take. But the reason you lost yourself is because you weren't nurtured or nourished growing up in a way that supported you being the truth of who you were. You became who you needed to be to survive. It was innocent. And now survival is the rule you live by. In family, in marriage, in love, in relationship, as a partner, it's more you don't like who you're being in the relationship, then it is your spouse. Your partner is behaving badly, I promise you. And then I guarantee, yeah, you're probably with someone behaving badly. But guess what, they're innocent too. Because they're playing out their survival coping skills and techniques. And their survival personality is large and in charge, just like yours. When I work privately with couples, I do a two day intensive. I write a personalized retreat just for you. Taking you out of survival into the truth of who you are so that we can reclaim, rediscover, reinvent and transform in such a way where you get to this is so massive. You get to have independence and freedom and your relationship. We are so programmed. It's either or I can have me, I can have my independence, or I can be in self sacrifice, whether I realize it or not, in my survival personality. But I get to have my family. It's not either or. So what I do with couples is you just need two days, that's it. And then you get to heal the past. Create a vision for yourself as an individual. Create a vision for the relationship, where it's going. And now two adults that are healed are in charge of the mission of designing and co creating and nourishing and nurturing their marriage their way. And again, maybe divorce is the answer. But until you've left no stone unturned, how do we know? History repeats. I just met the most gorgeous woman leader. She was a young breast cancer survivor. She was incredible. She was a devoted mother, she was a devoted wife. After cancer, she did try with her spouse to make things work. But she knew there was no going back to the way Life was before cancer. Ended up divorced. Now she's dating and finding herself being a chameleon, trying to morph into who she thinks she needs to be, to be received, to be loved, to be desired and to be wanted by the people she's dating. We don't have someone take the truth of who we are away from us. We abandon ourselves. So that's what happened and we never have to let it happen again. And I'll say that one more time, we never ever, Never ever, never. I'm very careful with absolutes. But we never have to give ourselves permission to lose ourselves, abandon ourselves or betray ourselves and in the name of love, ever again. And I am so passionate about this that my exclusive focus right now is helping people rediscover and reclaim the truth of who they are. Again with my mission really being about. I want our kids to have healed parents, I really do. I want family to be amazing. And let me tell you fast forward. Obviously I'm healthy, I'm well. I am so grateful for my life today and my experience of family. It is beyond my wildest dreams come true. I promise you. I wake up every day, I look at my husband, I look at my children and I think I have won the life lottery. I cherish my work with all of you. I cherish and appreciate so much my ability to serve day in and day out. But my dream of family, that is what my inner child wanted more than anything. And I have it. But I wouldn't have had it without my going through what I went through emotionally and spiritually during cancer. Because it allowed me to figure out what was important. Self care, soul care, listening to my own inner souls guidance and divine guidance. I don't know if I would have gotten there without cancer. But what I know is you don't need a crisis. You don't need to let things get more and more and more and more off for you to step up, for you to stand in. I'm ready to officially break through survival. I'm ready to officially risk letting the world see me standing in my power, honoring, caring for and respecting me. The only thing you have to lose is you. Don't you dare let that happen. It's time to rediscover what's possible. So what do I mean by rediscover? I just mean reimagine. And I would love for you to take yourself on a journey, meditating or journaling, letting yourself flirt with and fantasize again about what you want. What do you want life to feel like? What do you want love to feel like family, to feel like it's time for a vision. That's what you really want. Not just you making the best of and you achieving and trying to prove and living in spite of your past. Your parents did the best they could. They're innocent. And again, I'm not saying what really happened didn't really happen, but what hurt you didn't really hurt. I'm just saying if you're with me, you're likely the cycle breaker. You're likely the generational healer in your family. And what happens for us, the ones growing up that saw it, can be so much better than this is. If our family didn't validate that vision we had growing up, why isn't it better? It could be better. What likely happened is we started to doubt ourselves and our vision. And we decided what we saw as possible must not be. Because if the people that care for us, that love us, that we love more than anything, don't see what we see, it must not be real. It must not be possible. It must not be allowed. But rediscovering is about reimagining that childhood dream of what love and marriage and family could be. And I want you to give yourself permission today. I want you to hear my voice saying, you were right. You were right. You were right about what you wanted, you were right about what you saw. It is possible, but you're not going to get the validation that you're looking for externally to prove it to you. You just need to know. And just like how I played cancer, I was unwilling not to live. Like I was going to live. I was unwilling, not as much as I had control over putting my energy in the direction of anything, but I was going to live. I was going to come out the other side, and I was going to not only emerge victorious, I was going to emerge the most healed and whole and healthy that I had ever been. And that's exactly what happened. And from there, I was able to reset and rediscover my vision of love and reprioritize self care. It became number one on the list. And I'm not talking superficial self care. I'm talking about soul care. I'm talking about knowing how to honor and respect and take care of myself even when other people in life weren't honoring or nurturing or taking care of me. I'm talking about being so careful with myself in my heart that nothing could harm me ever again. So this is what I'm talking about when I'm talking about rediscovering so rediscover and reimagine and go back to giving yourself permission to play with and have fun with what you imagined growing up was possible for you. Because I promise, not only is it possible, it gets even better than what you think with the right support and the inner work. And reclaiming is just about committing to your life and yourself and love and marriage and family, becoming what you imagine it could be. And reclaiming you is about you being unwilling and to betray or abandon yourself in the name of love for any reason. Reclaiming is about going, I don't choose you over me any ever again. Reclaiming is about I don't choose you fill in the blank over me ever again. I choose me, my unshakable wholeness. I rest in self, love and divine love. And from there I'll show up to this relationship on my terms. Not yours, my terms. Love gets to be on your terms. Marriage gets to be on your terms. Family, parenting on your terms, life on your terms. That is what reclaiming is, is all about. And what I'm going to end with here today are two pieces for you. One is a little guided visualization, a little guided imagery and meditation to take you into feeling, into the truth of who you are again. And then I'm going to give you an exercise and then I've got a free gift for you again. I can't thank you enough for coming with me this far on this episode's journey back to you. It's an honor to serve you. And what I'm going to ask you to do next is close your eyes. As long as you're not driving and in a safe place to do it. If you don't feel safe or comfortable closing your eyes, that's okay too. Just softly rest your gaze and I want you to put your hands on your heart and I want you to breathe into how alive you are in this precious and sacred moment. And now I want you to breathe into your power and your strength and your resilience. You haven't come this far in this lifetime to come this far. You're closer to having the experience of life and love and marriage and family than you've ever been. And it's not nearly as far out of reach as you think. But in this moment, we're rediscovering the truth of who you are, the truth of your power, the truth about your dream of love. And we're reclaiming how equipped and prepared and capable you are to take yourself across the finish line into the experience that you've been longing for. Love gets to be better than you can imagine. But we've got to start with reclaiming that vision of what we imagined growing up love could be. We've got to decide if that love doesn't happen to us the way we hope it will. We've got to create it. We've got to experience it, starting with our relationship with ourselves. How are you treating you? How are you loving you? How are you respecting and caring for and nurturing you? Breathe into this truth. You're the one thing you've got for life. It's time to treat yourself and your life and your heart like it's precious. Because it is. You are. And I'd love for you now, with your eyes closed, if possible, to say out loud, I am precious and I am deserving of life and love the way I always imagined it could be. So many people will never do the work to create a life and a love story that they love. So many don't even see this as possible. But you're here because you do. And it's not the time to light a match and blow everything up so you can feel free and alive again. It's time to take your life back with life exactly as it is, just like I had to do with cancer. Because from there, you're unstoppable and you can create and have and be and do and experience anything you want. One more time. I am deserving of love the way I always imagined it could be. And now, out loud, I want you to say to yourself, I love myself. I am no longer willing to abandon myself to please anyone and everyone but me. I take back my right to put me first and to experience the best of myself and the best of what life has to offer. Now here's your homework. I want you to please journal or meditate on, but find the words. It can be simple, it can be extensive. Whatever your heart desires. What was your vision of love growing up. And let's reclaim it. So you're going to write out what your vision of love was growing up. And then you're going to say out loud, I reclaim my right to experience the vision of love I had growing up. I'm so excited for you. I'm so proud of you. I see you. The world needs you healed so you can make your difference. And here's what's next. I have a free gift for you. Please visit rebeccasilence.com forward/spa day. You're going to get access to a spa day for your heart, mind and soul 60 minutes where I take you on a master class journey back to you. I gift this course to my couples and I recently decided to gift it to all of you. My beloved community that understands the significance and the importance of prioritizing you so that you can serve at the highest levels. The world needs you healed so you can make your difference. Go to rebeccasilence.com forward/spa day 60 minutes to nurture and nourish your heart, your mind and your soul. You're just going to put in code self care and you get this course for free. Let your self healing journey begin now. Again, let us know how this episode touched you. Comment like and subscribe to the Rebecca Silence YouTube channel. Share this episode with those you know need it in the United States We've never been more heartbroken in the United States. I don't believe we've ever been more dissatisfied in our marriages and at home with our families. And it's not because we don't love our children, our spouse, our family. It's because we've lost ourselves. And you can be one of the rare few. Modeling love doesn't mean I have to lose myself. Love doesn't mean I choose marriage, relationship or family over my right to freedom and independence. Thank you for being here. I love you so much. Healing isn't promised, but it's possible for me, for you, and for all of us. And you're one of the brave that are going first and that are going for it. Congratulations. I celebrate you and I will be seeing you soon. From my heart to yours. This is Rebecca Silence signing off for now. So much love Sa.