I was ready to discover who I was without the relationship, without the expectations, without the life I had built around it.

Because I hadn't just left a marriage.

I had walked away from the life I thought I was supposed to want.

And I had also walked away from the life I thought I was supposed to want.

The business.

The success.

The dream house.

The Porsche.

The dogs.

The life that looked fucking perfect from the outside.

Except the dream life had turned out to be a nightmare.

So I left it all behind and started over.

I thought that was going to be the hard part.

I thought once I was out, I could finally become the woman I wanted to be.

And in the beginning, I was just trying to survive.

I was navigating PTSD, trying to rebuild my life, and learning how to exist outside of the relationship I'd spent almost a decade in.

I found a domestic violence support group.

I started working with therapists.

And for the first time, I began learning about personal development and realized that there was actually a whole world of inner work available to me.

That was the beginning of something huge for me.

I became fascinated with understanding myself.

Why I was the way I was.

Why I'd stayed.

Why I struggled to trust myself.

Why I kept repeating certain patterns.

I wanted to understand my mind, my history, my relationships, and ultimately how to create a completely different life.

And I did the work.

A lot of it.

But eventually I learned something I couldn't have understood back then:

Leaving the relationship didn't mean I'd left survival.

I had left the person who was hurting me...

but I had brought all of the patterns, wounding, pain, and shame with me.

And because I didn't understand that yet, I did what so many women do when they're desperately trying to create a better life:

I worked on myself.

I rebuilt my business.

I created a new life.

And from the outside, it looked like I had completely turned things around and had my sh*t together, but inside, I was struggling more than ever.

Anxiety was my baseline and panic attacks had become normal.

Obsessive compulsive disorder controlled my life.

I was compulsively exercising three times a day for years without taking days off.

I was struggling with bulimia and restrictive eating.

I was smoking weed to manage my anxiety and emotions, partying, and using Adderall every morning to be more productive. The fact that it also disconnected me from my emotions felt like a nice bonus at the time.

I was obsessed with improving myself, my appearance, my business, my productivity, my life.

I was people-pleasing.

Controlling myself and my life.

Overthinking.

Trying to high-vibe my way out of emotions I didn't know how to feel.

I was doing everything I thought I was supposed to do to heal, and somehow I was getting further away from myself.

And this was the part that was so fucking confusing.

I was incredibly self-aware.

I knew my patterns.

I knew my trauma.

I could tell you exactly why I did the things I did.

I was journaling.

Listening to podcasts.

Reading the books.

Working with therapists.

Learning everything I could about myself.

And I still couldn't seem to live differently.

There are few things more isolating than appearing like you have your sh*t together while feeling like you're barely holding yourself together inside.

I kept making changes to my life, convinced that the next thing would finally be the thing that made me feel better.

But eventually I had to face a much deeper truth:

I didn't just need to heal from what happened to me.

I needed to understand what had happened inside of me long before that relationship ever began.

I needed to understand the impact years of trauma and survival had on my body and nervous system.

I needed to work with the parts of me that had learned that people-pleasing, perfectionism, control, disconnection, and self-abandonment were ways to stay safe.

And most importantly, I needed to stop treating my mind as the only place healing happened.

Because my body had been carrying the story too.

That realization changed everything.

I began to understand that the goal wasn't to become better at managing myself, fixing myself, or endlessly healing myself.

The goal was to come back to myself.

To rebuild trust with myself from the inside out.

To learn how to feel without abandoning myself.

To create safety within myself.

To listen to my body's wisdom.

To honor my needs and desires.

To stop recreating the past.

To become deeply self-chosen.

And eventually, to have enough of my own life force available that I could actually use it to create my life instead of spending it protecting myself from the past.

That's the gap I've lived.

The gap between knowing better and living differently.

And it's the reason RECLAIMED AF exists.

Because I know what it's like to be the woman who has done the work and still feels fucking stuck.

And I also know what becomes possible when you stop trying to fix yourself..

and finally start reclaiming yourself.