Yeah

... "I am not gonna screw this up." Like, [chuckles] "I'm gonna..." And so I, you know, I just kept pushing through.

And, you know, in my situation, I, the more I tried, the worse it got, and I decided that I was gonna just start really looking and changing it so that everything that happened, I looked at myself and I thought, "What is this teaching me about me?" And after many years of really doing that deep work, and I was a coach at the time helping people through big decisions, typically at that time, like in career choices and those kinds of like midlife choices.

But after about eight years, I finally got what I describe as the bravery to leave.

You know, it was very difficult at that time.

We have so many patterns ingrained, and things are familiar.

You know, by now I'm in my late 40s.

Can you walk us through the framework overall so we have an idea of what that looks like?

Is that something you've seen people be able to come back from, or is that one of the signs that you are on that path towards the final movement towards separation?

You know, one of the things that I think, and this might just be me being a hopeless romantic, but I believe you can come back from just about anything.

It may be that you come to an agreement with your partner that the relationship as we have it now is dead.

It's done.

Like, this is done.

Put a fork in it.

What do we want to do from here? And so, you know, I think that when we look at that, I don't think there's any...

Just give us some stories about life on the other side from the women you work with.

Just speak on it, my

dear.

It's so interesting to me because I talk to so many women every single day and they are struggling.

They're struggling in their marriage and they're also questioning, why did I wait so long to say something about how I was struggling? They may have been asking their partner for change, but to voice out loud to friends or to even see a post online where they're like, oh my God, that's me.

I can't tell you how many times women say, oh my God, that's me.

And I think that there is... things that happen in our bodies that start to shift, you know, our estrogen drops and our give a crap hormone goes with it.

And so we become much more aware of, I think, a couple of things, but one is what we were taught to endure as girls, like what we were told was a good woman and what we were told was a good wife and how we're supposed to show up.

So tell me about how you do that with your clients.

Can you describe it so somebody can, if they're listening, say, wait a minute, maybe I had a whisper.

There can be moments where it's like, this is 100% the right thing.

Like, I am so certain.

But I know even in my own experience, it wasn't like that.

And I knew it was time to go.

But I think the shift there is...

Do I fully trust myself? It's self-trust that we're really looking for, not certainty, because certainty will come and go depending on your thought patterns, right? But like, can I trust myself to be able to handle the next right thing? And I think that when we have a level of clarity, it feels settled in us.

If somebody is listening right now and they're in that place, like what is there like an action or two that you could share with them that could help them kind of take that first step and maybe being able to see themselves in that different way or hold the space for a conversation in that way.

That with the second one, you were maybe more stuck because you didn't want to fail at this twice? Yeah, I think that's

a component of it.

You know, I think we all do things that we believe in.

are keeping us safe.

Even if we're unhappy, it's things that are keeping us safe.

And, you know, my origin story is that I had a really happy childhood and I feel like I was pretty securely attached.

When I was in high school, my mom died in a car accident.

And so do you, I'm sure you build that into this, like how, how does one start to really build that trust and feel confident?

So anything else you would add that drew you into this work?

Yeah, I definitely don't have it all figured out.

But every day I am figuring out more.

And I think that's an important piece, you know, to be on the path of self-discovery and figuring out where you're headed.

I have been married a couple of times and because I'm very chic, Holly, very chic.

So I've been married a couple of times.

But my most recent marriage was long and long.

Starting from your

Yeah.

Because when I know I have a choice, then I'm here because I'm choosing to be here.

And when I'm choosing to be here, then I am empowered.

Yeah.

As opposed to feeling like I have no agency over any of this.

And I think that that shift mentally, like, you know, was my marriage good? No, it wasn't good.

But when I got to the place where I was like, okay, I'm here because I want to try to figure this out.

Right.

And I say, you know, for someone that's going to be listening to this conversation right now, from your own personal experiences and things that you've been through to get you to where you are right now, why should they listen to you here today?

Cause I have been through it.

You know, I think so often, and especially as coaches, we find the thing we are best at helping people with the thing that we figured out.

I've been a coach for a long, long time since 2012, but I went through my own really difficult marriage.

difficult marriage difficult divorce and the thing was it wasn't my first rodeo i had been divorced before and so this marriage was one where i i clung i wanted to figure it out i didn't want to fail again you know i i leaned into hope i i wanted things to to shift and i had to get to the place where i had the wisdom to know it was complete And because I think I've been through all of those cycles, it is really clear.

And I think I have a lot of compassion for where women are when other people may get, you know, frustrated or aggravated.

Like I know our friends, you know, can be like, just leave.

yeah.

[laughs]

And [laughs] and I, you know, so this marriage that I just left a few years ago, it really was such a journey for me because I didn't want to have it go bad.

Like I didn't wanna fail again.

And I think so many women are in a marriage where they don't want it to fail.

And so th- you know, we, we do all the things, and we adapt in all the ways and bend in all the contorted ways that we need to to try and make it work.

And in that process, for me, I just recognized that, hey, you know, this isn't my first rodeo, and maybe there's something here for me to really dive into.

And when I did all that work, it made the exit so clear that I knew there was a pathway here, and that's really what I, you know, leaned into was like how did this happen? How, what are the things that I really tackled, and how did I move through this to a place where I could leave with a lot of, um, integrity and bravery and I knew exactly what I wanted? And, you know, I will say that that process and the process that I work with so many women, I left, I came back, I leaned into hope, and then finally had the wisdom that it was over.

Yeah.