You didn't lose yourself all at once. You said yes to one thing that wasn't yours, and
then another, and then another.
Shoutout to James Sexton, NYCDivorceLawyer on IG for the inspiration for today's episode!
This is the episode about how that happens — and how you come back.
→ Work with me, one on one: https://theloomlife.com/coaching (open to men and women)
If you retired tomorrow, or your kids moved out tomorrow, or your relationship ended,
would you still know who you are? Not what you do. Not who you take care of. Leslie
opens with a question she couldn't stop thinking about after hearing it secondhand: do
you have a place to go, a thing to do, and something to be passionate about? Lose
those three and you lose your inner compass. And once your sense of self goes blurry,
the relationship goes blurry too — because every relationship is the you, the me, and
the we. If the me falls apart, there is nothing left to hold the we together.
This one is personal. Leslie tells the story of the years she stayed home with her two
youngest, when her place to go became their school, her thing to do became their
schedule, and her passion became photographing their lives. She talks about not
recognizing the woman in her own photographs from that decade, and about the women's
retreat in Costa Rica where she was asked to write something about herself and
couldn't think of anything to put down. Then she tells a harder, more recent story:
the stretch after her divorce when an old abandonment wound woke up inside her
relationship with her partner Frank, and she lost months to worrying — along with her
friends, her family, and the attention her new business needed. What Frank told her
when she finally came back to her own life is the turn the whole episode rests on.
Along the way: what the research says happens to your sense of self after a
relationship ends, why people in relationships tend to have fewer close friends than
single people, self-silencing and what it appears to cost the body, the friendship
numbers that make retirement so much harder on men than anyone expects, and why family
systems therapy holds that a real "us" needs two whole people in it — not two halves
looking for completion.
For women in the middle of motherhood, marriage, an empty nest or a divorce. And for
the men in their lives, who are living the same story from the other side.
CHAPTERS
00:00 Would you know who you are?
03:00 Why we lose ourselves — and why it isn't weakness
06:15 The three anchors: a place, a thing, a passion
07:50 What the research says about a blurry sense of self
10:00 When I disappeared into motherhood
14:10 Self-silencing, and what it costs the body
15:40 For the men: when work is all three anchors
18:00 Retiring into nothing
19:20 My abandonment wound, and what Frank said
22:20 Two whole people: differentiation and the real "us"
24:40 Why good, loving people hand themselves over
26:30 Coming back
MORE SUPPORT
Going through a divorce, or rebuilding after one — THROUGH:
https://theloomlife.com/sp/through-divorce-program
Ongoing support and community — Mindful Untangling Membership:
https://theloomlife.com/membership
Instagram: @the.loom.life · @loom.life.therapy
This channel is educational content and is not therapy. Watching does not create a
clinician-client relationship. Leslie is a licensed therapist in Florida only; Florida residents seeking therapy can find that at loomlifetherapy.com. If you are looking for coaching, the link above is the door.
