This one was hard to record.
Not because I did not know what to say. But because my body felt every word before it came out of my mouth.
The laptop died. The camera shut off. The house would not quiet down; distraction after distraction. And somewhere in the middle of all of it, I had this moment where I just stopped and thought, people must be tired of hearing this story.
But the truth is, I am the one who has lived it.
You are hearing it fresh. I am reliving it.
And when you sit down and tell your story from beginning to end instead of in little fragments, something shifts. You start to see patterns. You start to see how long certain beliefs have been driving you. You start to notice where you never actually got off the struggle bus.
I said something to my husband before recording that stopped me in my tracks.
I got on the struggle bus when my parents divorced, and I feel like I never got off.
That realization is part of this episode.
When Life Looks the Same but Isn’t
Here I am, almost 50 years old, living in two tiny bedrooms after losing a home, vehicles, and almost everything we owned when my husband lost his job.
And even though I am the CEO of my own company, even though I have clients, even though I am building something meaningful, there are days I still feel like that same little girl just trying to survive.
Trauma does that.
It says that if your current circumstances resemble your past, then you must still be that same powerless version of yourself.
But just because something looks familiar does not mean it is the same.
The path I am on now is not the path I was on then. The reasons are different. My awareness is different. I am different.
And sometimes I have to remind myself of that out loud.
Let’s Begin
After I left my ex-husband, both of my boys stayed with him temporarily while I tried to rebuild my life.
That was the agreement.
When I got my own place, they would come back.
A year later, when I finally had an apartment and a job and a car, I made the call.
Austin could come back.
Andrew could not.
When we went to court, I had no way to fight my ex. No lawyer, no money. Again, I was powerless. Powerless against a man who put me in the position I was in. The judge told me he would have primary custody, and I would pay child support. I felt like my entire nervous system left my body. It brought me right back to another courtroom, another child, another loss.
Andrew was three when I lost primary custody. I did not spend another birthday with him until he turned twenty-one. Our divorce was not one of a meeting of the minds. Where we would parent together. He went off to lead his life with another woman, pretending she was my son’s “real” mother while I was just some occasional weekend babysitter.
There are some griefs that do not disappear. They settle into your bones.
I walked out of that courthouse divorced and legally free, but emotionally shattered.
And instead of sitting with that grief, I did what I had always done.
Survival Dressed Up as Love
I had met yet another man.
He was charming. Fun. Social. He had a job. A group of friends. He had a life. And I felt like I had nothing.
I was young and wanted to feel wanted. I wanted to feel something other than pain. He seemed like a good idea…
But the drinking was not occasional. It was constant.
Every night at the bar. Every night, closing it down. Carrying him to bed. Cleaning up messes. Retelling him what he did the night before because he could not remember.
And while he drank, I carried shame.
I believed I was not a good mother. I believed I did not deserve my children. I believed that losing custody was proof that something was fundamentally wrong with me.
He cheated. He disappeared. He drank. He raged.
And still, I stayed.
We moved to a 1914 house in the country. No heat. No air. Wind blowing through the curtains.
Isolation.
He worked and drank. Drank and worked. Hid alcohol that was not hidden at all. Came home angry. Punched walls. Threatened. Slurred. Passed out.
I slept on the couch the last year of our marriage because I could not stand the smell of alcohol on him.
There were nights I would lie awake listening to him rage in the dark and think, how did I get here again?
I found myself eventually hoping and praying for his demise.
And when your mind starts fantasizing about someone disappearing because you cannot see a way out, you know you are not living.
That was the moment I finally knew I had to leave.
January 2nd
I drove him to work like it was a normal morning.
I came home. Packed everything I owned. Left the keys in the car.
And I never saw him again.
Hundreds of phone calls. Hundreds of texts. Threats. Silence.
A few weeks later, we were divorced.
It was the first time in a long time that I felt relief instead of devastation.
But I was not healed.
I was just free from him. But still running.
The Pattern I Could Not See
Within weeks, I reached back out to the man who had once been my best friend.
The one I had hurt.
The one who loved me.
We reconnected. I apologized. We talked. We tried.
Within months, we were married.
Within a year, it was over.
That marriage ended just as quickly as it began. And in that short span of time, I lost my maw-maw, survived a car accident, and endured emotional and psychological abuse that chipped away at what little stability I thought I had left.
By the time it ended, I was exhausted.
Not just from him. But from myself.
The Rock Bottom That Was a Pattern
People talk about rock bottom like it is one catastrophic moment.
For me, it was not one event.
It was a pattern.
It was recognizing that I kept running from man to man, believing they were the solution to a problem that was actually inside of me.
I equated marriage with safety.
I equated being chosen with worth.
I equated attachment with survival.
And until I learned how to stand on my own two feet, I was going to keep recreating the same story with different faces.
The Ending That Was My Beginning
And then came my rock bottom.
If you have listened to my previous episodes before, you know what I am talking about.
If you have not, let me paint the picture.
I moved into a house that was so overrun with cats and waste from the previous tenant that the floors were saturated. The walls were stained. The smell was so thick it clung to your clothes.
It felt like despair had taken physical form. It was the physical representation of where I was internally.
Broken.
Ashamed.
Still scrambling.
Still not stable.
Still not standing on my own.
I remember standing in that house thinking, how did my life get here?
I had been married four times.
I had lost custody.
I had bounced from relationship to relationship.
I had survived a man's addiction, betrayal, abandonment, and grief.
And I was standing in a house soaked in filth.
That was my rock bottom. I finally saw the pattern. I finally saw the mountain I had been going round and round with.
The men were not the problem.
My inability to stand alone was
When Survival Finally Runs Out
Something shifted in that season.
I was tired.
Tired of repeating.
I was tired of trying to secure safety through someone else.
Tired of convincing myself that attachment equaled worth.
Tired of waking up in situations that felt eerily familiar.
I began to see the thread.
That awareness was painful.
But it was also the beginning of freedom.
And Then There Was Sean
I met Sean later that year. In a time when I was no longer looking for someone to fill the void.
I met him when I was done.
Not perfect. Not fully healed.
But done surviving the old way.
I want to say he didn’t rescue me, but the truth is we rescued each other. He simply showed up.
Meeting Sean was not the fairy tale I had always dreamed of.
But it was the fairy tale I needed.
Final Thoughts
When I look back over this entire stretch of my life, I do not see a reckless woman.
I see a woman who was terrified of being alone.
I see a woman who thought survival required attachment.
I see a woman who did not yet believe she could stand on her own.
The Cat House was not just a bad chapter.
It was the mirror.
And meeting Sean was not about being saved.
It was about finally being ready to build something different.
See you next week for Part 5, The Ending.
