My Story

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A “great guy” for a husband.
The lifestyle everyone said I should be grateful for — even though it was never really mine.

I smiled.
I supported him.
I played the role so well, I almost believed it myself.

Meanwhile, life was on his terms.

I was the accommodator.
The rock.
The good sport.

Maybe that’s what hurt most — not just giving up what I wanted in life, but staying easy.

Giving endlessly until I couldn’t tell his opinions from my own.

For years, I was the good girlfriend, then the good wife.
I got sick and thought it was my body that was betraying me.
Brewing inside was an undercurrent of anger that had no name.

Giving myself up happened so slowly, I didn’t see how much he depended on it. I was convinced that the only way I could live was in subservience to his preferences, his needs, his opinions. I thought that even if we were no longer together that I could never leave him. Though it was the last place I wanted to be, I’d have to live in isolation next to him.
My forever fate.

Until, that is, I could no longer pretend this was love.

But I tried to make it work for five more years.
And it got worse. More isolation, self-deprecation.

I stayed because I felt sorry for him.
And was convinced I had no right to live how I wanted to live.
What I wanted or needed evidently didn’t matter.
It just wasn’t expressly said; it was understood.

One day, I knew the whole thing was rigged against me.
It was by design.

”I can’t do this anymore,” came tumbling out of my mouth like a waterfall.

He replied, “You don’t want to even try?”

That’s when I realized he had never tried at all; not really even from the beginning. That’s when I couldn’t unsee what I saw.

The grief I felt wasn’t just because our marriage was ending.

I grieved the great man I thought he once was and could be. The one who loved me - but also didn’t; I was so confused. Most of all, I grieved the years, the sovereignty, I gave up so we could function.

Years after we first separated, I’d jolt awake at 2 a.m., still replaying conversations, rehearsing comebacks, trying to pinpoint the moment I could have changed it all.

The net result?

A decade of rebuilding myself from scratch.

With no career or direction to speak of, he left me with six figures of debt from a loan a family member forced me to take out. Instead of paying down the mortgage as I had asked, he secretly used the money to buy a sports car to impress his friends. I had grown so used to him managing our finances that I had forgotten about the loan in my name until his lawyer served me papers.

He moved on quickly.

Forced me to sign a bifurcation so he could marry his girlfriend while requesting I stay on the mortgage so he could refinance the home they now shared.

When the loan officer called, I informed him of his new martial status. I got out of that, but not the other accounts we shared. Only because the law changed years after our divorce was finalized could I take my name off the joint accounts.

I dated, but I got attached too quickly. I liked the validation and the attention, but online dating could be flaky and I didn’t fell hard for men I hardly knew. I longed for togetherness that could distract myself from feeling lost in life. I was afraid to admit I felt incapable of taking care of myself - something I never considered before I met him - yet never wanted a man to take care of me. More confusion.

In vulnerable moments, I missed being with him. I knew it was the illusion that I had bought for year. Loneliness will do that to even the best of us.

I moved to my final place, the place I’m now in, and stopped dating. I didn’t want to just attach myself to someone new and lose myself again but I felt lonely. For a long time, I didn’t think I was good enough for a relationship. I projected qualities that I didn’t have onto me that I thought a man would surely require. Deep down, I didn’t know who I was - something that terrified me to admit. I had no confidence to be myself in a relationship.

Finally, I reached a point where I was tired of trying to renegotiate the past. Tired of not being enough. Heck, nobody has it all together.

Years were passing by, and I wasn’t getting any younger.

I wanted the years ahead to mean something.

For my voice to count.
For relationships to be mutual and fulfilling.
For it to feel safe to give and love.
To know what a healthy relationship felt like.
A purpose for my life that went beyond a past long gone.

I wanted a life that I recognized as my own.

I wanted to live where I wanted to live
Be surrounded by people who celebrated me.
Who I could count on and they could count on me.

First, I threw myself into trying to understand what happened from day one. Once I saw a YouTube video the described the lesser-known traits of narcissism, a light bulb went off. Alas, I had been manipulated from the beginning.

My marriage had been a lie all along.

I filled my bookselves on the subject.
Journaled at least 1,000 pages.
Analyzed every angle of what could have motivated him.
Studied every way I could to relive every sliding door moment successfully to have prevented years of regrets.

Just after my father died, the quarantine happened. around the time it dawned on me that my marriage had been a lie. It was just after my father died and I became estranged from my siblings. At the same time was the onset of menopause. The only thing keeping me trauma from my marriage left me unrecognizable - from thinking patterns, to career aspirations, to my physicality. The sheer terror of learning that to him it was all a game, a scorecard that he kept to maintain manipulated advantage, and the disillusionment of love that I believed was true - to learn it was all a lie and that I could have fallen for it left me in desperate disbelief.

Once I came across the term narcissism, especially covert narcissism, I read everything I could. Narcissism in relationships, narcissisism in friendships and family systems. The different types of narcissism and terminology like Dark Tetrads that delineated the different ways that people could mask and manipulate. Recognizing patterns from loved ones, friends, and my ex-husband was like a scary red lightbulb going off. I started understanding the dynamics of relationships that shaped me since childhood. The man I married I went with like peanut butter and jelly was really a different person that I didn’t even recognize. How different we were.

It wasn’t until I got laid off by a job and was contemplating my next career move that I came across therapeutic approaches that got to the root cause of issues. After only one session, I had a major breakthrough like the clouds had parted. After only a few sessions, I transformed. It was remarkably fast reframing my mindset in a way that felt natural - without memorizing hacks, more like a gradual noticing that I could be calm about things that no longer upset me.

Overnight, the night terrors stopped.

A calm settled in my body I hadn’t felt in years.

I got to know myself again—the real me—and I liked her. I wasn’t ashamed of who I’d become. I was proud of what I’d overcome. And I finally had language for what I’d been through.

That’s when I realized this wasn’t just about me. I wanted to help others find their way back to themselves too. And when I started working with others, I watched deep vulnerability turn into bravery. Intention turned into transformation.

I realized it wasn’t just the techniques that created change. It was combining them with my intuition, experience, and empathy that made the work powerful—and gave me real purpose.

You don’t need to perform strength anymore.
You don’t need to over-explain your pain to be believed.
And you surely don’t need permission to want what you want.

Whether you’re still in the unraveling, or just past it wondering what now?—I’ve got you.

Let’s help you come back to yourself. And build from there.