Ep #12: Friendship - A Personal Story About Losing Myself, Finding Myself & The Power of Real Connection

In this episode of The Secure Love Club Podcast, I’m sharing something really close to my heart—a live talk I gave recently at the On Purpose event in Melbourne. This one’s personal. I open up about parts of my journey I’ve never shared online—times where I lost myself, felt disconnected, and how the friendships I built (and let go of) played a huge role in coming back home to me. If you’ve ever questioned your place in a friendship, felt like you were too much (or not enough), or struggled to stay true to yourself while trying to belong—this episode will hit home. Get ready for honest stories, raw lessons, and real talk that’ll help you reflect on your own connections and step into your most authentic, aligned self—both in friendships and beyond. 🎧 Tune in now! And if this episode resonates, send me a DM on Instagram—I’d love to hear your thoughts!

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Transcript

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You are listening to the Secure Love Club podcast. I'm your host, Mimi Watt. Hey friends, welcome back to the Club. Happy Tuesday. How are you doing today? I hope you're doing well. I am feeling fucking fantastic. I just have come off the back of such a high over the weekend. If you are following my Instagram stories closely, you would've seen that on Saturday I did my first ever public speaking event and. Oh my gosh. Despite the intense nerves that I did feel that showed up as sweat patches on my bright blue shirt, I had the most amazing time getting up in front of a group of like-minded women who were there to grow and expand and to learn and to speak my message to them. So it was an event called On Purpose, and it was hosted by my beautiful friend in Pierre Alana. Leah. And this event was for women who were feeling like they needed a bit of empowerment. They needed to be energized and reactivated in their life. And Alana had myself there to speak on relationships. She had two other amazing women there to speak on business and on motherhood. And when Alana first put this idea to me, I remember thinking. And immediate, like my body immediately said yes, before my, my brain even had time to ask questions on what it was really about. I think communicating and speaking my message is something I'm very passionate about and I have to say it's one thing to speak in front of thousands of people online. It is an entirely different experience to speak in front of a room of, I think there might have been about 30 women in the audience, so it was quite intimate, but still to speak. Up in front of those women was an energy and a sort of electricity that I've never felt before. It was just so expansive and really has opened up something within me and has made me realize that I wanna do more of this. I want to do public speaking. I wanna do speeches, I wanna do events, and just open up another side of my business and another part of myself that I think has been waiting to come out for a long time. I thought today that I would share with you the speech that I wrote and that I said on Saturday at the event, because for the women who were there in the room, it resonated so deeply. I had so many amazing women coming up to me, telling me how much they resonated with so many parts of my story. And the theme of this speech was around more around friendships and the way that we navigate friendships as we evolve through life. So, as you know, my specialty is more in romantic relationships, but in a way it's all intertwined because your friendships and your romantic relationships are always a reflection of the most important relationship that you have, which is the one you have with yourself, of course. And so in this story, there is a weaving of friendships, partners. Breakdowns, breakthroughs and all the things, and I'm sharing in this story parts of my journey that I have never shared publicly on here before. So it's very intimate and I know that there were a lot of powerful takeaways for the women at this event on Saturday. And so I wanna share this with you because I know that you'll be able to resonate too. So whether you are driving and you've got your coffee or you're on your morning trot and you've got your coffee. Sit back, get comfortable and let me take you on a journey. Alright, let's dive in. Today I'm gonna tell you a story about losing myself and finding myself and the pivotal role that friendships played in shaping these experiences. When I was a little kid, I wanted to be a boy. My best friend was a boy named Christian or buddy for short, and I wanted to be just like him. I cut my hair short, wore cargo shorts and t-shirts, and even asked if I could have some of his underwear because I liked the ones with trucks on them more than the ones with flowers. I told my family to call me Scott. Scott, what? This wasn't a request, it was an order. On my first day of kindergarten, I refused to wear the proper school uniform because it was a dress and boys didn't wear dresses. So after putting my little foot down, my dad let me wear the sports uniform. I still remember walking through the school gates, holding his hand and heading to class. Now did I know that the other kids would look at me funny and say things behind my back. Honestly, I can't remember, but clearly I didn't care enough to let it stop me from being my authentic self. I walked into a social setting with a certain expectation of who I should be, how I should look, and how I should behave, and said stuff that because I was being my true self, I quickly made friends who were on the same wavelength, PIP and Cass, when the pretty and popular girls sat around in a circle discussing their latest crush. My friends and I sat under the trees with our faces buried in Del Torah. Quest Books, a fantasy series following the Adventures of three companions as they journey across the fictitious land of Del Torah endeavoring to recover the seven gems stolen from the magical belt of Del Torah and defeat allies of the evil shadow. Lord, if it wasn't Del Torah, it was smashing the boys in a game of handball or upping our monkey bar skills. I was having the time of my life. I wasn't yet aware that the world had expectations of who I should be and how I should look, or that there would be societal structures ahead of me that would make me question myself. A few years later, things began to change. I got a new sister. My stepsister and I are the same age, but couldn't have been more different as children. She looked like a perfect little Barbie doll with shiny blonde hair, blue eyes, and pretty pink outfits. I began to notice the way people would point out how gorgeous she looked, how sweet she was, and how that recognition made her smile with glee. And I thought, Hmm, I want some of that attention. So I started copying her. I'd rock my cargo shorts and sneakers, but pair them with a pink top with frilly sleeves. It was a great look. I grew my hair out, stopped reading fantasy books and started to care more about how I looked. Over the next couple of years, I began morphing into someone who tried desperately to fit in with the cool kids life. Became centered around who liked who and who was the most popular girl. Each week it was the beginning of comparison and the first time I remember feeling self-conscious when I moved schools in year five, I made a new friend called Charlotte. We clicked instantly and quickly became inseparable, spending every class sitting side by side. Every lunchtime, knee to knee chatting and every weekend at a sleepover that brought us to tears, having to say goodbye when one of our parents would collect us. Her family took me away on a trip to Hamilton Island where we went snorkeling around the coral reef and met the big blue grpa whose lips put Kim K to shame. Again, I was having the time of my life. Charlotte was a friend who truly got me and who I could be myself around. I thought we would be BFFs forever until year seven rolled around and we graduated to high school. Suddenly there were new girls everywhere and a hierarchy was quickly formed. The Queen Bee was a girl with shiny blonde hair, the perfect tan and a mean streak that had everyone equally fearing and worshiping her. Charlotte and I started hanging out with her and some of her friends who weren't the best influence on us. We began sneaking out at night, stealing our parents' vodka and replacing it with water and meeting up with boys under the, under the fluorescent streetlights, playing truth or dare and trying not to cough as we smoke dries to impress them. This went on for a few months and I could feel Charlotte and myself beginning to grow distant. I tried desperately to keep the friendship alive, but I could feel her pulling away. One night my worst nightmare came true. I was at home looking at pictures from Hamilton Island, cherishing the memories we made. When my Motorola flip phone sounded a text notification. It was from Charlotte, and it said, I don't want to be friends anymore. A friendship breakup can be as painful and devastating as a romantic one, and in this moment, my 13-year-old heart broke. I was devastated and didn't know what to do. She had been taken in by the popular girls and I had been tossed out. God girls can be cruel, can't they? I slowly recovered despite many awkward encounters, passing Charlotte in the hallway and made some new friends, a group of girls who were very tight knit, but saw potential in me and took me under their wing. I remember feeling happy to have found them, but always just on the outskirts of their inside jokes. For the following few years of high school, I persevered by trying my best to fit in, but I didn't know my place or who I really was. I'd become a paper mache held together by pieces of expectation, making myself small to appease others, wearing what the popular girls declared was cool, even if I didn't like it, and tolerating flakiness and one-sided effort because I didn't wanna risk experiencing any more. Friendship breakups. As you listen to this story, I want you to pause for a moment and ask yourself, what does being my true self look like for me? Who am I when I'm being my most authentic self? And think about the times you've shied away from your unique quirks or passions just to fit in. One day high school ended, thank God, and I was thrust out into the big wide world to figure out what I was gonna do with my life. Being raised in a health conscious household, I decided to get my personal trainer certification and what seemed like the logical thing to do a university degree. The days rolled into weeks and the weeks into months. I had a full roster of PT clients, was working at a cafe on weekends. Attending my uni lectures four days a week, begrudgingly, and had the same group of friends from high school on paper. Life wasn't too bad, but I wasn't happy. I felt lost on one particular Saturday in early 2019. I was working at the cafe when my eldest sister sent me a podcast by a woman named Brooke Castillo, a life coach from America, and said, Hey, listen to this. I think you'll really like it. I popped my headphones in and hit play while blending smoothies in the juice room. 30 minutes later, my life changed. What was this magic sorcery that this woman was dropping in my ears about noticing and allowing urges and being able to create any result you want in life by learning to manage your mind. Now, I'd always been into personal development, but this was the moment I learned that you could make a full blown career out of it. I started applying the lessons I was learning from Brooke to my own life, and for the first time in a decade. I could feel my authentic self finding her way back to me. Things were clicking into place. I knew I enjoyed helping people, a clear takeaway from helping my PT clients, but I realized that I wanted to help them more. I wanted to help them understand themselves on a deeper level, gain clarity on why they repeat unhealthy patterns over and over again, and build their competence to take on the world and create new results. I decided then and there that this is what I would do with my life. I got my life coaching certification and ventured into the world of entrepreneurship, an uphill battle I was naively unprepared for, but loved. Every second of this part of my life was finally getting on track. I thought things were coming together, but little did I know that less than a year later I would go through the most painful and powerful transformation yet. August, 2020, I experienced a soul shattering breakup with a man who I love deeply, but riddled me with anxiety and made me question myself far too much. This has been a common theme throughout my adult life in all of my relationships, but this one cracked me wide open. It was the catalyst to finally stop rather than find a rebound and figure out why relationships have always been so difficult for me. Why I constantly walked on eggshells, swallowed my feelings, silenced my needs, and lost myself in trying to control my partner because I felt so utterly powerless. I finally saw that amongst all relationships, I was the common denominator, so I had to be the reason these unhealthy patterns kept repeating. My eldest sister coming in with the goods again, had been telling me to read a book called Attached for several years, but I wasn't ready to lift the hood and face my demons until this point in my desperate attempt to gain clarity and relief. I got the book. Now hear me when I say I didn't read this book. I inhaled it with every page. I felt like the blindfold was being lifted off my eyes and I could see with crystal clear clarity why I attracted the same person with a different face every time people who were emotionally unavailable and avoidant of true intimacy. I learned that there wasn't anything wrong with me. I had just been conditioned to believe that love was difficult, that I had to earn it. So I subconsciously sought out partners who would prove this belief to be true. I was having a dark night of the soul, a profound and painful period of spiritual or personal crisis characterized by feelings of emptiness, despair, and a sense of being disconnected from one's usual sense of purpose, meaning, or connection to something greater. Now it sounds dark, and in a way it is, but it's a necessary evil to shed all the layers of yourself that no longer serve you. If you are hearing these words and thinking, Hmm, that sounds painfully familiar to me. Just know that you're not alone. Take a moment now or later to reflect on your own relationship patterns. Maybe you've found yourself constantly chasing someone who's emotionally unavailable to or settling for less than you deserve. It is time to flip the script. Just as I discovered that love doesn't have to be difficult or earned, you too can relearn what a truly secure connection feels like. Transforming rapidly, I began to shift the way I related to and felt around my friends. I began to notice that the things I used to enjoy talking about no longer mattered. The jokes we would tell no longer made me laugh. And the direction we were heading in no longer aligned. At first, I tried to deny how I was feeling because I was terrified of what it would mean if I confronted it head on. I would have to admit to myself that these were no longer my people. And what if I didn't find new friends? Who would I be without them? But the truth has legs and it remains standing. This shift gave me perspective and I saw things I'd been unaware of or ignoring for some time that my friends would often flake on our plans that I was initiating catchups 80% of the time that I didn't feel valued or respected the way I needed to be, and that I was holding onto history over alignment. My inner voice was growing louder in my final attempt to save our friendship. I had my friends over for a dinner party one Friday night. I made a big effort to tidy the house, set the table thoughtfully with fresh flowers and a custom playlist to set the mood and make a delicious meal from scratch. My friends arrived and I noticed I was on edge As the night progressed, I felt like I was having an out of body experience. I felt invisible, unseen, and unappreciated. My friends began gossiping about people in ways that tore them down rather than lifting them up. I didn't engage, contribute, or entertain. I was the silent observer watching the remaining threads that tied me to them fall away. I knew this would be the last night we would get together in this way as our values, priorities, and emotional needs were no longer aligned. As the evening wrapped up, I thanked them for coming, hugged them goodbye, and shut the door to a chapter that needed to close. The next day, I was walking along the promenade at Bondi Beach, listening to a podcast about building authentic relationships, trying to find comfort from the anxiety brewing in my stomach, stemming from the fear that I'd made a terrible mistake that I shouldn't cast away my friends. But then the host said five words that would change my life again, he said. When you're feeling out of alignment in your relationships, when they're no longer serving or supporting you in becoming the best version of yourself, you have to let go to let in. I stopped dead in my tracks and the mental clouds parted. It was the validation I'd been longing for that told me my intuition was 100% correct and that I did the right thing. I had to allow a temporary void to make space for new people to come into my life who would not only encourage my authentic self to shine, but who would love me for me, support my ambitions, and allow me to feel safe to share my emotions. This statement Let go to Let In became a mantra I live by to navigate life and trust my intuition. When it tells me that it's time to pivot in my career, move house distance myself from friends who don't reciprocate efforts or leave a relationship when my heart is no longer happy. So much so that I got it tattooed on my arm. Sometimes we hold onto relationships, habits, or even self-limiting beliefs simply because we fear the unknown. But as I learned, clinging onto what no longer serves, you only blocks the entrance of who and what's meant for you. Ask yourself, are your current relationships truly lifting you up? Are you prioritizing connections that honor your worth? If not, it might be time to gently, but firmly let go of what weighs you down. When I allowed the distance, I found myself the Mimi who geeks out on personal development and human psychology who loves to try new things like surfing, outdoor bootcamps and camping adventures, who's delusional enough to think she could build a coaching business from scratch and a community of over a hundred thousand people and actually did it. Who wears her heart on her sleeve and sees her emotions, not as a weakness, but as her greatest strength. Who values meaningful relationships where deep chats trump, surface level, small talk, and who still loves getting lost in fantasy fiction with dragons, daggers and magical powers? When I allowed her to shine the right people noticed, I began making new friends in the most unexpected of ways. I moved into a new apartment and instantly clicked with my housemate Rachel, who was the first friend I could be my most authentic, unfiltered self with. I was introduced to a girl named Anez through a mutual friend who thought we'd hit it off. We met for coffee and immediately bonded over our shared passion for coaching and entrepreneurship. We've been close friends for the last five years. I joined a new gym and met a fiery redhead named Adelaide who is fiercely loyal down to earth, and a true friend. I feel so lucky to have made in my late twenties. I met these people and formed these connections because I was being my authentic self, and because I had this space and energy to invest in them, something I wouldn't have been able to do had I clung onto my old friendships out of fear and scarcity. By sharing some of my story with you today, I hope that you can find the courage to let your authentic self shine so that you can experience the richness of fulfilling relationships where you feel seen, loved, and cherished for who you are by friends and lovers, but most importantly yourself. If you enjoyed today's episode, hit that subscribe button and leave a review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. Share this episode with your friends and come find me on social so we can hang out between episodes. All the links are below in the show notes.