How to Reconnect With Yourself When You've Lost Your Identity

We explore how easy it is to lose yourself in motherhood and people pleasing, and how small daily practices rebuild identity, trust, and joy. Marisa shares her pandemic postpartum story, the tools that helped her heal, and a clear path to make self-love a non-negotiable.

• the emotional cost of losing yourself in caregiving and people pleasing
• how motherhood and the pandemic intensified anxiety, isolation, and resentment
• movement, yoga, and journaling as anchors for hormone and mood regulation
• why self-love is essential maintenance, not selfish
• practical micro-rituals: five minutes of quiet, breath work, boundaries
• the heart exercise to name identity beyond roles
• journaling prompts to reconnect with inner truth
• from healing to serving: creating a workbook, group journaling, certification
• permission to ask for help and make rest a priority
• the long-term practice of nurturing the relationship with yourself

If you're not already following me, you can find me on Instagram at @iammarisa.xo

If this episode resonates, spread the love like you would Nutella by sharing this podcast and tagging me so that I can personally thank you. Share with a friend and if you are feeling extra loving, leaving a review helps light up another beautiful soul and supports the growth of this space. 

My personal weblink:
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Where I hangout the most to connect:
https://www.instagram.com/iammarisa.xo/

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https://www.instagram.com/theinnerbeaconpodcast/

Don't forget to spread love like you would nutella. 

xoxo, M

Transcript

Welcome And Intentions

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome to the Inner Beacon. I am your host, Teresa. I'm a Canadian girl mama of two business owner, flight attendant, and a certified self-love coach. You are in the right place if you are ready to lead your life from within to reconnect with your intuition, trust yourself deeply, and reclaim your power. My goal and intention here is to inspire and empower you. And for fun, I might even add some flight attendant content and travel tips. And I'm so glad you're here. So let's dive into today's episode. Alright, let's dive in. So today I wanted to talk about remembering who you are. And I don't say that lightly. Now, maybe it's because you've lost yourself, your identity in motherhood, like I did, um, or people pleasing, which a lot of us do, or doing so much for others than not pouring back into yourself. Maybe you've lost yourself in a relationship. Also been there. My intention today for today's episode is to help you remember who you truly are beneath the rules and to reframe self-love and self-care as an essential and not selfish. Listen, girl, I've been there, and it can be a dark and scary place. I can relate from several experiences in relationships how easy it is to get there, but also it's really easy to get caught up in people pleasing, making sure our partners are taken care of. But I am here to tell you that you need to be pouring back into yourself. Eventually, you have to put yourself back up into the in instead of backing yourself into the corner because that's how we lose our identity. Trying to do everything for everybody else. This can be true, especially for mothers. Now, I know for me personally, when I was in my 20s, early 20s, I went right right from home to like miss independent on my own path, working on me, my career, my spiritual practices. And all of a sudden, I got into this relationship. And four months later, we were pregnant. Nine months later, I had to stop working. Um, I had to depend on someone else financially, and was a full-time mom. And not just that, I had my first baby in a pandemic, so I was literally quarantined with a newborn as an anxious mama, and all of a sudden, I just felt like I had completely lost myself. I found myself crying all the time, like I was in a dark place, you guys. And the thing is, motherhood naturally pulls your focus outwards, your body, your time, your identity, your nervous system shifts. You're suddenly responsible for someone else. It's survival. There's often no space to process the loss of who you were, and now you're this new person and you're everything to you, this new little person, right? I know the pandemic probably didn't help my situation, and I was, again, a very anxious mom. Locked in a room 24 hours with this tiny human who was not easy to put to sleep. I swear I didn't sleep for two years with my first. Luckily, the second one was better. Um, but and I love her dearly. And the thing is, I felt a lot of guilt for feeling the way I felt because I wasn't sure if I ever could be a mom with my own health stuff with PCOS and all the things. Um, and like I just didn't know that my life would be there. And then when it did, everything happened really, really fast. And I remember thinking things that like I shouldn't take this for granted. I'm like, even though I was so exhausted, I didn't get a break. I don't have family nearby, but even if I did, again, pandemic, we're we were all quarantined. I was exhausted. And other than my husband to help me, that was literally the only little breaks I had, and we had just started our business, so he wasn't home very often, and like our business, despite other people's businesses not doing so great in the pandemic, which really was no bueno. Ours is a cleaning company, so people still needed cleaning, and I felt a little bit of resentment because he got to go outside. Um, he got to be, I know like he was working, it's not like he was out there having fun, but the struggle is real because I went home and I'm resenting him because like I'm doing, I feel like I'm doing everything for this tiny human and like I don't get a break. And I was just not a happy human being at the time, and I I really was in a really dark place, like kind of scary. Um, and I had to pull myself back out. And I asked myself, like, in the past, like I mentioned before, I've lost myself in past like relationships that I had been in, and everything reverted back to my journal practices, back to my spiritual practices, back to moving my body. Moving by body was always a huge thing, especially as a woman that struggled with PCOS. It's very hormonal, and like I feel like that always helped me. It was like my way to just like you know release. And the thing is, it's not that motherhood makes you disappear, it asks you to rebuild yourself without a map. Now I knew that the only person who uh has the responsibility for my own happiness is me, and I needed to shift something, I needed to do something for myself, and since I couldn't get out of my house, um, at the time I remember going through Instagram and watching one of my girlfriends post every day her postpartum journey, how she had workouts from home and whatnot. So I reached out to her and I ended up getting, I think it was maybe three or four months postpartum. I ended up getting signed up with her with Beach Body at the time, which is now called Body. Um, and I started working out from home. I started my journaling and I remember doing like specific yoga, and I don't know what it is about yoga. I know it's like a meditative state, I guess, but yoga, I always get downloads during yoga. Um, and at the time I remember like start this journal and like specific, it was very specific about like gratitude and like adding these little things, and every day I started doing that, and I started actually from that uh kind of creating a workbook that I ended up later on launching. Um but it was exciting because like that's kind of what helped me rebuild that you know relationship for this what I had control over the things that I could do for myself at the time. And don't get me wrong, there is we are conditioned as women to be caretakers, peacemakers, self-sacrifice. We were praised for being helpful, agreeable, selfless, and easy to get along with potentially as kids. Many of us were taught who to be for others before we were taught how to be for ourselves. And I think this isn't the biggest message from this, if I can, from this episode, is that you need to learn how to be for ourselves because you know what? You can't pour from an empty cup. And self-love is not selfish, it's quite the contrary, actually. Because the cost of neglecting myself and not listening and being in complete burnout, resentment, and complete disconnection from the rest of the world was taunting me. And I had to shift that. I had to shift that. What happens when we begin to pour back into ourselves? Then we get clarity, we get patience, pres we're more present, we're intentional. You can react in a more loving, soft place instead of this place of resentment and anger. And I knew this, like I know these tools. I've taken so much self- uh like self-uh development books and courses and whatnot. So I knew that like in order to shift my energy and shift the way I was feeling, I had to get back into the inner works. And I often need this reminder myself, even as a self-love coach. So if you feel disconnected, it doesn't mean you're broken. It means something inside of you is asking to be acknowledged. And this is why self-love isn't selfish, because it is when you've lived outside of yourself for so long taking care of everybody and neglecting yourself, then coming home is necessary. And it will, in fact, actually make you a better mom, a better wife, a better coworker, a better friend. So take this as your permission slip right now to make sure that you learn how to start pouring back into yourself, and it can be very small things, including rest. And if you have to ask for help, ask for help. Stop feeling guilty. This is your permission slip, I'm telling you. Today I want to invite you to ponder and please take this with you and journal about it if you can, and if you will. How you can find ways to bring more joy into your heart. What can you do every day and commit to it to pour back into you? It could be very small things, and then eventually gradually add to it, make it work for you. What lights you up? What feels true but has been ignored? Pause this, journal about it. Make sure that the small things are feasible. And here's some great little things you can start with. You can start with five minutes of quiet, journaling, and I just gave you some prompts and I'll give you some more at the end here. Breath work, just sitting and focusing on your breath. One that's really good is learning to say no, creating those boundaries and be very like create discernment in your life, create what's worth your energy and your time because you need to also be pouring into yourself so that you can be a better mama for your babies. Listen to those inner pings. That is a huge one, and we get more into that as I go through more episodes. But for today, I dare you to draw a giant heart and fill it up this week on a on a paper, in your journal, wherever. And then name everything that you are, what you love about yourself. And I don't when I ask when I say the things that you are, I don't mean a mom, a sister, a thing. Yes, those can be added, but I want you to s to speak more. I want you to speak about who you are, who is your character, and because I just want you to remember her, remember who you are. That's what the episode is about, after all. And here's some more general prompts. I want you to ask, where have you been putting yourself last? And what part of you is asking to be remembered right now. And on that note, so I ended up doing back to my story. I ended up doing the workout thing um daily. It was something that I can focus back in that made me feel good about myself again and good good in my body again. That's really big too. And then from that, I just got inspired. I ended up doing my superhero within workbook. I launched it, I did a 21-day uh journal launch with a group of people over Facebook at the time, which was really fun, and it just helped me pour back into others and serve in a way where you know, like this helped me, so let me help you, kind of thing. And then I remember at the time seeing an ad for uh self-love certification program by Melanie Monaco, the self-love uh coach. At the time, her certification program it just kept on popping up as an ad. And I'm just like, and for me, when I ask for signs, I usually ask them and I ask for them to be shown to me in three. And this showed up in three at the time. I wasn't sure how I was gonna financially do it, and I ended up like I took the course, I got my self-love certification, and through that course, it helped me even more so because we learn um what is called the self-love roadmap, and in order to get certified, we also go through all those steps ourselves, and I think I needed that so badly at the time. So, like the fact that it showed up for me and that I got placed and that I got accepted into the program and all of it, and the girls that I met through the course were pretty amazing too. Um, but just that that whole journey in itself, now I just want to pour back into other women, and I just know that you know it's a real thing to lose your identity and motherhood. So here I am showing up. I just want to continue to bring value and um show up for other mamas and just be that reminder for you that you don't need to figure it all out, but today you can commit to just doing one small thing. So commit to relearning who you are now, commit to building and nurturing your relationship with thyself. That's the longest relationship we have, and it's really important that we nurture it just the same as we would any other relationship in our lives. So I invite you to take a mo a few moments right now, close your eyes if you can, place your hands on your heart and just sense all the beautiful love that you have been giving to everyone else so freely. Feel that warmth and turn that heart fire back on. That is something you always have with you. You are not lost, you're just remembering. Thank you for spending this time with me here on the Inner Beacon. If you're not already following me, you can find me on Instagram at immarisa.xo. And if this episode resonates, spread the love like you would Nutella by sharing this podcast and tagging me so that I can personally thank you. And if you are feeling extra loving, leaving a review helps light up another beautiful soul and supports the growth of this space. I am so glad you're here. I'll meet you on the next episode.