Episode. 23 "My Identity Belonged to Everyone Except Me."

I'm Skye. And this is What You Took Back. A podcast for women who've spent years surviving on fragments of themselves. I'm here to hand you back the whole damn thing. Picture it. You're at a function, glass of average chardonnay in hand, and someone you barely know asks, completely innocently, "So what do you do for yourself?" Go on, actually put yourself there for a second, and notice what comes up when you try to answer. For many, many years, I could not have told you who I was. Underneath all the roles, there was grief, old trauma, heartaches I'd never let myself feel all the way through. On top of that, I did everything society hands you as the blueprint — work hard, buy the house, get married, have the kids, be the good wife. That's the mould. I poured every part of myself into it until, by my thirties, I felt like I was about to explode. My identity belonged to my husband. My kids. My parents. My friends. Every single person except me. This episode walks through the frozen, non-answer moment near a plate of sausage rolls at a school carnival that showed me exactly what needed finding — and the ordinary morning, two years into being a divorcee, that became the real beginning of taking myself back. In this episode: Why some women survive the empty nest and others feel like they've lost a limb Self-complexity theory — the real psychology behind why one role holding your whole identity leaves you so exposed The "bucket" test for telling a real hobby from another chore wearing a nicer outfit One small, deliberately useless thing to build this week, with zero justification required Take the free Power Leak Checklist at whatyoutookback.com/power-leak-check-list-sign-up, and if you're ready to go deeper, The Noticing and The Awakening are both built for exactly this kind of rebuilding. What will you be taking back? 🎙️