TFC Live | When You Know Deep Down It's Time to Leave (Girl, Unbecoming Chapter 1)

What happens when you finally stop trying to make something work that deep down you know isn't meant for you?

In this raw, unfiltered episode of The Femme Cast that was recorded LIVE on my Substack page, we hit record with zero preparation and dive into the powerful theme behind chapter one of my memoir: Girl Unbecoming

After divorce, dating in downtown Toronto, and years of moulding myself to other people's expectations, I found myself facing a truth many of us avoid: life will keep showing us what's out of alignment until we're willing to let it go.

We explore why leaving relationships, careers, identities, and situations that no longer fit can feel so terrifying, even when we know it's time. From the fear of starting over after a 15-year relationship to navigating financial uncertainty, job searches, self-worth wounds, and the question of "Who am I without this?", this conversation gets honest about what really keeps us stuck.

Inside this episode, we discuss:

🎤 The deeper meaning of the unbecoming journey
🎤 Life after divorce and rebuilding your identity
🎤 Dating, settling, and recognizing what's no longer aligned
🎤 Why we cling to relationships, jobs, and familiar circumstances
🎤 The connection between self-worth, identity, and attachment
🎤 Financial fear, survival mode, and trusting yourself anyway
🎤 A practical decision-making framework: Best Case, Worst Case, Most Probable Outcome
🎤 Why baby steps are often more powerful than massive leaps
🎤 The six-month Asia journey that changed my life forever
🎤 How creating space allows the next right opportunity to find you
🎤 Remembering who you are beneath the masks you've learned to wear

This episode is for anyone standing at a crossroads, feeling the nudge that something needs to change, but afraid of what happens next.

Because sometimes the most important transformation isn't becoming someone new.

It's unbecoming everything you're not.

Done abandoning yourself for everyone else?
It's time to come home. Download The Unbecoming Ritual free. Your unbecoming begins here: https://thefemmecast.kit.com/ritual

Want to go deeper?
Come find me on Substack at The Femme Cast Diaries. I'm sharing my own unbecoming in real time -- the mess, the magic, and the chapters of my memoir Girl, Unbecoming. For the woman who is ready to stop pretending and start coming home to herself. Come unbecome with me: https://thefemmecast.substack.com/

Transcript

Going Live With No Prep

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome to the show. I have decided we're going to record an episode of the podcast live. I've never done this before. I don't even know if it'll work. I heard on a certain AI that this can be done. So we shall see. So say hello if you're here. Let me know if you're tuning in. I probably should have planned this a little bit better, and that I probably should have like, you know, let people know I was gonna go, I was gonna do this. But to be honest, this is kind of a spur-of-the-moment thing. Meaning that, you know, I had a very I had an intention to do a live this week, and then I kind of like went back and forth with it. And finally I was like, fuck it, I'm just gonna do it. So here we are. No planning, no prepping. I haven't sent any emails. I haven't notified anyone. Next time I will plan this better. But I wanted to kind of jump on here and record an episode of the podcast live because as you guys know, I just released the first chapter of my memoir last week, which I'm gonna start dripping out very slowly over the coming months. So I kind of wanted to do a live around each chapter to kind of talk about, you know, the lessons or the themes and within the chapter. The whole book is about my unbecoming process, which if I've if I'm being completely honest, I've gone through now several times because every time I go through it, I go through it in a different layer. And the first time I went through it was when I was traveling in Asia. After my divorce, I was in Asia for six months. I completely just undid everything

Why The Memoir Matters

SPEAKER_00 1:39

about myself, everything I had become over like years, because I realized I had been molding to everyone else's expectations for so long that, and of course, now I get a knock on the door. Of course, now I get a knock on the door. I had been molding myself to everyone else's expectations for so long that I had completely lost sight of who I was. And so that trip was my very, very, very first experience in really unbecoming everything that the world taught me to be and really coming back to myself. And so it was for me, it was life-changing. Like I've always said, every time I talk about that trip, there was my life before that trip, and then there was my life after that trip, and the version I was before that trip, and the version of me I was after, and the two were very different. And so I released the first chapter yesterday and kind of the first lesson of the book, which was kind of started in the months or the year leading up to before the first time I had gone to Bali, because I'd gone to Bali once for about 10 days, totally fucked me over, totally changed who I was at a like core level, and then I had to, then I came back, and then I ended up going back to Asia. So, but I I will leave that for further chapters. But the first chapter, we really just talk about you know, my life before I left. And I kind of paint the picture of you know, life after separation, you know, moving into my place on my first new apartment on my own in downtown Toronto, you know, being single in the city and dating and the schmucks I was dating at the time. And, you know, in the book, in the book, I named them Andre, right? I compiled them all into this one character, this all-encompassing character of all the two schmegs I dated before I went on this trip, right? And and he had a little bit of everybody in him, right? He had a little bit of everybody's characteristics. And so the whole lesson of the book, of that chapter was, you know, you have to be willing to let go of what you know is

Toronto After Divorce And Dating

SPEAKER_00 3:44

not working for you. You have to be willing to let go, like the whole of the unbecoming process is recognizing that you're not where you're meant to be. And owning that. And sometimes I think we recognize it, but owning it is scary. And it's a scary thing. And I'm living this right now in real time. Because again, I'm going through another, a whole other phase of this. Every time I go through this, I go through it on a much deeper layer. And I like I've always said, you know, when the when our life shows us what's not aligned for us, it'll show it to us and it'll show it to us again and again, right? And it'll throw us little hints, right? And

Letting Go Of What Is Not Working

SPEAKER_00 4:25

little nudges to let us know, hey, this is probably not the best thing for you right now. Um you're probably settling just a little bit. So it'll show you and it'll nudge you and it'll tell you. And and oftentimes we keep kind of pushing that under the rug, right? We're like, oh no, it's okay. I can make this work. No, it's okay. You know what? This will turn around. No, it's okay. I'm not, I'm not really. And this was one of the things in the book. I don't really, I'm not really, I'm not really into this relationship. I'm just using him for right now because it's convenient and it's he's available and whatever. Bullshit. Bullshit. I was totally bullshitting myself, right? And the reason is we're really afraid to let those things go. That even though we know they're not for us, even though we know we're not supposed to be there, even though that we know we're meant for so much more, and on some level we're settling, and we know this. Deep down we know, but we don't want to look at it. We don't want to look at it because either our identity has become attached to it, like we've our identity is wrapped around it, our worth is wrapped around it, or our security is wrapped around it. Either way, we've created an attachment to these people, places, and things that make us afraid to let go of them when we know in our heart of hearts it is totally time to let go and to move on and to do different things and to meet different people and to go in a different direction, right? But we fight it tooth and nail sometimes. Sometimes we give in, right? And it's it's yeah, it's a little bit scary at first, but we give in and we move with the change and we accept the assignment, right? We accept the assignment from the universe. Sometimes we resist. And when we resist, the universe will come and literally swipe it right out from under us, right? And this is when we've got like those those moments of really difficult upheaval that take place. So, you know, that in this particular era, I was done. I I knew things weren't working and I was resistant to let them go, but I did make the choice to eventually like let them go and and and go on this trip and do the thing that was calling my heart to do, that my cart was calling me to do. And, you know, it was the most life-changing experience of my life, even though I didn't know then going into it how my life was gonna change or how it was gonna impact, or if I was even gonna make it, if I was gonna die on this trip, and this was a real thought that I had. I did make it, and it was the best thing that I've ever done. And and that is the that is a lesson that I take with me throughout my entire life. And I'm literally having to revisit it now because I'm having to make some choices that feel a little bit scary. You guys know I've I've kind of outed my financial circumstances and you know, navigating that and making decisions around that and moving forward. You know, there's there's a there's a ton of fear attachment wrapped around financial security, right? And so it makes it very hard to make those heart-centered, internally led decisions, right? When so much is dependent on it, right? So it's almost like, you know, when I did this work, I healed it on the relationship in the first level. That I moved through that, and that took some time, but I I inevitably moved through that. I moved through the visibility and being seen and being and being authentic in who I am and and and letting myself be truly seen and and and letting go of all the attachments there. But now it's at this level of survival where it's literally tied to my finances, and it's so difficult moving through this lesson this time around because again, so much of my survival is wrapped up in this experience that I'm in right now. So having moved through, moving through this in real time, having gone through this before I went to Asia, moving through it in real time now, I'm able to see really clearly and and feel, like viscerally feel the feelings that I was feeling before I took this trip. So again, there's a fear that you're, or not the fear, but there's a fear of letting something, yeah, the fear of letting something go because it is your identity. When I ended my long-term relationship, I didn't know who I was. I'd been in that relationship for 15 years. I didn't know how to be single. I didn't identify with being a single, I didn't know what the rest of my life was gonna look like. My life was planned for me. And so the end of this relationship literally meant the end of life as I knew it, because I didn't know what my life was like around without it. This had become a permanent fixture in my vision for my life. And so with this now gone, who even am I? Right? And that is something that, you know, as a woman who's gone through divorce, that is a very real thing,

Identity Worth And Financial Fear

SPEAKER_00 9:08

right? Especially like I find sometimes, and not to put an age on this, but sometimes I hear this more from women who get divorced when they're older versus when they're younger. And that's just I'm just making a general statement there. That's I'm not I'm not adding an identity. I'm just I'm just saying what I've observed, right? I've I've heard this more from women who, you know, got divorced or got separated, you know, 40s or later, which you know kind of fell into my category. I think it was small as late 30s. And so, you know, it becomes a real thing, right? It becomes a real question. It's scary. You you feel like you feel like you're literally starting over from scratch again, right? You you literally feel like you don't know who you are. And then there's the self-worth piece, right? When these things, these relationships, these people, these jobs, these circumstances, these homes, the whatever it is that we've attached our identity to, when it becomes a masking tape for our self-worth issues, right? Our our our soothing, our soother for our self-worth issues, that can be very scary. Because now letting these things go means that we're gonna expose a vulnerability wound that we believe that we're not enough. Right? We let go of the hot guy that we've been attached to, even though we know it's not going anywhere, and suddenly we feel like, oh, you know what, I'm not enough. Here I am by myself again. You know, we let go of the job that that feeds our identity, and suddenly, you know, we're left in that in that vulnerable state of feeling like we're not enough. We leave the marriage, the relationship, the career, the whatever it is that we're leaving behind, right? When we've attached a certain portion of our self-worth to that person, place, or thing, then we have to face the unworthiness that comes with letting that thing go, right? And really being present with the discomfort, whatever that was soothing, right? And then there's a security piece, which for me is very alive and well today, is am I gonna be okay? Right? Because I I will say this, you know, it's an interesting job market. I have been looking for work now for almost a year. I've only just now started getting some interviews. And some of the interviews that I've gotten, some of them are great, great opportunities. They're taking a long time to kind of come in. Others, I'm like, oh my God, I can't, I don't even want to touch you with a 10-foot pole. But at the same time, there's a part of me that's saying, oh, just take it. And just like, because you know, you you're in that scarcity mindset, right? You're in that fear mindset of, well, how am I gonna make it and how am I gonna do this? You know, like there's so much at stake with every decision that you make. And so the fear is alive, it's well, it's very activated right now. And I'm gonna say this to you and to myself, okay? As I'm saying this, I'm literally coaching myself as I'm saying this, okay. Having learned from my experience from going to Asia, which felt like the scariest thing in the world that I'd ever done. Walking away from and I don't think I've actually written that part yet, but it's coming. Walking away from all of my relationships, all my friendships, walking away from my work, walking away from my home, walking away from all of it. And packing up and going to Asia for six months, it was very scary. I really didn't know if I was gonna be okay. I didn't know if I was gonna have enough money to make it. I know if I was gonna starve to death on this trip. I didn't know if I was gonna be homeless on this trip. I didn't know if I was gonna die on this trip. Like it was insane how I left to do this. But something in my in my soul was literally calling me to do this. And so I did. And it was the best thing that ever happened to me. And so I always remember that when a decision feels really, really, really, really scary. Okay. Now, is that to say that I'm gonna tell you to do anything that scares you and say to fuck with the consequences? No, I'm not. That's just, you know, I know a lot of coaches and healers and everything will tell you to do that out there. I don't think that's practical. Sometimes I think we actually only traumatize ourselves more when we push ourselves past our limits. I believe we do have energetic limits that we're available for, and I think we need to respect them, and I think we need to move through them with love and acceptance, right? For where we're at and not try and force ourselves to be somewhere where we're not. And that's something that I firmly stand behind. So here's my take take it or leave it, right? You know, whenever you're weighing a decision, you ask yourself, you know, what's the best case scenario here? What's the worst case scenario here? Like what could what could be the worst possible outcome in the situation if I do what I feel in my heart is the right choice to make, right? And really just sit with both, right? Sit with the sit with a potential of the best case scenario and then sit with the potential of the worst case scenario and say, am I willing to risk the worst case scenario for the possibility of the best case scenario? And if if it's worth the risk, go for it. Like, fuck it. You know what? If it happens, it happens. I'll figure it out, I'll move through it, I'll get past it. It's really not as bad as I thought. I'll be okay. And then also ask yourself, what is the most probable outcome? Probable outcome is probably

Best Worst Probable Decision Test

SPEAKER_00 14:28

somewhere in the middle. Okay, I can live with that. You know, especially when you think of the potential of what it could bring in, right? When you start to break your decisions down like that, and there's gonna be some decisions where it's like, absolutely not, I cannot, I cannot take the risk right now. That's okay. Is there a middle ground, right? Is there a stepping stone? Like, is there is there is there is it can you do it in more than one step? Can you can you break it down? Can you make it more bite-sized, right? And not so high stakes in your mind, right? Try that. Even with the decision to go to Asia, like I didn't actually make the decision to go to Asia. I think, you know, I'll I'll probably write about this later. I don't know if I don't know if it's in the chat, I haven't gotten to that chapter yet in terms of the writing of it. But you know, when I book the trip, I didn't I didn't decide, okay, I'm gonna go on the trip on this and this day, or I'm gonna go here. I'm like, I it it wasn't a it it wasn't a I didn't fully commit until probably the week before, put it that way. I, you know, I I'd been saying that I want to go and I want to go and I want to go, and and and I kept I just kept feeling like it was it I needed to go there and I couldn't figure out why, and and it just didn't make any sense to me and I couldn't logically explain why, and I nobody understood why.

Baby Steps That Invite Magic

SPEAKER_00 15:53

And I slowly started to dismantle my life, you know, after this was after I left my job, then I rented out my place, or I think I rented out my place first, then I then I left my job. Then I was couch surfing at a friend's place for a little while, just trying to kind of figure things out. And then I started looking for flights. I'm like, I have no intention of going, but I'm gonna look for flights. So I started to look for flights, then I started to look at Airbnbs. Then I I don't know, I started to look at something else, and then next thing you know, I started to get all these. Oh, I put myself on a notification for flight price changes. So then I started getting notifications when flight price changes would come in, and and I would get them usually, I think every Wednesday would be the new listings of new price changes. And then lo and behold, one day there was a massive flight sale on flights to Bangkok. So I booked it. I didn't have the money. I had no idea how I was gonna survive, but I booked it. It was dirt cheap. I booked it for a return for six months. I was flying into Bangkok and out of Bangkok six months later. I had no idea what I was gonna do in between. I had no money to take care of myself while I was there. I just knew I booked the flight for, I think at the time, you know, it was probably I think in the summer months. And I think I was leaving in October or November. I was I was gonna be there right before the lantern festival. And so, you know, I booked it. I had no idea how I was gonna like support myself while I was there. I was like, okay, well, we'll see what happens. Right? I could that was a decision that I could easily walk back from. It's like the worst case scenario is I book this flight, I don't go, I lose, I think it was like a thousand bucks at the time, which is a steal for Bangkok. You know what I mean? Normally you're looking at $1,700, $1,800 at the time. So I was like, okay, well, I'll just book it and then I'll figure it out. And then lo and behold, I get this job, which by the way, I hated. But two months into that job, and they bankrupt, everybody got a settlement. I had the money to cover my trip and cover my expenses while I was there. That's how the magic literally works, right? So you just have to take one step in the direction, even if it's a baby step of what you want. But before you can do that, you have to start letting go of the things that you don't. Because the things that you don't want, you don't realize yes, your security is wrapped up in them, yes, your worth is wrapped up in them, and yes, your identity is wrapped up in them. You need to you need to make space in all of those three areas in order for you to really discover who it is you're truly meant to be. And that's why the letting go process is probably one of the most, because you need to let go of all those places where your identity, your your security, and your worth are clinging to and let them fall by the wayside, let it be uncomfortable for a minute, let it feel empty for a minute, let it feel like you have no place to go, nothing to do, no one to cling to for a minute. And those are the magical moments where you really start to find out who it is that you really are when you take all those people, places, and things out of the equation. And, you know, leaving the Andres, who at the time I knew weren't good for me. But I stuck it out. I convinced myself I was fine and they were fine, and you know, I convinced myself I wasn't serious and I didn't want anything serious. I did. I convinced myself that, you know, maybe, you know, there there was, you know, there was some sort of value in the breadcrumbs that they were giving me. There wasn't. You know, at the end of the day, I was just so afraid to just be alone at the time, right? Just so afraid to be alone, just so afraid to be in and sit in in my unworthiness, right? And that's that's really what the Andres were providing for me. So, you know, and it wasn't until I had the courage to let that go that all of these opportunities kind of found their way to me, right? And there was a lot of other things I had to let go to. It wasn't just the Andres, it was a lot of friendships. It was, again, my career, which was totally toxic. And it was just like, you know, creating space. It was creating space for so much possibility to come in and just open me up to things that at the time weren't even on my radar. You know, I mean, I knew I wanted to take this trip. I didn't know why. I just knew my heart was calling me to take this trip. But there were so many other things and so many other beautiful moments and beautiful friendships and relationships and experiences that came along with it, you know, that never that never would have transpired had I not had the courage to first walk away from and really accept the things that weren't working for me, even though I had formed such an attachment to them and letting go of them was so scary. So the point of the story is, and this is this is basically what comes down to the lesson in in chapter one. You have to it if if you're going to go through the process of unbecoming everything that the world taught you to be, so you can really become back to who you are, who you were truly meant to be, you have to let go of all those people, places, and things that you know aren't for you. And and I know it feels scary, and I know it feels uncomfortable, and I know that in many cases it will feel dangerous to do so. Right. Just remember, for me, had I not found the courage to do that, the most magical moments of my life would never have happened had I not done that first. Right? And again, you don't have to, you don't have to make all the decisions, it doesn't have to you don't have to rip off the band-aid. You don't have to like blow up your life like I did. You can do it one little decision at a time. What's the worst case scenario? What's the best case scenario? What's the most probable scenario? Am I willing to take the risk here? Yes, great, go. For it. If not, that's okay too. Just pick somewhere in the middle then to start, right? Take a baby step. Like I did with booking the flights. I didn't, I'm like, okay, I'm not really going. I was like in denial. I'm like, okay, well, I'm not really going to Asia yet, but I have a flight book for I think it was October 16th or October 15th. I have a flight book for October 15th. We'll see what happens. And it all worked out. So just take some baby steps, right? If you listen to the episode of the podcast where I talked about baby steps and toe testing, I'm telling you, that is how we would create a miraculous life filled with magic, right? One tiny step at a time. No plan, no commitment, no. Sorry, there's a trend going by. No planning, no committing, no, you know, needing to always be 10 steps ahead. Take one little baby step at a time. And that is where we figure out the most miraculous things, right? And then it makes it easy. It makes it so easy to just take one step at a time. And if it's like if it's not vibing, we feel like we're not moving in the right direction, we just slightly pivot, you know, and then we'll find you'll find your way. You will find your way. And sometimes I think that's the better way to do it because sometimes I think, you know, there's so much out there about, oh, reinvent yourself. Oh, become this, become that. And it's like sometimes we get so attached to the external world. We get so dependent on the external world telling us who we need to be and what we need to look like, that sometimes, even in those reinventions that we make up that we want to be, it's so far from who we actually are. We're just putting on another layer, we're just putting on another mask, we're just putting on another enoughness suit, right? To put over our own shame and unworthiness and not enoughness. Right? What we're talking about is not, this is not a reinvention process. This is remembering who you are process before the world told you to be everything but, right? And that's really when the magic really opens up in your world and in your life and in your relationships. So look at those areas in your life where you know, you know they're not for you. And are you willing to let them go? What is the best case scenario? What is the worst case scenario? What is the most probable scenario? And where can you start to make room? Say no to the things that you don't want and that you that are not for you, so that you can make room for the things, for the things that are for you and that are part of who it is that you're truly meant to be in this world and in this life. I promise you, things will start to

Remembering Who You Were

SPEAKER_00 24:36

unfold from there. Now, again, I'm doing this in real time. The decisions are high stakes, so I'm being very mindful and very, you know, I'm being logical about it. I'm not being crazy, but I'm also taking this lesson with me and I'm taking it to heart. And I'm remembering, yes, sometimes it'll feel hard. Yes, sometimes it'll feel scary, but I know that when I follow my heart, it always leads me someplace miraculous. And even though it feels scary in the moment, it feels like there's nothing here to take its place. Like, yeah, if I say who no to this job, I don't see another job like readily available to take its place, or if I let go of this relationship, where's the other relationship? Or if I let go of these friends, am I going to be alone? Just trust. Trust that if you're being guided to let something go, it's because there is something waiting to come in. But that thing that's waiting for you to come in needs you to let go of that thing first before it can come because we need to make room for these things. Okay. So that is it for today. Hopefully, we'll do more live podcast episodes. Let me know what you thought. If you have questions, let these be interactive. And if you guys do ask questions, please know I will edit them out of the podcast. I'm not going to put them in the podcast, or I won't say your name in the podcast, put it that way. So, until next time, you guys, massive love. And now, if I can figure out how to turn this off.