Now what?

Once you’re over that hurdle, you inevitably must face another – staying gone.

Leaving was like a short sprint of bravery. But staying gone was a marathon of it. Staying gone took constant self reassurance and validation, which was a very new concept to me after having abandoned myself for years. Relearning self trust was a painful, messy, and nonlinear process. And it’s still ongoing.

For a little while, I had to make my world very small. I had to be extremely protective of who I allowed into my life, what content I consumed, what energy I surrounded myself with, and where I allowed my thoughts to wander. I retreated into my safe, warm, protective turtle shell.

I listened to affirmations on repeat (shoutout Lavendaire Lifestyle). I always had instrumental music playing in the background. I did a shit ton of arts and crafts. I watched comforting movies and TV shows from my childhood. I stayed off social media.

Slowly but surely, I felt something shift. The anxiety was still there– that didn’t change for a long time. But underneath my anxiety, I noticed that the deep rooted dread in my stomach wasn’t there anymore. And I felt a flutter of hope. And the war in my head stopped. I started sleeping better. I wasn’t walking on eggshells. I could make noise, I could make what I want for dinner, I could make a mess. It took some time, but everything got so much lighter.

Things that helped me stay gone:

Keep a “proof” list

It’s been almost 2 years for me, and new flashbacks still pop into my head from my relationship. I’m still remembering details for the first time that I can’t believe I endured. Since the day I left, I have kept an ongoing list. Anytime a bad memory has popped into my head, I’ve written it down.

Then, in those inevitable moments of self doubt and questioning my path, I would read that proof list OUT LOUD to myself. It validated my decision every single time.

(You also don’t need to have “horrible” experiences to keep a list. You can keep a list of moments that felt off, moments that made you want to leave, even if they were super subtle)

Build a support system/find an accountability buddy

I had one trusted friend who I opened up to completely. I told her details of the abuse I had endured. I sent her screenshots. I sent her my proof list.

Once she knew what was going on, I couldn’t rewrite it or minimize it in my own head anymore. That little mental barrier was all I needed to keep going.

You don’t have to tell everyone. (And you definitely don’t have to tell the whole world on TikTok like I did).

But tell someone the truth!!

(BTW if you’re not in our group chat, send me a DM on IG and I’ll add you! Our community is full of incredible women who have been there)

Write a letter to your childhood self.

Find a picture of you as a child and set it as your background. Then, write a letter to her.

What promises would you make to her? How would present-day you protect her and keep her safe? What did she need that you can be for her now? Keep her at the top of your mind throughout this process. Anytime you doubt yourself, think about her. It’s hard not to blame yourself as an adult, and to wonder what you “should” do. I found it so much easier to have empathy, grace, and a protective instinct for that little version of me. She’s still in there!

And say it with me: we are DONE dismissing ourselves. We don’t minimize our experiences. We don’t blame ourselves for other people’s behavior. Our feelings are real and they provide valuable information.

For me, staying gone took a lot more willpower than leaving did. You have to actively choose every single moment of every single day to stay gone. Some days were easier than others. Some days felt like torture.

But I will choose to set myself free in every single lifetime.💖

Our stories were all different, and the dollar amounts ranged greatly. But the themes kept repeating themselves. And I started thinking: what if we stopped treating these stories as isolated experiences and started looking at what we can learn from them collectively?

What if your story could become someone else’s advice?

That’s exactly what I want Common Ground to be. A place where we share what we’ve lived through, notice the patterns, and turn our collective experience into something useful. They say life doesn’t come with a handbook. But what if we wrote one?

Let this comment set the vibe:

“Aight y’all it’s early, everyone grab a coffee and sit cross cross applesauce on the rug.”

So get comfy!

It wasn’t about the money!!!

If you didn’t watch my last straw video, here’s the TLDR:

My ex was accumulating thousands of dollars in credit card debt in both of our names without my knowledge. When I confronted him about it, he turned it around on me and told me I was the one who wasn’t trustworthy.

I know. I know. The jokes write themselves.

One of the biggest debates in the comments was: is $15,000 enough of a reason to end a marriage?

But here’s where I was at: I thought we were building a life together. Meanwhile, there was an entire part of our financial life I didn’t know existed.

And THAT was my final straw.

You guys introduced me to the concept of financial abuse, and then so many of you shared your own experiences with it.

“$15k in debt isn’t a lot but I guess it’s the principle, the lie.”

“That’s financial abuse. Mine did that too. $34,000 credit card debt.”

“Girrrrl oh my god! Was financially abused by my ex too—the BETRAYAL.”

“My ex husband of 21 years hid $150k in personal loans…”

“There were several things that led to my divorce, one of them being around $10,000 of hidden credit card debt... he had borrowed $30k against our 401k.”

“Same thing, except it was 25-30k of debt... told me for years it was ‘just a couple grand’. That wasn’t the only reason btw, it was the last straw.”

Your stories mentioned amounts ranging from $1,000 to $250,000 which is obviously a huge range. But despite that, the pattern was always the same:

They lied→ You found out→ Somehow it became your fault

A lot of you identified this as blame-shifting and connected it to a manipulation pattern called DARVO. I had NO. IDEA. that other people had experienced this same dynamic.

You shared:

“Mine would get SO MAD when I brought up finances and literally dismiss me and say I didn’t know what I was talking about.”

“My ex husband had 30k debt and yep, somehow always my fault…”

“He got 180k in credit card debt and blamed me.”

“She accumulated $15k CC debt AGAIN... she had hidden it from me for months. She also blamed me for her choices…”

And when I looked at these stories together, I could see the pattern:

It wasn’t about the money🗣️!!! It was about the dishonesty, the betrayal, and the refusal to take responsibility.

Seeing how he reacted in that moment of confrontation revealed something about his character that I hadn’t encountered before. And I was never going to be okay with what I had learned.

Our collective takeaways:

1. The final straw doesn’t have to be an explosive moment

My final straw wasn’t necessarily the worst moment of my life or the worst thing my ex had ever done to me.

It was the moment when I recognized a pattern in his behavior that had been occurring throughout the relationship. And more importantly, it was the moment I stopped wondering what was wrong with me and started wondering what was wrong with this dynamic.

2. Nobody taught us how to talk about money.

This was another thing I noticed over and over again in your responses. People weren’t just telling me their stories. They were TEACHING each other!!

You said:

“I wish it was common knowledge or young adults got sat down and talked about marriage and such. Finances, communication, how to disagree, red flags to look for, life goals…”

“This is something I personally wouldn’t have thought of if not for this video.”

“Normalize running a credit report on your spouse.”

“Marriage IS a financial arrangement, whether you’re rich or not.”

Things you told me you wish you’d known:

• Talk openly about debt before combining your finances

• ALWAYS GET A PRENUP even if you think you have nothing to lose

• Know where the money is

• Don’t assume you know someone’s financial situation

• Understand the laws where you live because the reality is that marriage IS A LEGAL CONTRACT

• Pay attention when someone becomes unusually defensive

• You don’t need a reason to leave

(Btw this isn’t financial or legal advice!! It’s a collection of things people in this community said they wish they’d known. Laws and financial circumstances vary, so do your own research and talk to a qualified professional about your specific situation. I’m not a professional I’m just a girl)

This community saved me

And I want it to save you too! I posted stories about my life, but the most important part was it opened a conversation and created a place for you to share your stories too. And we have SO MUCH to learn from each other.

What was your final straw??

Share it with Common Ground anonymously or with your name attached. Your story might become part of a future bulletin, resource, conversation, or simply help another person feel less alone.

Share your story here

See you soon,

🫶 Lizzy

When they asked my favorite color, I always said blue. Blue is safe. It’s cool, calm, collected, and quietly neutral. Blue is embraced because it’s steady and muted. Blue girls can play four square at recess and they aren’t like all the pink girls- the soft girls who hug and make braided crowns out of willow tree branches and hang upside down on the monkey bars. If you say you like blue, you can run fast and play tetherball, you can make the cut. He runs like a girl- but not a girl like you- you’re different. Because you prefer blue.

When I set myself free, I saw the world with new eyes. I replaced my cracked glasses with rose-colored ones. I met myself for the first time and it’s nice to meet you- my favorite color is pink. And I am just like the other girls under the willow tree. We like to dance and sing and make art and make noise. We are powerful and proud.

Have you ever experienced a field of summer wildflowers in the rockies, or a sunset over the pacific at point dume? If you’re lucky, there will be pink. Pink is loud- it demands to be seen. What they deemed obnoxious and unpredictable, was truly just vibrant and visible.

I always wanted to be chosen, and the ones I wanted to choose me preferred blue. Instead of softness, warmth, and playfulness, they preferred the cold, muted, and pristine. And most of all they preferred me tame.

Now pink is everywhere. It’s in the dried bouquet on my kitchen table, the tint in my lips, it’s on the sheets of my bed. It’s in the breeze and the music and your smile, it’s in my messy hair, it wraps around me like a hug. It’s within me!

Once I set myself free, I started to soften. My hard shell exterior became pliable. I no longer carefully curate my presence, now I am just me. And now I prefer pink.

I still love blue. Yellow, orange, green, red, purple too. But pink is sacred to me- it set me free.

When I looked in the mirror, I didn’t recognize myself. I lost all sense of who I was and what I wanted out of life, and replaced it with followed rules and met-or-exceeded expectations that someone else set. I wasn’t me, I was who he wanted me to be, who they wanted me to be. I achieved the goals, but didn’t realize until I reached them that they were never mine to begin with.

I began to daydream. In another life, maybe I had taken advantage of my Austrian citizenship, moved to the EU, and become fluent in German. Maybe I had followed my dreams of dancing and making art and writing and helping others and living a creative, purposeful life that felt like my own. In another life, maybe I believed in myself and I was making 8-year-old Lizzy proud. In this life, I could see forever laid out in front of me, and sure, it wasn’t what I wanted, but at least I knew what to expect. At least I did everything right. I’ll feel better soon.

I thought, I just have anxiety. I’m just overthinking and I’m just in my head too much. I just need to meditate and pray to god and to the universe and to whoever and to read and exercise more and sleep more and try a different antidepressant and go to a different therapist and reduce my screen time and live somewhere different and to make more money. So I made those changes, every one of them. I still woke up every single morning filled with dread, counting down the hours until it was time to go back to sleep. Counting down the days until Saturday and then when Saturday came around, I’d think, I’m sure next weekend would be better. I clung on to hope so hard I dug my nails in and pierced it.

They say the devil you know is better than the devil you don’t. I too was terrified of the unknown until the moment I realized I was even more terrified of the known. I imagined waking up in 10 years, in the same spot, with the same person, feeling the same way, and the all-too-familiar feeling of dread filled me to the brim. Deep in my heart I knew what to do, I just wasn’t yet ready to listen. Admitting this to myself took tremendous bravery, it took every ounce of energy and courage I could muster up inside of me, and it took sitting in discomfort and pain. It took trusting my intuition more than I was trusting the people closest to me.

But what if I’m wrong? What if I burn my life to the ground and start from ground zero, redesign and rebuild, all to realize that I still felt the same way? How could I be sure that starting over would fix this feeling? I confided in my family - they said the grass isn’t always greener on the other side. They said just keep trying to fix the life you have. Fix yourself. You can’t change your mind, you already made your choice. No one is as happy as they seem anyways. Life is just hard. Starting over would just be a bandaid on top of a gaping wound, and the wound was me.

I desperately needed advice, and instead of seeking it from others, I started seeking it from myself through writing. I’d brain dump, I’d scribble, I’d write poetry, I’d write nonsense, I’d write letters to the younger and older versions of me. I’d write words of encouragement, affirmations, and my wildest dreams. I even wrote down my dream day-in-the-life, dating a year in the future, which FULLY came true (down to an exact description of my apartment and the exact cost of my rent btw!!!!!). As soon as I surrendered to the page, the answers came flooding to me. Through writing, I realized just how powerful my mind is, and how my ENTIRE reality is shaped from my thoughts. I realized that my own doubts and limiting beliefs (and the doubts and limiting beliefs in the people surrounding me, who I was actively choosing to be surrounded by) were the only things stopping me from making my life into my very own. And I realized that I am in full control of what thoughts I hold on to and what thoughts I let go of.

I had nothing to lose- I was already miserable- so I may as well run an experiment. I decided to trust myself deeply and unconditionally. I broke up with my ex. I moved into an apartment on my own. I blocked people that were harmful to me. I went low contact with those who didn’t believe in me. I didn’t just rock the boat- I made tsunami-grade tidal waves in the lives of those around me, who had only ever known me to comply. And I started feeling more alive and more free and more myself than ever. Which leads me here today, on your screen, into your mind as you read these words to yourself. What a shame it would be for us to doubt how powerful we are. Start today and take one tiny step. What do you need to hear today? Take a moment to really think about it. What do you wish a loved one, a trusted friend, a mentor would tell you today? Now tell it to yourself, and write it out. Maybe in your notes app, or maybe on a post it note and stick it to your wall. Say it every time you walk past it.

Here’s mine: I am exactly where I’m supposed to be and I trust the path that I’m on.

We’re on a floating rock! We don’t even know the purpose behind being alive! We are tiny specks in the universe! Maybe they stopped telling us to follow our dreams once we became adults, but kids aren’t the only ones with dreams. Now, it’s time to tell ourselves to follow our dreams. That’s the only person you need to hear it from anyway.

Long story short, every ounce of discomfort was worth it. Every risky decision was EASILY the right decision. Every time I listened to my intuition, it led me closer to my dream life. The more I listened to my intuition, the easier it became. So I challenge you to tune out the noise and listen to yourself today.

Until recently.

When I started sharing my honest, raw experiences of rebuilding my life after an abusive marriage on TikTok, I never in my wildest dreams imagined that thousands of people would resonate with my stories, find comfort in them, and feel seen.

My inbox was flo…

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