A Mirror, a Promise, and the Journey of Self-Discovery

Welcome to the very first episode of I Will Know You! In this deeply personal and raw conversation, I share the pivotal moment that led me on an insatiable journey of self-discovery—staring in the mirror and realizing I didn’t fully know myself. From navigating loss and divorce to redefining identity, this episode is about embracing change, finding resilience, and allowing relationships to guide us toward knowing ourselves.

If you've ever felt lost in transition or unsure of who you are, this episode is for you. 

What You’ll Hear in This Episode:

• The moment I realized I didn’t know myself—and how I started to change that
•  How major life shifts (divorce, loss, career changes) impact identity
•  The surprising role of community and relationships in self-discovery
•  Breaking free from societal expectations of success & happiness
•  Why vulnerability and connection are essential for personal growth

🔗 Listen & Subscribe here!
💬 Let’s Connect! @QueenArlyne on Instagram
⭐ If this episode resonated, leave a review! It helps more people find the show. 

Transcript

Starting Over After Previous Podcast

Arlyne Marella 0:10

Welcome to the I Will Know you podcast, with your host, yours truly Arlyne Marella, here to dive into the heart of self-discovery, exploring how life, love and the people we meet shape who we become. One connection and one story at a time. I'm so excited that you're here with me today. I'm nervous, I'm excited I don't know what else to say Overwhelmed, feeling a bit vulnerable. There's a lot. There's a lot to uncover here. There's a lot to unpack here. It's a good thing that this will be a multi-episode podcast. Because it's a good thing that this will be a multi-episode podcast because so much life has been lived and I feel like I have so much to say and so much to share with everybody about self-discovery and the way that I was able to really dive deep into who I am and the journey that that took. And I'm not sitting here today saying that I know everything about myself and I feel like I'm fully healed and I don't have any more work to do. That's not the case at all. I'm here completely imperfect and as somebody who just felt like I had some shit to say and I wanted other people to know that you're not the only one in pain. You're not the only one going through something. You're not the only one that has heartache and trauma and these experiences that move us and shake us to our core and, on the other side of it, the beauty that comes with those experiences, the times when we feel like we are completely being overwhelmed and overtaken by the waves, when really we're just learning how to swim. And this podcast is actually not the first time I've put out a podcast, but this is the first episode of this one, so let's go back a little bit.

Arlyne Marella 2:01

I did this once before, in 2020. I felt similar to many creators at that time and voices that I was hearing at that time. I had a voice and I had been through a lot even at that point. So, five years ago, I felt like I had been through enough in my life that I wanted to share how I had gotten to where I was, how I had become who I was at the time, and I also felt like I was surrounded by some really cool people. That inspired me, and so, bringing those two things together during the pandemic, at a time when just the world was in such chaos, I wanted to be able to bring some brightness, some real conversation, some inspiration and some hope for people as they were re-evaluating so many parts of their life.

Arlyne Marella 2:52

I realized through that podcast that number one. I didn't necessarily, when I started it, felt like I was doing it for all the right reasons. I felt like, yes, I had a voice, but I was really focused on branding and taglines and imagery and just so many things that of course matter as you're starting out but for me were not really the basis for what I was trying to do. But I got really caught in that and it also helped me play it safe for a while because I could get stuck in all the planning phases, which I've similarly done in this podcast. But here I am so much less I don't know if the word is polished or you know it's interesting. So my previous podcast was called all the well. There was two names to it Recipes for Realness and then All the Real Feels, and both of those podcasts I felt were real and authentic and raw, but they weren't compared to who I am today and what I've been going through and the life that I've lived over the past five years or so, and so, again, I loved that podcast.

Arlyne Marella 4:03

I stopped doing it for a lot of different personal reasons which we will get into here. But when I listened back to it and one of the reasons I took it down you might be able to find it in places here and there, I don't know if I took it down everywhere is the purpose of this? Who am I through this? What am I trying to pull through? And I just didn't feel like I had that. So, as I'm bringing all of this together just a few days before I'm launching, I have had ample time to do this. But I felt a lot of inner friction and a lot of nervousness in knowing that I still had that pull. I still wanted to share my voice. I still wanted to let people know that, hey, I've been through even more stuff now and I feel like I've learned even more. But I'm showing up completely different this time.

The Mirror Moment That Changed Everything

Arlyne Marella 4:56

Last time, I was approaching everything from a place of what felt like a lot more security in different ways. I was married, I was a homeowner, I had worked really hard to be where I was. Here, I come to you in the end stages of a divorce, having sold my home and starting over on my own, and this has been a long journey, but the mindset with which I'm entering this podcast. This time feels so much more authentic and I hope that that comes through to each of you. And I wanted to give a little bit of background in case you listened to the previous podcast and you were thinking to yourself what happened and what was all of that? All of that was a labor of love. It just didn't feel authentically me and authenticity is one of my highest values that I hold and so this is one of the times in my life where I would say I probably feel the most authentic I've ever felt in who I am, in what I believe, in the life that I'm living, and at the same time, I also feel, in some ways, the most fragile I've ever felt and I'm learning how to manage those things together and it's a lot. So I hope that if this podcast is finding you at a place of transition, in a place of your life where you are really diving into who you are and what you want and who you want to be and all of the different facets of who you can become mind, body, soul I hope that this podcast inspires you and can bring you some light, some inspiration, some real talk, and will move you forward in, maybe ways that you didn't think you could.

Arlyne Marella 6:42

The first thing I want to talk about is the name of this podcast, and the name of this podcast came up from one really big experience and I was after my separation. I was in a temporary home for a bit and I had been going to therapy, and this was such a big, this was such a big shaker for me. Like it, it shook my life. It shook who I thought I was. It shook what I thought my future would be. Just so many things at one time, and I realized in those moments what I was standing on. Didn't know I had spent so much of my adult life wanting to be the best that I could for everybody else.

Arlyne Marella 7:33

So, you know, I went to college, I got a job with quote-unquote good benefits, as my grandma would say, and I put myself through school and I worked really, really hard to get visibility and to be seen and to do all of these different things. And then I got married and then I bought a house and I did all the things that everybody told me to do, and I ended up in this spot where I wasn't happy, and not only was I not happy, but I had really lost my sense of self. I had been focused most of my 20s on two things being a great wife and being great at my job Like that was kind of it and the reason for that was because I had spent so many of my earlier years struggling like really struggling financially, emotionally, just in lots of different ways and security, stability those were the things that meant so much to me. And so, as I was in this weird transition phase of life, I was talking to my therapist and she had suggested do some affirmations, just let's try to get you out of your mindset of how tough everything was, because I was devastated. And she said let's do some affirmations.

Arlyne Marella 8:46

And so I'm looking in the mirror at myself head on, and I'm having even a hard time looking at myself and I'm crying because this life that I thought that I knew that was so comfortable for me, that was so much of where I found my peace, was all of a sudden shaken in such a big way. And I had to ask myself the question of if everything about me is based off of something else, from someone else. What do I know about myself? I'm just giving and giving and giving. But what have I learned? What have I taken in how have I grown and what does all of this mean to me? And I hadn't asked myself a lot of those questions. And so I'm looking in the mirror, I'm staring at myself head on and trying to say I don't even remember what I was trying to say to myself at that point, to be honest. But what I do remember vividly was looking in the mirror, looking at myself and crying and apologizing to myself and saying I am so sorry that I don't know you. I don't know anything about you.

Arlyne Marella 9:58

And in the time that I was spending in my rental, I couldn't even decide what I wanted to eat, like I had been so used to a life where for and I don't necessarily think good or bad, but in some ways right, not great I had been so used to a life where I looked over at someone else and said hey, what do you want, what do you want to do, what do you like, where do you want to go? And for so many different reasons. But I had gotten so used to that that even making simple decisions for myself, I was like I don't know. Is that where I want to eat? Is this where I want to go? Is this what I want to do and that even just sense of decision-making was really.

Arlyne Marella 10:44

It was really tough. It was really tough for me to struggle with what felt like some basic things, some basic decisions, some basic processes or things to get through in each day. So I look in the mirror let's go back. How many times I'm going to say so? I look in the mirror. So I look in the mirror and I just say to myself I am so sorry I don't know you. I'm so sorry I don't know anything about you, but I will. I will know you, I promise you're worth knowing and I'm going to know everything about you.

Learning Through Connection With Others

Arlyne Marella 11:21

And that was the beginning. That was really the beginning of this insatiable quest for self discovery to feel like I had lost something, that I don't know, if I had even had really that deep sense of self. But I was willing to go to the ends of the earth to find it. And I didn't know at the time what that meant, what that would look like, but I felt this inner conviction that was so strong that I was like no, I know. Part of this journey, part of what's going to come out of this for me, is I'm going to know who I am and I didn't even know what that meant at the time. Truly, I did not know what that meant at the time, but I just knew I needed to know myself and I needed to figure out how to do that. A couple things as we think about this journey now. Right, and here I am, almost three years from that time to now. Well, I would like two and a half, two and a half from that time to now.

Arlyne Marella 12:28

And I have said to my therapist, to my friends, to my family I know myself in a way that I never thought I would get to, and one of the biggest things, one of the biggest ways that I did that, was through other people, believe it or not. So it might sound a little bit contradictory to be like I wanted to know myself but I had to do it through other people. I didn't know that that was going to be part of the journey, because I had spent so much of my life feeling like I needed to give to everybody around me and they didn't need to give anything back. And that's still true. Right, like you, not every connection that you have or every conversation that you have is going to be reciprocal, but it is important to recognize that the connections and the people around you should also feed into you when you're feeding into them.

Arlyne Marella 13:21

And when I started opening up and letting people know that like, hey, things aren't going well for me, people wanted to be there for me and I had created I'll call it a brand, like an internal brand with my friends and family that I'm good, I don't need help, you don't need to check on me, I got this, I've done the hard stuff and so like I'm good. And then, in this moment of what felt like total loss and a complete shatter of sense of self and so much, I didn't know who to ask for help. I didn't know what to say and I had also, I felt like, created a facade of not that there wasn't so much love in my marriage, but there was also just a lot going on and for various reasons, until everything is legally finalized, I'm not going to go into all the details. In little bits and pieces. I'll talk about my experience, but I'm not going to get into the deep details for a bit, because after 15 years, you do have respect for a relationship and experience, et cetera, and while this episode won't be where we talk about exactly what happened, that will be something that we get to, definitely.

Arlyne Marella 14:44

But it was such a shattering, just like such a shattering moment. I didn't want to let people know. I spent months and months of my separation trying to hide it, trying to pretend like everything was OK, trying to just show up in spaces and be like, yeah, it's fine, like I'll figure it out, no big deal. And it wasn't until I started really opening up to my friends and to my family about what was happening that they rallied around me and it's sad to say, but I think I wasn't expecting it only because it's not something that I had expected in my life.

Arlyne Marella 15:24

In general, I'm not somebody who likes to ask for help. I'm hyper independent and that comes from my childhood, that comes from being a Taurus, I think, in so many ways if you're any of my astrology baddies on here listening but I really had so much pride in being self-sufficient that I didn't want help and I needed it. I needed someone to listen to me. I needed someone to listen to me. I needed someone to listen to me cry. I needed somebody to talk to me as I was going through rough days and I needed to relate. I needed community and along the way I met so many people that have been such incredible influences to me, my life, this podcast that helped me pull out those layers.

Arlyne Marella 16:16

And so when I say that knowing others is how we know ourselves, I don't mean it in the sense of you have to pick up traits from other people to become who you are. That's not at all. What I mean is we learn and we extract so much from the people around us when we are also pouring into them, and the more that we give, the more open we are, the more vulnerable we are with our conversations, with the discussions that we're having, with an understanding that we are all human, having a very human experience, and you can bring down those judgments. It creates this opening, this really beautiful opening for you to relate to other people and for you to be human with them and to take the judgment down. And I think when we see people online every day on social media and we see them on all these different platforms, there is this essence of like oh, this person must have this figured out or, you know, this person must just have so much around them. And I think that we don't talk enough about the journey, of what it got to get there and the fact that we don't go through these journeys alone and in the absence of a romantic partnership.

Arlyne Marella 17:35

In this time of my life I have found so much love from friends and family and community that, again, I just didn't expect to and that was such a big part of the inspiration for this podcast was me consistently journaling and talking to my therapist and doing Reiki and all of these different methods of healing and growing and opening up to people, and all of that. I felt like wow, if I can share not only what I've learned from all of these amazing people, but also the way that you can kind of take what someone teaches you and make it your own and leave the rest and keep going to inspire yourself. You can kind of see I light up thinking about it, because people poured into me in a way that I had always hoped that they would and all I had to do was ask. I had to ask for the help, I had to raise my hand, and so many of us especially I will say for myself as a Latina coming from a low income background there's just, there's just. You're just not expected to ask, right, you, it is more expected that you be self-sufficient and that you don't bother other people, and I really took that to heart and I made a beautiful life for myself and with my partner my previous partner but I again felt just very isolated in a lot of ways and this has just been so beautiful to be able to bring this together and remind everybody that, yes, being vulnerable can feel messy, it can feel so exposing, but if we can open up to people, people open up back to us.

Grandmother's Legacy and Living Without Limits

Arlyne Marella 19:33

One of the biggest, I would say, revelations that came even through this time, as I've been talking about putting a podcast together and having conversations with friends as I was navigating my separation and eventual divorce, when I opened up about what was happening and how I was feeling and the things I was going through, other women and men opened up to me about what they were going through and how they were feeling and the fact that some of friends I had had for years and years and years and we talked about everything, everything you could think of but we didn't really talk about our marriages, and that came from societal stuff. Right, it's like you don't talk about your marriage, you don't talk about your partner, you don't talk about this, but so much of us would have felt so less alone if we had just said something to each other hey, I'm going through a hard time and we could in other ways. But marriage just seemed to be this really taboo thing that nobody was really talking about. And that was one of the first experiences I had where I realized okay, if I can open up a little bit more, maybe other people will open up a little bit more to me and we can just learn from each other. Because this is my first time doing this. I don't want to do it again, not the podcast, but the separation, and I wanted to just let people know there's not a blueprint here, there's just not. And let's ask each other questions and let's be inquisitive, like truly, and let's reserve the judgment, because there's enough pain, there's enough heartache, there's enough of all of the bad and sad that we can think of. But are we creating space for community? Are we creating space to cultivate understanding and joy? And I don't think that we do enough. And so that's another big reason why I wanted to bring this podcast together, because, even in my own social circles and having these conversations, I was realizing that, wow, if people aren't talking about this, if this is not something that is being said out loud, it's just sitting in all of us, it's living in our bodies, it's living in our minds and just eating away at everything. The other big part to that was, and to so much of what's gone on over the past few years, are some big life events, outside of, of course, my separation.

Arlyne Marella 22:10

One was the death of my grandma and many if you follow me on social media Queen Arlyne, arlyne, with a Y A-R-L-Y-N-E. Just spelling it out there for a moment. If you follow me on social media, I have posted a lot about my grandma. She passed away a couple of years ago and my grandma was an incredible woman and without her I wouldn't even be sitting here, likely with what I'm doing today and the way that I'm doing it, because that woman sacrificed so much of her and her life and who she wanted to be or who she thought she could be for her family. And that comes from old traditions, right, it comes from, again, societal norms. It comes from so many different things, but I think to myself a lot after my grandma passed.

Arlyne Marella 23:03

She spent, I would think about her life and I would think about the way that she lived, and she lived with such an open, beautiful heart. But she also lived in the shadows a lot. She was the one that was cooking for everybody at the events and then cleaning the events up, and she was the one that maybe wasn't quote unquote as fun as maybe my grandpa was, or she didn't really get the credit for being the incredible woman that she was. And when I got out of high school, as much as my mom wanted to cheer me on to go to college, she didn't have a dime to give me and I ended up moving in with my grandma and I lived with her for a few years and I went to community college and she helped me buy my first car for $1,000. It was a 1997 Ford Escort that did not have power locks or windows. Her name was Candy and she helped me buy my books. There were just so many things in getting started that I wouldn't have been able to do without her.

Arlyne Marella 24:05

And so in the end of her life and realized, looking back, she spent a lot of time alone after everybody moved out, after my grandpa passed away, and she always had extra rooms at her house so there was someone living there at all times. But I would think to myself wow, like this woman gave so much to everybody and she spends a lot of time alone. And that was kind of wild to me, which there's nothing wrong with spending time alone that's a whole other episode, learning to spend time with yourself but it also showed to me like, wow, you can give and give and give and still be on your own. And that was one of the things that I felt early in my separation was like wow, I feel like I've given so much to so many people. And here I am dealing with this on my own. And so after my grandma passed, I felt like something inside me shifted in just a big way where she I won't say she lived small, she traveled, like she had four incredible kids and all these grandkids and great grandkids and she had a really beautiful life.

Arlyne Marella 25:11

She also spent a lot of her life feeling limited. Feeling limited by being Mexican, feeling limited by her education levels, feeling limited by her work. She had worked in packing houses, she had worked cleaning hospital, worked cleaning hospital rooms. And I remember when she would talk about when I was a little girl and she would talk about coming home from cleaning hospital rooms. And I remember when she would talk about when I was a little girl and she would talk about coming home from cleaning hospital rooms and when the doctors would talk to her or the nurses would talk to her and they would ask her for help and she would talk about how much she loved that and how she was. So she just lit up. She lit up when she would talk about that and I would think about that all the time.

Arlyne Marella 25:51

And when I was in college I didn't necessarily have a dream job, I just didn't want to be poor. I was like I really just want to make some money. I don't want to have to live paycheck to paycheck and have $10 to my name and $5 for some Jack in the Box tacos and $5 for gas. And I wanted to. Just I wanted more. And I was like college is gonna be in the millennial vibes, college is gonna be what helps me do that. And at that time, like I said, I would think about different things that I could do.

Arlyne Marella 26:24

But my grandma just felt so limited constantly in her life and restricted, and she lived the fullest that she could. But after she passed I remember thinking to myself over and over again I'm going to die. She didn't sacrifice so much of who she was, so that I could only be a portion of myself. And that's not, and that's not going to happen Like. I'm going to know myself, I'm going to love myself, I'm going to celebrate myself, I'm going to share, I'm going to live big, I'm going to do all of these things and she's such a huge inspiration to me for that. And this podcast is one of my love letters to her, because without the reflection and the understanding and the knowing that she gave me through these years, I don't know if I would be able to truly appreciate the fact that that woman stood on her feet for 10 to 12 hours a day longer, packing avocados and oranges to feed her family, cleaning hospital rooms.

Arlyne Marella 27:30

And here I am sitting in front of a laptop and an iPad and a microphone talking about my whole life. I cannot remember who said it, but I had heard in a podcast years ago that our grandparents and even, for some of us, our parents too their role was survival. They just wanted to survive and we get to self-actualize and that is such a privilege. Once I realized that I had that privilege in such a big way, I just have been white knuckling it, holding on as tight as I could to say to myself like, okay, live, big, live, authentically. Go out there, meet people, figure some stuff out, fail upwards, up, down, side to side, whatever it is, and this is such a big part of that. And so this whole episode, this whole kind of beginning, is for you to understand a bit more about who's behind the microphone, who's behind the screen and why am I doing this. Why am I doing what I'm doing and what am I hoping to get across to my listeners right, and that's so weird to say my listeners and so I'm excited for this journey.

Finding Your Voice Despite Doubts

Arlyne Marella 28:54

Another big thing to think about as you are listening to this podcast and following this journey is your own story. I'm hoping that there's nuggets in here that you'll be able to pull out and think to yourself wow, yeah, I had a moment where everything shifted for me and I didn't ask for help. Or I had a moment where, yeah, somebody in my family really inspired me. And how am I going to use that inspiration to move myself forward and to go after what I want to do? I have spent so many years talking, and here I am talking again, but doing it in a way where I feel like it's going to get out in the right ways.

Arlyne Marella 29:41

I've spent so many years talking about this voice, my voice, the voice that I have, the things that I've experienced, the life that I've lived, and for the longest time I thought to myself well, who am I? Who am I? To even put a podcast together? If you were to look at me on paper, just every day, on paper, I'm like I said, every day, on paper, right, I'm like I said Latina, low income, first gen, on my dad's side and on my mom's side. Second and I would think about my quote unquote qualifiers pretty, not as super impressive Went to a state school.

Arlyne Marella 30:14

However, I paid for every penny of that degree on my own. I worked two jobs, I put myself through school, I paid off my student loans. I did so many things and I have been so proud of all of those and the way that this life has shaped itself for me. But I don't know if this is a but or an, and Maybe that could be a whole other thing. No-transcript showed me that that's true. Yes, I have stuff to say. I've met incredible people through some of my social media, through boudoir photography, which will be a whole episode on its own about the way we see ourselves, our bodies, et cetera.

Arlyne Marella 31:21

But I had really just thought, okay, I look up to so many of these other thought leaders in this space and I don't have that type of education or I don't have those resources or that network. I have a lot more resources and network than I did 10 years ago or even five years ago, but it's still not what I'd seen through some of these big names on stages and podcasts, et cetera. But then I sat and I really thought to myself and was like I have a voice, that's enough. That's enough. My voice will find the people that need to hear it, and I just have to be confident enough to put it out there. I might not have a degree in something specific that has to do with any of what I'm talking about, but I have a PhD in struggle and I can absolutely talk to you about what that is like and how you make your way through it.

Arlyne Marella 32:13

And I think that those life experiences are really the ones that shape us, and when we are in moments where we feel like we are truly just being buried under everything, maybe we're not, maybe we're being planted. Another quote I heard, and again I do not remember who said it. If you know who said it, send me a note. But I think of these things so much, and so one last message that I want to leave you with that I think of these, I think of these things so much, and so one last message that I want to leave you with that I think is so important is the fact that you have a voice, too. You have a story, too. You're also going through something, and your story matters, and I hope that if our paths cross at some point, that you'll share some of that with me, or how going inwards and learning about yourself helped you get to whatever the next phase of your life is gonna be or who you'll become, because we don't stay stagnant. We grow, we change, we evolve constantly, and that also means that all of our stories are evolving constantly and there is so much from us to learn from each other and grow from each other.

Final Thoughts and Invitation to Connect

Arlyne Marella 33:31

So, with so much excitement and nervousness and feeling like I don't know what I'm doing right, I don't know what I'm doing wrong, I don't know how this is going to turn out, I will say at the end of this in general, I'm glad I'm doing it, because this is me living authentically. This is me sharing my voice. This is me sharing who I am, what I'm about and the way that I've navigated some really, really tough experiences in my life and the people that helped me get through them, because I didn't get through them alone. While, yes, I would love to say I am quote, unquote self-made right, I would definitely say that. But on the other side of that was my best friend picking up the phone when I was sobbing about how hard things are going, or my mom picking up the phone, or some of my incredible network that I have and the community that I've built, whether that's from the workplace or that's from my childhood, from college, from previous jobs, from my fitness journey. I've made a lot of amazing friends, but hearing opening up my story, hearing their stories and again hoping to hear your stories, I think, is something that is going to transform all of us, and I think that this is an exciting journey. So, while you might be listening to this as somebody who knows me, or a friend or a colleague or something like that, I also want you just.

Arlyne Marella 35:08

This podcast is about knowing yourself.

Arlyne Marella 35:10

I'm glad that you took some time to get to know me and you're going to continue to get to know me for a bit, because the story of how me and who I am is one that I'm excited to share, but I also hope that I get to know you and that you can share some stories with me.

Arlyne Marella 35:27

So, if you haven't already, please be sure to subscribe and follow me at Queen Arlene Again, that's Queen and then A-R-L-Y-N-E on social media, where I will be continuing to document this journey, share some fun clips, let you know when episodes are coming out, and thank you again for taking some time to just listen, to listen, to be open to a new voice, to a new message, to maybe a new way of thinking a bit. I know that there are so many podcasts out there that you could be listening to, and I'm really excited that you decided to spend just a little bit of time with me today. So, again, thank you so much for being here. I'm excited for this journey. I want to hear from you, I want to connect with you. Please subscribe, and until next time.