Okay, friends, you asked for more on this so buckle up for the next episode in the Fireside Chat series. This isn’t really about giving any kind of typical relationship advice - this is the raw, from the front lines of life, uncomfortable truth about how I reoriented my life to prepare for marriage and family building.
In some ways it feels strange to be so explicit about this because there feels like there is some kind of taboo in what I’m saying. What I know is true is that we have so much conditioning around doing things the right way around “what we want and desire” that it was hard for me to figure out how to navigate this journey. In the end it’s really been about settling in, being extremely intentional and allowing things to flow organically.
Just over a year ago my life looked completely different. I was living overseas in Paris, burning myself out, deeply out of alignment and having to work hard to keep myself together. I was hanging on by a thread without realising it and much to my deep sadness, everything was about to change.
I had a conversation with my bestie Lola where she asked, "Is your soul happy living in France?" And boom. When I realised that the soul truth answer was no, everything I’d built started to unravel,
Here's the thing: preparing for partnership isn't about having a perfect checklist. It's about becoming the woman who can actually show up for a real, deep partnership. There’s so many things I had to address internally and externally to orient my life to build something different that I’d never built before.
For me, that meant:
Slowing the f*ck down
Getting brutally honest with myself
Having vulnerable conversations with elders (like, literally asking my aunties, family and friends about their marriages)
Learning to REST (which was SO hard for me) and really come out of the spotlight to recover
I'll be real - I was terrified. I'd been this location-free, some-what work-obsessed entrepreneur for years. The idea of settling, of creating space for a family? That felt foreign and filled me with fear. What if I fail? What if I open myself fully up to this and I experience ginormous heartbreak and disappointment? What if I become outcome oriented and obsessed with perfection?
I wrote a little about the journey here:
These are all real fears and I’m sure many of you relate. Thankfully, and this isn’t always the case, my desire inside me was stronger than my fear and so I allowed myself to trust it. I knew this was my next chapter and life was heading in this direction. So I did the work. I moved back to the UK. I took a sabbatical. I reconnected with my family.
I started dating with radical honesty - literally telling people on first dates, "I'm looking to build a family." Wild, right? And now? Things are unfolding in this beautiful, almost magical way. Not because I forced it, but because I created the space and stayed open. This episode is really not about the outcome, it’s truly about showing what the journey can look like and that there is so much more in the preparation of life than we give it credit. The trees can only grow in fertile soil, as they say.
I also answered one of your questions, “How much do you think we need to prepare to be ready to get into a relationship and how much is timing / god's will?". I loved this question because I’ve thought a lot about it and I was very grateful that someone asked it. Make sure you listen to hear my response.
Pro tip: Your life will tell you exactly what you value. Look at how you spend your time, who you're spending it with. That's the real wealth of information that will show you what needs to shift for you to align your life with your desire. So much juice and momentum can be regenerated when your journey is infused by aligned intentions based on what you actually want.
For anyone feeling called to this journey - whether you're 25 or 45 - trust yourself. I personally think that before you can move towards what you actually want you need to know exactly where you are. I designed my new 8 week comeback coaching container with exactly this in mind.
We orient you to exactly where you are right now on your journey, design a process around what’s next and begin moving towards it.
Book a discovery call in May to talk about what this could look like for you.
Thank you for listening.
I love you,
Liv
P.S. Free workshop coming soon. Stay tuned, loves. 💕
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