Why the Wrong Person Feels Like Home | Sheleana Aiyana
episodePreviously titled “Break the Cycle of Toxic Love for Good | Sheleana Aiyana” — renamed by the publisher on Aug 7, 2026
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What personal experiences shaped Sheleana Aiyana's perspective on relationships?
You have an amazing book, Becoming the One, that has taken over the world by storm. An amazing community at Rising Women. And you have this really interesting story that I started to read more about where you were in and out of foster care for a while. Is that right? Up until you were 16, I think.
Yeah.
You grew up without a father.
Yeah.
And your mother was also kind of having some challenges. So it felt like an intermittent mother kind of off and on.
Yeah.
How does someone who grows up in foster care, has to work multiple jobs at 16 to survive, and doesn't really have the mother that maybe they desired, how does someone turn out healthy, conscious, and in a loving, committed relationship with a beautiful child? How does that happen?
Well, you know, part of it I can explain and part of it I feel like is just grace. I often wonder that myself because I think so many of us go through these things and I wonder, you know, what's the difference between a person who experiences just as much or more trauma and doesn't make it out versus a person who does. And sometimes I feel that it comes down to knowing that we were loved because even though I went through so much pain and I experienced a lot of abandonment and abuse and all of these things, There was this part of me that knew that I was loved. Really? Yeah. Like I knew that my mom loved me. I knew she couldn't care for me.
When did you know this? How old were you?
I think I always knew. Even though there's a lot of wounding and a lot of relational rupture and virtually no security at all, I still knew that she loved me. And so that, I believe, is one of the most important things that we carry with us is to know that we are loved. And so I always carry that as a relational principle as well. It's like how we...
How does trauma influence our relationship patterns?
and remind people that they're loved and that they're cared for. Even if we go through hard things together, we have traumatic experiences, just having that as a base, I think is what allows us to survive it.
How did you, I mean, so you knew that, like in your core, you knew that you were loved, even though your father wasn't around, your mother was off and on, and you were in foster care. You still knew it.
Yeah, you know, there's something about growing up with a single mom. And I think most people who have experienced that dyad know it's a very deep, intimate relationship. I mean, all of relationships with our parents in some way are very deep and intimate, even if it's just in our own hearts and minds. But I had this very deep relationship with my mom. And because she experienced mental illness and all of these developmental issues, it was more like having a friend. So when I look back at my history with her, there are a lot of good memories with play because she was more like my age. So we can have a lot of fun together. She just couldn't care for me or create a safe container or boundaries or be consistent in any way because she wasn't able to do that for herself.
And so we did have a lot of fun in those moments where, you know, we were being kids together. And I knew that she had a lot of love for me. And also I saw a lot of suffering. There was a lot of self-harm and a lot of her having to be in somewhere else so that she could survive. Right.
What are shadow vows and how can they help in relationships?
And so that helped me build a lot of compassion once I moved through it.
But I mean, how old were you when you started to understand how to have compassion for your mom?
True compassion, I was probably 28 years old.
Okay, yeah. Yeah. But it took a while. Oh yeah. So you weren't like, I'm 12 and I need my mom to be there for me and I have compassion that she's emotionally unstable in this moment or suffering.
Yeah, I mean, I knew that she was, but it was more painful for me. So I remember packing my whole world into my backpack and running away in the middle of the night from foster homes and walking for three to four hours in the middle of the night to show up on her doorstep and sleeping outside on her doorstep, wanting her to let me in. Or her, you know, she was in the hospital a lot and so often she wouldn't even be there.
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
What personal experiences shaped Sheleana Aiyana's perspective on relationships?
0:03–1:50
2
How does trauma influence our relationship patterns?
1:50–3:15
3
What are shadow vows and how can they help in relationships?
3:15–5:30
4
How can somatic experiencing aid in healing relationship wounds?
5:30–8:10
5
What are the signs of a trauma bond in a relationship?
8:10–10:41
6
Why do people attract chaotic relationships despite wanting stability?
10:41–14:26
7
What are the essential elements of a conscious relationship?
14:26–18:19
8
How can we break the cycle of repeating negative relationship patterns?
18:19–1:10:51
Speakers
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