Should You Stay or Leave? Trusting Your Inner Wisdom Through Soul Recovery

In this episode of the Recover Your Soul podcast, we explore one of the most profound questions in relationships: how to know whether to stay or leave. Through the lens of Soul Recovery, we’ll look at how relationships, whether they’re sources of love, challenge, or growth, can be powerful mirrors for our inner healing. This journey invites us to step into our own wholeness, moving beyond fear, codependency, or people-pleasing, and learning to listen to the wisdom within. Relationships have seasons, and part of our Soul Recovery process is gaining clarity on whether a relationship still aligns with our true self or if it’s time to release it with compassion. It’s not about a “right” or “wrong” decision but about trusting your soul’s wisdom to lead you towards greater peace, healing, and joy in your life. Join me as we tap into this courageous self-inquiry and open ourselves to the possibility that, by honoring our own path, we step closer to the life our soul truly seeks.

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This podcast is for educational purposes only and is not allied or representative of any organizations or religions, but is based on the opinions and experience of Rev. Rachel Harrison. The host claims no responsibility to any person or entity for any liability, loss, or damage caused or alleged to be caused directly or indirectly as a result of the use, application, or interpretation of the information presented herein. Take what you need and leave the rest.

Chapters

• 0:00 Navigating Relationship Complexities and Soul Recovery
• 15:09 Choosing Paths
• 28:15 Building a Positive Community

Transcript

Rev Rachel Harrison: 0:43

So relationships, whether you're married first time, second time, third time or more, or even just in a committed relationship or in a I'm not entirely sure what this is relationship, are complicated, to say the least. Who are we and are we safe, and what do we believe and think and feel? I know that's been the case for me and I wanted to use this episode as a kind of coming back to an episode that I did in August, when I had this moment of am I going to stay in my relationship, and the reflection that I've gotten back, both in coaching and from emails, were a few people saying, hey, I really don't know what to do in my relationship. I really feel like it's healthier for me to leave, but you stayed, so maybe I should stay. And this is a discussion that says oh, no, no, no, no. You are on your soul recovery journey in your relationship, and what I want to empower you to remember is you have the wisdom within you, the knowing within you for what is right and perfect in your particular situation. Let's talk about it. Enjoy the episode.

Rev Rachel Harrison: 1:59

Welcome to the Recover your Soul podcast a spiritual path to a happy and healthy life. My name is Reverend Rachel Harrison. I started Recover your Soul. After having profound changes in my life from my recovery of alcoholism, codependency and control addiction, I was guided to share the tools and principles of spirituality and soul recovery to help others transform their lives as mine was transformed. For us to overcome external circumstances, we need to turn the attention to ourselves, focusing on our inner change and healing. Positive results in our lives will follow. Welcome to the Recovery Soul Podcast. I'm Rev Rachel and I am so grateful that you're here with me. We are doing this deep dive into our own soul recovery journey here as a community and if you're new to the community, welcome, welcome, welcome. I know a lot of people actually go back and listen to the podcast from the beginning and really allow themselves to immerse themselves in not only the process of soul recovery but my process. I think about the four years that I've been sharing my personal journey with you and everything that's transformed in my life, the nuggets that I've been able to give to you, and I just am so grateful for the stories that I hear, either in reviews on the podcast, in the one-way texts that I love that you can do from the show notes, the emails that I get and especially, especially, the coaching that I get to do with so many of you. Thank you for trusting me and sharing how this podcast and this process of soul recovery is transforming your life.

Rev Rachel Harrison: 3:41

And for today's episode, I wanted to come back to relationships and I wanted to hit on the concept of whether to stay in a relationship or whether it's time to let it go, and part of that is a reflection of last week's episode, which talked about this in friendships that we have sometimes seasons of friendships, and then sometimes we have friendships where we're learning from each other and we're allowing each other to really be a mirror for ourselves, to deepen our relationship of healing. And marriage and romantic and long-term relationships are the same and even more so. To be honest, really, the spiritual teachers that we get out of our love relationships have such a heavy, heavy part of how we can learn and grow. And it's also a reflection around an episode that I did back in August around Rich and I and a situation that we had and my decision to stay in our relationship. So if you haven't listened to that episode, I highly recommend that you go and check it out, because I don't want to repeat all the things from it, but what I wanted to hit on is that in that particular situation it made the most sense and was right for me to stay in my marriage of 32 years and I had a lot of really fabulous opportunity to reflect upon myself, to do my own soul recovery, healing, and to really continue to use my marriage as a mirror and a reflection for me to continue to dive into not only healing the wounds from the past but really stepping more fully into this awakened state that's super curious about.

Rev Rachel Harrison: 5:29

Who am I? You know, when my kids left the house and I was an empty nester, that was a good question who the heck is Rachel? And coming out of my own addiction and just sort of getting my head out of drowning and asking the question what am I doing here and who do I want to be right? This is that place where we are, and sometimes that means that our relationships offer us strength to continue that journey and sometimes it means that that season of those particular relationships has changed. Now the reason why I wanted to hit on this conversation again was because I had a couple people in sessions right after that episode aired and a couple emails that I got where people were sharing women most of the people who are here listening are women over the age of 40, and we have been through it, right, we have been through it, we've been through it with our relationships, we've been through it with our kids and we're in that place of sort of getting our head out of water and starting to ask ourselves questions.

Rev Rachel Harrison: 6:36

This is the new step one in soul recovery. We're ready for awakening, we're ready to see our lives in a different way, to engage with our relationships, with ourself in a new way. And so I'm in these conversations and in these particular sessions that I'm thinking about, there was real clarity that the season of these relationships were over, that the timeline for them and for their highest good and again, I'm not making a judgment on whether this was right for them. This is them reflecting to me. It feels like this is how I see it, but I'm afraid of. And then they said but you stayed with Rich, and so I'm wondering whether I'm making the right choice or not, because you stayed, so maybe I should stay. And in that I thought, oh, oh, no, no, no. We need to have a deeper conversation, because soul recovery is about you, soul recovery is around you, having clarity of your timelines of what's right for you, of looking at the larger picture with this more healed whole self. And how can we engage in our life and our relationships from our most healed whole self and recognize if I'm in this relationship.

Rev Rachel Harrison: 8:02

Is this a dead end relationship? Am I betraying myself by staying in this relationship? Am I enabling somebody to not change or grow or have the experience that they need to have? By being in this relationship, am I holding myself back from experiencing the life that I know that's calling for me if I stay because I'm afraid? Or am I in a relationship that I could grow more, in, that there is more opportunity, but I'm leaving too soon because I'm afraid, or because I'm seeing it from a perspective that's really around woundedness and not from a healed state? Or are you in a situation where this doesn't feel safe and you're just not sure what to do because you're in a fight or flight situation?

Rev Rachel Harrison: 8:57

Each person, each relationship, each situation is so uniquely its own and yet, at the same time, where these beautiful, whole, magnificent souls having these experiences and learning how to distill out our woundedness, our patterns, our beliefs, and from that sometimes relationship, our patterns, our beliefs, and from that sometimes, relationship, no matter how scratchy and sticky it may be, is actually a way to continue to grow and to learn, and sometimes we stay stuck in something that is no longer healthy for us or the other person. So that's what I wanted to sort of step in today and we'll see where spirit goes with it. I want to just reflect first about the modeling that happened for me when I was growing up and my parents were these wild hippies very individual wild hippies, wild hippies, and you know their love story of meeting each other and really recognizing some soul connection. I believe in soul connections and soul contracts that they had with each other. And they both moved to New Mexico and they had this, you know, wild eyed idea of what life was going to be like, and I think I've shared the stories that my dad was a musician and my mom was more practical, and so there were some elements of how their values were with each other that they really liked, this larger dream.

Rev Rachel Harrison: 10:32

But the way that my dad's lifestyle was was not aligned with the way that my mom's lifestyle was, one being that my dad was really interested in at that time, which was pretty regular, which was open, free relationships. He had not gotten approval for this open relationship before he started having these experiences, which is infidelity, right, but in his mind he was having this free love. That was part of the 60s and in my mom's mind in the early 70s. In my mom's mind that wasn't an agreement that they had made and it was hard for her, but she was trying to allow him to have his lifestyle and in the end they made a concerted effort to try to make the marriage work. My dad made a decision to be monogamous and my mom made efforts to try to make things work.

Rev Rachel Harrison: 11:43

During this trying to make it work, it became clear to both of them that it just didn't align with who they were. They couldn't be their true selves together, but it didn't mean that they didn't love and respect each other. They actually loved and respected each other enough to let the marriage go. And one morning one of them rolled over and said I think we need to make a different choice. And the other one said I agree, and this was when I was eight years old, and so my dad moved out and my mom and I started our life together, as my mom being my main parent, who had raised me from the beginning anyway, but what they modeled for me was that this was a loving interaction. It wasn't an angry thing, it wasn't something that was terrible. It actually was saying I can't be my full self with you, and so this was my modeling right.

Rev Rachel Harrison: 12:29

So when I met Rich and his parents were divorced, and even before that, and people's parents were divorced and they said their parents hated each other and that there had been all this animosity and there was always fighting. And I didn't get it because my parents were best friends. There was always love, we spent holidays together, we were kind to each other, they talked to each other right, they had this relationship that just said you living with me doesn't work. And then I watched them both blossom into the truth of who they were. My mom was able to become a scientist and a Buddhist and a quilter and do her whole life that she could not possibly had done if she had stayed married to my dad. And my dad got to be a hippie cowboy, folk hero, singer, songwriter, silversmith that still lives a pretty funky life that really is aligned with him, that he's happy with, and so that was my model. So then I meet Rich, and Rich's situation is he has parents who divorced when he was around three and never talked to each other, never got along so much animosity. So for him, he didn't want to have anything like that.

Rev Rachel Harrison: 13:42

Are you ready to step into your soul recovery? Well, I am here to support you as your spiritual coach. Visit the website to book one-on-one coaching sessions with me as we transform your life through working the nine steps of soul recovery. You can also choose to work the steps on your own through the modules at your own pace. I'm excited to also be announcing that there are retreats every year, both in Colorado and other places in the country, workshops and events, and I hope that you also will join us the first Monday of every month from 6 to 7 pm, mountain Standard Time for the free Zoom support group. This is an amazing place for us to connect, learn and share our stories. And don't forget to join the private Facebook group for soul recovery, inspiration, connection, answering each other's questions and giving shout outs. I thank you for supporting this podcast, either by being a Patreon member, apple podcast subscriber and getting that extra episode every Friday, or by your one timetime donations or your small monthly donations that are found in the show notes. You are helping spread the soul recovery message and supporting this community. Visit the website recoveryoursoulnet for dates, times, everything that's happening, register for the support group and how to stay connected. Together we can do the work that will recover your soul. How to stay connected. Together, we can do the work that will recover your soul.

Rev Rachel Harrison: 15:09

Fifteen years ago, when we had our year of separation and I left and in that period of time, there was about two months in that time frame where I made the decision I wanted to be divorced he said if you know which direction this is going, you need to tell me I don't want to be strung along. And he opened that door and I walked through it and tell me I don't want to be strung along. And he opened that door and I walked through it and said I don't want to be married to you. Well, my assumption was that it would be just like my parents. Right, because I was taught a model of that. You have different relationships for different phases and seasons of your life and for me, I was feeling like that was the season for me, that was the phase for me, and I remember Rich sitting with tears in his eyes at this coffee shop just saying this doesn't feel right to me, I'm just supposed to go and, like, live my life, and I said we're going to be okay, we're going to be all right.

Rev Rachel Harrison: 15:58

Well, in our situation, there was the decision to come back together, and I will tell you that there are times, even today, sometimes, I wonder whether that timeline would have been different. What would my life have been like if I had chosen the timeline that I knew, as we sat in that coffee shop that day and he said what is going to happen to us? And I said we'll be fine, it's going to be okay. There's a place for each of us to go. In my mind, that timeline had a trajectory that I could see. That would not have included me staying married to Rich. It would have had an entirely different outcome. And if you go into way, woo, woo stuff out there. Maybe that happened in some other dimension, but we ended up coming back together and making a go at it and at that moment, part of that reason for me was I just couldn't bear the responsibility of having made a choice to break up our family.

Rev Rachel Harrison: 16:59

Now, most of the time, I'm really glad that I made that decision, because I do believe that for me. I'm in a relationship with somebody who often is sandpaper but is never harmful to me today, right, we've had a lot of really intense hard stuff that happened in some of those years prior to that separation and some after. But when I look at soul recovery, what we want to be looking at is today and we want to be processing the stuff that we experience and the feelings that we had in our relationships from an uplifted, higher self perspective that we want to be witnessing. What is our experience? What are we learning here? How can we be our best selves? How can we step fully into our wholeness? And I do believe, and I strongly believe today, that I was supposed to stay in this relationship and I'm really glad that I did.

Rev Rachel Harrison: 17:58

Now, what I really want to emphasize in this conversation is it would have been fine had I not made that choice to come back. There would have been a timeline that would have been fine and appropriate and I would have learned there's no wrong choices. Ultimately. It might have been more painful, it might have been easier, might have had Alex totally do something different, bodhi do something totally different. Maybe all of our lives would be totally different at this point. I don't know, but I also don't ruminate on it. And the same happened in August, when Rich and I had that conversation and the door got opened again and there was this opportunity to step through and to say, do I want to look at that timeline? And in those couple hours where I was remembering all the hardship that we had experienced together, there was part of me that really wanted a different timeline, that felt, how I did around my parents, that there's a time and a season for each relationship. But when I came back home and I looked Rich in the eyes and I saw that he was willing to move forward, not for me but for him, and that our relationship together has this energy that allows us each to grow, and that there is safety in this. It was the right decision for me.

Rev Rachel Harrison: 19:19

Now, when you have people that I'm working with or in yourself, as you're listening to me, and you are also in complicated situations, whether your person's an addict who is active, an addict who is trying to recover, none of those things actually are the reasons why you should or shouldn't stay or go. What it really comes down to is for you to check in with yourself from your soul, recovered, your wholeness perspective, your place where you're looking at your soul and your timelines and you're being curious about what is right for you and your wholeness and your safety and your growth, and that you're not running from thinking that someplace else will give you more, that the grass is greener, but you're also not staying because it's the bed that you made and you're going to lay in it. This is the piece that's so profound about us stepping into an awakened life. We have so much more choice than we ever thought that we did before because we were run on trying to control the world around us, and in my parents' life they made the absolute right choice to not be together and they loved each other so much. They still are beautiful friends and in my life I made a choice to stay together, beautiful friends, and in my life I made a choice to stay together.

Rev Rachel Harrison: 20:47

But as I've listened to people come into coaching and saying, I can feel and know that it's time for me to leave, but you stayed, so maybe I should stay I want you to really hear the value and importance of you, listening to your internal knowing of what is right for you, because, as recovering codependents and people pleasers, we get so caught up in trying to do the right thing for everyone else that we put ourselves last. One of those coaching sessions sessions was so profound because it was a act of love to let somebody go. And she reported back to me after the session that it had actually been a conversation in the end, that she'd been terrified to have to really actually finally make a decision. So often we're not in, we're not out, we're in this in-between space because we're trying to do the right thing and that's really, really dangerous for everybody involved because nobody has any footing and you can't heal from what's lost, you can't move forward right. And she reported back that once she really had clarity for herself and she stepped into her soul recovery space with love and compassion and grace and tolerance and forgiveness, she had a conversation with her husband and made the choice and they both felt like it was the right choice.

Rev Rachel Harrison: 22:16

Now there'll be a whole bunch of feelings afterwards. There'll be a whole bunch of our mind that swirls around. Should I now? I want it back Now? I don't know that's being a human being. It's so complicated. But what I want to empower you in in all of this is anything that I say in my stories is sparking something in you that is bringing you to your wisdom of your wholeness, of what you know already. There's nothing that I say that is new. You know I've sponged in all of the spiritual information and what's fascinating to me is the stuff that sticks and the stuff that just washes away and ultimately I'm creating my experience with spirit. That is right for me and I'm trying to model that for you, to do for you.

Rev Rachel Harrison: 23:10

In relationships, when we are healthy, we are owning our projections, because it is so easy to project onto somebody else our expectations, our woundedness, our fears, our needs, our self-esteem. But when I own the projection and I say ah, so often I'm telling myself a story about what is happening here that is from a unhealthy place, then it dissipates and you open into a healthier, more pure state where you can actually be with what is Now. When you're with what is, there's more clarity around. Is this okay for everyone involved? Is it healthy for me? Am I enabling somebody who is in a state where they really need to hit their own natural consequences? Am I abandoning myself here? And even if somebody is in recovery and you see them moving forward, but you know, you know that this isn't right for you, can you trust that that's true, and even if you have somebody who is in dysfunction or addiction, who isn't taking on the horn to like get better, but you know that you can continue to grow and thrive regardless of what's happening to them, it might be a choice for you to stay.

Rev Rachel Harrison: 24:38

You are uniquely you and your life, your relationships, your soul recovery journey is your process, your connection to spirit, and so what I want to model for you is to think of your timelines and to have clarity that your being your fullest self is your number one priority. It's my number one priority. The beauty of what has been happening with Rich and I is we've been having these discussions is it is this incredible opportunity to sometimes bump up against each other and to be sticky or to have it be sandpaper, and sometimes to be loving and warm and completely supportive. It is a relationship that's growing, each of us in our own way. I've stopped being so obsessed with wanting his way to be the way that I like, a little way, I used to call the right way, but I'm more invested than ever in making sure that I'm taking care of me and I hope that you hear me loving you, supporting you, seeing you to do what is right for you, and if you're scared, it's okay, because it isn't easy to step out on the ledge of the unknown and make choices for yourself that don't seem to have a certainty in them.

Rev Rachel Harrison: 26:03

But when you're in spirituality, you're actually trusting something even greater still to hold you in the space and to give you what's next. Because when I look at my life and I look at all of the situations that I've had, now I can actually look back and say I wouldn't have changed anything. I can see how even the most painful, difficult pieces were part of how I got here today. But now that I am here, my timeline of being my full expanded self is so clear that I will never abandon myself. But I have this opportunity within my relationship the way that it is for me to continue to look at and heal me and update my beliefs and my patterns and my mind, and to not project, to own my own projections.

Rev Rachel Harrison: 26:58

If you need help with this, if you have any questions about this, if this doesn't make sense to you, I encourage you to book a coaching session with me. I'm here to help and to support. This community is here for each other. Get on the Facebook page and share with each other. Just know that you are held in space and trust yourself, trust your innate knowing, choose your connection with your higher self and your higher power, and know that you have everything that you need within you. Until next time, namaste, thank you for listening and I hope that that helps support your soul recovery process.

Rev Rachel Harrison: 27:38

I just wanted to give you a quick reminder that every Friday is the Recover your Soul bonus podcast and this is available both to Apple Podcast subscribers for $3.99 a month, or it's available for both free and paid Patreon members. So as a Patreon member, you can choose. Do you want to support the podcast with $5, $10, or $25 a month? Totally volunteer. But to let you know that if you want to listen to those bonus episodes incredible interviews, wonderful book studies you don't have to be a paid member. You can access them in the first week or two that they're available free on Patreon.

Rev Rachel Harrison: 28:16

This community is so important to me and I want you to know I treat it with love and consideration. If you want coaching, I'm here for you. You want to. If you want coaching, I'm here for you. You want to come to a retreat? I'm here for you. You want to come to the free Soul Recovery Support Group. The community is here for you. Watch us on Facebook, instagram, follow us on all the social media for daily inspiration. Be part of the Facebook group. And one of the most important things is that you share this podcast with people that you think that it will resonate with, that you think that they're interested. Give it five stars, give it a review. We are growing this community together because together we can do the work that will recover your soul.