5 The Struggle for Authenticity

⚠️ Trigger Warning: This episode contains a brief mention of suicidal ideation. Please listen with care and prioritize your well-being. Resources are included below if you need support.

• U.S. 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline – Call or text 988
• International Help Directory – https://www.opencounseling.com/suicide-hotlines

In this episode, Vera Rivera shares her personal journey of self-discovery, exploring the themes of authenticity, the struggle between societal expectations and inner fulfillment, and the importance of healing. She reflects on her past experiences, the pressures of perfectionism, and the pivotal moments that led her to embrace her true self. Through her program, 'Become Her Now,' she aims to guide women in reclaiming their identities and living authentically.

Remember...

• The journey of self-discovery is about remembering who you truly are.
• Societal expectations can create a facade of success that feels unfulfilling.
• Performance and perfectionism can drain your soul.
• Breakdowns can lead to profound realizations and growth.
• Listening to your inner voice is crucial for change.
• Investing in healing modalities can transform your life.
• Understanding your identity is key to personal empowerment.
• Authenticity is about living in alignment with your true self.
• The 'Become Her Now' program helps women reclaim their identities.
• You are worthy just as you are; no need to prove yourself.

ilysm,

Vera xo

✨ Ready to step into your highest self? ✨

Join the Wild Heart Sanctuary →https://wild-heart-sanctuary.mn.co

Grab the “She Found Herself Again” Gratitude Journal → https://tinyurl.com/shefoundjournal

Book a private 1:1 Soul Activation Session →https://calendly.com/theverarivera/soulconnection

Instagram → https://www.instagram.com/vera.wildtruth/

Website → https://tinyurl.com/becomehernow

Podcast sound design by Myles Lumbab 

https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZP86us2ry/

🔥 “You don’t owe anyone the watered-down version of yourself.”

Transcript

Vera Rivera (00:27.948) Before we begin, I want to gently let you know that this episode includes a brief mention of suicidal thoughts. If you’re in a sensitive space today, please take care of yourself and feel free to skip or pause as needed. You’re not alone, and this space is here to hold you—not harm you

Vera Rivera (00:27.948)
Hey beauty. Welcome back to She Found Herself.

the podcast where we break the code, remember who we really are, and start acting like we really mean it. I'm your host, Vera Rivera. I'm a spiritual sovereignty coach, a human design projector. I'm your host, Vera Rivera, spiritual sovereignty coach, projector priestess, and guide for women who are done performing, perfecting, and pretending.

Vera Rivera (01:06.242)
Pretending that everything is okay. Pretending that this is what you want. Pretending and faking that you're fine.

you're ready to rise to your highest most unapologetic self. Today's episode is a little bit different. I think they're all kind of different. We're trying to figure out a rhythm here and a style, but today is a little more intimate. We are gonna get a little a little more honest and I'm gonna tell you a little bit about

the story of how I got lost and what it took to find myself again.

and it's not a regular before and after transformation story. It's more of a story to help you remember because instead of changing who I was entirely,

Finding myself brought me back to remembering who I really was before everything else.

Vera Rivera (02:27.401)
influenced it. So I didn't reinvent myself, I remembered who I was. And if you're in the same season of this unraveling or feel like you've built something amazing but it doesn't feel like it's in alignment with the person that you're becoming, then this episode's for you.

Vera Rivera (02:57.355)
So this all started, this was life and what it looked like on paper. I graduated high school and instead of going to school, I got pregnant and I started a career and actually had multiple jobs. So at this point I was curious about everything. So I...

My first job was at McDonald's and I was 14, which was pretty cool that they let me work there at 14. But I was too young to use the fryer, so I learned how to manage the drive-through. This actually really helped with multitasking or doing multiple things at once and being able to juggle different things and also figure out that I'm really good at.

strategy and finding out a pattern or a rhythm with things. I, after that, I worked at a hair salon which was awesome because I was able to learn what it meant to be a receptionist, an assistant to hairdressers, and how to take inventory and run a hair salon.

It was also really awesome because the perk of getting your hair done and getting your hair colored for pretty much nothing is also an amazing perk.

After that I actually got a job as a legal assistant and after that I became an assistant to pretty much anything and every successful person or professional that I could become an assistant to and little did I know that that would actually help me with getting to where I am today and having the knowledge and experience in knowing how to run businesses and

Vera Rivera (05:10.133)
do customer service and be the front-facing person and also at the same time learning how the boss actually ran things. So I find myself really lucky to have Lucky blessed. I'm really blessed to have had these experiences. It made it

really clear to me. never been, I haven't been able to say that I've been a barista or had like a food service job. Not that there's anything wrong with that. It's more like I don't have that experience and I honestly don't know how to take an order or how to be a server or do any of that. Being in customer service, I've been able to

learn about people, how they react and whatnot, but these different industries are exactly what they are, like different industries. So being able to actually like speak up for myself or be someone who was able to like use her voice wasn't something that I was taught to do, even in these positions because in these positions as an assistant or someone who worked

at a front office for a business, you would always be the smiling face, the person who would figure out all of the problems and find solutions to things. You would not be the person to be like, you've had too much to drink, get out, or you can't speak to me that way or whatever it is. I've never, I guess conflict in that type of skill wasn't something that I practiced.

But it's something that I've learned to practice more recently. So we're putting that all together. I guess...

Vera Rivera (07:20.013)
When it comes to having a life that looked good on paper, I was able to build a house. I had a secure job. I made really great money. I was married. I had kids. Everything was great. Everything was great. I had a schedule. I showed up as best as I could.

When I say that it looks good on paper, guess what I mean is I checked all of the boxes. I had a full-time leadership job, the marriage, three kids.

Checking every box society hands to us everything my parents told me to do I pretty much did to a T, pretty much. At that point I say pretty much because I don't entirely feel like I've done everything that I could do exactly the way that my parents wanted me to.

Therefore, I didn't feel as successful or as proud of myself as I thought I should feel because of that. Like I was always lacking something because I like did the things but always seemed to fall a little bit short, if that makes sense.

Regardless of having everything, I had awesome friends, great social life, I was working a ton, making money, I had my own side business, and I was able to help train and influence a lot of people through it all.

Vera Rivera (09:09.801)
Regardless of if this was in Juneau, Alaska, if it was in Charleston, South Carolina, or Florida, or now we're in Austin, Texas, I feel like I had everything, but I still felt really empty.

Vera Rivera (09:33.811)
I didn't necessarily feel broken. I just felt like something was off and it was still off. I pivoted a lot before and after COVID and we moved a lot. We...

Vera Rivera (09:54.997)
did all of the things and worked through a lot of things, but there was still something that still felt off after everything that we did, like after the moving and uprooting the kids again and everything. I felt like it made sense, but there was still something pulling at me, telling me that what was happening still wasn't it.

and I wasn't showing up as a present mother like I really wanted to be. I didn't really feel like I had a real partnership in my marriage. I was working a lot and I felt like I needed to show up because I chose this path and that I needed to stay in this path because I chose it.

but I was performing really hard towards perfection, but it continued to drain every part of my soul.

It sucks that through all of this, I was still showing up, still high achieving and still being everyone's person, know, like everyone leaned on me. I do still feel like that today, but the worst was I felt like I was disappearing as a person little by little. And

I have this smile that I would always have and I would show up with a smile and everything would be fine but...

Vera Rivera (11:51.471)
little by little every time I would feel like I was moving in a direction that wasn't the direction I was supposed to go, it started to feel like I was really faking the smile. I never... when I would smile and show up it would definitely be genuine but it wasn't up until recently that I was like okay.

my smile does not feel genuine and authentic and real and something's wrong again.

Vera Rivera (12:27.475)
I hate going back to these moments and thinking about how many times I've pivoted and flip-flopped and changed things because, it costs a lot of money to move. It also costs a lot of energy and time. And not only was it affecting me, but it was something that affected my whole entire family and my whole environment. honestly,

I feel a lot better now, but I still feel like I'm navigating and on this adventure. Like it's not over yet.

Vera Rivera (13:10.323)
I didn't have...

Vera Rivera (13:14.687)
Like when I think about breakdowns that...

turned into like lessons or silver linings. I do believe that there is a silver lining with everything and there's a lesson in everything. You don't think that there's a lesson in the things that are happening at the moment, but when you get to step back and take a look again at something, then it starts to make sense, right? So there's so many moments, so many to list. I don't even know where to start, but I didn't have just like one big crash. I literally felt like I died.

thousands of times. Thousands of times. And thousands of times I like... Each of those times was like a betrayal to myself. Like...

Vera Rivera (14:05.739)
Trying alone in my car or sitting in my car just to have time for myself. Avoiding calls. Not having hard conversations. Lying next to the man I loved in bed but feeling lonelier than ever.

and looking in the mirror not even recognizing who the woman was that was staring back at me.

And honestly, maybe you felt that too, but...

Vera Rivera (14:44.999)
I felt like I was really good at playing life.

Vera Rivera (14:52.639)
but not feeling like truly alive.

Vera Rivera (14:59.877)
that makes sense. It's really frustrating and really frustrating especially after all of the years of the mindset work that I've done and all of the grief that I've caused my family.

It was not a good feeling to know that it was happening again.

I would burn it all down again.

Vera Rivera (15:31.741)
I hate, I hate to say it, I hate to talk about it because it's never easy. It wasn't easy.

It's not easy at all.

Vera Rivera (15:50.643)
Sometimes I wonder if, maybe if I was just a little more grateful, things would be like better or...

things would have turned out differently if I would have just been really grateful to have everything I had, that everyone was alive and well.

and that I would just be okay going into work, coming home, not really knowing when my husband would be home, not really knowing what my kids were doing and how they felt and if anything that was happening was even affecting them. Did they even care? Did they notice that I was...

not there or mentally just gone.

Vera Rivera (16:51.391)
You know, there are so many things. I felt like...

I could have done that. I feel like things could have just blown up eventually.

but

I think that at some point you just get really tired and energetically done with everything that you just explode and there's just no turning back and you can't take back the things that you've say or do and you just have to live with the consequences of your actions. And

I felt like I was stuck in a loop and that there's no way out of it so fuck it. Burn it all down.

Vera Rivera (17:45.877)
Well.

Vera Rivera (17:54.056)
I definitely still think about a lot. I definitely still wonder if moving out of Juneau and selling our house was still a good idea or a bad idea, but the what-ifs aren't things to consider and think about or dwell on, because we're here today in Austin, Texas, and I'm sharing my story on my podcast and

Feeling closer to my goals more than ever and more aligned to my goals more than ever.

Vera Rivera (18:33.939)
I want to talk about...

Vera Rivera (18:39.539)
what changed everything.

So like...

Vera Rivera (18:49.801)
I started off really depressed actually. Whenever I am not okay and things aren't aligned, I notice I get really depressed, really bitter, really envious of other people and where they are and I start really comparing myself and my life to other people. And it's okay to feel that way, but

also really good to understand where it's coming from.

One of first times that this happened was...

And you know, I had this like mindset where...

If I did everything that I was supposed to do and got everything I was supposed to and was a kind person, a nice person, and was a yes to everyone person and didn't put myself first, then I would get everything that I wanted. That life would just fall into place for me. But I was finding more and more that that wasn't happening and that's not true. Um.

Vera Rivera (20:11.167)
I actually got really depressed about it and up to a point where I like didn't

want to be alive but

I'm sure we've all been there at some point in our lives.

Vera Rivera (20:31.625)
I just kept ignoring the voice that told me that there was more and that this isn't what I should be doing.

to get the voice got stronger and stronger.

Vera Rivera (20:55.262)
I guess.

I had no choice but to start listening.

Vera Rivera (21:07.313)
One of the moments that is really hard for me to talk about that I don't talk about often is...

I grew up Catholic and I've heard many stories. My grandma used to tell me tons of stories about folklore and things, you know? I know that for some people it's really hard to believe in something that you can't see. It's really hard to believe that there's a God if there's so much sadness and destruction and so many terrible things happening in the world and so many bad people who are living

what looks to be really great lives or people starving or whatever, you know, like it's hard to believe in some thing that you can't see or have faith in something that you can't scientifically prove. But in one of my lowest moments when I was really close to...

Vera Rivera (22:09.259)
planning this thing that would...

Like how do you even say this? How do you even admit that this is something that you have thought about actually doing? But unaliving myself, I heard this voice that wasn't mine. It literally came out of nowhere. And the voice said, don't let the devil win.

Vera Rivera (22:40.087)
And I can't explain it at all. I know that it wasn't my voice. It was just a voice and...

At that exact moment I literally was sitting in the bathtub and I like immediately got up and my whole entire everything changed.

Vera Rivera (23:03.607)
I like started.

Vera Rivera (23:08.003)
I started going on this search for what the fuck, all of this stuff is so fucked up. What I was thinking was fucked up, what I was doing was fucked up. It was against everything that my values were. And I say that because I wasn't perfect. I did all of the things, but I also was escaping. I was drinking a lot, I was partying a lot, I was doing lot of crazy shit. And honestly,

I feel like I do have guardian angels because I should be dead right now, honestly, with all of the crazy shit that I've done. All the times I've betrayed myself, all the times I haven't been proud of myself and all of the things. Yeah, it's kind of insane.

Anyways, I started on this like obsessive path of trying to figure out what was wrong with me. Started with there's got to be something wrong with me if I can't be grateful or if I'm not happy after having everything and anything that I thought that I wanted. And

What was also crazy as far as timing is that one of my friends actually was someone that I looked up to in this like side hustle business and she like had everything, all of it, everything that I was working towards.

And she started posting about how she was...

Vera Rivera (24:48.837)
Possibly.

not okay that she was anxious and depressed but like in denial about it because she didn't have like the regular depressed

traits like staying in bed and whatever, whatever.

Vera Rivera (25:13.261)
I guess we also didn't realize that there was a lot of like toxic positivity happening around us and

That's how we lived life. Said everything was going to be okay, fake it till you make it. Like, just get out there and smile and show up and everything's gonna be fine. Just have faith, you know?

But I started investing in healing modalities and things that didn't make a logical sense, but for some reason felt right.

I started realizing that I was living in survival, but I was also learning that I can change my mind and my neural pathways in just minutes and that like changed everything for me. I learned about emotional intelligence, the neuroplasticity. I continued like learning about myself, my Myers-Briggs, my Enneagram.

my like literally everything and anything whether it was spiritual or scientific I turned to it I just wanted to understand why I thought the way I thought I wanted to know who I was and I was obsessed with it I turned to human design like learn gene keys anything that was medicine whether it was figuring out

Vera Rivera (26:52.097)
that I had undiagnosed ADHD all my life and

doing breath work and meditation, not as tools to fix me anymore, but to understand and remember who I was created to be. And I started picking apart my conditioning. I started understanding that the goals that I was choosing for myself and chasing weren't actually goals that were mine. I started to...

Vera Rivera (27:31.533)
understand my relationship with money. I learned about energetics. I did a theology class to understand and deepen my faith. I released a ton of shame. I activated my voice, my power.

stopped showing up in a way that was compromising and not honoring my energy and started choosing to live.

Vera Rivera (28:03.785)
just more in alignment with everything that felt right intuitively to me. And from that place I started to rebuild everything. I rewrote my whole entire vision and my story.

Vera Rivera (28:20.969)
And what I've created isn't just a coaching program and I'm not just a coach. I really feel that I've walked this whole entire path of remembrance and

It's called Become Her Now. And it's for high achieving women who are ready to stop performing and start living in their truth. For the woman who is done pretending that she's okay and start speaking her truth and living authentically.

She's just tired of pretending and tired about lying. And she knows that she's not broken, that she just needs to uncover some things. And she knows that her soul didn't come here to play small, that there is definitely more and that she's not confused. She's remembering who she truly is before the world told her to shrink. And inside Become Her Now, we don't do surface level, like self-help stuff. It's...

much deeper, it's where we get to reclaim our true identity, the identity that existed again before the world told us to shrink.

It's a three month immersion where we work together one-on-one using spiritual technology like human design, your gene keys, some somatic healing and soul work, your breath work, shifting your frequency and learning about and uncovering your identity and basically your whole entire life.

Vera Rivera (30:08.421)
This is for women who are ready to go all in. And there's also an optional retreat in Austin. think that we all love retreats and getting together and actually like doing the work together and learning how to embody all the things that we've learned.

This is going to definitely be like an intimate high frequency space for this embodiment and some real life sovereignty activity, sovereignty activation. So really getting deep into.

Vera Rivera (30:46.529)
actually fully stepping into the highest version of you.

Vera Rivera (30:55.013)
If you're not sure where to start, I have opened up a limited number of Soul Mirror sessions. These are deep, intuitive, reflective sessions to help you to see what's been holding you back and show you who you were always meant to be.

Vera Rivera (31:15.045)
They're normally 333 for 90 minutes and right now they're available for that price with Vox er support included. So jump on it. I've learned my energy and I know that I can only open up just a couple of spots for this. This is your mirror and pattern interruption moment.

and hopefully your first moment of seeing who you truly are and knowing who you truly are, being able to step into that version of you.

Vera Rivera (31:51.005)
If your body feels like it's remembering something as you listen, it's not random. This is just your body knowing that there's a truth that's been covered and

Where you can go from here is to explore the Become Her Now experience. Send me a message or look at the links in my bio. You can do the Soul Mirror session or you can do Get Yourself on the Waitlist for the three day Austin retreat. Or just message me on Instagram at fiera.wildtruth and say that I'm ready and I'll walk with you through it.

Remember that you don't need to do anymore to be worthy. You just need to remember who you are. And I promise that the woman that you're becoming is already inside of you. She's really just waiting for permission to lead.

Vera Rivera (32:52.677)
I love you and I hope that this helped you and I can't wait to work with you. I will see you again soon.