The Self-Abandonment Epidemic: How Women Can Reclaim Their Power, Relationships, and Lives5/19/2026 Women are often taught to endure. To give more. To sacrifice quietly. To hold everything together for everyone else while ignoring themselves in the process. Relationship coach Ada Gore helps women stop self-abandonment and reconnect with themselves emotionally, spiritually, and relationally. In a deeply personal conversation on the Trust Me Mom podcast, she shared her own story of burnout, divorce, motherhood, relationships, and healing, while offering women practical ways to reclaim their power and stop living purely in survival mode. For Ada, the journey began with a devastating moment that initially felt like failure. The Firing That Changed Everything In 2017, Ada was a single mother working as a manager at a dental practice. She had poured herself completely into her career. She transformed the struggling business into a profitable operation, expanded the team, and dedicated herself entirely to success. Then, two weeks before Christmas, she was fired. “It felt like my whole world fell apart because I had invested so much,” Ada said. At the time, she had built her identity around being a strong, independent single mother who could do everything herself. Losing the job shattered that identity and forced her into a painful period of self-reflection. What she realized was startling: she did not actually know who she was outside of performing roles for other people. “I had been so locked into what I have to be,” she explained. “I was being who I thought I needed to be in order to be a good manager. But I was not being my true self.” The physical consequences of that disconnection had already begun to surface. She experienced anxiety attacks, hormonal issues, digestive problems, and chronic stress. Her body was demanding that she slow down. That moment became the catalyst for a decade-long journey of healing and self-discovery. What Self-Abandonment Really Looks Like Many women assume self-abandonment only applies to passive people pleasers who never speak up. Ada argues it is often much more subtle. She describes herself as a “shapeshifter,” someone who could instantly adapt to any environment, personality, or expectation in order to get approval or results. “I can read a room and adjust my behavior based on the temperature of the room,” she said. “I didn’t realize I was doing it.” For countless women, self-abandonment becomes second nature. It can look like:
Ada believes many women learned these patterns in childhood as survival mechanisms. “If you know how to be trapped and miserable and broke, you will cling to that,” she explained. “Not because you consciously want better, but because your nervous system knows how to handle it.”  The Scarcity Mindset Keeping Women Stuck One of the most powerful parts of the conversation centered on fear, especially financial fear. When Ada lost her job, she had almost no savings. As a single mother, the uncertainty was terrifying. Yet she says that experience taught her a life-changing lesson about trust and survival. “The resources show up,” she said repeatedly throughout the interview. She described receiving unexpected tax refunds, surprise financial opportunities, and support arriving from unlikely places during periods when she believed she was completely unsafe. According to Ada, many women stay trapped in unhappy relationships or unfulfilling lives because they believe survival depends on external security such as a job, a husband, or financial predictability. But she argues that true safety is internal. “Your safety does not come from your job. Your safety does not come from your husband,” she said. “Your safety is an internal knowing that you are a beloved being, that you are made of love, that you were made with love, that there is a benevolent, loving force that cares for you, and that there are resources everywhere, things that you can’t even think of.” This perspective challenges deeply ingrained beliefs many women carry about dependence, scarcity, and fear. Why Women Ignore Their Own Needs Throughout the interview, Ada repeatedly returned to one theme: women dismiss themselves constantly in tiny everyday moments. She gave examples many mothers instantly recognize:
Over time, those small moments accumulate into resentment. “Resentment is the canary in the coal mine,” Ada said. “It’s the alert that you have abandoned yourself.” She explained that many women become angry at their husbands or children without recognizing the deeper issue underneath: they are not allowing themselves to have needs at all. One example she shared involved a wife who secretly longs to attend a yoga or dance class but continually talks herself out of it because of money, childcare, or guilt. When her husband later leaves to play basketball with friends, resentment explodes. “The problem is not that he went to play basketball,” Ada explained. “The problem is that you did not go to dance class.”  In this episode of Trust Me Mom (Season 2, Episode 41) available on Spotify and Apple Podcasts, Ekaterina talks with women’s relationship coach Ada Gore about self-abandonment, people-pleasing, resentment, dating, marriage, divorce, motherhood, and learning how to stop disappearing inside your own life. Ada shares her personal story of being fired as a single mom, rebuilding her identity, healing generational patterns, and helping women reconnect with their needs, intuition, and power. This conversation is for women who feel depleted, stuck, resentful, or unsure how to reclaim themselves in relationships. The Power of Reflective Writing
Ada believes one of the most transformative tools available to women is also one of the simplest: journaling. She credits reflective writing with helping her process trauma, understand her patterns, and reclaim herself emotionally. According to Ada, writing creates two important psychological shifts:
“You need a place where you can start to name your emotions,” she said. “I feel angry. I feel resentful. I don’t feel supported.” For women conditioned to suppress their needs, simply admitting those emotions can be revolutionary. Healing Generational Trauma The conversation also explored how family dynamics shape women’s relationship patterns. Ada described growing up with emotional neglect and learning early that her needs were inconvenient. Her mother, however, eventually became an important example of resilience by returning to school for nursing after facing financial instability in her marriage. Healing generational trauma, Ada explained, requires women to hold two truths simultaneously:
Dating After Divorce: “You Are the Prize” When discussing relationships, Ada did not shy away from controversial opinions. She believes many women settle because they are afraid of loneliness and because they underestimate their own value. “If you are a single woman, you need to stop giving and start receiving,” she said. Her advice for dating includes:
“You only need one good man,” she said. “You don’t need a hundred.” Ada believes women who deeply love and respect themselves naturally become more discerning and magnetic in relationships. Marriage as a “Growth Technology” Perhaps the most nuanced part of the discussion involved unhappy marriages. Ada emphasized that not every marriage should survive. She strongly stated that abuse of any kind changes the equation entirely. However, in non-abusive relationships, she believes many marriages can transform if women stop over-functioning and begin addressing their own patterns. “A marriage is a technology to help you grow,” she explained. She described how women often unknowingly create dynamics where they manage everything emotionally and practically, leaving their partners passive and dependent. Healing begins when women stop controlling everything and begin taking responsibility for their own emotional well-being instead. That process can feel terrifying because it often means allowing discomfort, mistakes, and uncertainty. “You have to stop holding it all together,” she said. “As long as you keep gripping it, it stays the same.” At the same time, Ada stressed that women should never stay trapped in deeply unhappy marriages purely for appearances or obligation. “You are the operant power in your life,” she said. “You do have agency.” Learning to Live Instead of Survive Ultimately, Ada’s message is about far more than relationships. It is about reclaiming humanity, identity, and emotional freedom. Many women spend years living in survival mode, convincing themselves that depletion is normal and sacrifice equals love. Ada challenges women to imagine something radically different. “You are not here just to survive,” she said. “You are here to live your life and to live a good life.” That transformation does not happen overnight. It begins with small acts of self-respect:
For women trapped in cycles of resentment, exhaustion, or fear, Ada believes healing starts with one powerful shift: stop abandoning yourself. And perhaps the greatest act of love a woman can offer herself, her children, and the world is finally choosing not to disappear inside her own life.
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