From Married to Divorced to Married with Kids: Rebekah Ward, 44

Today Rebekah Ward talks all about her past relationships, how religion influenced them, and how she moved through divorce to a healthy, loving marriage with two kids in her early 40’s. Rebekah is hilarious, open, and full of personal insight. My goodness do I love this episode. You will laugh and cry (maybe not cry but you will laugh) and you will absolutely learn something about what loving relationships really look like. Enjoy today’s change story! www.iamthisage.com@iamthisage_podcastwww.jellyfishindustries.comwww.mollysider.com Transcript:Here's the thing. In my twenties and my thirties, I could not have been in the kind of romantic relationship I am in now. I couldn't because I hadn't yet done the work on myself that is required to be in that kind of relationship. I wanted to feel a deep connection with another human, and I wasn't going to settle for anything else, no matter how loud my biological clock ticked.But I also had no idea how to get that. I wanted to feel seen by a partner in such an intimate way that all my fears of being misunderstood by the rest of the world would fall away with the knowing that this one person whom I loved and respected and let's be honest, wanted to have sex with all the time, saw me for exactly me, and still wanted to have sex with me.It took years of learning and growing and experiencing disappointing relationships, and then years more of taking a very hard look in the mirror and recognizing and admitting the things about myself I wasn't particularly proud of, and then more years of untangling why I was doing those things.Figuring out why I really wanted this deep connection, unlearning unproductive habits, teaching myself new ways to be, and then committing to being those things. Now I get to continue learning and growing, but I get to do it in the kind of relationship I always wanted. So no, I couldn't have had this back then.I wasn't ready yet. But at 44, I am ready and I have it because I've lived those experiences and with every experience I learned more about the person I want to be, the kind of person I want to be in relationship with. And maybe most importantly, the belief that I am a worthy of the deep connection I always dreamed of.And if I learned anything from today's guess, it's that you have to believe in your worthiness enough to risk losing something great in order to gain what you most desire.Welcome back to another episode of I Am This Age a podcast proving it's never too late. You're never too old, so go do that thing you're always talking about. I'm Molly Cider, your host. And today's guest is Rebecca Ward, and we go deep into relationships, self-discovery, and what love really looks like. We talk extensively about how her experiences in and out of relationships in her twenties and thirties prepared her for getting married to her current husband just before her 39th birthday, and for having two kids in her forties.Rebecca is a blast. There's definitely some swearing in this episode. We laugh a lot and we laugh loudly, but mostly there's so much honesty and self-discovery, and I think it just might be one of my favorite episodes so far. So please enjoy Rebecca Ward.My name is Rebecca Ward. I am 44. I am a an artist. I act and direct and write. I am a wife and a mother of two children, a four year old and a one year old, and I am tired. So, and it is almost eight o'clock at night. Almost eight, which used to be when I would go out. It's just a perpetual, uh, exhaustion. But it'll pass.It'll pass. Yeah. Today we're gonna talk about love and relationships, how to get there. Yeah. Yeah. Um, so I, the long and windy road, the long and windy road, , the never ending, lo