Rosa Linda Román: Marrying Myself

MM001 Marrying Myself - First Date (Video Podcast)

Rosa Linda Román — Mon, 15 Jun 2026 21:16:54 GMT

This is the video version of this blog post:

There is also an audio version here:

MM001 Marrying Myself - First Date (Audio Podcast)

Rosa Linda Román — Sat, 13 Jun 2026 06:45:18 GMT

This is the audio version of this post:

MM001 - Marrying Myself - First Date

There is also a video version here:

MM001 Marrying Myself - First Date (Mixed-Media Post)

Rosa Linda Román — Sat, 13 Jun 2026 06:17:14 GMT

**Author’s note: This is the free, blog post version of this article. Paid subscribers can listen to this audio podcast or video podcast instead, if you prefer.

Hello! And welcome to “Marrying Myself.” I’m Rosa Linda Román and this is my new mixed-media project where I step out of the constant consuming of other people’s products and programs and all the external input that hits us like a firehose everyday and instead center my own wisdom and experiences first. That begins with my personal journals which I have been keeping since I was a teenager. So, consider this a little preview of those journal entries, which are really just a small part of the greater project I’m calling, “Marrying Myself.”

For this first episode, I’d like to start with a journal entry I wrote a month and a half ago with a cool invention called a Moleskine Smart Pen. You use the pen to write in a special Moleskine Smart Journal and it magically takes what you write on the physical page and instantly converts that into a digital formal. Cool, right?

So, you can either watch the following video of me reading that Moleskine Smart Journal entry or scroll below and find the transcript. Also, if you’re a paid subscriber you can listen to this whole post on the private audio podcast, or watch the whole video of it at the bottom of this post. If a complete audio or video is your preference but you aren’t yet a paid subscriber, you can upgrade here.

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However you prefer to experience “Marrying Myself,” I’m glad you’re here and I hope you enjoy it!

MOLESKINE SMART JOURNAL ENTRY

Transcription of Moleskine video:

April 16, 2026, Thursday, 2:05 pm.

Less than 24 hours ago I sent the finished “Mortal Treason” manuscript to my editor, Deb. She has already reviewed about 75% of the book and I made all those corrections before sending over the finished series finale. I am especially grateful that Deb is fitting in this book’s edit right now as she is smack dab in the middle of a battle with breast cancer. She says she is bored after her two surgeries, so she welcomes the distraction, but I am keenly aware that she didn’t have to do this for me. The book comes out in two weeks and it will be dedicated to her.

Within a few hours of sending the book over to her I started feeling really odd. I have been working on this series, “Catalina’s Chronicles” for 25 years (more probably) and now I am in the last two weeks before it is wrapped up. Because the books are starting to pick up steam in both sales and read-through on Kindle Unlimited, my husband and my author mentors told me that I should not wrap the series up with book 5, but instead keep it going for at least 6 books, maybe more. But I was ready to wrap it up. As fun as it has been to write this series—and it has been really, really fun—I felt that it had run its course. The characters will live on in my next series, at least the ones I didn’t just kill off, but this storyline felt complete.

Which brings me to this note.

I don’t know if wrapping up the series was the right decision from
a financial standpoint—only time will tell on that—but I do know
it is what I wanted to do, and what I want is exactly what I
want right now. Even just writing that feels strange, selfish somehow,
which is exactly why I need to make this a priority for this next chapter in my life.

When I try to boil it all down I think it comes down to the feeling
that I’m tired of all the input. I am tired of looking “out there” for the answers. I already know the way and that is what I will be focusing on and rediscovering through the process of “Marrying Myself.”

So, what exactly am I doing here? Not here on this Earth, but here
with this new project? What does “Marrying Myself” even mean?

There are words swirling around my head as possible answers: love, trust, alignment, awe, joy, inner-knowing, curiosity, wisdom and so many more, but I think the main point of this project is rediscovering and enjoying my favorite parts of myself and this world I’m moving through. Of allowing myself to be not just enough, but the abundant, wise, joyful, magnificent being that I have always been, the one who I kept hidden and private and quiet as my survival parts protected me and ran the show.

This week I have read and listened to several profound, inspiring, upsetting and deeply important pieces by women on Substack (some of which I will share later in this post). Each one left-me raw and slightly off-center for a few moments. My first reaction each time was to scroll in the comments to feel more solidarity and righteous indignation. But then I remembered this is my marrying myself era now and I let them sit on my heart as I stepped away and put down my phone. I am here now, actively choosing to slow down and engage with myself and my deep inner-knowing as I look for healing, as I decide next steps. It is quiet in here and my legs are wobbly, but this is exactly where I need to be. When I thought about the idea of starting a project that focused on “Marrying Myself” I had a fun idea come into my head.

One of my favorite traditions as a bride was to honor the old adage to include “something old, something new, something borrowed and something blue.” And so, as I process the things that are sitting on my heart right now, with a focus on truly listening to my own inner voice and falling in love with that, here’s what is coming up for me:

Something Old

When I think about something old, I realize there are two different ways this could go. There are the things that are old yet precious, the parts of my world that are worth preserving: the wisdom of my youth, my ancestors and my journey which led me to this moment in time. And then there are the old and rotten things, the parts that have been carried from generation to generation which shall have no place in the beautiful, sustainable, inclusive future I care about: the systems of oppression and manipulation, the “isms” that kept me small, the old rotten things whose only use now is to serve as fertilizer for the healthy growing things.

So, on this first attempt at “Marrying Myself,” I would like to note an old thing from each of these categories of “old,” one old and welcome and one old rotten thing to bid adieux to.

Let’s start with the obvious, old rotten thing:

The “Bro way,” with a capital “B.”

The “Bro way” includes all the poisonous systems of the “Good Old Boys” clubs and bro culture that have allowed the nasty, hateful and hurtful things to flourish. The patriarchal, colonialistic, misogynistic ways of old. I have been reading and learning about a lot of those ways in some powerful Substacks, which I will talk about in a future episode of “Marrying Myself.” But for now, suffice it to say that in this new era of marrying myself, of embracing my strength and beauty, that that “bro way” and those who cling to it don’t get an invite to the wedding. Those men (and the women who enable them) who use violence as their currency, who aren’t doing the work to fix what they’ve broken, and who have destroyed the precious ones through their abuse, addictions and adultery, do not get a seat at the table. That is the old thing that is not on the guest list as I am marrying myself.

That said, there are old things that are precious to me, and I am loving the chance to rediscover them through this new project.

Since this is my first “Marrying Myself” post, I thought this series of old photographs would be the perfect start.

Taken 15 years ago, this was a day when my three kids asked me to try on my wedding dress (from 13 years before that) to see if it still fit. It did. And they decided it made a perfect tent for them to play under. That little baby boy is now a sophomore in high school who is currently learning to drive and the two girls are off at college pursuing their passions.

I look at these photos with a smile but without longing to go back there as many people do. The baby years were precious, but very hard. I’m grateful I had those beautiful experiences and equally grateful for this moment in time that we are currently living in.

Something New

Perhaps it’s because we’re in springtime, but the “Something New” section is alive and abundant this week, from a book launch to this “Marrying Myself” project and, finally, to agriculture.

Let’s start with “Marrying Myself.” What, exactly is this? I touched on it in my journal entry above, but I’ve since been mulling over this question for a few weeks now. Is it a video series? Do I want it to be a bunch of blog posts? Or maybe a podcast? The answer, I realize, is “Yes!” I want it to be whatever I feel like it should be each week. Some audio, some video, some writing. If there’s audio, I will throw that in a podcast. If there’s video, I may post it independently or just drop it into a post here on Substack. That’s the whole point, right? When you meet your new love, you don’t go in with a preconceived idea of who they are and how they move through the world. Well, you might, but if it is anything like my own experience with almost 28 years of marriage, you quickly realize that preconceived ideas and expectations will go out the window very quickly, at least if you want a healthy relationship. So, when it comes to marrying myself, I’m going to do my best not to come in with preconceived ideas and expectations. I’ll share as inspiration strikes, in whatever form that may take. If that interests you, awesome! If not, I am totally okay with that since this project is really for me anyway.

The second “Something New” that I want to share is the launch of my book, “Mortal Treason,” on April 30th. Mortal Treason is book five and the final book of my mystery thriller series, “Catalina’s Chronicles.” Writing this series has been a wild and wonderful journey of self-discovery for me for the past twenty-five years. The first book, “Death Wounds” began as a screenplay which I wrote while I was a TV news reporter covering heinous crimes at Fox 10 – KSAZ in Phoenix, Arizona. The story follows a young, Latina TV news reporter, Catalina Cruz, as she discovers the local sheriff is stockpiling military surplus property for a private militia. Grown from the seed of that real news story from my early broadcasting days, which I then wildly fictionalized, “Death Wounds” made the top five of the New York International Latino Film Festival in 2001. But then life happened and I did nothing else with it, until now. Over the past fifteen months, I not only converted that screenplay into a novel, but I wrote four sequels to it, too. Now the complete, five-book series, “Catalina’s Chronicles” is available on Amazon and free to read in Kindle Unlimited. You can find that here:

Catalina's Chronicles on Amazon

And, finally, “Something New” that is lighting me up right now is the possibility of not only blooming where I’m planted (to follow a dear friend’s advice on how to deal with finding myself suddenly landlocked… more on that in a minute) but to plant the seeds that will grow a symbiotic, sustainable community that I love.

What, exactly, do I mean by that?

As a lot of you know, my family splits our time between our landlocked home in New Mexico, USA and exploring the world on a catamaran (which is currently in Greece in the expert hands of captains Verena Kellner and Mike Castle of Pacific Sailors fame). Once my daughters went off to college, my family’s enthusiasm for living on boats apprently went with them. Right now, we are a one-kid-at-home household and that means his input carries more weight. Since my son never loved living on boats, he has requested that he get to spend his high school years in New Mexico. And so, in an effort to bloom where I’m planted for the next three years, I’ve been thinking a lot about growing things.

Actually, that’s only partially accurate.

The dreadful state of so many societal systems (i.e. the state of the world), plus finding myself suddenly landlocked, plus all of the mystery-conspiracy-thriller writing and research I’ve been doing for my fact-based-fiction, has been the perfect trifecta to get me thinking a lot about self-sufficiency, sustainability and prepping for any apocalypse that may happen to become more fact than just fiction in the near future. As I researched for a particularly intense scene in my series finale, the term, “preppers” came up and I realized there were two camps really. One, which tends to lean more towards the prepare-to-kill-your-neighbors kind of prepping, and the other, which is more focused on how to make sure your beloveds and communities will be okay if the systems we typically depend on fail us.

Which brings me to my personal mantra:

“Get clear on what you want, and why you want it and the right people
and resources show up to make that happen.”
-Rosa Linda Román

For me, when it comes to preparing for an apocalypse, I realize I’m decidedly in the second camp. Realizing that I love the thought of creating symbiotic communities for the future, and with a focus on marrying myself, the obvious question was, what’s my part in all of this? The answer, I realized, is:

Yes! Even just writing that statement of clarity sent happy magical shock waves reverberating through my whole body. That’s how I know it’s right for me.

And, sure enough, the moment I found that clarity, many of the “right people” and resources started showing up, mostly right here on Substack.

Which brings me to the next section…

Something Borrowed

Before I share the links to some of the spectacular (and sometimes deeply disturbing) articles that I’m borrowing from in this week’s post, I want to say something about “borrowing” in general. In an age where we have had “Bro-tech” companies and robots stealing our collective intellectual property to build their AI systems and mega-corporations, I feel very, very strongly that we must go above and beyond to give credit where credit is due. Part of that comes from my career as a broadcast journalist. Part of it comes from one of the only “F” grades I ever received in college when a professor felt I didn’t give proper attribution and was therefore accused of plagiarism (!) and I had to rewrite the whole darn paper. But mostly it comes from my blood and my DNA.

Like most people I know, I am the descendant of people whose hard-working natures allowed them to survive unimaginable hardships, but whose labor was also mostly used to serve others and line other people’s pockets. To honor them, and to build the world so many of us are envisioning during this lifetime, I firmly believe that we must stop appropriating other people’s work and passing it off as our own. You may have noticed that at the bottom of all my posts, I remind my readers about ethical sharing. It is as easy as clicking a “share” button instead of cutting and pasting, or simply including a link back to the original article wherever you share it. So, as you check out these amazing creators I’m about to introduce you to, I invite you to apply the same ethical standard when sharing their work, too.

Okay, so now on to “Something Borrowed”:

As I mentioned above, the moment I started to shift my mindset to the idea of growing something in case the systems that currently support us completely fall apart, I started finding some amazing creators who are not only talking about these things, but taking action in their own spheres of influence. These homesteading agrarians are inspiring me to dream big while slowly trying my hand at growing my own food.

The first awesome agrarian I discovered here on Substack is Jack Thomas. She (yes, “she”… two traditionally male names, one inspiring lady) first introduced me to the idea of “American prepper ethic” in this piece while I was doing research for my mystery thrillers.

To Be a Good Vermonter

Trump started a war. American prepper ethic might not be ready for it.

Disclaimer: I’m not a licensed professional in any of the fields covered in this article…I just have training (professional + school of hard knocks) and a few decades of life experience in these arenas. Please take the following input as a jumping-off point for conducting your own research and preparations. By continuing to read this article, you unders…

4 months ago · 402 likes · 74 comments · Jack Thomas

Despite the doomsday-flavored, monochromatic title, the article is actually a rich and colorful introduction to what a family might actually need in the event of societal collapse.

Here’s an excerpt:

The article then goes on to give practical ideas for how to actually do this in ways that support you and your family while also nurturing healthy partnerships with your neighbors.

That said, while I love the idea of becoming a totally self-sufficient homesteader with a robust, symbiotic, sustainable community, the reality is that I’m a complete novice at this agrarian business. I have the land, but not the know-how. Gratefully, Jack Thomas is doing much more than writing Substack posts about prepping. She also created a community called, A.C.R.E.: Agrarian Co-learning & Resilience Exchange, which she describes as “A year-round home for learning, moral support, and community for liberal and leftist farmers, gardeners, homesteaders, and aspiring agrarians.” Here’s the post where she invites us into this community which also takes a sobering look at the whole “tradwives” movement and shines a light on the ways that it can do more harm than good.

To Be a Good Vermonter

A Call to Action: The Agrarian Community That America Needs In This Moment

The American agrarian imagination is being held hostage by women in linen aprons, men with unblemished Carhartt workwear, and a glossy lie about what self-sufficiency and ideal rural culture should look like…

3 months ago · 22 likes · 5 comments · Jack Thomas

I encourage you to read both of those articles by Jack Thomas and then go join A.C.R.E. But, before you do, I should warn you about the risks of doing so. If you’re anything like me, you will soon find yourself totally obsessed with the idea of growing your own food and start stalking homesteaders and small farmers online, looking for inspiration. Luckily, there are some amazing Substackians to help you get your small farm fix. One of my absolute favorites is Jenna Woginrich. She is the proprietor of Cold Antler Farm. Her Substack is the perfect scratch to that new homesteading itch as she shares the journey of being a solo, female small farmer complete with birthing lambs, shearing sheep and wrestling with all the challenges that come with this lifestyle.

I love the photos of her newborn lambs, her candor about the challenges of solo farming and her audio diaries that welcome you in to her special sanctuary.

Although I’d love to share a dozen more creators with you right now, I must remind myself that that is not my focus here. So, Jack and Jenna are this week’s “Something Borrowed.” I hope you’ll check out their offerings.

Now to the final section…

Something Blue

I don’t know why, but this “Something Blue” category tickles me. I guess it’s because it fits the expression, “The sky’s the limit,” since the sky is blue and there are countless things that I love in this life that either are blue or relate to blue somehow. At first, I was unsure about this category, but I quickly realized how many blue things lit me up this week.

One: These sailboat paintings by my oldest daughter, Ahava.

She tends to be a very serious, analytical person, but she has this magnificent creative side too. In addition to these blue paintings, she made me a beautiful blue container which I now keep my favorite rocks in. Yes, I love rocks, but those are very rarely blue.

Two: My blue Osprey backpack.

It is my mobile office and I love it. For years, this beauty has been a constant companion across continents and through all the daily abuse it still looks brand new. Inside you’ll find my computer, livestreaming equipment, journals, snacks, a sweater and even a water fountain in the form of a camelback bladder. Like I said, a mobile office.

And, three: this blueberry plant.

As I mentioned above, I am newly obsessed with growing my own food but it didn’t take long to realize how little I knew. Even after joining Jack Thomas’ A.C.R.E. community, I found myself doing more consuming than creating. Until I saw this note from Jenna Woginrich and was inspired to finally take action:

So, I followed her advice and got the tomatoes and basil but also several other plants, including this blueberry plant.

Blueberries in my backyard!

Yes, it does feel like we totally cheated since it came fully formed with fruit on it already, but a woman must know her limits. Believe me, it will be no small task for me to keep these plants alive—especially since a bear came to visit us last night. Gratefully it preferred garbage over my gardens (here’s a little video I took this morning).

All of this to say that, while they are still growing undisturbed, for today at least, these blueberries are also something blue I am celebrating.

That’s a Wrap!

Well, there you have it, this week’s episode of Marrying Myself, complete with something old, something new, something borrowed and something blue. I hope you enjoyed it. For me, I have to say this project feels both odd and joy-sparking, which tells me it’s exactly where I need to be right now. After all, couldn’t we describe the beginning of most of life’s best things that way? Odd and joy-sparking. So, I guess I will keep this going.

You can help me do that in one of three ways:

One, restacking this post. You can do that easily by clicking this share button.

Two, becoming a paid subscriber. For $5 a month or $50 a year, you become part of the solid foundation that supports me on this new journey of marrying myself. You can subscribe by clicking this button:

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And three, by posting a comment. Let me know what you think of this idea of marrying ourselves? If you were to spend a season marrying yourself, what would you focus on? How could you fall in love with those parts of yourself that might have been hanging out in the backseat or a box in the closet for a long time? I would love to hear from you.

MM000 Marrying Myself Intro

Rosa Linda Román — Sat, 30 May 2026 02:34:18 GMT

**Author’s note: The following is the loose transcript of this audio recording. I have tried to clean it up a bit, but I definitely recommend listening instead of reading this one. However, in case you choose to continue reading, you should know that my speaking style is much messier than my writing style. I should also note that this project is more for me than for anyone else, so please feel free to scroll on by or to check out other sections of my work that fall into more traditional categories. For example, my mystery thriller series, “Catalina’s Chronicles,” or my memoir, “Losing Sight of the Shore: How to Live on a Boat Without Killing Your Family,” about living on a catamaran with three kids, one husband and a German Shepherd. Plus, I co-host a weekly livestream for indie authors called “Friends & Authors Live.” This project, “Marrying Myself” is more like a love letter to myself as I move into the next chapter of life. It will not be for everyone so please proceed with caution. And now, on to this episode.

Hello and welcome to “Marrying Myself.” I’m Rosa Linda Román and this is my brand new project that I just decided to create this week, like literally two days ago maybe. I was brainstorming. It’s the beginning of the second quarter of 2026 at the time of this recording and I was just looking ahead: What is coming up? What do I want? Goal setting.

I try to do that at the beginning of every quarter and I’ve got a lot of big stuff coming up. One of the things that I learned from many, many different coaches over the years is it’s really important to get clear on what you want before you try to accomplish all the things and take action, because otherwise you’re just taking action for the sake of taking action, which I certainly have done many, many times before. But now I’m in this different season in my life, and I really wanted to get clear on what is it that I want for this next chapter.

So let me back up for a second. If you’ve never met me, I am Rosa Linda Román. I go by Rosa Linda. And my background is that I was a television news reporter and anchor for my career. Then I had a second career, if you will, of being a full-time mom, and a traveling one at that. We travel frequently, living on a boat. traveling in a camper but most notably we’ve spent six years of our family’s lives with three kids and a German Shepherd, living on various catamarans and sailing around. So, I’ve had some really great adventures but the greatest adventure of course is raising these amazing humans.

Well, now I’m moving into this different season and I came to realize pretty quickly that I needed to start looking at what I was going to do now that my kids are starting to get to the age where they are becoming their own people. I mean, they’ve always been their own people, but they’re starting to move into that phase of… my two daughters are already off at college. My son is 15 and learning to drive. So he’s only three and a half years, less than that, away from graduating high school himself. So we are currently landlocked in New Mexico, which is the phase that we’re in. We each take turns and right now it is his turn and he wants to be at our home base in New Mexico, which is a beautiful thing because I love it here as well. It took me a little while to want to give up the boat. We actually still have a boat, but that’s a story for another day.

To kind of finish filling out the picture, I have been married to my beloved for almost 30 years, and we’ve had amazing grand adventures together as well. So, the title of this show might seem funny because I think that maybe people might think, “Oh, you’re saying marry yourself, don’t worry about getting married,” or whatever. No.

As I looked ahead… I became, in the last two years, an author.

I actually became an author a few years before that when I published a memoir about living on these various boats. But I became a fiction author and published four books last year in the mystery thriller series called, “Catalina’s Chronicles.” Book five, the final book of that series, is coming out in three weeks. At the time of this recording, it’s the beginning of April, and that book comes out at the end of April. And that is kind of wrapping up a chapter in and of itself, because I started writing this storyline 25 years ago when I was a TV news reporter in Phoenix. And I wrote it as a screenplay, and then eventually, just two years ago, decided I would convert it into a novel. And there’s a whole bunch of stories about how that came to be. Maybe I’ll share them here along the way. But coming to this present moment, as I’m about to wrap up this series and really focusing on stepping out into the world and back on stages… that’s one of my big goals for 2026 is to be on many other people’s stages. That might be on somebody else’s podcast or speaking as a public speaker on various actual stages. I’m very comfortable in that because of my background.

And the final stage that’s really just coming back into my world is video. Because of my background, after I left the mainstream media, and two years after I had my two daughters at that point, and my youngest was like four months old. I mean, my youngest daughter. Samuel was not yet a blip on the radar. And I started a video podcast, launched this video podcast called New Mexicast. And it was the first video podcast in the state of New Mexico. I did that throughout my children’s childhoods when they were little and through the process of moving onto the boat and all of those experiences, I documented heavily because it is my nature. I always record everything.

And that brings me to now.

I am starting to put some video content out because I’m trying to market my books. And that made me realize as I was going through that, that I have so much content already recorded that I never shared over the years because I was busy living those experiences and trying to be fully present. So, as I was working through quarter two of 2026, and just general structure of how my days would look, I realized one of the things that I’ve always wanted to do is go back and really curate what I have already recorded and the things that I, at the time, I thought, “Oh, I’m going to record this event or this moment…,” and by record, I mean it might be video recording, it might be an audio recording, it might be a journal entry. There’s so many different, or even just a half-written blog post. I have so many archives of things that I have already created. So as I was thinking about, well, what is this next chapter? And I was realizing, I had kind of, in the last few months, I’ve had the realization, since my daughters, my second daughter, Ziva left to college, and my first daughter left two years ago, I have really had a… I’ve been missing the female presence in my life.

We live up in the mountains, pretty much away from anybody. I don’t see another human unless they live in my household some days, or, you know, driving to school and stuff like that. I see people, but to engage with and really have conversations, it doesn’t, happen that often.

And the last few days in particular, my husband is out of town. He works out of town as a physician. The last few days, I’ve been really excited because I’m finishing up this series and I’ve got the characters are in my brain and I just worked through this really intense section, the grand finale of wrapping it all up. And I’m trying to talk about it with my son on the way to school. And just this morning, I was like, “Yeah, so I’ve got this scene, and this is happening, and what do you think?” And he literally turned the music up and started singing the song that he had on the queue in his Spotify account. Which is fine. That is actually his... love language. He’s very much into music and he communicates and he wasn’t trying to be rude at all. But the realization comes to me, and this has come over and over, not just in that moment, but the fact of the matter is I have spent the last 30 years being very present and supporting my beloved. So as the partner to my husband who started off as a mechanical engineer when I met him and building his business and eventually selling his business, to then going through medical school and building his medical career. And he was working in corporate as well as a senior vice president of integrative medicine for a big medical corporation. I supported him through all of that. And my kids… I have helped them, and I continue to help them, really try not to dull their shine… to quote my friend who once said that to me about Samuel. He wanted to get up on stage at our friend’s daughter’s wedding and do a toast. And we’re like, no, no, no, don’t do that. It’s their moment. And the father of the bride said, “Be careful not to dull his shine.” And I realize now, you know, a few years later, that… and he did by the way get up on stage he wowed everybody everyone was just delighted especially the bride and groom by that moment that precious moment the little boy got up on stage and toasted them, and so I have tried to remind myself that throughout the raising of my children journey that I don’t want to dull their shine. And I’ve never wanted to dull my husband’s shine for sure and everyone that I am around, I’d like to be a positive contributor. I like to be supportive. I like to do the things that bring out the light in the people that I’m around and share that with the world if I can.

And then as I sat down and I started thinking about, “Well, what is it that I want to put into the world at this stage?” I had this idea pop in my head. And it was the realization that I’ve spent a lot, a lot of time, basically a lifetime—I’m 54 years old at the time of this recording—I have spent a lifetime supporting people and really projecting, not projecting, yeah, like sharing their greatness with the world and supporting people. And really not necessarily trusting myself. Until recent years. The older I get, the more I realize, you know, I need to trust myself completely before I can do anything else in the world or really reach the level that I envision. I’ve always held this vision for myself. It just always seemed to be something in the future.

So, the epiphany.

All of this backstory brings me to this show and why I’m calling it “Marrying Myself.”

The content that I have already, which is so much, so many interesting things that I wanted to share with the world, but I didn’t want to slow down long enough to edit it or curate it or whatever in the past 30 years. Now, I’m at a point where I want to do that.

I want to go back through my archives. I want to look at everything that I’ve done and and see what’s relevant today and and see what people might be interested in at this point and so I’m creating… I had the idea of I guess… the mantra you’ve heard people say when you know you’re getting married the bride is supposed to have, “Something old, something new, something borrowed, and something blue.” That’s the expression you’re supposed to have those four things in your wedding, somewhere as part of your wedding. And it might be a blue garter and an old, the old veil that your great grandmother wore or, and then something new, your new, you know, wedding dress or, and then something borrowed. So you might borrow somebody’s necklace. So, so basically that’s kind of something that when you’re getting married, that’s a theme, a little goal that you have as the bride. Well, I realized I’ve focused so much on other people and thinking about their needs. And when you marry your beloved, you think about how can I help support him? How can I love him best? How can I bring out the best in this relationship? How can I be the best wife? And I’ve heard the expression that every wife needs a wife. My mom likes to say that.

I thought about that. I’m like, well, I don’t know that I need a wife. But what I do need is to see the value in myself. And instead of thinking about trying to marry someone else, I mean, I’m married, obviously, happily, but marrying myself, like, what would that look like? What if I started a show, a blog, a something… where each episode was focusing on something old, meaning going through my archives, finding things that I have not yet shared, something new… what am I working on? You know, at the moment it would be I’m about to launch my book, so that would be something new. Something borrowed. As I go through my journals, there’s so much wisdom that I have discovered that I’ve written down all these years from my favorite coaches, sessions that I’ve gone to, Zoom calls, in-person events from people like Tony Robbins and Chalene Johnson and Serena Hicks and Brooke Castillo, all these coaches that I find not just fascinating, but so uplifting and that have helped me get through different stages in my journey. So that would be easy to be a something borrowed section. And then something blue that’s still open in my mind. I’m like, that could be anything. I mean, it could be right now I’m driving in New Mexico and the blue sky is stunning. It just opens up your senses and I might share something about that. Or maybe the blue, the Bahamas blue, which is the most, the bluest blue, aqua blue that you’ve ever seen when you’re on the water there in the Bahamas. Or it might be something, I was thinking it could even be something like sad, like I’m blue today.

And it could be anything, like what is blue? And the reason that lights me up is because My beloved mother-in-law, at one point when I was sharing something I was struggling with, probably when the kids were really little, she taught me that when you’re really feeling out of sorts and you just need to kind of center yourself, the thing that she would do is look for something blue. She would close her eyes and she would look for the blue, is what she said. That might be like something in your mind that is an actual blue thing, like visually blue if you visualize things, which I learned just recently that not everyone visualizes. I learned that from I went to a retreat in Sedona, Arizona, and my roommate, Terry, she doesn’t picture things in her head the way that I do, and I assumed everybody does. So that’s kind of a funny aside. um but i don’t know what that could be what something blue might be.

But I love this idea that we should be like marrying ourselves because when you fall in love like you meet your beloved and you’re getting excited and you’re going to get married and why are you getting married? Because you want to share the best parts of yourself with the best parts of themselves, and you want to be there to support the parts of them that need support and you hope they will support the parts of you that need support. And I have done that with my partner, my beloved, my husband for 30 years. We’ve been together 30 years now. Actually, this December will be 30 years since we met so I’ve done that and it changes over the over the years. Like, you know, we are much older. We have gone through raising children. We have gone through phases when we were just dating. You know, all of that.

Every stage, I have chosen, and he has chosen, we have chosen each other.

And we have chosen to continue to do the work on our relationship and all of that. And I’ve done that as well as a parent. Every phase that they’ve been in, I have chosen to be there and to support and to, you know, choose to do the hard work that it takes to make sure that they know they’re loved, to make sure that I’m treated also as someone who is beloved so that it works both ways. And to help guide them and teach them how to do that in relationships with other people. And when I’ve missed the mark, I have worked hard to correct and to teach them about how to correct and also how to give ourselves grace and all of that. So now I’m like, “Oh, I guess this next phase is about marrying myself.”

What that looks like, falling in love with myself and the things that younger me created. I actually thought about calling this the show something like, “Love notes from my younger self,” or “Gifts from my younger self” or “Gifts from young me,” something like that. That was what I first was wrestling with or playing with. I should say, I was playing with those names about the gifts that we get from ourselves from our from our younger selves and now I’m like, actually it’s all a gift. The now is a gift, what I’m working on now.

The archives, the recordings, the journal entries, the notes to myself, all of that is a gift. And that’s part of the marrying, right? Like getting to know yourself. I’m marrying myself just like I would marry my husband.

You’re getting to know that person. in a whole new way, right?

You know, of course, there’s the initial attraction and all of that. But over the years, you constantly learn more and more about them. So all of this to say, that is what this show is going to be about. It’s going to be the process of me unpacking literally and figuratively all of the things that I have been accumulating, saving, preparing, recording, All of those archives and journals and things that I’ve been,… yeah, I knew one day I would revisit them. I just thought it was going to be like after I was a grandma or something. But I actually really like the idea of doing it now. And I really like the idea of sharing it here with all of you.

So I just got home. I see my beloved, my other beloved, is Nala, who is our German Shepherd, who I adore. And she’s sitting just outside the car, waiting for me to open the door, which I love. So I’m going to wrap this up.

I’ll leave you with the question, if you were going to marry yourself, fall in love with yourself, look at the things that you are unique about and that are just so special about you, past, present, and future, how could you marry yourself? What would you do to make sure that that marriage, if you will… it sounds so silly, I know, but, you know, what is it about you that’s so special that you would choose you? I’m going to explore that in this show for myself. And I hope you, I invite you to do the same for yourself.

Thanks for listening to this inaugural edition of “Marrying Myself.” I’m Rosa Linda Román, and I will check in next time. Bye.

Well, that’s it for now. I am excited to see where I take this project. So many possibilities. But, again, I have to emphasize that this project is really for me. If it interests you, welcome! I am happy to have you along for the ride.

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