From Codependency to Independence: Michelle's Path to Self-Love

In this heartfelt episode, Michelle Renee shares her journey from a challenging marriage to finding independence and self-love. Explore the importance of addressing codependency and nurturing the inner child for personal growth and happiness.

Michelle Renee (she/her) is a therapeutic intimacy specialist, trained as both a Cuddle Therapist and Surrogate Partner, and a co-owner at ⁠https://Cuddlist.com⁠. She practices a trauma-informed, consent-based approach that helps folks of all genders rebuild trust with touch, set clear boundaries, and access authentic pleasure ... at their own pace. She serves clients nationwide as a holistic intimacy coach and partners with therapists to integrate somatic, consent-based healing.

Michelle's websites are⁠ ⁠https://meetmichellerenee.com⁠⁠⁠ and⁠ ⁠https://humanconnectionlab.com⁠⁠ and she can be found on social media at⁠ ⁠https://instagram.com/meetmichellerenee⁠⁠.

If you’d like to ask a question for Michelle to answer on an episode, or you’d like to join her for an Intimacy Lab Experience, visit ⁠https://intimacylabpodcast.com⁠.

To grab your own set of We’re Not Really Strangers ⁠https://amzn.to/47XJjvm⁠

Become a Cuddlist Certified Touch Practitioner and save 10%: ⁠https://cuddlist.podia.com/cuddlist-certification/6dnxo?coupon=REFERRAL⁠

Rough Transcript:

Michelle Renee (she/her) (00:00.938)

Welcome back to the Intimacy Lab. I'm Michelle Renne, a therapeutic intimacy specialist. I work in the middle space between cuddle therapy and traditional surrogate partner therapy, offering platonic touching connection, which gives a reparative experience for some of our young wounding. That's what I'm here today to talk about. I just finished up.

helping out a colleague on a workshop, like a webinar series that she was doing on healing our inner child. And it got me thinking, I've read a little post to know about, talk about when I met my inner child. First I thought it might be a post and I thought, no, this is a conversation. I haven't done a solo episode in a long time. So see how this goes.

I didn't even know anything about an inner child for a really long time. If you've listened to this podcast for a while, you know, like a lot of my background.

Michelle Renee (she/her) (01:15.95)

interesting childhood that you know had its problems. And then really rough marriage, probably because of the childhood. I just kind of recreated my parents' relationship. And when that marriage ended, I really afraid to date for a while. I say a while. I don't think I had

I don't think I went on a date until we had been separated.

Michelle Renee (she/her) (01:51.086)

maybe it wasn't as long as I thought. I knew I didn't want to date though. I will say this, I didn't get in a relationship for a year or so. I did go out and sample the buffet. There's somebody who got married at like 19 or 20.

I think I was 20. To the first person I ever had sex with. And then there wasn't, I there was, I cheated a little bit in the marriage. A lot emotionally, occasionally physically.

And there was some other interesting circumstances that I'm not gonna, it's not all my story to tell and I'm just gonna leave it alone. But I didn't come out with like a lot of sexual experience. And so I just wanted to sample the buffet and I did. And I really did not want to fall for anybody. So I was very careful about it. I even remember one of my like...

acquaintance of mine that I had an interest in, we had a lot of overlap and interest in things. When they told me that they bond really quickly, was like, nope, not gonna play in this playground because I was afraid I would do the same thing. And so never, never dallied there. I really stayed to like unavailable people. And I remember one time, a friend of mine at the time, I said,

They're also wishy washy. And she goes, Michelle, you're wishy washy. And I was like, you're right. I don't actually want them to want to date me. And so I just did a lot of like dabbling. And my second long-term relationship was with my husband now. And a lot of that relationship over the 10 years that we've been together has been long distance, like a few years here, a few years here. Like we've done this a few times.

Michelle Renee (she/her) (04:02.23)

And I remember he moved to San Diego. I was in Michigan and

He could not do enough to settle me into feeling secure in our relationship. I just remember wanting a lot, a lot of assurance. And this was in July of 2017. He said something to me like, Michelle, there's nothing I can say that is gonna make you feel better. And it's getting really old and I'm not really sure what to do about it. I think I'm gonna need a break. Something to that extent.

And it wasn't like a long break. He was just going away to like some con in Vegas, and was just going to take the chance to kind of be offline for me. And I was supposed to meet him in San Diego, like he was going to pick me up on his drive back from Las Vegas at the airport. And I questioned whether I should really go because what if what if we were just breaking up, we had an agreement that we would break up in person.

And it scared me a lot. So in that downtime, which wasn't a lot, it was, I don't know, maybe four or five days, I don't remember. I got to work. I got an appointment for a therapist. My first one, post divorce, I had gone to therapy briefly after my mom died in my 20s. So now I'm in my late 30s. No, at this point I'm in my early 40s. I made an appointment for a therapist.

And I happened, I hate the word manifesting, but I manifested. I came across Brian Reeves, who's like a relationship coachy person. I don't know what he calls himself. I came across a class he was teaching or something, and I listened to it and it connected some dots for me.

Michelle Renee (she/her) (06:06.221)

I didn't realize that what I was experiencing was codependency, which is not a terrible thing. all move between codependency, interdependence, and independence, right? And the goal is to be an interdependence majority of our time, but we're gonna flow in and out of all these spaces, right? It's not bad. We don't wanna live there. We don't live in codependency.

probably in full disclosure, I've moved so into independence. I think it's working for us okay. We'll adjust if it's not. I do trust my partner to let me know when things aren't working. But the thing about that video I watched was that I didn't recognize that that was codependency. I knew I had codependency in my first marriage and it just looked

different. And the trick for me was a converse. It must have been part of his video. I don't know. I'm tempted to go back and find it and see if this is true or not. But the story I have in my head is that there was something there that encouraged me to talk to my inner child, my young, young parts, that part that wanted that reassurance.

We'll just call her Little Michelle. I was invited to talk to Little Michelle and what needed to be said was that I needed to apologize to her for abandoning her for so long because in that first marriage, she didn't exist. I was not paying attention to her and her needs at all, which I was really not focusing on my needs at all in general, right? But.

that little young little Michelle, she needed to hear that I could take care of her and that she didn't need to look to Paul for that. Like that was the thing is that part of me kept looking to Paul. And it reminds me of a phrase I heard years ago in a book I was reading about like giving away your center. All these things we can talk about inner child, we can talk about parts, we could talk about your center.

Michelle Renee (she/her) (08:32.459)

All those things can be different. I mean, they can overlap in weird ways, right? Ultimately, I like how I don't really care for Terry real, but I do like his language around really keeping it simple. I love simple language. I'll share some other simple language with you in a minute. But the question is, who is in front of me right now? Is this, like, who am I presenting as?

Am I my wise adult or am I my adaptive child? And my adaptive child really, really, really wanted to hear that I was safe, that Paul was going to pick me. And there was never enough that he could say to make that really feel solid because I was like outsourcing it. Right. And I needed to let that young part of me know that I was ready to do that.

And it was so understandable why she wouldn't trust me to do that because I am.

I don't know if I'd ever done it. Definitely hadn't done it in 20 years. And having an actual conversation, like really saying it out loud to her.

Michelle Renee (she/her) (09:50.049)

having the actual conversation and really saying it out loud to her started to make the change. was simple and hard, right? It sounds silly to talk out loud to ourselves, but like it made a huge difference. So that was like July of 2017. And then, so I'd have these conversations with her occasionally, probably not as often as I should have.

But then I ended up in New York and I well, let me back up a little bit. I ended up in DC and I remember meeting Don shanks who is a Cuddlist in Or was a Cuddlist I'm not sure if he has a listing anymore, but he was in the DC area and we were Cuddlist was bringing a bunch of people into The psych networker conference like I was attending

A couple of my colleagues were attending like the actual conference, but then other Cuddlist from the area came in and just kind of worked the lobby, sat with their Cuddlist t-shirts on. Like this is what we call guerrilla marketing. It didn't cost us a lot. We were trying to like, I don't know, not get kicked out, but also like test the waters a little bit. So that's 2019. This has happened a few times before, but when I met Don for the first time and we hugged,

fell apart, I just started bawling in the lobby of the, what is it, the Omni. Omni Shorum in Washington DC. Not my proudest moment. Here's this colleague that we've talked online, you know, and been in contact that way, but we've never met and here I'm just a puddle hugging him. And it was like anybody with some daddy energy, I just crumbled. And so,

Like a couple months later, I end up in New York and I go out to my colleague John's house and John Ellsworth. He has this lovely farm and I go out for the weekend and same thing. But here's the thing, like I could do a session with John and that session looked like me in his arms.

Michelle Renee (she/her) (12:15.821)

crying so hard. Like talk about snot on the t-shirt. I have said to many clients, it's okay if you get snot on me. It's like karma. Like I've, I've, I've prepaid for this. I don't mind it at all. Cause somebody else did this for me. Right. And it was so much snot, but I remember at the end he said,

Are you open? Like, would you be interested in hearing my thoughts? And I was like, yeah. I love how he asked for consent, right? And he says, I just think that maybe you are so good at loving other people, you're not so good at letting love in. And the only way you know how to let love in seems to be from these like male fatherly figures. I think you should get to know your inner child.

spend some time with her and just like engage with her. I was like, okay, I don't know really what that means, but all right. I mean, I've talked to her, but I think that he wanted something more than that. So I thought about like, kind of figured this out on my own. What did I like to do as a kid? That's probably a really good way to like give her love. And...

I colored.

That's the only way, like that was the thing I was, I loved doing that when I was a kid. I took a lot of pride in my coloring skills. I was the best color in my kindergarten class. I always stayed in the lines. But what does that say? That's most of my life until it wasn't. I still say I'm a rule follower until I don't want to. Like if the rule doesn't make sense to me, then I'm not gonna follow it. But that.

Michelle Renee (she/her) (14:10.423)

Those two things really made impact on my life. even today, like...

What does my young part like to do? She likes to color. She loves going through the kids section at the grocery store. I go into Vons and I always have to go down the holiday section, the seasonal section. And there's always little stuffed animals. We call them stuffies. And I have to touch them all. And sometimes I'll make up an excuse to buy one. I remember when I used to once in a while pick one up for work.

One of my kids, even though my youngest was late teenager, I'm like, he loves soft things. Stuffies and coloring and playing basketball. I remember being at the gym with Sarah, my Michigan wife, not Michigan wife, sorry, San Diego wife. I think we're like episode two, if you want to go back.

We were at the gym one morning and the gym was empty, which is unusual. Like the actual gymnasium was empty. It's usually a bunch of guys in there playing basketball. And she goes, you want to go in and shoot hoops? Like we both played in high school. And so we went in and she said to me, I don't know if I've ever seen you this happy. And like that was back in the day when I couldn't, I couldn't recognize the feeling of happy. I had to see it on my face. Like I have to catch it in a mirror, but I trusted her. believed her.

And then a little bit later, I went to Disneyland for the first time, rode my first roller coaster in well over 20 years. And I was nervous because I used to love them. And I was like, am I going to hate this? And I can't get off. like, I'm pretty controlled person. I like to be in control. And I was like, just try it. And it was on that roller coaster that I felt happy. Like, I felt the joy. I could feel it with.

Michelle Renee (she/her) (16:14.185)

out looking at my face. And that was...

Michelle Renee (she/her) (16:21.733)

2023 in the fall, I think. I was with a bunch of cuddlers, which is fun to go into Disneyland with a bunch of professional cuddlers. I don't know why it's fun, but it makes me giggle. yeah, just reflecting back about how those changes, just engaging with that young part of mine.

how that has really shaped my own healing journey. And I know it comes up with a lot of clients too. Some of them don't wanna hear the words inner child. They have an, like, no. Whether we specifically address it or not, there's so much in this, I'll say cuddle therapy world.

that is happening under behind the scenes that we don't have to talk about. You know, I have a client that that says how much.

Michelle Renee (she/her) (17:26.581)

It's repairing like the pre-verbal overwhelm, trauma, whatever you want to call it. I'm trying to change my language. Just finished reading a really great book. I'll put it on video here. The Biology of Trauma from Dr. Amy. I don't know how you pronounce her last name, but she goes by Dr. Amy on socials. Anyways, and they talk about trauma is really just

overwhelm. And, and I kind of like that word better.

I don't know. I'll use whatever word works for whoever's around me at the time. me healing, what was kind of beaten down and stripped out of me in that first marriage where I just...

I disappeared. I just didn't have any needs or I imagine I had needs and wants, but I learned that they weren't.

It wasn't safe to express them.

Michelle Renee (she/her) (18:41.845)

And I kind of just died a little, a little every day. To the point that I started to normalize that, like normalize the life I was living as just like, well, this is my life. This is, if I change my attitude, it'll be better. And I really just resigned myself. I quit trying, I even quit like, I quit asking for a divorce.

I gave up on getting divorce. Somebody emailed me today that's reading my blog. Sexaftermarriage.org is an old blog I wrote shortly after getting divorced. I started it, wrote it for a few years. It's like a public diary of exploration of kink and poly and I lost it. Don't have your friends, host your domain.

thankfully I had downloaded all the content at one point and then, my friend let the hosting package go and so it was all gone. And I've been republishing it very inconsistently, but I am, I have been working on putting the post back out one at a time with like a 10 year take, because it's been over 10 years since I started the blog. And,

Michelle Renee (she/her) (20:10.282)

remember where I was going with this story.

Michelle Renee (she/her) (20:17.728)

Hmm.

Michelle Renee (she/her) (20:34.282)

I'm not sure. It'll come to me later.

Michelle Renee (she/her) (20:45.686)

I was talking about.

how I just resigned myself.

Michelle Renee (she/her) (20:59.456)

I have needs, I have desires. My little parts, they have needs and desires.

Michelle Renee (she/her) (21:08.404)

I can't ignore them anymore. won't. I don't want to ignore them anymore. My life is so much better. So much better since.

I reestablished a connection with all of my younger parts. I was helping out a colleague of mine on this healing your inner child thing, that's we were talking about in the beginning of this. And one of the, wasn't part of the whole class, I just helped with the Zoom rooms. And so I would get just smidgens of what they were doing in the class. And one of the,

not if it was an assignment, an invitation, a choice, an option, I don't know, was to change out the lock screen on your phone to a young picture of yourself. And so I changed mine to like five-year-old Michelle. I think I was five because it looked like, I know I didn't have my long curly hair, which my mom did not let me cut off until I was five.

I asked for it, she relented, but I really think that it was very convenient for her. Because I think back as a mom myself. That was when my baby sister was born. And I imagine sitting me down in the morning and putting my hair in ringlets, because I had like ringleted long hair kind of Shirley Temple like for you young ones, you can Google it. I imagine that was a lot of work that she couldn't do. But she made me think for all those years that she gave into it.

And it just dawned on me a couple of years ago that, no, that was, that was like, that was a busy mom move. Totally. I totally see through it. Um, uh, but I put that, I put this short haired version of Michelle on there and, uh, it felt nice and people would see it on my phone and they asked me about it. um, I feel good with her. I feel really good with her. So I'm sitting, uh,

Michelle Renee (she/her) (23:18.693)

here Sunday and I was like, I need to change that picture out. doesn't feel like it's challenging me. Right. And so I went into my like Facebook archives. it's not archived, but, years and years ago, my baby sister put a whole bunch of pictures up, family pictures up and tagged me in them. And so just went through those and I pulled some screenshots of different pictures that were me through different ages. And I sat with them and I looked at them and

I ask myself like which one of these versions of me needs the most attention right now.

Michelle Renee (she/her) (23:58.286)

25 year old.

It's not the youngest parts. We feel good. We feel good.

Michelle Renee (she/her) (24:09.525)

The picture I used is a picture of, it's from my mom's 49th birthday party.

Yeah, 49th. She had inflammatory breast cancer. She was diagnosed at 48. And so this was her first birthday with cancer and we thought she was gonna be okay.

And I'm standing there, my son, who at the time is...

Michelle Renee (she/her) (24:46.493)

Must have been three going on four He's in front of me and my my first husband's to the side of me and my mom's to the side of me And I just focused on me. I cropped everything else out. I couldn't crop out my son really that's okay I appreciate him being in there because I'm sure I have a lot of work to do with him

Michelle Renee (she/her) (25:12.961)

But what I know about 25 year old Michelle is that she's very unhappy in that marriage and that she couldn't go anywhere.

Like I did ask to leave many times, but I was a stay at home mom. So no job, no education, some accounting background.

And I'm very, like my son had type 1 diabetes. I was keeping him alive. Literally, it's a never ending job.

And without my first husband's cooperation, I kept making up ways, how could we be together apart? Was there a way to not break free from him completely, but be free from him? I don't know how much of that was trauma bonding or how much of it was a real...

realistic idea of what it would be like. I knew I didn't want to go home. I knew I didn't want to go home. There was nothing that was going to take me back home.

Michelle Renee (she/her) (26:20.673)

Maybe that part could probably use some work too. The part that made the decision. I left when I was almost 18.

That's a whole nother story that I don't know if I want. I don't know if I want to bring it here, but he also say I didn't have a where to go. I was by myself and when that really toxic relationship is the only thing you have.

Michelle Renee (she/her) (26:58.113)

I didn't have a lot of choices. We talk about like what does freedom mean? And I think freedom is like the ability to choose. And...

Michelle Renee (she/her) (27:14.571)

It's one of the things we do here. One of the Cuddlist mandates is, you it has to be client led, which means a client has to make a choice. They have to ask for something and they have to make choices. it's not, Madeleine Guadazzo would always say, and I don't know who this originated from, but this is who brought it into my life. What you choose is not nearly as important as making a choice, something like that. It was worded something like that.

And it's true. It is very different life when you are able to make choices.

Michelle Renee (she/her) (27:54.816)

Yeah, very different life. So at the end of the call tonight that I was helping on the Zoom room for, we got to...

say all the things to our inner child that our inner child needed to hear. And mine was such a celebration of how much I love her, how much I consider her, how wise she is, but she's fun wise. Like she can bring so much levity into a space. One of my friends and colleagues,

recently shared a picture from her birthday party this summer. And in this birthday party, everybody took turns laying in the middle of the room and asking for what they wanted. In her, I think she says it was her nine year old, was her inner nine year old was wanting to like, I think there was like, I don't remember what it was. It doesn't matter. And it's her story. I don't want to break her privacy, but I will tell my part in that what I decided to offer

was zurburtz. I don't know if you call them that. I think I got that languaging from the Cosby show, which is really kind of interesting retrospect, but blowing strawberries. Another thing I think I've heard it called, but I just blew big old fart noises on her tummy. And it went from this very serious room, right? Everybody's wanting to, you know, it's all love and light and a little, a little more woo woo than I'm used to. And I just broke the mood. My young part was like,

blow on that tummy. Anytime I see a belly exposed, I just want to blow on it. And I did that. And it was probably perfect. It was perfect as far as I'm concerned. And it was perfect for me. And I love that about my young parts when I listen to them. So yeah, what are you doing to connect with your your younger versions? They are running our lives. I don't know if you realize this.

Michelle Renee (she/her) (30:05.899)

But that whole thing about wise adult adaptive child, as a child, we did things to adapt to our surroundings, right? We did things to adapt to get our needs met. And until we can like pay attention to that, those things are still happening. They are still happening. And to learn to be able to like recognize if your behavior is your

wise adult or your adaptive child.

That's a good one to learn. Anyways, thanks for listening. I hope you come back around soon. If you enjoy this podcast, leave us a review. It helps spread the word. And if you're curious about working together, at this point, let's see here, I'm recording this on December 10th, 2025. I hope I get it out quickly, because I don't have anything else in the hopper.

I'm currently working all over Southern California. I am in the Baltimore DC area quarterly. I'm going to be back out there in just like next month. I'm up in Pittsburgh sometimes, like usually when I'm out in Baltimore DC and I am adding San Francisco, but I'm like again.

I'm mainly in Southern California, but I love coming to clients and I mean, this is a great place to, to visit. If you want to come see me in San Diego, have some pretty interesting, like, intensives where we get to really like, possibly if you're up for it, like really stay together. So anything from an hour to a couple of days,

Michelle Renee (she/her) (32:09.825)

I'll meet you where you are. Thanks for being intimate with me today. Have a good holiday.