You weren't too sensitive. You weren't dramatic. You were conditioned to apologize first — every single time. In today's episode we break down exactly how that pattern gets built, why it has nothing to do with who you are, and what it actually means when love becomes leverage.

📖 When Love Becomes Leverage on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/WHEN-LOVE-BECOMES-LEVERAGE-Understanding/dp/B0G1RXRN1Q

📅 Work with me 1:1: https://tr.ee/hJRKu3hkgK

🌐 SheRisesFromAshes.com

When things were easy — they were warm, attentive, generous. The moment you had a real need, everything shifted. This episode walks through exactly why that happened and what it tells you about the relationship you were in.

Every kindness had a price tag on it. You just didn't know you were running a tab.

📖 The Anatomy of Control — Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Anatomy-Control-Inside-Mind-Narcissist/dp/B0G1M7P65H🌐 All books, episodes & resources: SheRisesFromAshes.com📩 Free resources & email list: m-martin-she-rises-from-ashes.kit.com

Steady Fire with M. Martin is available on Spotify, Amazon Music, iHeartRadio, and YouTube.

Hold your fire steady. 🕯️

Nobody prepares you for the moment you realize they are out there telling a story about you — and people are believing it.

Today on Steady Fire we sit with the smear campaign. Why it starts before you even leave. How they build the narrative. Why you keep going back to the details. And what all of it actually tells you about who you are dealing with.

You are not crazy. You are not unstable. They don't discredit you because you're wrong. They discredit you because you know too much.

📖 What To Expect When You Leave — https://www.amazon.com/What-Expect-When-You-Leave/dp/B0G7XZDMF7

🌐 For all books & resources:

https://www.SheRisesFromAshes.com

Nobody warned you about the people around them. But that circle is a big part of why you couldn't get out faster. Why nobody believed you. Why you started wondering if you were the problem.

In this episode we walk through the 4 types of people a narcissist keeps close — the defender, the flying monkey, the fixer, and the image protector — and why each one had a reason to look the other way.

This one is for every survivor who tried to tell someone and wasn't believed.

📖 The Anatomy of Control — Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/stores/M.-Martin/author/B0FVB5H5NF

🌐 All books and resources: https://SheRisesFromAshes.com

📅 Work with me 1:1: https://tr.ee/hJRKu3hkgK

Nobody told me that leaving was only the beginning.

I thought I'd be sad for a few weeks and then feel free. At one month, I was in complete panic mode. At six months, I completely shut down — wouldn't answer the phone, wouldn't answer a text, kept telling everyone I was fine when I wasn't.

And I kept asking myself: why am I still not okay?

Because leaving doesn't start the healing. It just stops the bleeding.

In this episode I walk through what actually happens in the months after you leave — the panic, the shutdown, the moment the dots finally connected and everything changed.

What To Expect When You Leave is available on Amazon and at SheRisesFromAshes.com

Steady Fire with M. Martin is available on Spotify and YouTube.

I was six years old when I first told the truth about a narcissist. And I spent the next 50 years paying for it.

I grew up in a narcissistic household. I walked out at 15 with nothing but myself and a decision. I put myself through school, worked full time, and built my own life from the ground up. And then I walked straight into a narcissistic marriage — because the chaos was the only love language I had ever been taught.

For 25 more years I asked myself what I was doing wrong.

And then one day I stopped asking what was wrong with me — and started looking at the patterns.

That is when I saw it. It wasn't random. It wasn't moods. It was a system. A very specific, very consistent, very intentional system of control.

This is why I wrote The Anatomy of Control: Inside the Mind of a Narcissist. Because nobody should spend 50 years inside a system they didn't know existed.

📖 The Anatomy of Control on Amazon:

https://www.amazon.com/Anatomy-Control-Inside-Mind-Narcissist/dp/B0G1M7P65H

🌐 All books, episodes & resources:

SheRisesFromAshes.com

📅 Work with me 1:1:

https://tr.ee/hJRKu3hkgK

Steady Fire with M. Martin is available on Spotify, Amazon Music, iHeartRadio, and YouTube.

Today is my daughter's 27th birthday. And I want to talk about something that most people don't realize about narcissistic abuse when it involves children — it doesn't stop when they turn 18.

I grew up in a narcissistic household. Birthdays weren't celebrated. Holidays came and went. And then I got married — and it was the exact same pattern. There was always a reason. Always too busy. Always a woulda, coulda, shoulda.

You learn not to expect it. But you never stop hoping.

Now I'm watching my daughter go through the same thing at 27. And that is what this episode is about. The narcissistic parent who performs devotion for the world while their child lives a completely different reality. The way that child gets replaced by new supply. And the hope that never fully dies — no matter how many times they don't show up.

That hope is not a weakness. That is what narcissistic abuse does to someone who loves.

This is why I wrote When Love Becomes Leverage.

📖 When Love Becomes Leverage on Amazon:

https://www.amazon.com/WHEN-LOVE-BECOMES-LEVERAGE-Understanding/dp/B0G1RXRN1Q

🌐 All books, episodes & resources:

SheRisesFromAshes.com

📅 Work with me 1:1:

https://tr.ee/hJRKu3hkgK

Steady Fire with M. Martin is available on Spotify, Amazon Music, iHeartRadio, and YouTube.

I grew up in a narcissistic household. And because of that, I walked straight into a narcissistic marriage. Not because I was weak — because it felt like home. The chaos was familiar. The hot and cold, the walking on eggshells, the love that came and went without warning — my nervous system had been trained for all of it long before I ever knew what narcissistic abuse was.

In this episode I'm talking about why I wrote The Empath's Dilemma: Loving What Hurts You — the book I needed and couldn't find. We're going into the origin wound, how narcissistic abuse in childhood conditions survivors to repeat the dynamic in adult relationships, and why empaths don't just fall into these relationships — they fit into them.

This one is personal. And I think it might be exactly what you needed to hear today.

📖 The Empath's Dilemma — available on Amazon:

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0G42VWYBK

🌐 All books, episodes & resources:

SheRisesFromAshes.com

📅 Work with me 1:1:

https://tr.ee/hJRKu3hkgK

Steady Fire with M. Martin is available on Spotify, Amazon Music, iHeartRadio, and YouTube.