Olga SaeliyaChoosing Yourself Doesn’t Have to Mean Blowing Up Your Life

Contents ↓

Twenty-five years of marriage can’t be reduced to a single event. And deciding to end a relationship doesn’t mean everything you lived through was a mistake.

That’s why I handle stories like this with particular care: it’s all too easy to turn them into either a drama about betrayal or a pretty fairy tale about choosing yourself and walking away.

Olga Saeliya’s story isn’t about leaving a marriage when things get hard. One of her strongest conclusions sounds different: Don’t rush to tear everything down — but don’t keep tearing yourself down to hold everything together.

Behind her are children, years as an entrepreneur, big family goals, a move to Moscow and a habit of putting her own wishes last. She joined Clirium in February 2026. Today she lives on her own and is building a women’s project called Volshebnitsy — “Enchantresses.”

Olga herself stresses that she hasn’t reached the finish line. She’s in the middle of the process.

From the outside, my life looked perfectly fine for a long time: family, kids, twenty-five years of marriage, a business, a home, endless to-dos and big goals. I was a woman who knew how to cope — and that was probably my biggest trap. I’d gotten too good at solving problems, organizing, supporting, enduring, being reliable and keeping a huge number of plates spinning, until at some point I no longer understood where I myself fit into all of it.

I lived in “have to” mode: I have to take care of the family and the kids, I have to keep the business going, I have to be strong, patient, easy to deal with and dependable, I have to hold it together and get through it. I was used to putting myself off until later and treating my own wishes as secondary. Meanwhile, a feeling was quietly building up inside that I wasn’t quite living my own life: I was missing freedom, personal space, financial independence, lightness — the very sense that this was my life and I could choose. The hardest part was that for a long time I couldn’t even call it a problem. Everything seemed fine, but I had less and less energy inside and more and more emptiness.

I had big goals: to give my children a good education, to create better opportunities for our family, to move to Moscow. For that, I truly took a lot on my shoulders and gave up a lot. I was used to thinking that this was what adult responsibility looked like: endure now so things will be better later. And yet, somewhere deep inside, I sensed there were things in our family I didn’t want to see and didn’t allow myself to believe. When warning signs appeared, I’d tell myself, “You’re imagining it, don’t make things up” — and keep going, because there were goals, a family and responsibilities.

And we really did move, so on the outside I had achieved what I’d worked toward for so many years. But the move seemed to lift the lid off everything I’d tried so hard not to notice. I ran into betrayal where I least expected it — and that hurt all the more because I had denied myself so much for so many years for the sake of my family, and it was inside that family that something came to light which shattered my picture of our life.

At first I kept going on autopilot — doing, solving, holding on. Then something happened that I never expected: my body simply refused to go any further. I was literally flat on my back, without the strength even to eat properly, and for the first time in my life I couldn’t just order myself to pull it together. That’s when I understood that my body was speaking to me louder than I had ever let myself speak.

It was a very painful experience, but it was through it that I began to have a real connection with myself. I started noticing what I feel and what I want, where I feel good and where I don’t, what my body accepts and what it rejects — and why I’d been able to hear everyone for so long except myself. And I realized I could no longer allow myself to lie to myself and betray myself: I can’t tell myself “You’re imagining it” when inside I already know the truth, I can’t keep doing something just because I’m supposed to, and I can’t put myself at the bottom of the list again.

That’s how mindfulness came into my life — not as a pretty philosophy, but as a daily choice of myself in every decision. Today I understand that that period didn’t destroy my life. It destroyed the version of it in which I was barely present.

Honestly, I didn’t have some lovely goal of self-development. I came when I didn’t know what to do about deception and betrayal. I was hurting and lost, and I was looking for answers outside myself — asking other people, collecting opinions and advice, and desperately wanting someone to finally take responsibility and tell me what the right thing to do was.

Gradually I saw that this was exactly my core problem: I had gotten so used to orienting myself around my family, circumstances, other people’s expectations and opinions that I’d stopped hearing my own voice. For me, Clirium became less a place of ready-made answers than a space where I learned to ask myself questions, hear my feelings, notice my body’s reactions, understand my true desires and trust my own inner knowing.

I no longer need someone to tell me how to live my life the right way. I need to hear myself clearly enough to know the answer myself.

— key points

After twenty-five years of marriage, I decided to divorce, and it wasn’t an easy decision. I tried for a very long time to save the family, but at some point I realized I was with a man whose values and outlook on life I could no longer share — and that it wasn’t honest toward myself to stay in the relationship just because we had once chosen each other and lived together for many years. Love, habit, a shared history and shared children matter enormously, but to share a life, I need us to align on the fundamentals: honesty, respect, trust and how we treat another person.

But now I understand that the real turning point came earlier — when I decided to stop betraying myself. I used to think first about what the family needed and what others would say, and only then ask myself what I wanted. Now the order has changed. If something feels bad, I no longer convince myself it’s no big deal, and if a clear “no” comes up inside me, I don’t try to turn it into a “yes.” I stopped making decisions out of fear of losing my familiar life and started making them by asking what would be honest toward myself right now.

And it’s very important to me to say this to any woman reading this who may be in a crisis herself: Don’t rush to tear everything down — but don’t destroy yourself to keep everything intact, either. Those are two completely different things.

Today I live on my own, and for me that isn’t just a change of address — it’s a powerful symbol of a new chapter. I have a space of my own where I can wake up and fall asleep, think, rest and make decisions without constantly adjusting to another person. And I felt the difference very clearly: in my own space I have energy, it’s easier to breathe and think, the desire to do things, go places and create is coming back, and I feel my body much better and understand its signals.

Walks, massages, the spa, rest and personal space are no longer “someday” things for me — they’ve become part of normal life. My circle has changed, too: it’s become much harder for me to be around people and in places where I have to play a role, put up with things or suppress myself, and more and more I choose quality connection, calm and people I can be real with. I’ve also started putting myself out there, when before I could spend years preparing and waiting for the right moment, thinking I first had to settle every other issue. Now I understand that my life is already happening.

The most amazing part is that this moment came literally the day before our interview. I was sitting on a riverbank just looking at the sky — not rushing anywhere, not deciding anything, not proving anything to anyone — and suddenly I felt deep gratitude toward myself.

I thought, “I really did it.” I’m free. I can breathe freely and choose where to be, how to live, whom to spend time with, what to say yes to and what to say no to.

I used to think freedom was when circumstances finally became perfect. Now I understand that it starts inside, when you reclaim the right to choose. If you ask me what I can take credit for here, I’ll say that I finally stopped giving up on myself: I made it through a very painful period, I didn’t close my eyes to what I’d seen or talk myself into believing I’d imagined it again, and I found the courage to change my familiar life — to live on my own, decide to divorce and start building my life anew. That evening by the river, for the first time, I felt not only free but proud of myself — not for how much I’d endured, but for finally choosing myself.

Today I’m building a project called Volshebnitsy — Russian for “Enchantresses.” It’s a space for women who have also found themselves at that very familiar point of “I can do it all, but I don’t want to live like this anymore,” and who want to reclaim their energy, their inner footing, their joy in life, financial independence, visibility and the right to build a life on their own terms.

What matters to me is that I’m not creating it as someone who has already been through it all and now teaches others. I’m walking this path right now, honestly and for real: learning financial independence, creating my own source of income, building a personal brand, learning to be visible and choosing a new circle. And little by little I’m building a life that includes my own home, my own business, my own money, beauty, pleasure, travel, creativity, growth and love — but above all, one that includes me.

For a very long time I was a woman who knew how to be strong for everyone, and I thought that was exactly where my strength lay — until life stopped me in my tracks and made me ask, for the first time, where I was in all of it. And I understood that the worst betrayal in my life wasn’t even the one that happened to me. It was how long I had betrayed myself: not hearing myself, not trusting my feelings, putting off my wishes and always choosing someone or something over me.

Today I simply live — I feel, I choose, I make mistakes and change my decisions when I realize they no longer fit me. And most important, I enjoy life. I no longer need to become smaller, more agreeable or quieter to make someone near me comfortable, and sometimes I stop and think: God, it feels so good to be myself.

If you’ve lost yourself right now, it doesn’t mean you’re lost forever. You can come back to yourself, the way I did. I want to live a big life, and for the first time I’m not afraid to be exactly who I am. I thought that if I chose myself, I’d end up alone. Instead, I finally met the most important woman in my life — me.

Comments

0

No comments yet. Be the first — share what resonated with you.

your thoughts

I accept the comment rules. Your comment will appear after moderation.I consent to the processing of my personal data in accordance with the Privacy Policy and confirm that I am at least 18 years old. Post comment