How I Saved My Own Life, Borderline Personality Disorder, Childhood Trauma & My Transformation
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The following podcast is a Dear Media production. Hi, guys, it's Mari and you're listening to The Pursuit of Wellness. Hi, everyone. Welcome to my brand new podcast, The Pursuit of Wellness.

Today is a solo episode with just me because I really wanted to dive into why I started a podcast and also introduce myself to anyone who's new to me and my story. My name is Mari Llewellyn. I'm 28 years old and I live in Los Angeles, but I'm clearly not from Los Angeles. I will jump into that later.

Firstly, thank you so much for listening and supporting me in this new venture. I've been creating social media content publicly since 2017, but I've always wanted to do something with my voice, as weird as that sounds. Since I was a kid, I've loved presenting and connecting with people through my voice. In school, I would fail every test but nail a presentation because I feel like that's the best way I'm understood and how I convey ideas the best.

I also feel like social media has become faster and faster. There's short form content everywhere. It's become more and more difficult for me to dive deep on topics that I really care about. I have a lot more to say than I think social media allows for and what people would assume about me. And it's interesting, the more my social media has grown, the more private I feel like I've become.

because social media is such a scary place lately. It feels like you are not allowed to have an opinion about anything. And I'm really excited to use this podcast as an outlet for me to share my opinion, hear from other people. I think it's so important to embrace change and growth. It's okay to change your mind. It's okay to be corrected. It's okay to expand your perspective. And that's really the goal with this show is

Now, why did I name the show The Pursuit of Wellness? Everyone knows I'm a fitness influencer. Actually, you may not know. You may be new. Technically, I'm a fitness influencer, but before I was an influencer, I started my brand. My brand and my Instagram page pretty much happened at the same time. So I've always considered myself more of a brand owner than an influencer, but my social media platform is definitely a huge part of who I am.

And I'm obsessed with all things wellness. And to me, the best thing about wellness and fitness is that there's always more to learn and ways to grow. I think growth and change is okay. I think social media has made us slash me feel like we need to be in a box. And I feel like I'm always learning more about wellness and fitness. And I'm constantly on the pursuit of wellness. My journey has definitely changed dramatically.

over time so many times. You know when people say you've changed and it has a negative connotation? To me, I'm like, well, yeah. Have you not changed? This is a good thing. We should be celebrating change. So I've experienced a lot in my life. I've learned a lot. And even though I have so much more learning to do, I'm so excited to be on this journey with you guys.

I thought on today's episode, it made sense to tell you guys about my own pursuit of wellness and how that has evolved over time and what it looks like now. Let's go all the way back. So I was born in Chertsey, England in 1994. I lived in Chertsey for about a year before moving to Switzerland. Now, before I tell you this story, you will notice that I have moved a lot. I think in my life, I've probably lived in like

15 different houses. My dad works for the United Nations, hence us moving around a ton. But also in my adult life, I found that I've moved around a lot, potentially because I became comfortable with that when I was a kid. I don't know. So after living in England for a year, we moved to Switzerland, Geneva, Switzerland, where my dad worked for the foreign office there. And I went to nursery school there, French nursery school for three years. I

And then ultimately we moved back to England. That's really where my childhood memories are. And to be honest, it's where a lot of like my really good memories are. I was super close with my sister, Anna. She is 18 months younger than me. And we just spent our entire childhood playing imaginary games outside. A lot of like pure...

fun. I'm half Welsh, half English. So we would go to Wales often to see my family. We would see my grandparents often. I was really blessed that I had a family that was from all around the world. Most of us are obviously British, but my mom's sister moved to Italy because she married an Italian guy. So my cousins were from Italy. We went to Italy a lot. We would go to Barbados as a family. We would go to France all the time.

Both my parents are really passionate about language, so I was hearing French around the house. My mum speaks Portuguese, Spanish, Italian. I felt like I had a good understanding of other cultures from a young age. And I also just think growing up in Europe, even though the UK is not considered Europe anymore, you just travel everywhere.

quite frequently. Like it's easier in the UK to get to France by train or get to Italy or Spain. You know, I feel really blessed to have traveled quite a lot. I was very into animals when I was a kid. I still am. Horseback riding was huge for me when I was younger, even though I was terrified of horses back then. Now I'm revisiting that, but we'll get to that later.

We lived in England until 2004 when my dad told me and my family that he had an opportunity in New York. I'd never been to America before. Let me say that. All I knew about America was friends, the TV show, and hearing that Americans all ate burgers and fries. That was the extent of my knowledge on America.

And it was really exciting, the prospect of moving. I just had no idea what I was getting myself into. I remember our last day of school in England, the whole class made me a book and I was leaving some really good friends then, but I was 10 years old. So it's not like I was so tied to where I was necessarily. So we moved to America in 2004. I was 10 years old.

The first thing I noticed about moving to New York was the culture shock. It's kind of surprising to a lot of people how different culture is in the UK versus America, particularly because I moved to Scarsdale, New York. Scarsdale, New York is a mostly Jewish town, very, very wealthy. Me and my family were neither of those things.

So I remember my first day of school just feeling like a complete alien. I sounded weird. I was calling things the wrong name. I was referring to erasers as rubbers, which obviously didn't get me very far. And kids were not particularly welcoming to me, I felt like. And I was also really shy.

I come from like an interesting childhood, which I'll get into, but I was definitely raised to be quite reserved, very polite, very shy. So I definitely didn't fit in. One thing I remember so clearly was one of the first days of school, they did a lice check and lice in the UK are very, very common. Every child in the UK experiences lice. We actually call them nits in the UK, which I don't know why now that I'm thinking about it, why do we call them nits?

I did not have lice, but I did have leftover eggs, which is disgusting. I do know this, but that was the reality of going to school in the UK. One of the first days of school in America, they did a lice check and they found the eggs in my hair. They made me stand apart from the entire class with a sticker on my chest that said, I have lice.

This was so traumatizing and mortifying for me. And it really like set the tone for my experience at school in America. So that was an interesting start. And even going into high school, I just felt so different from everyone else. It really took me years to feel better.

adapted to where I was. I was also really struggling at school. I'm not an academic person. I wasn't thriving on tests, really, really having a hard time. And I was sent to a therapist actually by my mom who handed me a sheet of symptoms of ADD and said, I think you have this. This was after a lot of like screaming arguments over tests and studying and it just being a nightmare.

So I went to a therapist at age 14 and got diagnosed with ADD, which is interesting now because I don't think that I have ADD. New York and America was really where my childhood became a lot more tumultuous in my perspective. My parents were fighting all the time. It was a very emotionally tense household. My sister and I could hear everything. We definitely heard things we shouldn't have heard, and it was never spoken about.

I also had a challenging relationship with my mom, which my followers ask me about a lot. And, you know, I think I'll get there at some point. I would love to do an in-depth episode about that. But it was definitely a lot of blowout fights, screaming. We had a challenging relationship pretty much my whole teenage years slash childhood. Eventually, my parents got divorced. I was 17 years old.

And it was challenging because I felt like even though we had this tumultuous, chaotic household, we were all we had in America. It was just me, my mom, my dad, and my sister. We didn't have the support of grandparents, aunts, uncles. It was just us. And it really felt like our family got ripped apart. And I took it really badly. I remember my sister was a bit more stoic about it. She kind of kept to herself. But for me, it really, it was a tough moment because

And I was still in therapy. I'd been with the same therapist since I was 14 at the time. So I stayed with her to talk it out. Needless to say, I was very angry. And as I was getting older, I was kind of realizing how messed up the workings of our family was and how neglectful the situation was.

Even after the divorce, I felt like there wasn't much support from my parents. It was challenging. And I think I'll do a whole episode on childhood trauma because I'm so passionate about it. And I've done a lot of work on it in my therapy sessions and I've learned so much. And I would love to do a whole episode on childhood trauma. So let me know if you guys are interested in that. You can let me know on my Instagram. But anyway, after the divorce, I was ready to get away from my house. I was angry. I was confused. I was

I kind of realized that no one was really there to help me. So I was ready to move to college and have my own life. So I went to Drexel University in Philadelphia. I studied design and merchandising and I discovered alcohol.

Yeah, I hadn't really been drinking in high school. I know a lot of people have their first drunk experiences in high school. I was not like that. I wasn't really going to parties. I definitely wasn't a popular gal. If anything, I was sitting behind the vending machine hiding from people. So when I did get to college, I was determined to make a ton of friends and I did. It was my first time feeling like I was in the cool crowd.

And I felt like I knew everyone on campus. I was at every single party. I was meeting boys. It was a whole new world for me. And I felt seen for the first time. Needless to say, I was on social and academic probation within a few months, which wasn't great. I think I had a situation where I got too drunk and came back to a dorm and got in trouble. And then my grades were really bad. That was definitely a reality check.

I would say college was like the best time in my life that turned into a nightmare. It's kind of where everything came to a head. I joined a sorority and I made a really good group of girlfriends. I was obsessed with sorority life. I would wear my letters everywhere. I lived in the house. It was a whole thing for me. I also had a couple of relationships in college that sort of were the first indicators that maybe I was different to other people.

with my mental health. It was at this time that I realized that being alone was very challenging for me. I had a hard time being by myself at any point. I was at every party. I was always down to drink and socialize because it meant that I wasn't alone with my own thoughts.

Being alone in my dorm room was my worst nightmare, so I avoided it at all costs. It was at this point that I actually met my husband, Greg. He lived in a fraternity next door, and I could see him through my bedroom window cooking every single night. And at this stage in college, no one's cooking, no one's concerned for their health. We're all ordering pizza or eating Subway. That's just it. So I was like, who is this man who's so concerned with his health? It was my first time seeing someone that was so dedicated to fitness.

Me and Greg hit it off quite quickly, but my mental health was still at a really bad stage. I was self-harming, blacking out, ruining relationships. My whole life was pretty much dictated by my emotions. And I didn't really have any goals. I was pretty...

sure that I would just be a mediocre human in my life. I wasn't particularly driven or passionate about anything. I had moments where I felt passionate. I went through a stage of event planning and I was good at design. I knew that. I was always good at art and language and writing and speaking, but I just didn't know how to harness that in an academic environment. Anyway, during this time,

I had my first self-harming experience and Greg knew about it and he was terrified. And he said, I think you should go see someone. I was still seeing the therapist from when I was 14 and she recommended I go to a psychiatrist in Philadelphia. I was diagnosed with BPD, also known as borderline personality disorder, and put on a cocktail of medications. So

I was on antidepressants, mood stabilizers, anti-anxiety. It was a lot. And I just completely lost my personality and a grip on reality. I had no idea what was going on. I made some very questionable decisions at that time. I'm lucky that none of them got too bad. I was in my final semester of college, so I was supposed to be graduating within a few weeks.

And I was failing every single class. My apartment looked like a dumpster. And I'm not exaggerating when I say that. It looked like someone out of control was living in this apartment. It was awful. And I was surrounded by people who were doing drugs and it was just getting so out of control.

I had no, like, sense of myself at this point. And I kind of realized that I needed to take a step back. So I dropped out of school as per recommendation from my advisor. My dad had to come pick me up, which...

Let me preface by saying all through college when I was dealing with self-harm and suicidal thoughts and things of that nature, I wasn't reaching out to my parents. We don't have that type of relationship. If anything, I have more so developed that later in life with my dad.

But my parents weren't really people that, I don't know, they just weren't very prevalent in my life. My dad was living in Switzerland at the time. My mom was busy with her job. So I really felt like I was on my own. At this stage, Greg and I had broken up because I was pretty much incapable of keeping a relationship at that point. I couldn't even keep myself safe. So ultimately, I moved home and...

I'm not recommending this to anyone. I'm definitely not a medical professional, not a doctor, but I came off my medication cold turkey. For anyone who has taken SSRIs, you know that's not recommended and it's very challenging to do that. It was pretty brutal and it took months, honestly, for me to feel like myself again.

I went through a really weird period of time where I wasn't myself. I was like shoplifting. The whole thing was a mess. And I honestly, when I talk about it, I feel disconnected from who that person was. I think I was just hurting really badly. I try not to speak too negatively about my old self. I'm working on it in therapy about bridging the gap between old me and new me.

because clearly I was just in a lot of pain and unsure of how to handle it. Sometimes when I talk about old me, I speak really negatively about myself and I think that's harmful. So I was definitely just hurting and looking for ways to deal with it. During this time when I was at home, realizing that I wasn't graduated, I had no plan for life, pretty much on my own.

I kind of had this realization that I was the only person that could pull myself out of this hole that I had dug myself into. And someone that I was so inspired by was Greg. Greg was dedicated to his fitness journey. He was a bodybuilder. He cooked every meal for himself. He was at the gym every day. He drank his water. He wasn't partying till 3am. He was taking care of his body and

At the time, we were starting to speak again. And I asked him, like, I really want to do this. Can you help me? So this is really where I found my passion for weightlifting, nutrition. I started to realize how much food was affecting my mood and my life. I was prioritizing habits. It started small.

started with longer walks every day and swapping out my blueberry muffin and giant iced coffee with sugar for eggs and oatmeal. And I definitely had ups and downs. Progress is not linear. So I would have days where I was like, I hate this. I'm doing it wrong. I would walk into a gym and leave crying. I was so intimidated.

Also, I should say at this point, I had gained 60 pounds plus for sure, almost without realizing because I was so unaware of what was happening in my life that suddenly I looked in the mirror and I was like, oh, okay, my body is not in a good place. I wasn't taking care of myself physically or mentally. So prioritizing habits became my obsession. Looking back,

Yes, this was a weight loss journey and a fitness journey, but more so, I was mentally incapable of living life. I couldn't even walk into a grocery store without being triggered by the cashier. My borderline personality disorder was dictating everything I did. I was crying. I was having outbursts. I couldn't handle everyone else. I felt like

I felt like everyone was penetrating my piece all the time. Self-harm was still an issue. So this was really a journey of becoming mentally tough. I wanted to be able to handle anything. And to me, the best way to start was by putting myself through a difficult workout. If I could make it through a tough workout, then maybe I can make it through the grocery store. And maybe I can make it through...

taking up school again. Maybe I can get a job. It was really about keeping my own promises and showing myself, hey, you can do hard things. That was so life-changing. So after weightlifting for a while, I ended up getting a job at Orange Theory Fitness, not because I liked the class particularly. It just happened to have a job opening. So I was waking up at 3 a.m. to open up the gym. I was bringing my Tupperware every day.

super dedicated to my fitness journey, but just wanting to better myself and make my own money. Keep in mind, I was making minimum wage and getting no commission because I could not make a sale. I ended up going back to Drexel to finish school. I graduated online. Meanwhile, I was educating myself on everything I could with fitness, nutrition. I was obsessed, particularly obsessed with bodybuilding at the time. I was following bikini competitors and trying to learn from the best. So

Ultimately, I lost 90 pounds on my weight loss journey and really found my true potential. I felt like I tapped into a part of my personality that I hadn't seen before. I found a crazy work ethic, discipline, commitment, self-value. I had never valued my body before, which if you've ever experienced self-harm, you don't value your own body. You're...

causing harm to yourself intentionally. And suddenly I was having love for myself. I wanted to put good food into my body. I wanted to take care of it. It just completely shifted my mindset and

And, um, I began posting about it on social media. My first post was November, 2017. It was a before and after, which is what I'm known for now, which is funny. And it blew up. It was getting reposted everywhere. People were asking me for my workout plan, my nutrition plan. And that's really where my career began. I turned this passion into my job. Um,

So I was still living at home at the time, running my business out of my dad's house, which wasn't ideal. So we decided to move to Colorado. This was a little bit of a random decision. I think we were ready to live life independently away from our families. And we were also really, really focused on our business. So we just wanted to go somewhere that we could focus and not have external opinions coming in.

I was still very much in my bodybuilding phase. I was bulking at the time, so I was trying to put on muscle. That whole era of maintaining, bulking, cutting, that was like all the rage at that point. Colorado was beautiful, very nice people, but it was also incredibly isolating. We knew no one there.

And it wasn't a particularly social place for people our age. It felt like everyone was in the mountains every day or kayaking every day. And it really gave me and Greg the opportunity to just lock ourselves up in the house and work. We were running Murray Fitness, which was the original Slay app, which was my first business, and Bloom Nutrition at the time. We were doing all the customer service, all the label design, all the photography. So it took up

All of our time. I was also really focused on creating content at this stage in my life. I was sharing everything. I didn't have a ton of friends, so I really viewed my community as my friends. And the year we spent in Colorado was super...

transformative for us and our business. I will say after living in Colorado for a year, we were ready to get back to real life. Greg and I moved quite quickly. We decided to move back to New York. Specifically, we wanted to live in New York City, which was a bold move after living in Boulder, Colorado. It was a big difference.

We wanted to find something where we still had access to the outdoors, mostly for our dog Lulu, who is our baby child, but also because Greg and I are quite, you know, we like to cook every night. We like to be outside. We like space, which is difficult to find in New York City. So we chose Brooklyn. We lived in Park Slope.

And we definitely found something that was right by a park, but it was still the city. It was loud. The kitchen was tiny. It was four flights of stairs. Getting groceries and going to the gym became a chore. Not to mention the snow really made things challenging. Creating content became difficult.

Bloom was really starting to take off. At this point, we launched our greens and we had our first million dollar day at this stage. And it was just me and Greg running the business. So it was kind of like, oh, we got to hire people. We need help. So we were trying to run a business. I was trying to create content, trying to stay fit.

trying to socialize everything at once. And it was a lot to handle in New York City. We did a couple of photo shoots in LA at this stage and I fell in love. I was like, oh my gosh, LA is where I'm supposed to be. I really, really want to live there. I actually found a note in my notepad from July 3rd, 2020, which happens to be Fi's birthday. Fi is my assistant and best friend, which I thought was funny.

I wrote in my notepad, it was titled Manifestation. I will move to LA even if it's temporary. I just knew that I wanted to be here. I felt like everything aligned in terms of my values with fitness and health and being outside. It felt like I was in a city where people were doing similar things to me. It was a lot of creatives, a lot of content creators. So I felt like I was somewhere that was motivational, busy, but still I could have a yard and access to the beach.

So we moved to Los Angeles a month after I wrote that note and we fell in love right away. We moved to Venice, which we're still in Venice. We've always loved Venice. We never considered anything else because we felt like we fit in so much there. Wellness is like a religion here. Everyone's into wellness. And it actually taught me so much more than just bodybuilding. I was starting to meet people who were into different things. It was definitely intimidating. LA is a lot.

Everyone here looks like a supermodel. Everyone here is a supermodel. Everyone's trying to be famous. It's a whole new scene that I wasn't used to. And I'm still today even struggling with trauma from my childhood and having a deep insecurity because of the way I grew up. And you kind of need to be confident in LA. And it's something that I've been learning and working on.

We definitely found a community of weightlifters at Gold's Gym, and that's really where we felt most comfortable. At this stage, I finally switched therapists. I was with my therapist from age 14 to 27, which is insane.

I managed to find a therapist who specialized in borderline personality disorder, but also having difficult relationships with your mom. And she worked with people who were on social media or had a following or who lived publicly, which has been really, really helpful for me. LA is really where I've begun my journey with self-love. I think I developed a lot of tools during my fitness journey

that I needed. I needed the intense mindset and the discipline to get through that fitness journey and to be able to survive what I had been through at the time, which I can go more in depth about on a different episode. But I realized I was carrying the intensity beyond my fitness journey. I was telling myself I didn't deserve to have fun. If it wasn't productive, I wouldn't do it.

I even experienced issues with over-restricting and obsessing over working out and over food because I had been so intense with myself for so long. I think my biggest fear is and was slipping back to who I was before, and I'm working on that. So as of late, my journey with wellness has been flexibility.

I'm opening myself up to new ideas. Pilates is a new thing for me. I've been horseback riding again. I've been exploring inner child work. I've been trying to show myself more love. I think my fitness journey was such a pivotal moment in my life, but I also think it made me, in a way, torture myself a little bit because...

I clung to that mindset because I thought I needed it to survive and thrive. And I've been realizing that it's okay to let go a little bit. Of course, I want to keep my work ethic. I wouldn't be here without it. I wouldn't have my businesses without it. But I'm now allowing myself to have hobbies that are just for fun. Horseback riding for me, which I've been doing for the past maybe three, four weeks, has brought me so much joy. I can't believe how

grounded I feel when I'm on a horse. No phone. It's not benefiting my career. It's not for content. It's not for my body. It's just for me. It's for me to have fun. And I feel like especially with social media nowadays, it's so important to find those things. And it doesn't really fit my brand. I've always been the weightlifting girl. I've always been the motivational girl, the one that lost the weight. But it's so interesting because I don't identify with that girl.

It's been a while since my fitness journey. I lost the weight in 2017, 2018, and my journey has turned into so much more than that. Wellness has become my priority, hence the name of this podcast. And I've just been learning so much more about inner health rather than just looking good on the outside. So I'm really excited to have you guys on this journey with me.

I'm excited to push boundaries and not box myself in the before and after girl label. I'm excited to delve deeper into topics I love so much and for you guys to get to know me on a deeper level and have some amazing guests on. I would love to hear some of your ideas for guests you'd like to see on the podcast. So make sure you go to my latest post on Instagram and comment who you want me to have on. I am here to learn. I'm here to ask questions. I'm here to learn.

I'm a little bit of a nerd when it comes to health and longevity and stress, mood management, all of it. So I would love to have anyone on here who can bring insight to the topic. I love you guys so much. Thank you for listening. And I can't wait for the next solo so we can get to know each other even more. Bye. Bye.

Thank you for listening to today's episode. Go comment on my last Instagram at Mari Llewellyn with the guest you want to see next. I'll be picking one person from the comments to send our bloom greens to. Make sure you hit follow so you never miss my weekly episodes. If you enjoyed the conversation, be sure to share and leave a review. See you next week.