How Divorce Sparked a Movement to Reinvent Marriage

I thought, well, maybe a lot of people are doing the same thing.

It's just getting married because of love. And I learned that love wasn't enough.

“You need strategy and you need to ask the right questions”

to make sure that you're with the right person. And then once you identify that you're with the right person, Marcela Sherwin is a relationship advocate entrepreneur and the founder of the Liv tough movement. She helps individuals and couples build stronger relationships

through education, greater transparency and marriage, and practical strategies that foster trust, resilience, and lasting commitment. The legislative work that I'm doing is strictly focusing on intentional commitment, intentional.

Like, I want to be with you so I want to renew my contract with you, just like a business, not a trap, because I think that's causing a lot of phobia with the younger couples of today. They see so much failure and problems and marriages

are like, why would I want to get myself a new situation? Do you think there is the idea of a perfect marriage? Perfect marriage is what you make it, is how you build it. There is no such thing that perfection and any level, but you can make it as perfect for you if you are with the right person.

And if you can achieve that, it's more about. It spans the globe. Like a super high school, internet elders. Today, Apple is going to reinvent the phone. It's not over, I'm telling how we're living your legacy podcast.

For those who live, to live a legacy. Hi, this is a living your legacy podcast with Insights Access TV, and I'm here with Marcella Sherwin. Hi, how are you? Thank you for having me, of course.

So Marcella, tell us, just a little bit about you first.

I am a legacy maker. I am the president and CEO of the Lift Up Movement, and what I'm doing is basically revamping the entire family structure as we see no way today to bring in solutions to modern-day marriages that are more sustainable and practical for couples to practice moving forward.

“So that's what I'm dedicating myself to on one part,”

and the second part that I'm dedicating myself to is to bring forth legislative changes on how the marriage laws read today. Not asking for changes in marriage laws, but asking that the marriage laws that are existing are actually brought up to modern-day marriage needs.

Okay, so that we can basically mesh the two backward truth and the marriage laws to make impact of change for sustainable marriages moving forward. Okay, lots of impact there. I guess I must start with, how did you come to do this, right?

I know your story, obviously, but let's share part of your story, whatever your comfortable with sharing, and going through all that, right? Yeah, so what inspired the Lift Up Movement was a moment between the going through a divorce and surviving a pandemic.

Okay, and understanding that reflective moment of what we're wrong, what happened in my marriage, and self-reflecting to find the answers, and what I came up was that I didn't ask the right questions. I did marry the right person because of that. Yeah, and I didn't want my kids to ever go through that,

and I see divorce rates at such a high level. I thought, well, maybe a lot of people are doing the same thing. It's just getting married because of love, and I learned that love wasn't enough.

“You need strategy, and you need to ask the right questions”

to make sure that you're with the right person, and then once you identify that you're with the right person, then your love will grow. Okay, that's great advice. As a young woman myself, especially here in Miami,

it's hard to date, right? Yes. A lot of people in my age aren't getting married. So I guess that's what your whole movement is about. Yeah.

And how old do your kids? What are you? Yeah. So my daughter, I have young kids. I have my daughter is 30 years old.

Okay, yeah, she is a licensed pharmacist today, and I have a 20-year-old son, okay, who is an electrician. And then my daughter is the youngest one, 18, that's getting ready to go off to college. So obviously the whole marriage failure is a bit concerned to me,

because they're wonderful people, and I really don't want to see them match up to the wrong person. Yeah, right? So I try to bring this forward so that they can just make more informed decisions for themselves.

It's all about having more education, so you can make the best decisions for yourself. Okay, so explain a little bit more about what you do on a day-to-day hands-on work with your actual clients, the people you work with, all that good stuff.

Yeah, so it's basically about building the strategy

on an individual level. Everybody's relationship is different. They come with different backgrounds. They come with different education levels and different needs. So it's just a matter of pivoting the strategy,

which is a framework, and then understanding what people's long-term goals are and working the strategy backward to meet those long-term goals.

but then you have every business is different

and has different requirements to reach their goals. Yeah, so it's just having the flexibility, having that understanding, and building it to the unique situation that you're trying to accomplish. Okay, yeah, very insightful.

“What are I guess major trends that you're seeing right now?”

I mean, besides people making the wrong decisions or asking the wrong questions. I think I see the trends moving in the opposite direction where people are not wanting any level of commitment. Yeah, but that also creates just so much instability

for children, because they're not going to know if their parents are going to be together tomorrow. It's not good for them to not have that's the ability that my parents are together and that we are a solid family structure. So I don't want people to, I mean, I would prefer not to see people

just be together, short-term, and then move on to the next. That's also just creates a lot of issues internally as far as not knowing where you're going to be next or who you're going to be next with. But it's more about stabilizing the relationship and really focusing on what you want out of our relationship.

And then scaling back, and so that you can find the right person for you. Okay, I'm going to ask you this question. Do you think there is the idea of like a perfect marriage? Perfect marriage is what you make it, is how you build it. There is no such thing that perfection and any level,

but you can make it as perfect for you if you are with the right person. And if you can achieve that, it's more about alignment. If you can align to the right person, then you're going to have a lot of wonderful positive experiences and experiences of growth and development with the right person.

“Okay, do you think that troubled marriages can be saved?”

Do you think they can, you know, can there be a turnaround? It was their point where it is too far. Do you suggest that people can, you know, break up or divorce? Yeah, I would recommend depending on a case-by-case basis. If there's any level of abuse or any type of where there is no negotiating to a solution,

then that may be the right course. Okay, but I do believe that you can take the strategy and apply it to the state that you are in your life and begin to build it because it will reset to what your ultimate goal is.

And if you never set down with your partner and you just enter the relationship,

weighing it, you really had no structure, no direction. So no matter where you are in the relationship, if you're like, okay, well, what is our ultimate goal? What were we trying to accomplish out of here? That would be your starting point to then building the bridge back to where you are today

and hitting the reset button on your path forward. Yeah, sometimes you do need a reset button for sure. Yeah, for sure. But I think that it's also really important for people like their investments, you know, you're really looking at investing your life with somebody else and you want to make sure

you pick the right partner. So you don't want to like throw in the towels so quickly because marriage does require forgiveness, right? And everybody's mistakes isn't a life sentence. You have to learn to know what you can tolerate, what you can forgive and what you can't.

“That's why it's so important to ask those hard questions upfront.”

Yeah, because then you have that clear understanding of the boundaries. And I think that once you have those boundaries or set in place, then I think people also have something to reflect back on. And then think twice about their behavior, so amazing. Um, I think what you said about throwing in the towel, that's like a super big theme for everyone, right?

Especially in this day and age, we have access to social media, so many people. We can meet so many people in so many places, uh, people travel more and more now. You're gonna, especially here in Miami, you can meet people from everywhere, right? Yeah, so I think a lot of people are quick to throw in the towel because they know there's something else there, you know, even if they don't want to put in the work,

it may be a little hard, uh, they're like, well, there's always another, right?

Yes, I think, I think that's a big trend. And why a lot of people don't even want to do the commitment thing at all. Or don't even want to start, right? Yeah, exactly. Yeah, I agree.

I, and I think that that's not the right approach because you're going to get to a point where flipping into between relationships gets to be too much. And you get to lose who you are as an individual. Yeah, you don't even know, it becomes almost like a chameleon effect. You're just gonna change with the next person you're with and you're gonna change to the next

person you're with and you can lose yourself in the process because there's no clear path or direction. Yeah, yeah, but I think the social media, the backward truth, takes you through those hard questions of how you're gonna manage your social media and encourages the transparency so that you can build that trust.

If you really want to be with somebody and somebody truly is committed, it's going to show you that they'll make different decisions that are favorable for both of you. Yeah. And if it's not, if it, if they're not, you think they are, the questions that are in the backward truth are going to expose that to you and see you, you know, from deception.

Okay. Yeah. All right. Lots of learning the backward truth. Yes.

I want to talk a little bit about the legislative work that you're doing.

Yes.

So the legislative work that I'm doing is strictly focusing on intentional commitment.

Intentional. Like I want to be with you so I want to renew my contract with you just like a business.

“A trap because I think that's causing a lot of phobia with the younger couples of today.”

They see so much failure and problems and marriages are like, why would I want to get myself in that situation? Yeah. But giving them that option like, hey, you can try it, you can do it this way and you also have the option to renew it with each other as you continue on your path forward or choose

like, hey, this really isn't for either of us. Now that we know each other, you know, under a marriage arrangement, maybe it's better that we go away, you know, go our separate ways without it having to destroy you and set you back 25 years financially. Yeah.

Right. That's really it's a protection for both of you. So the legislative work with the goal is to establish milestones that will make it harder for people to commit, to get married and easier to get divorced, not that it would be harder to get a marriage license, but you will have to go through some work to earn the privilege

of marriage. Okay. Yeah.

For example, having background checks, full transparency, having credit checks, full transparency,

things like that, because the conversations will come out later of, I didn't know you call a bankruptcy three times, because you didn't ask, why would I ask that? Well, it would never. Yeah. Why wouldn't you say that?

Yeah. So there's a lot of things that are hidden within those two reports that really need to be part of the conversations, of the hard questions that give you the full transparency

“of who you are committing to because everything in your life is tied to them.”

Yeah. Your credit, your reputation, your finances, your 401(k) everything is. So there is no opportunity for risk for you to lose. Really? That's the truth.

Mm-hmm. Yeah. That's a really different approach. Yeah. It's a more aggressive approach.

Yeah. But that's what happens when you live in a world with so much deception. Of course. Yeah. Well, that's very true.

Have you taken this approach yourself? Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. The top true on success.

Yes, I have. And I think that it actually brings you closer because all of those questions and doubts are not in there in your head like how, why you can plan your finances better when you're actually looking at your true money pool to your debt ratio, right? You're not just saying, well, I make this amount of money and then you're not disclosing

all the debt that you have or how much child support somebody else is being paid out, things like that. Yeah. It's like when you have full disclosure of the entire financial picture, then you really can plan things better.

Mm-hmm. Right? It's your life. You can't take it lightly. Yeah.

It's going to be a business. That's super interesting. I think, you know, just thinking about this now, just when you know someone accepts all the bad, you know, they know all the bad things about you and they still choose to be with you anyway.

Absolutely. I feel like it's a whole different level of commitment. And you just wholly accept each other, good bad, you know, what might be bad, what might get better. Exactly.

Exactly. Really good, yeah. Wow. And I think that none of that will matter when you are fully transparent when you're better.

Right? So I think that if you're honest and you're like, hey, yeah, if I open cryptocurrency because, you know, I had tons of medical bills or for whatever, I learned a big lesson. Yeah.

“That's what I mean when I say, it's not a life sentence.”

Yeah. You learned from all of those back sets and then you move forward and you do it better next time. But you have to be honest about it, right? So I think that's those are the milestones that I want to set in so that when you do commit,

you know who you're getting involved in. You know, it's like it's like picking a player's for a team. When you go to pick a team, you're looking at observing everyone who gives you. And you're going to only select the players, the potential players, they give you the highest chances of winning.

Yeah. So why would you not do that for the person that's going to be your partner in life? Of course. All right. That's the, I love the approach.

You know, it's not only about love, but it's about protecting yourself, especially as a woman. Well, yeah, for me as a woman, that's how I feel. Yeah. Um, so let's see, how did you get here? What made marriage so important to you besides, you know, what happened during the pandemic

and things like that? Um, has this, what were you doing before? What made you make the switch?

I was always writing my autobiography and just raising my kids.

Yeah. And dedicated to my career and just trying to get through those milestones in life. And when the pandemic hit, it was just my marriage broke my heart. Yeah. I broke my heart literally like my heart cavity hurt and I'd never experienced such

deep pain. But it wasn't because I missed my husband. It was because I hurt for my children. I felt like I failed them. And I felt that pain.

It was so deep that I never wanted them to experience that and I felt the obligation to protect them from that by writing down what I would have done different. And that's where the backward true strategy started to take form all on its own. It came from a moment of reflection, a self reflection of what I would have done.

If I die today, I have a brain aneurysm actually.

And so I always have to live day by day very, very carefully and manage stress and things

like that. But I knew that my day is privileged every single day. And if I don't do what I do and I don't get it out there before, it's my time to go. It's not going to get out there and that really helped me to say, OK, I can't take it that I have all the time in the world because I don't.

I could be gone in three hours or I could live another 30 years. You know, only our maker knows.

“Of course, I think that speaks to how passionate you are about this.”

Given that, you know, you may have limited time here, hopefully not. But that's given that that is a possibility and you've come to accept it. You've chosen for this to be your passion, for this to be the message that you want to leave for everyone, not only just your kids, but just to spread it to everyone. I think that's beautiful.

Thank you. Thank you. I love that. And it's truly as genuine. I want to make a difference in the world.

And even if I help one married couple or help 100, it's not about me helping them. It's about putting everything out there and forming new leaders that they can sustain the model and work the backward true strategy themselves for their future and pass it on to their children when they see that the strategy works because it's done differently. And it's done through transparency unity and fortitude.

Then that is going to give you a different outcome because those pillars are what we require and we need in this particular setting of marriage.

“And that's what I want to do is just put it out there for the winning for it to be sustainable”

and live on even after I'm gone. Yeah. Okay. Well, speaking of putting it out there, you filmed your episode today, right? Yes, I did.

So your episode will be out in a few months, but how do you feel about today? How do you feel about going forward? I mean, I know for a lot of people, this is like a very reflective process and they think about next steps, think about their paths, what they're going to do next. So what are you feeling right now?

I feel extremely motivated more than ever because I have been waiting for this moment

my entire life to be able to share my story and I never shared my story because I never

had really found the purpose of sharing it and would have just been another survival story. But when I had that moment, that epiphany in my room during the COVID, it was like, that's where I found the purpose to the pain. And when I found the purpose of the pain, that's where my healing started. It's like the purpose took over the entire pain and I didn't feel the pain anymore.

Yeah. And now I had a reason to share the story for the world because then I knew that somebody out there could benefit from it. Of course, I mean, everyone is in a relationship, right, and one way or another, we all have relationships.

I think that's something that can be applicable to anyone, young old someone who's been married a few times, someone who's still looking, right?

“I think it's great and say on how you need to be intentional with what you do.”

We all love people that we're with, right?

But it's not always about love.

We have to protect ourselves and our kids, which is your main driving force, right? Yes. That's beautiful. Thank you. We've got this up.

Where does everyone find you? How do we connect with you? Yeah, you can connect with me through my website, www.livetoff.org, and we'll be rolling out a podcast, probably by summer. Cool.

So you guys could join us and call into our podcast and share your experiences and we want to hear your questions. What's the call in? Yeah. It's a call in and we've got.

Yeah. We want audience participation. Yeah. We want to hear from the people that have stopped the backward-trud strategy and apply it and to all the feedback that we possibly get, so we can begin documenting and tracking, tracking

success. Amazing. Well, I know larger scale. I know larger scale, guys. I know larger scale, guys.

Yes. Well, that's for us. It was great. Talk to you. Thank you for having me.

Of course. Thank you, guys.