Who Is Marcela?
Marcela entered life with every odd stacked against her. Born into poverty in Costa Rica and orphaned as an infant, her early years were defined by a profound hunger for parental love and belonging. Stepping into independence long before any child should be, she relied on sharp survival instincts as her shield, her creativity as her lifeline, and her resourcefulness as her foundation for survival.
After moving to Chicago, while quietly carrying the heavy trauma of her biological parents’ abandonment, she was recruited into an oppressive religion. It was a system that promised life everlasting and endless love but demanded absolute conformity in return.
Following the painful divorce of her parents, Marcela was left alone with nowhere else to turn. She found herself navigating absolute survival mode once again – homeless and hungry on the streets of Chicago. Seeking stability, she married an elder from the religious community, and soon after, gave birth to her child.
Marcela struggled deeply to conform to the rigid demands of the religion. Eventually, she rebelled – not out of malice, but as the only means to fight for her own freedom and the future of her child. When Marcela finally chose to speak her truth, the religious community shunned her. Cast out from the only life, safety, and love she had ever known, she was left vulnerable and completely unprepared to face the harsh realities of the secular world.
While Marcela was eager to explore life and her newfound freedom, it came with a heavy price. The grip of the religion wrapped itself around her daughter, pulling Marcela into the middle of fierce, exhausting legal battles. Marcela went undercover to access privileged information which she later used to refute the religious organization in court.
Stepping into the courtroom, she fought tirelessly for her daughter’s freedom – freedom of choice, the freedom to obtain an education, the right to vote, and the freedom to live life in her truest form. Marcela refused to let her child be silenced and oppressed by the very same system that had once oppressed her.
The Turning Point
Later in life, Marcela married again, only to find herself navigating a second divorce just as the COVID-19 pandemic hit. Facing single motherhood once more, she worked tirelessly to keep her children safe and protect their mental health, all while quietly struggling to maintain her own sanity through it all.
In a moment of deep despair, Marcela asked herself a pivotal question: “If I could do it all over again with my second marriage, what would I have done differently?”
Her answer was immediate: “I would have asked the tough questions up front. But back then, I did not know what those tough questions even looked like.”
It was at that exact moment of truth that Live TUFF and The Backward Truth Strategy were born.
Pain Transformed into Purpose
What was designed to break Marcela only developed her greatest strengths. Yet, it was her second divorce that became her ultimate breaking point. The immense loss of never truly being part of a family, combined with the crushing grief of not being able to sustain one of her own, revealed a profound truth to Marcela: the modern family system is deeply broken, yet a family is the one thing everyone truly wants and needs.
Understanding firsthand, the trauma of childhood abandonment and the deep scars of her parents’ divorce made experiencing that pain twice as an adult heartbreaking—especially because she knew exactly what her own children were going through. Yet, fueled by her deep love, Marcela transformed that profound heartbreak into a powerful vision: she realized that to build a better world, we must fix the system that our core existence depends on—the very family institution.
Marcela refused to let her past have the final say. Today, she stands TUFF to break the cycle of generational pain—equipping modern couples with the alignment, tools, and clarity they need to build unbreakable families that truly thrive.
“I am not a product of what happened to me. I am a product of pain transformed.” Marcela C. Sherwin