The Podcast · 30 October 2026 · 42 min
Emotional healing from childhood trauma and shame | Anne Peshka
Content note: this episode includes a discussion of childhood abuse, incest and addiction.
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Why do some of us carry shame for what happened to us, and how can it begin to loosen? Emotional healing can begin when we start to see that what happened to us isn't who we are.
In this episode of The Stone in My Shoe, Debbie speaks with Anne Peshka, author of Trauma Recycled, speaker and certified professional coach. Anne names the Stone she carried for years: the belief that she deserved what happened to her and was worth no more than the weight she had to bear. She talks about being adopted, growing up in an abusive home, and starting adult life filled with shame.
Their conversation moves through childhood trauma, self-worth and identity, and what began to change when her young son looked at her as though she could fly, a therapist handed her one book, and she realised she gets to choose who she becomes. Anne talks about retraining her inner critic, giving herself grace, journaling and learning to trust her intuition, and about the gifts she found inside her hardest experiences.
She also shares how she left a marriage that wasn't right for her and started a new business in her mid-50s, finding a resilience, authenticity and sense of midlife possibility she once believed was for other women.
What you will hear
Why shame can feel like what you deserve, and how Anne began to see it differently
How childhood trauma can shape what we believe about our worth
Why Anne believes trauma ends the moment the danger passes, and what it meant to start choosing again
How self-compassion, journaling and retraining her inner critic became part of Anne's emotional healing
Why Anne believes our intuition is never wrong
How she began a new life in midlife and met "the person that I always was but never knew"
If you're the one who copes, who keeps everything going and has never been asked if you're alright, this conversation offers a gentle place to begin: with curiosity and compassion rather than judgement.
Read the full transcript
So if I was walking with a stone in my shoe, I really did believe that was, that's just my cross to bear. That's just, that's what you deserve. That's really what I felt. And then as I began to discover support groups and therapy and I dove deep into reading books and trying to do anything that I could, I began to realize that things happen and they actually stop. So you get to a point where you're like, wait a minute, I'm not still being abused. Why am I acting like I am? So this is on me. I get to choose right now whether or not I want to continue acting like a victim or I'm gonna stand up and own me. And that was a big shift for me. That actually didn't even start happening
until I was in my 40s. I'm Debbie Thompson and this is a stone in my shoe podcast. Like a stone in your shoe, we all carry things that quietly shape the way we walk through life. Through honest conversations and powerful stories, we discover the wisdom that helps us understand ourselves and walk a little more freely. And today we're gonna be talking about what happens when you're the capable one, the one that everyone leans on, the one who just gets on with it and nobody ever thinks to ask if you're all right. Well, we're talking about being so good at coping that you mistake surviving for living and about a whole life built on being needed,
useful and strong. And what it finally takes to say, this doesn't feel like my life anymore. If that's you, stay with us. And I'm delighted to introduce today's guest, Anne Peshka. She's the author of Trauma Recycled, a speaker and a certified professional coach. Anne knows what it takes to rebuild a life that finally feels like her own. And this is at any age. She brings lived experience and coaching training to shame, resilience and personal agency. In her memoir, she writes openly about adoption, abuse, addiction and homelessness and the choices that changed the direction of her life.
Her belief is simple. We can't change what happened to us but we can choose who we become. Welcome, Anne. Oh, thank you. Thank you. It's a pleasure to be here. It's lovely to have you. And I love that belief. Simple but profound. We can't change what happened to us but we can choose who we become. I think we forget that. I think that, I don't think that. I know for myself, I was never raised with empowerment that I was powerful enough to make my own choices. I was raised that like a dictatorship but as children often are, do as I say, not as I do. And then you grow up and you become an adult and you start to make decisions but are they really ultimately ever your heart driven choice
or are they the ones that you're guided along to pick? And that's such an important one, isn't it? Is which of the beliefs are mine and which were handed to me? Yeah, and just stepping back. Absolutely. And that really is, does require that. I love how you just said that, step back. Really think about it. So simple, right? It honestly, I know but when you're in the moment and you're in the grit and you're in the messy middle, you're like, how did this come about? How did I get here? And then we all have to accept the fact we are where we are because we chose to be. And that's a harsh truth. That was very hard for me to accept that all of my choices,
because I would have the excuses, right? I didn't choose to be in a bad relationship. I didn't choose for him to be mean to me. I didn't choose yet what I didn't understand was the choices that I made for me brought me to the places where I ended up. We're looking forward to going through that. But before we begin, I'd just like to ground this and frame this for the women who's listening. What do you hope she takes away from your story today? The biggest gift I think a woman could ever give herself is identity and really honoring who she truly is and who she strives to be because we still all have that perfect child inside of us
that had those dreams and those beliefs. We really did believe when we were little kids that if we wanted to fly, we could. If we wanted to become a ballerina, we could. If we wanted to be a professional football player, we could. Little kids believe in themselves. And if there was one gift that we could get back is that who are we? Our true identity is something that's so often lost and we don't even know how to get back there. Yeah, I love that, our true identity. Because I think you're right, women at our age, we've got so much wisdom behind us and we've still got so much life. And we've got this amazing opportunity
to put these two things together and create something that is authentically ours. Yeah, because we've worn the titles, right? We've worn the labels. And perhaps it was daughter, sister, mother, wife, caregiver, there could have been, there's a number of different labels that we all could carry at any one point. And if you stop and you, I love this exercise, this is one of my favorite exercises is I will ask people, you're introducing yourself to a complete stranger. When they say, what do you do? Take your job title out of it and now try to introduce yourself. And that is a struggle for a lot of people because their identity is locked into what they do, not who they are.
And what hats they wear, you're absolutely right. And I remember doing this for the first time and I'm going, I'm a mom and I'm an accountant and I'm always a teacher and a counselor. And no, who are you? And I'm like, oh, and then I'm like, I'm compassionate and kind and uplifting. And then you have to go, you have to search for that. But it is wonderful because it actually changes your identity. But before we get going, I just wanted to find out a little bit more about you. Who are you in this season of your life and what feels the most important to you, Anne? Oh man, who I am now is the person that I always was but never knew. It's like I introduced myself to me for the first time in my fifties, I'm now 60.
And it was literally less than six years ago when I completely just put a hard stop to where I was and I just moved down a path that was truly innately me. And the freedom that has given me in my soul is beyond words. I can't ever describe the words because it has brought me by being innately who I am in carrying the way that I do. It has also brought these amazing gifts that I never even knew existed. And I've been able to utilize those gifts to develop a life that I would have once, never in a million years, dreamt that somebody like me had a right to live it. Those were for special people.
Those lives were for the chosen. They were for the wealthy. They were for special, just special women, not for women like me. And so what that has given me, learning to give myself a place in my life was not easy because I had always put everybody else first, a young mom, the oldest of eight kids. So you've got these roles that you've got to perform under, right? And then you get overlooked. There's just no way about that. There's no way to really, there was no way for me anyways, I didn't have those tools to stop say, wow, who is this woman underneath here? Why is she such a fighter? Why is she doing all of this? And we will dig into that because the things that we think are our greatest superpower can also be the thing
that's dragging us down the most, carrying those two. But if you had to introduce yourself to me now, because you said you had the freedom to say, who am I? How would you do that? The first thing that comes to mind, I am so incredibly grateful that I gave myself a shot. I am so grateful that I trusted me because that was the secret this entire time in my whole life, if I had just trusted me, because in here we have this most amazing, call it a machine if you will, but it's called intuition. It is never, ever wrong. And when you can connect to that part of yourself, your choices change. The way you look at things change,
it's magic and so grateful is exactly how I would describe myself. Beautiful. So let's take you back to the stone because it wasn't always like that. You weren't choosing for yourself, you weren't choosing from this place of intuition. If you had to describe your stone, how would you do that? What would you call it and describe it? If I go back to my younger years, I'm gonna describe my stone as I deserved it. I wasn't worth anything more than the person that had to bear the stone. That's literally how I felt about myself. This is where you started. This is what you've got to carry. There's a stone there, deal with it, kid. That's how I felt about life in general.
That's definitely how I felt about the stone. And then as I moved through life, I never eliminated the stone in my 30s, 40s. It was like, deal with it, might hurt a little bit, but it's okay, it's there. And that's how I describe like carrying trauma. It's like, oh, this stuff happened to me, but you know what, that's okay, I can move through life. And I carried and then all of a sudden I realized that all along, I was carrying gifts that my experiences and trauma gave me. That I never realized were there or were so powerful. And that was, that's the stone to me now, it's an option. It's an option and it's my duty to say,
okay, I'm feeling a stone, I don't like it. And it's up to me to remove it or I'm gonna keep it there. I realized I had that power because I used to look to others like it was like extenuating circumstances or I thought other people were smarter than me. They knew my life better than me. So if somebody said, Anne, I think this is what you should do. I would go, oh yeah, okay. Cause you wrote the manual on Anne, I'm gonna believe you. And I followed that. I didn't give this intuition any chance. I didn't know it existed, honestly. And you've said some really important things then, some of the words that really jumped out at me
were endure and carry. And that sounds so heavy. And I think so many people just get on with it. Swallow some concrete, harden up. All those things is just get on with it. And what's really interesting is becoming so good at surviving. And I don't know about for you, but things harden and your intuition hardens and it's about going through the motions. I don't know, where did this feeling start of I don't deserve it. I need to, this is just how life is.
You're stuck, girly, get on with it. Oh yeah. You're not special. So this is your life, get on with it. Where did those thoughts and patterns first come from? And then how did they develop in your early years and your teen years? Just take me through how that stone got stronger and bigger and yeah, let's start there. Absolutely, yeah. So I started as an infant at four years old. I was adopted by a couple. They couldn't have children. And it went on that I was going to be the oldest of eight children. They adopted three, myself, another daughter and then a son. And then they had five natural children in a row. So this is a couple that took me many years of hard work and therapy to realize
that this was a couple that brought some really poor tools to the table. They weren't evil people. They just had some very bad tools. So it was a very abusive life for me. And when you're raised one with adoption, now you're already starting out really feeling like nobody wanted you. So they have discarded you. And you got picked up by a family that was really horrific. Like, how good are you? So that is because children cannot process trauma. Children do not know how to say, you know what, let me see, it's not about you. Kids just can't do that. You take it on. So I lived like that for my whole life. And then as a teenager, I went out on my own.
But when I went out on my own, I had zero good tools and I absolutely hated myself. I literally did not want to live and I had made a couple of attempts. So I started my adult life feeling like the lowest of the low. Like I was so filled with shame and so filled with all of those horrible feelings that children take on that you don't, you can't articulate what it was. But I really felt that poorly about myself. So if I was walking with a stone in my shoe, I really did believe that was, that's just my cross to bear. That's just, that's what you deserve. That's really what I felt. And then as I began to discover support groups and therapy and I dove deep into reading books and trying to do anything that I could,
I began to realize that things happen and they actually stop. So you get to a point where you're like, wait a minute, I'm not still being abused. Why am I acting like I am? So this is on me. I get to choose right now whether or not I want to continue acting like a victim or I'm gonna stand up and own me. And that was a big shift for me. That actually didn't even start happening until I was in my 40s. But it was just a long course and not to make an excuse that I'm a single mom with two children. And the middle child, I had place for adoption because I was just absolutely in zero shape to be taken care of at the time, a three year old and a newborn. So I made that choice.
Then I went on and I'm just muddling through motherhood as best I can because I honestly had zero tools, right? So I'm trying to develop tools, not realizing that I'm developing tools. And there was no woman that was there for me that was like, hey, Ann, you're doing a great job or try this. And I didn't have that kind of support. And I think that to get off on a little sidetrack here, I think that women need to understand how incredibly important they are to the younger generations because younger generations do need that wisdom and that love and that guidance, not telling them what to do, but love them enough to see them. And that's something that had I had that, that just would have felt so good.
So as I moved through and I got to a point where I was like, I own all of this. This is my story. But it doesn't define who I am. And it really was, I can never really articulate the exact word of the feeling, but when I started to put all of this together, I just felt like I had this new opportunity on life. Like I was this new person moving forward because I was able to leave that desperate Ann behind. It wasn't serving me. It wasn't serving my kids. It wasn't serving anyone. And it was my choice. Well, there's so much in there, isn't there? And having no skills brought forward from your parents
or your, excuse me, having no skills brought forward from having loving parents and many people in that situation, but having the curiosity, and I wonder if it is curiosity that got you going to therapy to see if there was another way because it's, you've got to be curious and then you've got to be courageous because when you're curious, it opens up so many things that you have to walk through. And I'm sure that much of your journey was very challenging to unravel all these things and go, it's my story, I can choose. Getting out of this happened to me too, I can choose.
How was that for you? Because that is a journey that is filled with ups and downs and one that some people still want to do because it's too hard. Can you talk me through that? Absolutely. It was when I pregnant, homeless and using drugs and drinking and I'm pregnant. It was at that moment where I was like, completely shocked me that I got pregnant, which is crazy, right? But you're sitting there going, whoa, how did I do this? And then once I made the decision and I moved on, my little son, now I've got this three-year-old now, we're still homeless, right? And he's looking at me like I'm something amazing.
He's just the mom. And I'm like, oh my God, he thinks I can fly, right? He thinks I'm Batman and all these cool people all put together and I'm really a loser is how I'm looking at myself. But it hit me that if he thinks I'm worth it, maybe I am. And that was what propelled me forward. So it started with somebody else believing in me that depended on me. And then I have my second child or my third child and a few years later, obviously and he thought I was amazing. And it was really at that age. So I'm like, what, 26, 28 years old before I finally find a therapist who introduces me to a book about incest.
And I'm like, oh my God, other people have this? That literally like I was living under a rock. This is way before Facebook and internet, right? So you're only hearing things that you allow yourself to hear and nobody talks about that stuff. Nobody talks about that. So now I'm learning I'm not alone. Thank God I'm not alone. It really that was like, that was why. So that was my defining moment. Those things there all layered in together knowing I wasn't alone, knowing that the shame was a choice to carry, knowing that the things that happened to me didn't happen because I was a bad kid. They simply happened and they also stopped. So trauma ends the moment the danger passes.
I had to embrace that because I could continue to carry that crap for the rest of my life and be a victim or I could stand up and go, you know what? This is my story. And I get to write how it goes now. And that, thank God for that therapist that gave me that one book. It was one book. And it just started this massive, massive project of mine and project Dan, right? I could not instill to this day I cannot get enough self-help books, podcasts. That's all I fill myself with. And thank you for sharing that, Anne. And it's so true that once you stop the process of unraveling and knowing that it's not defined you as a person,
it's what happened to you. And it's the meaning that you made from that. And then it's all the stones that you carried. I'm not good. I'm shameful. There's something wrong with me. I'm unlovable, which is absolutely not true. But you make the meaning from the event that happens. Yeah. And isn't that beautiful that the love of your children who saw something in you that you just couldn't see then was the propelling thing. Plus it probably took you to that therapist. My question to you is, at that point, what was your intuition telling you? And how much of it were you able to actually listen to? Oh, it still was fighting me because that belief system was rooted.
So it was still filled with shame. And I was actually, I would like test people. I'd go to the therapist and I'd share my story and I'd go, I know she's going to get rid of me. I know she is. I know she is. I know she is. That's what I was saying in my head because I'm like, I don't belong here. I don't belong here. It's only a matter of time because it was so deeply rooted in me that self-hatred, that self-doubt, that self-incrimination, that this is all my fault. You're worthless. You don't deserve all those things. That was hard in there. That was really hardened. So this was not like a magical, oh, wow, I'm this new chick now. That didn't happen like that. It was a lot of hard work. It was retraining my self-talk loop in my head. So the loop that used to go on, I needed to literally erase and reprogram.
And that was a tape recorder in my hand saying affirmations over and over again. That did not happen overnight. So it was a battle that I had, but I had to recognize that nobody was coming to save me. Nobody, it's nobody's job to save me. If I wanted to have a different life and I wanted to be a different mom, that was on me. Nobody owed me that. My dad didn't owe me that because he hurt me. My mom didn't owe me that. That was my choice. So those were the hard truths that I needed to really understand. And it took some time. It took time to get there because you've spent all that time growing into this human of self-doubt and just really so desperate
that it doesn't come, you don't come out of it like that. There's never a magic bullet. It's the small choices that you make on a consistent basis. And even when it's hard and it gets, but being compassionate as well and knowing that you're doing the best that you can and getting back on the horse because it's like any change, you're going to, and fail, fails are all word because that's not the word, fail is when you give up, but you're going to fall off the horse and then get back on again. That takes a huge amount of strength and courage and inner, I'm saying inner strength, but also maybe a bit of a guiding light because some people listening go, wow, you have been through so much.
Like your trauma, it's not one thing. It's so many things compacted. And yet you have the strength, the courage, the resilience. I don't know what else was out there. Where do you think that came from? When we come into this world, we are flawless. We're perfect. We're perfect humans. Our heart is what leads. When you watch a little kid, their heart is leading. It's not any negative emotion that's leading. It's all love, pure love. That's the root of all of us. And when I started to give myself grace, that was hard because I never thought that I deserved to have a second chance.
Give yourself some grace and it's okay. All right, you made a mistake, but look what you've done with it. And I really, all those moments that I sat with myself and I reflected and I journal like a mad woman and I would make myself write down, even if it was only two things about myself that were good, write them down. And it just started, it was just such a magical journey. I would never want it to be a magic bullet because I would have missed the beauty in between. And that's the beauty in between, that whole journey of growth and self-love. I believe that it comes rooted whether somebody believes in a higher power, whatever it is that they may call it,
we come as a higher power, we are a higher power. That's never taken from us. We just often forget that it's there or don't know that it's there, but it's there. That deep belief, that love was there ready to come out. As you chipped away on all the crap that was around you, that just emerged and emerged. And what you said earlier was that all the things that have happened to you and so many, the way you believed about yourself, what happened is so traumatic, but what you said was that there was some things hidden in there, there was some gems for you to learn about yourself, it's kind of the trauma to truth.
What were some of those gems that you just had to chip away at to see? I never realized that they were there. It took me some time to really uncover why was I so good at customer service? I excel at customer service. I am so eager to help somebody have a better experience than the one they're having. And I don't mean people pleasing. I don't mean putting myself as a doormat letting people step on me. I don't mean that at all, I'm pretty firm on that. If I can be kind and I watch somebody smile, that absolutely triggers me like nothing else. I love that, that will fill my heart. Watching somebody else accomplish something
or smile in pride at themselves or someone they love floats my boat like you can't imagine. That didn't just happen. That is part of what I experienced because it was so far and few in between that I got to feel that I thrived on it. I wanted somebody to tell me I was good. I wanted somebody to give me a great tip because I did a great job. I was a limo driver for 30 years. So I depended on gratuities. I depended on tips. But more than that, I depended on thank you so much for making this night special. Thank you so much. That to me was worth more than any dollar ever could be. That was a gift. That was a gift.
If I had not experienced what I did and didn't have such a deep driver to be that person to make someone else's life better, I wouldn't have that. Do you know what I mean? Oh, absolutely. I absolutely do know what you mean. And it's because it was what I'm hearing from you is it was because it was so few and far between when that your affirmation came or thank you, I see you, I value you. It was like, whoa. Whereas I think many people who get it on a consistent basis don't see the value of it. Exactly. Yeah. And so that became your superpower to look out for people. And as you said, just make your experience better. And it does give you a bit of a super stuff
but it came from this place of hard knocks and hard learning. But then when it happens, when the trauma happens, the truth is that much bigger. You know if it's something little on the other side and not necessarily always, but that's the way the bigger. And that's the hard thing to hold but it's moving that experience from this dark place of shame and not good enough and to this place of love and light. And that's what I can really feel from you is just reframing with a different lens, a lens of love and belonging and from the lens of victim and all the crap that you believed about yourself.
Exactly. And I really admire you for that because that is a journey. And what I'm also hearing from you is getting from there to there is amazing. But it was all the learning along the way. That was where a lot of the magic was. Yeah. Yeah. When you open yourself up, right? When you come from a place of no matter what it is, no matter trauma can be a hurricane, right? No matter what it is that you've gone through in life, if you can open yourself up to going, wow, you know what? I'm here for a reason. I might not understand what it is yet but I'm gonna connect with me and I'm gonna move forward from that place. You cannot fail.
You cannot fail. You really can't because it's true and it's honest. It might take a minute. It might take a year. It might take five years. But when you sit there and you go, you know what? I am this beautiful human that is here intentionally. I wasn't an accident in the world's eye, in the higher powers' eye. I am intentional. What is my intention to do with me? Because it's not dress rehearsal. In my next life, I might be a frog, right? I don't know if I'll be a frog but I could be anything. I don't know that I'll even be anything. And that's not for me to decide. All I have is right now. I do not have to know. And how do you stay in your intuition when you first started connecting to it? I'm intrigued to know what it first felt like,
how you nourished and nurtured that relationship and how it shows up for you now. I used to, back when I was a child, I used to intentionally take myself out of a situation and put myself in a tree. My body might be in this place but my mind and my heart aren't. And as I started reading books and I started going through the movements of therapy, I reminded myself that I was able to sustain and move through some really horrible things. And I did it in the way that I knew best by taking care of me. Now that's what worked for me as an eight-year-old, right? What I understood about that
is that I still had the power to choose where I was except now I could choose where my body was. I could move my body out of situations that I knew here didn't feel good. Because we all know when we've got that boyfriend or we've got that relationship that's not jiving right with us, we will make excuses, oh, he'll change. Oh, it'll get better. Oh, I'm just being sensitive. Right here is knocking. It's going in, hello, listen. Listen, something's happening right now that's not jiving with you and you know it, pay attention to it. So those were really pivotal moments in the beginning when I used to notice that. And I would recognize and start to pay attention when even danger, which is another gift from trauma,
I am very hyper-vigilant. I can feel if someone's angry and they walk in a room and they're a mile away from me, I'm gonna feel that energy and I'm never wrong. I'm never wrong. It might not be what the anger that I know, but I know that there's some kind of energy happening there that is not good. And it doesn't mean I run from them. It means that I say, hey, there's an antenna up here. There's something going on. You're aware of it, pay attention. And that's what, those were the things that I built not realizing it. So being able to sense somebody's mood and being able to feel loneliness, I can feel loneliness as quick as I can feel anger because I felt it. And you just start, you're tuning in to something that you have that is so incredibly magical
if you've not found it yet. But we're never wrong. And how, because that intuition is always there as you said, you were born with it. And when you were younger and in those younger days until you started doing the work, the intuition never went. That you perhaps didn't connect with it or couldn't hear it. Now it is so much part of your life. I'm interested. I'm curious what was the, what was the, and it's never one thing because it's always a journey but what were some of the major things for you to, because it was always there to really see it and really trust it. Yeah, I would find myself in situations where, so I got married in my mid 40s for the very first time. I raised my children, they were off on their own and I got married.
And I knew that it wasn't here. But I was like, yeah, but, yeah, but he's a good guy. Yeah, but everybody likes him. Yeah, but we all have our faults. Yeah, but you know what? You're gonna have a great life with somebody so it's not perfect. Neither are you. I started doing that. I started doing that stuff and I end up and I get married and I'm not happy. Neither one of us are happy, but I stay in it because the world, our society, our friends, everybody's like, oh, come on, how bad can it be? Just deal with it, it's okay. So it's not that bad, he doesn't hit you. Those kinds of conversations start happening and it was literally, and I was getting beat down emotionally after I had spent so much time
putting myself up. I was getting beat down emotionally because it was just a dysfunctional marriage. Not to, I'm not shaming him, it takes two, right? But it was not healthy for me and I knew it. I could feel it. And it really took COVID. Honest to God, that's exactly what happened is I'm sitting there when the whole world just completely freaked out and nobody knew what was happening and we all are running around frantically watching the news thinking we're gonna die, we gotta buy toilet paper. It was so incredibly scary to me that I remember sitting, I was sitting on my porch one afternoon and I'm like, this is the most powerless I have ever felt since I was eight years old. And I'm done. I am done, literally done. And I just said I'm filing for divorce.
I had just gotten my license to sell real estate because I was bored. I had no intention of building a business with it. I didn't even know anything about real estate. But I was like, you know what? That's my vehicle. That's what I'm doing. I'm gonna divorce you. The first house I sell is ours and we're done. And of course he laughed at me, right? Oh please, you're never gonna do anything like that. Look at your mid fifties. Who's gonna start a business in their mid fifties and in an area they just moved to and they don't know anybody? I am. And I took all those gifts that really were, for the most agree, quite undeveloped. And I said, you know what? It's sink or swim. I've been through some hard stuff in my life and I'm gonna tell you something, what? It cannot be harder. It can't be harder. What I'm gonna go through right now, I'm resilient. I can read people.
I know exactly how to take care of people. I'm turning this thing into a machine. And I immediately, within a year, I've six figures that first year, second year, third year. It was me here that did that. And had I not recognized that desperate feeling of powerlessness once again and stood up and believed in this, I would still be in that marriage going, yeah, but it's not that bad. It sounds, from what you're saying, is that there were various steps in this process. One is unshackling all the rubbish around you. But this sounds like a big step up in inner power.
I have talked about the trust. I talked about self-love. But actually, I am now embodying it. Yes. And you just, you took everything that you'd learned and more, and all the experiences, all the crap. And you pulled it into this huge, I'm not gonna call it a superpower, but it was a superpower. Because all those gifts and skills that you had and the belief, and so many things from this little girl who believed she wasn't lovable, there was somehow she was flawed to, it's just such a beautiful story. And I can see it's almost, it is a new life, but not just a new life of so much wisdom,
courage and light. And it's just beautiful to witness that. Thank you. Thank you. It was really, it was quite magical, honestly. And that's what brought me to write my book. I'm like, you know what, I'm sharing this. I am gonna show up as a woman I wish I had. I wish I had somebody like me that wasn't afraid to go, hey, you know what, this is what happened to me when I was younger, but this is what I did. I was actually, I was listening to Brené Brown on shame. Oh yeah. And she's just so fabulous. And just, shame is one of those things we want to hide because we feel flawed. We feel that there's something wrong with us. And when we bring it into the light, as you said, we're not flawed. It's experiences that happen to us.
It's beliefs that we made from it. None of it is true. And if we could just bring it into the light, it loses its grip on you. Yeah. And they've got this freedom. Isn't that funny how when you can really look at shame as an accessory that you don't have to wear? But nobody could have convinced me of that when I was younger because it was my accessory. It was my wardrobe. Yeah. And it probably kept you safe in some way and strong when you were going through all those things. And this is the thing is there was a time when whatever the stone was that kept us safe. But as soon as that was over,
it's recognizing we don't need it. And we don't need that stone in our shoe anymore. We can remove it, we can chisel it away. And some of the stones are big and they just can be broken down like you did over years into tiny little pebbles. And then it's the way you walk through life, the way you see yourself, the way you believe and trust in yourself, the way you take those steps, those brave steps. It's extraordinary. And I bet your shoes now, you're running up that mountain. But you know what? I wanna bring people with me. Yes. I want to, I want other women to be able to stop, pause and go, wow, you know what? I've got magic in me. I'm not done yet. You know what I mean? Who in their right mind at 55 years old
starts an entirely new business they don't know anything about in an area where they have zero support? A woman that's got that magic inside. And that magic is built over years of wisdom. So we mustn't discount what has happened to us and get stuck in it. We must use it and take the learnings and the wisdom from that. But just before we finish, if you could speak directly to the person who's listening to this, if she only remembers one thing from your story today, what do you hope she takes away with her? Your story matters. It matters. Every single bit of your story matters. Even the parts that you think are the most horrendous and that you could never share with anybody, it matters.
That's beautiful. That's beautiful. Thank you so much for your time and links to Anne's memoir and all her work and how to get hold of her are all in the show notes below. And if you're the person who's really good at coping and what you've listened to today, if there was a moment when you recognize something in yourself, just stay curious because sometimes listening to someone else's story helps us finally see our own. And if you're curious about the stone in your shoe, there's some resources on our website and the link is in the show notes. Thank you so much for listening today.
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