Women Like Me Stories & Business
🎧 Introducing "Women Like Me Stories & Business" - The Inspiring Business and Story Podcast by Julie Fairhurst! 🎙️
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Women Like Me Stories & Business
The Champion Within: Finding Strength Through Sisterhood
What happens when the lessons from our childhood shape our ability to face adult challenges? Theresa Campbell's journey from competitive figure skating to published author reveals the profound impact of early mentorship and female friendship on conquering life's inevitable hardships.
Theresa joins host Julie Fairhurst to discuss her contribution to the upcoming book "Beautiful, Broken, and Becoming," releasing July 25th. Drawing from her background as a community newspaper reporter and educational assistant, Theresa articulates how her youth spent training on ice provided more than athletic skills—it built the mental fortitude and discipline needed to overcome anxiety, childhood trauma, and grief in adulthood.
The conversation takes us to a lakeside reunion where Theresa reconnects with her former skating teammates. This gathering becomes a powerful moment of recognition: these women, once united by their coach Lorinda's firm guidance, had each conquered significant life challenges using the resilience developed during those formative years. Theresa's story isn't about winning medals but about the triumph of perseverance and the sustaining power of female friendship.
For anyone struggling with creative expression, Theresa offers practical wisdom from Elizabeth Gilbert's "Big Magic," encouraging listeners to acknowledge fear without letting it control their creative process. Her advice is refreshingly actionable: establish a writing routine, embrace imperfection, and recognize that vulnerability in storytelling creates meaningful connections with readers. As she shares her experience of writing about her late husband, Theresa demonstrates how personal pain, when shared thoughtfully, can become a beacon for others navigating similar paths.
The episode concludes with a compelling discussion about finding purpose in later life stages, rejecting the notion that aging means irrelevance.
Want to connect with a community of women supporting each other's stories? Subscribe to Women Like Me and discover how shared experiences become stepping stones to personal and professional growth.
You can reach Theresa here: campbelltheresaj@gmail.com
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Who is Julie Fairhurst?
Julie Fairhurst – Speaker, Author, and Founder of Women Like Me
Julie Fairhurst is a champion for women’s empowerment and the founder of the Women Like Me Book Program. Since 2019, she has published 30 books and 300+ true-life stories—at no cost to the writers—giving women a platform to heal, inspire, and reclaim their power. Dedicated to breaking generational trauma one story at a time, Julie’s mission is to uplift women emotionally and financially, helping them create better lives for themselves and their families.
Well, hi everyone, and welcome to another episode of Women Like Me Stories in Business. I'm your host, julie Fairhurst, and today I'm so excited because we have a new book coming out and it's going to be released next Friday, which I think is. Let me just quickly log yeah, it's the 25th, so July 25th, we have a new book coming out and Teresa Campbell is one of our fabulous authors, so thank you so much, teresa, for being here.
Speaker 2:And thank you for writing in the book. I really English literature so I've always been interested in books and reading and writing. I also worked as an educational assistant within schools, so I've done that for a number of years and literacy is a big thing there, so I've always dabbled in writing and I also worked before I started working at the school board. I was a reporter for community newspapers and so I've interviewed people, and whether they're athletes or business people or just anyone for the local news. So I worked at that and I did that for a number of years. So I've always been interested in stories, just like you. And where are you located? Hamilton, near Hamilton, ontario.
Speaker 1:Okay, perfect, perfect. I knew you were in Ontario somewhere, but I couldn't remember exactly where. So when you were working with the community newspaper, you were. You were focusing mainly on on community news, but the good type of community news.
Speaker 2:Well, good and bad. You know, sometimes I would cover town council meetings, sometimes I would cover on the street, looking, interviewing people on the street or covering stories for something happening in town, whether it was recreational or business. So I learned to write stories from that.
Speaker 1:Yeah for sure. Well, that sounds exciting. I don't think I've met anybody who's actually done that kind of writing and kind of reporting. So very interesting. Well, teresa, can I ask you to start? What made you want to write your story?
Speaker 2:Well, I heard about you from a friend of mine and I thought women like me was a community. That appealed to me because, like many of the women in the community, I've struggled with some childhood traumas, some anxiety, lots of anxiety and trouble with facing my fears and getting making, making progress with my writing. So I was really happy to come and join the group and and publish some stories and read all the other stories and get a feel for what other women are going through, because we are a community and we have to support each other.
Speaker 1:We do, yeah, and it it's. It's interesting because so many women, women that that write in the books and we have 353 true life stories now and they they're most of them are quite fearful to get started. But once they get started, and even with you, like you're, like you're writing in the chapter books, you're writing in the community books.
Speaker 2:I wanted to jump in, dive right in. I just thought I waited so long. I might as well jump right in, because I've had lots of stories that I wanted to tell, for example, the story that is in our beautiful Broken and Becoming book. I've had an idea for writing that story for a long time. I grew up as a figure skater as well, so I trained very, very intensely for probably 10 years of my life and I met a lot of young you know, young ladies training and we were just elementary age children when we started and late teens when we stopped and we spent a lot of years and that impacted me and that is part of the story, but not all of the story.
Speaker 2:The story is really about anxiety and fear and getting over, well, depression, bereavement, that kind of thing, and so the story was really a a launching pad for addressing those issues. Yeah, um, and and women, um, if you have a good support group and these women were my support group and have always been um you can make some progress through your, your anxiety or your grief or whatever stage you're at, fears. You can talk with these people and it's helpful. And throughout the course of this story, I have kind of an epiphany or awareness moment where I realized that these women have struggled as well, not all the same, some more than others, but they were champion material because they have overcome many hardships, many really tragic events, and they have risen above that. And how did they do that? By believing in themselves.
Speaker 1:Yes, yeah, yeah. And support from other women yes, yeah, yeah. And support from other women yes, it sounds like cause when I I've read the story. Of course, it's fabulous and and what I really got with it was it was you were a tight, that was a tight knit group. Yes, it is, yeah, yeah. And and just to be there for one another, that's right. Yeah, it's right, yeah, it's a lonely place without your girlfriends.
Speaker 2:It is. You can't face trauma, depression, anxiety, bereavement. You can't face it alone, though you might try and you might get some kind of counseling therapy, but you really need a support group of really close, tight people, and not everyone has that.
Speaker 1:No, no, you're absolutely right. Not everyone has that, yeah, yeah, which is sad. I've had quite a few ladies who have written about certain things trauma situations, and how they found that, you know, the aunties and their grannies and their girlfriends lift them up and help carry them through that. And many of them say, if it wasn't for them, I don't know what I would have done. So I do feel for ladies that have experienced and maybe are going through stuff now that they don't have that support system. Right, yeah, but there's networking groups there's.
Speaker 1:You know, I live in Chilliwack, british Columbia, and when I moved out here I didn't know a soul and I thought to myself, okay, well, and I actually really enjoyed it for about the first year, because I was winding down from a very busy business and I was a little burnt out on people, and so I thought, oh, this is so nice. But then I got to the stage where, okay, now I'm lonely and so I started looking what could I do? And I started going to networking groups and now I go to barbecues and I go for walks and it's just a fabulous group of supportive women and even though it's a business networking group, we talk, you know, if you have a personal issue, you can throw it on the table and ask for advice. It's just, women are just so helpful and they just want to help one another.
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 1:Yeah, aw Well, when you so. So when you were at the lake cause your, your story surrounds the lake and your sister is there with you.
Speaker 2:Yes, my sister. I have a younger sister and an older sister, but my younger sister trained with me. My older sister had already graduated from skating by the time we got in there, yeah. So I spent a lot of time with my younger sister and I addressed. There's a bit of rivalry, but also there's just that tension that sisters sometime have. We we we are best friends, but we can also be enemies sometimes too, because we can set each other off or trigger each other, because we're both kind of perfectionists and want to please people and want to be seen as we're doing the right thing and we're.
Speaker 2:But so we can, we can set each other off, yeah but um yeah, I have a scene in the story where we kind of you know, wrestling on paddleboards and it's supposed to be funny because it really is yes it's just sisters being sisters, yes, um and yes.
Speaker 1:And it doesn't matter if we're five or if we're 30 or 40 or 60. I know, yeah, for sure Some skaters went on and went other places, but for most of the for getting our fundamentals. We started with this coach and her name was Lorinda.
Speaker 2:Lorinda and she was old school. You get on the ice, you get to work, you've got goals. We have to make sure that we do the work that we need to do and she was loved. She was very, very, very respected. She passed away, I think in 2001 or 2002 maybe, and anyway, we've always remembered the influence that she had on us and I pay tribute to her in this story because she was. Everybody needs a coach, a mentor, and she was the one who taught us the fundamentals values of being an athlete, being a competitor and what's expected and how to deal with your nerves and how to deal with, uh, your nerves and how to deal with, um, just getting out there and trying and doing your best.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Um, so I, I pay tribute to her. Um, because what? What we've achieved? Yes, and it doesn't have to be an Olympic gold medal, no, it is basically um having having being able to accomplish things in our lives, whether it's family, whether it's business, whether it's accomplishing achievements through your work or my writing, for example, to her, but also realizing that all these ladies surrounding me at the lake have also been influenced by her and are being successful and overcoming trials and tribulations because of what they learned from her. So I think it's important that I mention her in the book.
Speaker 1:No, I thought that was beautiful, and when you were talking about her, I thought isn't that amazing that you got that from a coach, even though she wasn't being a confidence coach? Well, I guess she would be a little bit yes.
Speaker 2:She wasn't mothering you. She no, firm, yeah, that was.
Speaker 2:That is what is needed yeah, yeah you can't, um, um, be too soft as a coach. Yeah, because if you're going to, if you're going to train athletes, they have to be um, hardened, and and and not in a, in a tough, but in a. They have to have strength and confidence and courage, and and um, sometimes I struggled with that, but I also found that there were times, um, after I was finished skating, that I brought that into my um other experiences, whether I was working as a reporter or whether I was working in the school assisting some special needs student. I realized that, okay, um, I'm feeling a little tired today, but I'm going to push myself because I know that this is my goal, this is what's expected, this is what I want to do, because sometimes, if we don't push ourselves, we don't reach our potential.
Speaker 1:Yes, yes, so often. Even for myself, there's been a thousand times in my life that I wanted to stop, and just you know. But I was. There was a corner and I couldn't see what was around that corner and I always thought to myself but what if it's just around the corner? Like what, if, what? I'm after what I've been trying to achieve is just around that corner. You just don't know, and sometimes we could give up. And it's just around the corner, that's right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you're so right. So that's the point I was trying to make in the story, that is, that she pushed us to accomplish and do the best that we could and achieve whatever accolades we needed to achieve, and that carried on into our adult life.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think it's just beautiful that, if you think about all the sports and things that happen out there I mean, I know, not everyone's perfect, of course, but I would well my two stepdaughters were in baseball and soccer, and so I think it is such a confidence building and, just as you say, it gives you tools to go out into the world. That's right, yeah, and work and deal with other people, that's right.
Speaker 2:And learn to collaborate and learn to get the job done to the best of your ability.
Speaker 1:Yeah, exactly. So what would you say to a woman that might be listening to this and she wants to write a story, but she's like, oh, I couldn't write my story. What would you say to them?
Speaker 2:Read Big Magic by Elizabeth Gilbert. She wrote Eat, pray, love, but she wrote this book called Big Magic and it's all about fear and being creative, whether you're a writer or an artist of some sort, and how fear is debilitating at times. It can cause you to stop and feel afraid and feel oh no, no, I can't do it today, Maybe not, maybe not this week, maybe next week, no, maybe next month. It causes you to put things off. You almost go into fight or flight mode. You freeze.
Speaker 2:You freeze. Yeah, oh no. What if they don't like it? I've got this story. And what if, what if? What if it's rejected? Or what if people think it's really bad? She said do it anyway, it's expression, get out there. And she said ideas are magic. They're floating all around us.
Speaker 2:But, we're so busy stressing and getting worked up over other things that we miss those ideas. And she said she once had a great idea fall into her lap. For you know just, she had this idea for a book about the Amazon and she started writing it. But then something came up. She was, I don't know, maybe a year or two into the book and she, she. There were other personal matters that she had to take care of, so she had to put the book on a side. Well, didn't?
Speaker 2:Another author friend of hers, not know nothing about what she was writing, got a similar idea? She said those ideas float around and if you don't stick with them, yes, it's anymore. Yes, she worked on the book. It's not like she shared it with anybody. Nobody saw what she was working on.
Speaker 2:But another author friend of hers said you know, I'm working on this book, I've got it ready, I'm ready to publish whatever. And she said what it was. And she said, oh, that's so similar to what I was going to do. But. But she said you know, I I stalled, it's my fault, yeah. And you picked it up and you took it in a new. She took it in a different direction. But that's what happens Ideas float all around us. It's like they say with money too, it's all around you. All you have to do is wait, you know. But ideas float around you. And it's almost like synchronicities, where you'll see something on a billboard, or you see this and that, and all of a sudden you put the, you join the dots, you get little ideas and then it becomes a bigger idea. And then you go oh yeah, I'm going to write about that. That's going to be really good. And then, of course, you've got to nurture it. You've got to work at it really hard.
Speaker 2:But, you said you can work on an idea, but if you procrastinate too long, you don't finish it. Then somebody else is possibly going to, you know, the idea is going to pop into their head and they're going to take off and publish it.
Speaker 2:before you do so, you have to be disciplined. She said some days you won't feel like writing. But write a little bit. Don't stop, because the fear just gets in the way. She said, yeah, fear can come along for the ride. She said she's going to write a book. She says, okay, we're going to write a book now. Creativity can come with me and fear can come with me. But fear, don't open your mouth, Leave it alone. You can't say anything. Creativity and I are going to write this book.
Speaker 2:You can just stay off to the side silently. But, yeah, you just have to write your, your, write your book or paint your painting or create your sculpture. You, you can't go oh um, because, yeah, some of us are perfectionists, some of us are just insecure, don't believe in ourselves for some reason, and you know that we all have days where we're super confident. I could take on the world, and then another day when like, oh, I don't think I can do anything today but you just have to be disciplined, have a routine yes and routines are so important.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'm glad you mentioned that yeah, right every day and even if it's not a lot right every day, just have a routine and also breaks where you go for a walk or you do something that's enjoyable so that you can break up your day. So it's not all work, work, work.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's so important. When I did the first Woman Like Me book, it was with myself and 13 of my stepsisters I have a lot of stepsisters, stepsisters and good friends, my stepsisters. I have a lot of stepsisters, stepsisters, and and good friends and and I called them up and and we wrote the book. And when the book came out, somebody messaged me and said I just counted 165 errors in your book. Now that's what I thought. I thought, oh really. Then I went in and my first thought was wow, I can't believe that she actually sat there and counted them all.
Speaker 1:Yeah yeah, that was my first thought. And then my second thought was like, oh, and then, but it could have in my years earlier, that could have shut me down. Yeah, you could have been so discouraged and embarrassed and embarrassed and everything, and so I fixed the errors. And then the next book had less, and the next book had less, and you know, now I'm 38 books later and it's rare that I get more than one or two, I mean, when you're dealing with 50,000 words, yeah, it's you know there may be something in there, for sure, but my point in telling you this story is that I could have just went.
Speaker 1:Oh my gosh, I'm obviously not a writer, I don't have an eye for detail, that's that. But I didn't let it do that to me because I knew this was I was meant to do this. So you know I carried on to do this. So I, so you know I carried on, but, but it doesn't matter, you know. Thank you for counting my 165 errors because it helped me.
Speaker 1:It helped me go. Okay, you gotta pay more attention to what you're doing here, julie well, proofreading is hard work. Sometimes you get close to the material and you just you miss things because you're just so focused on the whole piece, not just parts oh yeah, in the very beginning I remember sending to the book designer my rough draft not my fit, not my rough manuscript, not my finished one and then she'd she'd email me and go hey, there's like a lot of mistakes in here and I'm like oh, my goodness, I sent you the wrong one.
Speaker 1:So it's like you say, it's getting a system for and, and you know, and and following that. So now I don't have. You know, knock on wood, I haven't had that problem for for a few years now because I'm very careful. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I named them different things and stuff, so, but, but, yeah, so, so we, the thing that I've found in the world, especially with women, is we look at other women and they look so perfect and they look so, you know, and I like to tell people some of those stories, because none of us are perfect and we all have to start somewhere. And so as a, you know, as a woman, it's just understanding and laughing at yourself and then saying, but I'm going to do better, I'll, I can do better and I will do better, you know.
Speaker 2:So yeah, we, we don't have to judge ourselves too harshly, especially the older we get too, I think oh my gosh, I don't look as put together as I used to. I'm not going to do Botox, so I just have to accept myself the way I am. That's okay.
Speaker 1:I read. What did I read a while ago? That our wrinkles are our wisdom. Each wrinkle is a piece of wisdom that comes to us.
Speaker 2:Yes, Well, yeah, I should have lots of wisdom now no one wants to get. Sometimes you fear that when we get older, people are dismissive because they maybe not see the value or maybe think we're as wrinkled in our brain and memory as we are on the outside.
Speaker 2:But no, I'm not as wrinkled in my brain as I am on the outside. I can still write and I'm still very active. I still go skating with my friends, I still go hiking. I believe that we have to stay active in our life or we lose our mobility, we lose our you know, our ability to take care of ourselves. We don't keep moving.
Speaker 1:That is the key, and also about because I believe that, as we get older, we've lived through so much and so we should. You know, we have those things. How can we help other people with our wisdom? What can we do? Is it with books? Is it with coaching? Is it with what you know? What is it exactly that we can do? And so and so I think sometimes people will think, oh well, I'm done, I've retired, what do I? The kids are gone. I guess I just hang out, watch Oprah. But but, there's, there's another path for us, and it's just again getting past the fear and saying, well, okay, well, what can I do now with this next season of my, of my life?
Speaker 2:That's right, and I do want to be productive. I don't like sitting to watch. I don't sit and watch movies. I watch movies once in a while, but I can't sit on the couch very long. It just doesn't work for me. I need to be doing, you need to be doing, yeah.
Speaker 1:Well, I can sit on the couch at night and watch some of those brain-dead Netflix shows, but other than that.
Speaker 2:I'm with you. I'm a doer. I do like to keep myself occupied and engaged with purpose. We all need purpose.
Speaker 1:Yes, yeah, for sure, yeah. Well, teresa, I have just loved talking to you, thank you, and I'm so excited because, teresa. So what people might not know is that when we do the chapter series, we have a group of ladies in a private group, a private Facebook group, but none of them know what each other is writing about. So in the next couple of days, there'll be some marketing materials going into the group and, all of a sudden, all of the ladies are going to get a full view, or a peek anyway, of what the other stories are all about. I always feel so blessed because I get to read every one of your stories and I know every story that's in the book. So it's it's super, super exciting, so I'm looking forward to reading them too. Yeah, yeah, it's. Oh, you're gonna love it. Gonna love it, okay. So was there anything else that you would like to pass along to any of our, any of our people that are watching or listening before we go?
Speaker 2:Oh, I don't know. Just that. Keep you know, keep doing your art, keep writing. If you have a story to tell, put it down on paper and don't worry about it if it's perfect or not. Now talk to someone who knows a little bit about writing.
Speaker 2:Get help from Julie. I know you have places online that they can go on and get some guidance. But learn how to put your story together, because once you share it I know, even writing my story I thought, oh, I don't really want to share some of these moments because I'm thinking about my late husband and I don't like to put it out and you know, but it's okay to make yourself a little bit vulnerable. It's okay to say you know, but it's okay to make yourself a little bit vulnerable. It's okay to say, you know, you're stuck in a thought loop where you're kind of remembering and you're stuck and you're feeling sad because you think, oh, you know he's gone and you can't be here at the lake, and but it's okay, cause that's all part of the story and it's okay to be vulnerable.
Speaker 1:Yes, yeah, yeah, and by sharing that there's a for sure, a woman out there experiencing the same thing and hopefully she gets gravitated to the story and she reads it and gets some comfort.
Speaker 2:And hopefully she has friends like I do that are with you no matter what.
Speaker 1:Exactly, exactly. Well, teresa, thank you again. So I'm going to put in the detail section of our video, I'm going to have a link to our new book and so if anybody's interested, they can get it. And and also there is, we don't have any contact information for you, but that's okay. That's okay. Information for you, but that's okay. That's okay. So people can always just get a hold of me. If there's anything that you want me to pass along to Teresa, I'd be happy to do that for you. So, yeah, so, thank you again, teresa. I appreciate that, and everybody, we'll see you again on our next episode of Women Like Me Stories in Business. Bye-bye, thank you, bye.