Women Like Me Stories & Business

Lea Abram - Navigating Identity Loss, Loneliness and Grief

• Julie Fairhurst • Episode 177

Share episode

Send us a text

The ground can vanish in an instant. When Leah Abrams’ 46-year marriage ended without warning, she fell into a full-body grief that shattered identity, routine, and the story she thought she was living. What followed wasn’t a dramatic comeback—it was the tiniest of choices, repeated: notice the sun on a pine, call a friend, take a breath. 


We sit down with Leah—life coach, grief guide, circle facilitator, and founder of Rise Well—to explore how divorce grief extends far beyond a signed document. 

She names the hidden losses many carry in silence: a home sold, a community scattered, a career halted, the family unit reshaped. Leah explains why healing must be trauma-informed and whole-body, tending to the physical, emotional, energetic, mental, and spiritual layers that store shock and memory. 

Lea’s story is also about belonging in a lonely age. She builds “sudden villages” through online circles—Mindful Monday to begin with intention, Thankful Thursday to close with self-compassion and gratitude—because bread doesn’t rise without yeast and warmth, and neither do we. 

She shares how her book, And Then She Grew Wings, emerged only after she could reread her own poems and recognize an evolution: wings don’t mean perfection, they mean permission to lift. 

 Subscribe, share this with someone who needs it, and leave a review with the practice that helps you rise.

My website - https://www.risewellcoaching.com/

Find me on Facebook at:  Facebook

Find me on LinkedIn -  LinkedIn

My book - ...and then she grew wings

Published by Palmetto Publishing

Find it online at: 

Amazon

Barnes and Noble

Bookshop.org

Powells Books

Join the Movement - Women Like Me Community

Who Is Julie Fairhurst?

Speaker • Author • Business Strategist • Founder of Women Like Me

Julie Fairhurst is a force of nature disguised as a woman with a pen and a business brain built for impact. As the founder of the Women Like Me Book Program, she has opened the door for women around the world to share their truth, heal their past, and rise into their power. Since 2019, she has published more than 30 books and over 350 true-life stories — without charging a single writer a dime! Why? Because women’s stories deserve daylight, not gatekeeping.

With 34 years in sales, marketing, and successful business leadership, Julie knows how to turn storytelling into influence and influence into income.

Her mission is clear and unapologetic: break generational trauma one story at a time and help women elevate both emotionally and financially. She doesn’t just publish books, she builds brands, confidence, and possibility, giving women the tools to rewrite their futures, grow their businesses, and lift their families with them.


Julie's Website




SPEAKER_01:

Welcome everyone to another episode of Women Like Me Stories in Business. I am your host, Julie Fairhurst. I have a very interesting lady here with us today. Let me introduce her and then we'll just dive in. So, some stories don't arrive with a bang, they arrive with a leaving. So, my guest today, Leah Abrams, knows what it's meant to have the ground disappear beneath you. After 46 years of marriage, her husband left. And with that ending came a descent into grief, disorientation, and a deep reckoning with self. Today, Leah is a life coach, grief guide, circle facilitator, and the founder of Rise Well, helping others to find their footing after life shatters the story they thought they were living. This conversation is for anyone who has deeply loved, lost profoundly, and is wondering if they were ever feel whole again. Leah, thank you so much for being here. I appreciate it very much. Well, thank you for having me. Oh, you're welcome. So let's just jump right in there. So when your husband left, what was the first thing that broke inside you? But and also what was what quietly saved you?

SPEAKER_00:

Oh, wow, good question. The well, I have to say, the the what broke inside me was my sense of identity. I literally in the moment, in that moment when he said he was walking out, because it was a shock, I fell into this abyss. I don't know how else to describe it. Uh it was physical, it was emotional, it was spiritual, it was mental, it was energetic, it was everything. Um, and the second part of your question was what? How did I Yeah?

SPEAKER_01:

So, and how did you quite or what was the first thing that helped you quietly survive?

SPEAKER_00:

Oh, well, it took a little while because I wasn't quiet at all at first. No, I walked around the house smashing things, I was crying, I was it was horrible, you know, and I'm sure there are plenty of other women who will listen to this and be nodding their heads because I've talked to so many women who've had a similar experience. And I think I came to this moment of reckoning. It was like, okay, Leah, you either are going to die or you're going to live. So if you're going to choose life, what does that mean? And I started to begin to create new meaning for myself. Baby steps. Literally, literally, I'm gonna wake up in the morning and I'm gonna look at that sunshine, I'm gonna look at the pine tree, I'm going to call a friend. And I started to do these things that I'd done in the past, but with a very different approach and energy. It was slow baby steps.

SPEAKER_01:

Wow.

SPEAKER_00:

Wow. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

I love that though. That you I just love, I can see you standing there and looking out and feeling grateful for the sunshine.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

You know, and and it yeah, little sometimes we just want to jump in there, but sometimes it's baby steps, is what we need for sure.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, it was baby steps, and one of the things that saved me was writing. I've always written poetry, I had never published anything, but I always written poetry. And actually, I did have something published about a year before that um in an online journal, but I just started writing in a way that I hadn't written before, like something opened up for me. It was like the floodgates opened, right? And I was just almost channeling all of this, and I didn't make sense of it right away, but it started to coalesce over time, and it's now a book. Yeah, yeah. And what's the book called again? It's called And Then She Grew Wings. And this is a book of poetry. It's a book of poetry, yes, yes.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, because one of my questions here was why did poetry become the language that held your pain?

SPEAKER_00:

That's a great question. And poetry has always been the language to hold my pain, uh, ever since I was a little girl. And my father was a poet and he encouraged me. Yeah, he was he was not, he was published, but you know, he wasn't a prolific poet, but he encouraged me, and I and when I was in pain and when I felt sorrow or I felt unheard, that's where I went. I went into poetry. I read it, I wrote it, and so that's where I went this time.

SPEAKER_01:

Ah, yeah. It's writing is such a it's such it's so therapeutic. It it can be. It really can be. Yes. Yeah. So was there a moment when you realized that you weren't just surviving, but you were actually starting to transform?

SPEAKER_00:

Um, you know, I don't know if there was one moment, but I can tell you in the process of deciding, I, you know, maybe there was a moment actually. Maybe it was that moment when I was able to reread my poetry because I wasn't able to reread it. And it was maybe three years after, because it's been about five and a half years since my marriage ended. It was about three years out, so maybe two, two and a half years ago, when I decided I could read my poetry. And I realized that there was an evolution that I wasn't even aware of, that I was beginning to evolve and thrive. And so the title, and then she grew wings, the book is divided into three sections. And the last one is then she and then she grew wings, which really means, and I say in my epilogue, it doesn't mean that I know how to fly yet. It just means that I recognize that I do have wings. And so maybe that was actually the moment when I read my poetry over and I realized, and also I realized, oh, I need to share this because I know there are other women out there who have gone through or are going through or will go through just what I did.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

Wow.

SPEAKER_01:

So you you help women through grief.

SPEAKER_00:

I do. I I became um I I experienced grief at a very young age. My father, when I was 14, he died on the New York City subway coming home from work very um uh abruptly and experienced the death of many, many people when I was young. And so grief has always been something that I wrote about. Then I became a certified grief educator through David Kessler's program, which is called grief.com, and I'm a life coach. And so, you know, it's an interesting thing when people say they specifically work with grief. If you work with people as a coach, you work with grief because everybody is living with grief. Not the only thing they're living with, right? They're living with love, they're living with with all kinds of other things, but grief is there, and I work with all kinds of people around grief, but the people who are most attracted to my work are older women because they see their story in mine and my story in theirs.

SPEAKER_02:

Yes, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

So, and grief can come in many forms, it doesn't necessarily mean someone's passed on.

SPEAKER_00:

That's oh, that's right. I actually I belong to uh all kinds of different groups, and one of the groups is wonderful because when we go into breakout rooms, because it's on Zoom, we go and we just we can self-select what group we want to be a part of. And I select the divorce group because even though you know I lost I lost many people through death, this was a loss. There's three of us in that group out of hundreds of people. And so I wonder if people really associate divorce with grief. I don't know, and yet there's incredible loss, grief, abandonment, betrayal, um, loss of identity, all those things.

SPEAKER_01:

Well, I I was divorced, uh, I've remarried and uh knock on wood, all's good. Oh, good. I'm glad to hear that. Yeah, but I remember when because I was very emotionally connected to his to my mother-in-law, I was young and and to his family, and um and I remember it was like it was like a death because all of a sudden all those relationships there was there was this block there, it wasn't the way it was before. And so not only did I my marriage, you know, went away, but all those people that I loved and that I remember feeling grief about that.

SPEAKER_00:

Oh, absolutely. And I'm so glad you brought that up because it's not just the loss of a marriage. I lost my home. I had to sell my home, right?

SPEAKER_02:

Right.

SPEAKER_00:

I lost my community, I had to move out of my community. I lost my family because he has a large family, and I'm connected to some of them a little bit, but it's not the same. I lost my family because we were a family unit. I have two daughters, they're grown, I have grandchildren. We were a unit and now we're no longer a unit.

unknown:

Right.

SPEAKER_00:

I also, and I know other women who've expected this too, lost my career. I was an educator and I left my job because he said to me, I think, you know, you need to leave. We need to do something different. And then I left and I came back and he said, I'm done. And I had already retired. And so I lost, you know, and then a year and a half later, I lost my mom. She she died. So the lot it's confusing because it's so many different kinds of losses. As I said before, it's abandonment, and there's a loss of of the person you thought was the person you thought who he, you know, he was, you know, and also a loss of the past, because you question, well, was this really true? Was this really love? Did he love me? Did I even love him? You know, loss of reality, a sense of reality. So there's so many losses, you'd be wow.

SPEAKER_01:

And so what do you do with with uh with uh uh folks that come to you? Why what what tell me tell me this? What why are they coming to you?

SPEAKER_00:

Well, they come to me for different reasons, and I don't just work with grief. So my yes, my um, right, my approach is, I guess you would call it very holistic. My uh business is called Rise Well. And um, I I want to just tell you just briefly why it's called that because you know, we can all identify with the idea of rising, rising into our energy, rising into our power, which is part of it. To me, it's also about how bread rises, and bread rises with the help of others, with the help of yeast, with the help of air, with the help of sugar, and that we can't rise alone. So, my whole idea is how we I help people ground themselves in the solitude of the inner work that needs to happen, as well as in the community, because you can't transform in isolation, right? The well is about, yes, getting well, but it's also about the deep well that we are these deep wells of uh memory and ancestry and emotion and all kinds of things. And the well was also the place where women used to gather to share their stories. So I played around with those words and put them together because they're very powerful to me, right? And so a lot of what I do as I create circles of trust, circles, practice circles, support circles, um, other kinds of circles. I work with a process within circles and with individuals called soul collage. I'm a facilitator of soul collage, and it's a way to go deeper into your unconscious and to make it visible through collage and then to work that way. And really, I start when I work individually with people, I start with where they are, you know. But helping people understand, and I call them bodies, that we have many bodies. We have a physical body, an emotional body, energetic body, a mind body, a sp a spiritual body, and they all matter, and we have put so much emphasis on our thinking body, our thought body as being sort of the right one. But we hold, you know, and I'm sure you know this, but lots of trauma, all of us. We've learned so much now about trauma. So my work is trauma-informed, that we all carry trauma. We carry it in our bodies, but also in our emotional body, the way we react to things that could seem like kind of ludicrous at the time, but it's sort of an unleashing of what we're holding in our cellular physical body. So um, I mean, I could go on and on, but that's basically the container that I create for our work together.

SPEAKER_01:

And what brings people to what do you think brings, well, we'll just women. My main audience is is women, so let's let's stick with them. So, what do you think brings women to the point where they they they reach out for help?

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, that's a really good question. Um it depends, you know. I think that for the most part of desperation. They've tried other things. Either that or they're just beginning to open up and it's scary. Yeah. Or there's something that what brings anyone to therapy, you know, there's something that they're becoming aware is impeding their growth, and they want to explore that. Or something significant has happened very abruptly, like what happened to me. Right. There was a break, either a marriage ended or someone died, or something happened, and they don't know what to do with that. They don't know how to cope. Yeah, yeah, how to process it, just and how to process it, right, and how to understand it and how to how to live with it on a daily basis.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, it's um oh yeah, yeah. It's um it makes just makes me sad when I think about all the people that are sad.

SPEAKER_00:

I know.

SPEAKER_01:

And and living in grief and and uh grief of so many things, yeah, you know, and um and uh and and being afraid to release it.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, being afraid, because you know, even if we're in pain or in discomfort, it's what we know, it's what we're comfortable with, right? So the alternative is is scary. And, you know, I don't know if you are aware, I'm sure you probably are. We're living with an epidemic of loneliness in this country, if not the the Western world for sure. And what does that mean? I think about that a lot. You know, how do we help each other have a sense of belonging as our structures and foundations are falling apart, our our political systems are falling apart, things are falling apart. And since the the COVID epidemic, too, we've been isolated and really people are still struggling with what it means to come out of that place and that space. And also, I think people still feel a stigma about not being able to show up in, you know, in the ways they'd like to show up, and that can create loneliness. And one of the things that I work with for myself and with others is the difference between loneliness, being alone and being alone, and solitude, and that the joys and the gifts of solitude and how we can work with our solitude. Um, but partly why I really put a lot of emphasis on my circles is because I believe so strongly that we need to combat this epidemic of loneliness. And so one of the things I do, I do practice circles. So I do right now, I'm doing a Mindful Monday and Thankful Thursday, where it's a drop-in circle free or by donation, where we drop in for half an hour and practice uh mindfulness, different kinds of meditations, Mondays mostly for intention setting, Thursdays for self-compassion and gratitude. And we're building uh we're building more, we're building practice pauses to help teach people how to practice because we need to, we can't just say we're lonely, right? Right and we need someone to come and save us. We have to learn how that happens and we have to then practice, you know, and then it's hard to practice because we're changing new habits, we're making, you know, creating new habits. We need support. Yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

I know for myself, I I my husband and I moved in 2019 uh out of where he grew up and I grew up and where I worked and and uh for 34 years. Um yeah, and uh and then I retired. So I've been retired now for almost two years. But I we moved to an area where we really didn't know anybody. And for the first year or two, I was actually kind of excited about it because I was in real estate and so I was people, people, people, people. I got kind of burnt out. And uh I'm like, oh, this is kind of nice. Nobody knows me. I can go to the grocery store and I'll bump into people I know. But then it got lonely.

unknown:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

And then I'm like, okay, what am I gonna do about this? Because I don't have any friends out here. I don't, you know, what am I gonna do? And uh it was hard. Like I can't believe how even how hard it was. But I I found some ladies networking groups, and since there I've made friends and it's a couple of years now, and but uh, you know, and I make sure I go because this working from home business, yeah, as much as I love it, is as you said, isolating, extremely isolating.

SPEAKER_00:

Right. Right. And I think that, you know, and I'm doing the same thing. I moved to a new, I've been living in a new place these last two years. I'm living in Scottsdale, Arizona. I moved from the East Coast, from the Northeast. I went out to California for a short bit, and now I'm here. And I'm doing the same thing you're doing, joining networking groups. And yet I also do find a very deep connection online in my Zoom groups. And you know, I have people who have said, I don't think I'm gonna continue because I need to be in the flesh with people. And they still continue because sometimes it's hard to find those places. Yes, you know, and especially in the winter when you're shut in and it's cold. And I just want people to know that we can create circles uh that are really nourishing. And Michael Mead, who is sort of a philosopher and writer, I don't know if you know who he is, he coined the term the sudden village. And I use that term all the time. I don't know if he knows that, but I hope it because I love that experience of showing up in a circle with people who will probably never be together in the same way in the same configuration in another time, and yet we can develop a bond, we can develop uh an intimacy um quickly, actually. That can be sustaining. So, yes, we want to be we want to be in relationships that are sustaining and sustainable and that continue, and yet we can meet up with people in in a sudden village and feel nourished in that way too.

SPEAKER_01:

Yes, yeah, I I a hundred percent agree. And I it's funny because I I'll say, oh, well, I have a friend in Iceland and you know, and and we chat. I have another lady who's in Ontario, which is about a six-hour flight for me, and uh, you know, she's like, Oh, I wish we lived closer. And but yet we disconnect. So I I agree. I think that um that the internet and and social media, uh I mean, I think it's a very positive thing. I know that it does have some negativity that goes with it as well. But um, but I've met people that I would never, never ever have met before.

SPEAKER_00:

I know, and and I love you know people coming from different parts of the world, right? Yeah. And different times and different climates, you know, the northern hemisphere, the southern, and we're all together. When could that ever happen? And yet it doesn't take the place of that in-person connection. You know, I miss inviting people over for tea in the afternoon. I miss some of those things that I used to do, but I don't feel lonely.

SPEAKER_01:

That's perfect. That's so good. Yeah, yeah. And so tell me a little bit about this, about this circle. So you have Mondays and Thursdays, it and it's it's it's online and it's a drop-in. Anyone can drop in?

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, I like for people to register if they can, but Zoom link is available to them and it's it's a drop-in. So what's fun for me is I never know who's gonna show up. And luckily, there's always someone, there are always people who show up. I've never had a time when someone hasn't shown up. And um we engage with, you know, I do guided, uh basically a guided meditation because there's some people who show up who are Zen practitioners, and other people who've never meditated before. Right. So, and you know, what I include in my work, and actually I'm working on a book around this, is a grounding practice, a breathing practice, some kind of embodiment, body practice, and intention setting. And then we do some journaling on our own, share in the chat, and then we open it up for conversation. So we can do all that in a half hour, and we do, and it's a it's amazing. And we do a similar thing on Thursday, but the focus on Thursday is really on self-compassion and gratitude. And the idea is um, okay, you start your Monday. First of all, let's start our Monday in an uplifting way, right? And also in a way that aligns with who we are and not just get sucked out into the world and our jobs, you know, without being conscious and aware. So that's that, and also setting intention for the week. And I specifically don't use the word goals because intention is a different energy. It is a different energy. It's like this is what I hope, and we'll, you know, I'm playing with this this week. I'm I'm trying this. And then Thursday becomes that day where you can look at how the week went, that um you can approach it with self-compassion and forgiveness, self-forgiveness in particular. You can let go of what you don't need anymore from what's accumulated, right, over the course of the week and and express gratitude and move into the weekend in that way. So they're little book, they're kind of bookends, and you can come to both or either. And then we're gonna start in January what we're calling practice pauses, where Tuesday, Wednesday, and Friday will be 15-minute um pauses that you can attend or we'll have a recording for that will help you keep your practice going over the course of the week with support, you know? That's beautiful. Yeah, you don't have to go and close your door and say, okay, now I have to do all this by myself. You don't. Yes, exactly. Wow.

SPEAKER_01:

And so do you use uh do you use writing at all with you with any of your any of your clients? Is that something oh you do? Okay.

SPEAKER_00:

Well, first of all, we do it in Mindful Monday and Thankful Thursday. I also do quarterly retreats, and I have one coming up this Saturday. It's a solstice retreat where we work on Saturday, we do soul care work and um do a lot of journaling. Um, and a lot of the the writing is based on the work of Natalie Goldberg. I don't know if you know who she is, but she was one of my writing teachers, and Julia Cameron, who wrote the book The Artist Way, the idea of just putting pen to paper and writing. I also work with Mirabi Starr, who is a writer herself and does writing practice work. So I incorporate writing practice in my circles and also in my individual and couples work. Writing, writing and soul collage are big parts of you know what I do with people.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah. Wow. And so and so what type of what type of results do people get through their writing? Like, are they is it like is it almost like a journal that they're doing?

SPEAKER_00:

That's a really good question. Yeah, I appreciate your questions because you know they're helping me be clear about what my approach is, and that's helpful. Yeah, um the writing is very much not goal-oriented. Right. It's about um allowing literally taking your pen, putting it on the paper, and just going. I usually give people a prompt and they can go off, it's like stream of consciousness. You just write, you just write. And then you share your writing out loud. And nobody comments. This is not crit uh writing criticism. I mean, I'm in groups like that too as a writer, but that's not what this is. This is about freeing yourself up to allow um the parts of you to emerge on the page, whatever that looks like. So it's not about good writing or bad writing, and then we share. Um, in the group, we share. And um, one of the strategies I like to use is called the echo, where let's say you're in a group, let's say you're in a triad, and there's three of you, and one of you is reading your writing, and we're witnessing. That's the other thing about loneliness. We and what we crave, we want to be heard, seen, and witnessed, especially women. And so sitting in a group, whether it's online or in person, where you're being witnessed and heard, and you read your writing, and then the echo is the other people who are in your group saying verbatim something you said, using your words and mirroring them back. So there is an I loved your piece, or you know, nothing. It's just that, it's an uplift.

SPEAKER_01:

Wow, wow. That would be very awakening.

SPEAKER_00:

That's a great word. It is, and it's freeing, and it is it can be very emotional, it can be very emotional, you know. And when we're doing this with grief, grief work, it tends to be emotional. The soul collage can be emotional too, very emotional, and emotions are fine, and tears are messages, you know, and we don't I don't shy away from that with myself or with others. I've learned over the course of my life, but especially over these past five and a half years, I've learned a lot about myself. Yeah, right. And I've learned a lot about um my own emotions and what they mean and how to value myself and to see myself as enough.

SPEAKER_01:

Yes, yeah, absolutely. So how did you, I mean, I know you told us a story and and uh a little bit of your story, of course, but how did you move from being retired to what you're doing now? This is this is very deep and very meaningful.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah. Well, you know, I actually, you know, as an educator, I was always prone to sort of go deep into the whatever I was doing, whether it was teaching, mentoring teachers, writing curriculum, whatever it was. That's just the way I am. And yet, you know, in that moment that I said that I, you know, am I living or am I dying here? What am I doing? Right. And I decided to live. Then the next question was, okay, how? How do I do that? Right. And what does that look like? And I knew that, you know, I wanted to become a coach a while back, and I couldn't leave my job. So my ex-husband decided, oh, well, I'll become a coach. So he became the coach. Oh, even though it was, and I did, of course, all the research on how to do that, but anyway, he did it. And I realized, okay, this is my turn. So I went back to school, you know, and I did a coaching program. And I had been doing soul collage for years just on my own, and I decided to take a deeper dive and become a facilitator and go through the program. And I have done that work in unbelievable places. I've done it in nursing homes, I did it for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the government, I've done it in colleges, I mean, many places. Um, and you know, I just started putting things together, taking experiences that I had writing and teaching and my new certifications and looking and really sitting with it going, oh my gosh, this is all too much and so disparate. But it started to coalesce, it started to form, and partly because of my own personal work, and partly because of the people who love me and who I love who were there to help me see how wait a minute, no, this this all works together in some way. Yeah, and it was it just started to emerge. I could not have planned it, I could not have you know imagined it. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

Oh, I know. Uh same with me. I couldn't, I I would have laughed if somebody said that I would be doing what I'm doing. Be like, oh, I don't think so. But and and that's what I that's sometimes I feel for a lot of women as we age and the children leave, and maybe the marriages break up and and uh you know, and and we're left with just us. And and I just feel that there's that what what what so many women forget is that they have a lifetime of wisdom. Yes, a lifetime of wisdom, and they can do something with that, whether that's write books, whether that's whether that's coach other people, um, teach something that they've learned. But we we just we're a wealth of wisdom, but sometimes we don't realize it.

SPEAKER_00:

Well, yeah, and so that's exactly right. Like, how do you get from all that wealth of wisdom to realizing that that wealth of wisdom is valuable? Now I have found that men don't seem to have that problem in the same way. No, they don't. They think everything's they're good. I know, I know, even when they're not, even when they're not, even and so I've taken, I've taken, you know, I've learned from that actually. It's been helpful for me. I don't have to have all the answers. Yes, I don't have to know everything, you know. I don't have to know everything before I dip my toe. And maybe I'm not even gonna dip my toe. Maybe I'm gonna jump in. Yeah, you know, I have to dip my toe. And I jumped in. And when it came to publishing my book, because I self-published, but I was like, okay, I'm gonna, I had never shared my poetry really with people very much. And so I sent it to an editor who said, I'm not gonna do this with you, but I know someone who will. So I got this editor who was gonna work with me. You know, all of a sudden there was this validation, but it only came because I jumped in. Yes, it wouldn't have come. Like if you hide, right? If you hide, how are people gonna know? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

And and sometimes we think, you know, as as women, well, you know, oh, well, that's not such a big deal, or oh, well, yeah, you know, I'm I don't, I couldn't do that or something. But and and we just and we downplay the resources that we've gained from our our life. That's right. And there's just I I just get blown away by I just love my podcast because I get to meet people like you and I get to learn from you and and and gain knowledge and share it with other women, but but I I also know that women are listening and they're watching and they're and they're getting something from it. And that's so important.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, and part of it is getting the permission to be courageous. Yes, you know, and and you know, in a lot of these personal growth spaces and yoga classes and other places that I attend, there's it's everything's invitational. I invite you to close your eyes, I invite you, and that's important because we need to create a sense of safety, and yet it's not enough. And so what I do in my work is I invite and I encourage. And the word courage is in that word, encourage, yeah, that we need to learn, especially as women, to take risks, yeah, to step out of our comfort zone, right? Um, we can talk a whole lot about why over the course of history we have gotten to this place where we still feel like we're not worthy or we're not enough, or you know, all these things that all of us go through, men and women, but I think women in particular. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, for sure. I I agree. And and um I just love it when my writers, for example, because our pro the program that I run is called Women Like Me. And and so women write a chapter of their life in a book, and then we publish it, and and everybody knows, and it it it releases. Now, there's many ways, of course, for people to heal, of course, but um but uh but this is the way I was shown that I this uh anyway, I had a dream, but that's a whole other thing.

SPEAKER_00:

But but that's where it starts, right? That is where it starts, that is where it starts. No, it is a dream, and it you make it real, and there's a lot of ways to do that. And you know, I appreciate you talking about story because I do that too, you know, encouraging people to write their stories. And there's also something else that I do with story, and this is based a lot on Byron Cady's work. I don't know if yes, I do, yes. Yeah, her whole idea of asking yourself, and I do it with clients in lots of different ways. Is it true? So you write your story, you tell your story, and then you have to look at your story and decide, is it true? Because a lot of times our stories are based on um the stories we tell ourselves. Yes. And maybe not based on exactly what's going on. And how do you start to parse that out and understand what part of this is really your story and what part of it, and and no judgment at all here. It's just like you know, we create parts of ourselves to protect ourselves, right? To um, and we create stories that feel good to us, and we recreate reality to make it feel okay. And so sometimes, you know, it's helpful in the moment for sure. Yes, but sometimes it's important to look at what's real and what's what did we create?

SPEAKER_01:

Yes. So we got work too, yeah. Yeah, I had a woman that had a very traumatic experience um in her 20s, and uh, and she carried it uh into her 50s, and she came across me and we had a Zoom call, and she said, uh, I need to release this. It's you know, I've been I go in a room and I think everybody knows, you know, but nobody knows. And that whole thing, and so so she wrote the story, and then the day we were launching it, launching the book, she said, I don't know if I can do this. And I'm like, Well, it's in the book, and you know, there's 10 other ladies with you, so I have to put it out there. I can remove it if you want, and today I don't have to talk about you, but it's going out there, and then she contacted me, she called me back, and she said, You know what? This is what I wanted. I want you to, I want you to do whatever it is you need to do. So I did, and I followed her. I made I was watching her very closely on social media. She had over a hundred positive, beautiful comments from people saying, Anna, I didn't, you know, I didn't know this, and you're so courageous, and all of these beautiful things. And she released it.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, I love that word release, Julia. I I I think that when you release your story, then you know, there is something about that experience that first of all you get seen and people acknowledge you, and then you can change it too. You know, just because you tell a story doesn't mean that you don't have other stories to tell or that that story won't change. Yes, yes, for sure.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, absolutely. And and perception, I've learned, is not always reality.

SPEAKER_00:

Exactly. Right. Thoughts and feelings are not facts, yeah. They're experiences, for sure, but they're not facts. Yeah. Yeah. Wow.

SPEAKER_01:

Well, Leah, I have loved our conversation. It's been, it's been so, so good. Uh, just so for everybody to know that we will have uh information on how to reach out to Leah. Um, uh, maybe you're gonna do one of her jump-ins on Monday or Tuesday or Thursdays. Uh so we'll have information in the show notes so you'll be able to reach out to her uh and uh if if you're wanting to possibly pick up her poetry book or you know, whatever it is that that you're wanting to do. So in closing, Leah, what words of encouragement could you give to the ladies or to anybody who's watching or listening to us out there?

SPEAKER_00:

Well, I think that the first thing that I want to say to everybody is that you're not alone. Whatever you're going through, whatever your story is, there are others out there with a similar story. We're here, and you don't have to do it alone, and that also you are enough. You are enough. You know, when people join me in circles, I look at everyone after we share a check-in or something, and I just say, Thank you for coming. You belong here.

SPEAKER_01:

Oh wow, yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, thank you for that. I appreciate it. And I appreciate you being so open and willing to discuss uh some painful parts of your past, but some some uh beautiful parts of your future and what you're doing to help others. And and uh and I hope that uh anyone that's feeling grief or just needing to reach out will will reach out to you because I'm sure that you would be uh so helpful to them. So so I thank you again for doing that. I appreciate it. Thank you so much, Julie.

SPEAKER_00:

This was a pleasure. Oh, really good.

SPEAKER_01:

Thank you. Okay, everybody. Well, that's it. And uh, we will see you next time on uh Women Like Me Stories and Business. Take care, everybody.