Episode 40 - Brigette Panetta: The Battle Within

What happens when your entire world collapses around you? For Bridgette, April 2020 brought an unimaginable storm – serious legal proceedings against her family's investment business, followed just two days later by the birth of her daughter Emerald, all during the earliest and most uncertain days of the pandemic.

In this raw and moving conversation, Bridgette reveals how she navigated this perfect storm while operating in pure survival mode. "I remember telling myself, Bridgette, you can have a breakdown later. Right now, your priorities are protecting your partner and caring for your newborn," she shares with remarkable candor. As the legal battles intensified, the family lost their home, faced 27 separate cases, and Bridgette's body eventually rebelled through severe autoimmune issues triggered by the prolonged stress.

The healing journey that followed touches on powerful modalities including Reiki, kinesiology, and forgiveness practices that allowed Bridgette to release the dark energy she'd been carrying. Perhaps most transformative was discovering how her daughter became her greatest teacher and mirror, helping her shift from robotic mothering to present, joyful parenting despite ongoing challenges.

Today, five years into their legal battle with no end in sight, Bridgette has found purpose in her pain. She's building communities for others facing adversity, creating wellness programs for mothers, and embracing a new identity forged through fire. Her partner James is even developing a social media platform allowing people to counter misleading press narratives with evidence-based corrections.

Listen now to this extraordinary tale of resilience that will inspire you to find strength in your darkest moments and transform adversity into purpose. How might your own challenges be preparing you for something greater?

Connect with Brigette on Instagram here

Link for Media.com

Chapters

• 0:00 Introduction to Everyday Warriors
• 3:46 Bridget's World Turns Upside Down
• 8:59 Motherhood in Crisis Mode
• 16:14 When Your Body Says Enough
• 22:58 The Path to Forgiveness and Healing
• 32:12 Relationship Resilience During Adversity
• 38:02 Creating Community from Pain

Transcript

Trudie Marie: 0:01

Welcome to the Everyday Warriors podcast, the perfect space to speak my truth and dive into deep conversations with others. This podcast is about celebrating everyday warriors, the people who face life's challenges head on, breaking through obstacles to build resilience, strength and courage. Join me, your host, trudy Marie, as I sit down with inspiring individuals who have fought their own battles and emerged stronger, sharing raw, real and authentic stories in a safe space, allowing you to explore, question and find your own path to new possibilities. Let us all embrace the warrior within and realise that, while no one is walking in your shoes, others are on this same path, journeying through life together. Please note that the following podcast may contain discussions or topics that could be triggering or distressing for some listeners. I aim to provide informative and supportive content, but understand that certain things may evoke strong emotions or memories. If you find yourself feeling overwhelmed or in need of support while listening, I encourage you to pause the podcast and take a break. Remember that it is okay to prioritize your well-being and seek assistance from trained professionals. There is no shame in this. In fact, it is the first brave step to healing. If you require immediate support, please consider reaching out to Lifeline on 13, 11, 14 or a crisis intervention service in your area. Thank you for listening and please take care of yourself as you engage with the content of this podcast.

Trudie Marie: 2:01

Love the Everyday Worriers podcast. It would mean the world to me if you were to leave a five-star review to ensure that the Everyday Warriors podcast is heard by more listeners around the world. You can also support the show for as little as $5 with a one-time donation or by becoming a monthly subscriber. Your contribution helps me to continue bringing you inspiring stories of everyday warriors who overcome challenges to find strength, resilience and new possibilities in life. Head to the link to buy me a coffee and fuel the next episode. Every bit counts. Every bit counts.

Trudie Marie: 2:46

If you're looking for an inspiring story of resilience, healing and rediscovering yourself, then my book Everyday Warrior From Frontline to Freedom is for you. It is my memoir of hiking the 1,000 kilometre Bibbulmun Track, a journey that was as much about finding my way back to myself as it was about conquering the trail through the highs and lows and everything in between. This book is taken from my journals and is my raw and honest experience of overcoming trauma and embracing the strength within. Grab your copy now. Just head to the link in the show notes and let's take this journey together. Welcome to another episode of the Everyday Warriors podcast, and today I am with a lady from Melbourne who connected again through Matt Gahooley and the LifeShip podcast, and we connected through LinkedIn and Bridget gladly accepted to be here on the podcast. So welcome, Bridget. Thank you so much for having me. You're welcome. I would like to start your story back, I suppose, when everything changed for you, and that's probably, say, five years ago.

Brigette Panetta: 4:06

Yeah, yeah, 2020, our journey started, this fun journey that it's been. My family had an investment business that we were running very successfully and had a lot of exciting things happening in the pipeline. That we were working on a project in Mission Beach that was very, very exciting. And, as of April 2020, the Australian government took issue with our marketing of our products. So there was a misleading and deceptive proceeding that was lodged in April and from there our life just really took a turn for the worst.

Brigette Panetta: 4:47

When you feel you're doing the right thing and you've got all of your compliance in order and you're just doing your best to run a business and it's scaling quite quickly, and then all of a sudden, it kind of just gets stopped, it's quite a shocking and jarring experience. And two days after that so it's on the 6th of April, and on the 8th of April I had my daughter oh wow, she's also COVID as well. So it was just a lot of moving parts and a lot of unknowns and uncertainties, which then really led to just a lot of survival mode operation and operating in a state of fight or flight, and I guess I then went to get an autoimmune issue off the back of the stress and I just really had to navigate how to come back to self and how to cope and be back to the Bridget that I was before with. You know, you could laugh again and smile and enjoy life, life.

Trudie Marie: 5:43

So that was a very it's been a challenging journey, that's for sure look, going back to 2020, I think for most people at that very beginning issue or stage of COVID like that was hard enough for any Australian or anywhere in the world to actually deal with. Then you add on on top of that that you've got this legal proceeding going with your business, so now your career and your, like your family, lifestyle and everything is already up in arms. And then you add being a mother, like those three things are enough to kind of look individually to cause issues, let alone to have all three at once to cause issues, let alone to have all three at once.

Brigette Panetta: 6:29

What was that actually like? When you think back to that time it was really. When I think back, it's just a blur, honestly. And when the proceeding lodged, a lot of the staff left so I had to go back into working straight away. So I really just switched into that survival and I thought, okay, I remember telling myself, bridget, you can have a breakdown later. Right now you need to protect James, and Emerald is your priority. So I really just kind of kept moving at a really like robotic almost state and that was.

Brigette Panetta: 7:03

It was challenging but it also felt okay. It was just that you know, when you work better under pressure, it was like that pressure cooker feeling, but then I would cry. You know, I got emerald onto a really strict kind of sleep schedule because of COVID. As hard as it was, it also was great for us because we had no distractions. The only difficult thing was I couldn't have any visitors or you know, I didn't know what I was doing. It was just such a. You know, motherhood is such a trial and error game. I had a book that I read, that I used as a Bible, that I helped implement a sleep system, and then I would work slash, cry in between her sleep schedules to try and, I guess, just process and not let it touch her when, when she was up, I tried to be as present as I could and then, yeah, I had that time for her to sleep and me to heal, I guess.

Trudie Marie: 7:51

Motherhood is hard enough, you know, in any circumstances, and when you look back you say that time was a blur. Do you feel like inside of that you may have missed some of Emerald's first moments and that real nurturing space of being a mother? Because you're in this like survival mode of I have to be a mother when I can, but then I have to do everything to do with the business at the same time.

Brigette Panetta: 8:15

Definitely. Definitely more so James than me. He missed a lot because he's just been behind a desk for the last five years, basically just in war mode. But for me, look, I was as present as I could be. I don't feel I missed a lot, because I didn't put her in danger or anything for a long time or any care. So I did spend more time with her, which I was so grateful for, and because I couldn't really go back to work, essentially I just was really forced to to be home and just make sure that everything at home was running perfectly.

Brigette Panetta: 8:50

James was, you know, we had to divide it almost. The only thing is that I just wish I was me. I wish I was the version of me. That when I fell pregnant, you know, I was so excited. Everything was amazing. We had this beautiful, safe foundation that we built. And to lose that safe foundation is what breaks my heart the most, because it did send me into more of a you know, that robotic mum who was just getting everything done, but I wasn't able to really just feel safe in it. It was more of a job, a chore. You know. Another thing I had to check off, whereas now I've learned to be a lot more in my feminine, a lot more flow, and enjoy the motherhood experience and see it as something I can have fun in and not just see as a checklist, I guess.

Trudie Marie: 9:38

Totally get that, and you're right in the sense that, unless you have this feeling of safety, it appeals to every single human being on earth. I mean, our root chakra is literally embedded in that whole feeling of safety and your survival mode is trying to keep you safe inside of that. And you mentioned before that you developed an autoimmune breakdown because of that. How long did that take? Because you said like you would just go, go, go. At what point did you start to notice that things weren't right?

Brigette Panetta: 10:10

After I think it was around November of 2020, we went to Queensland temporarily to get the project moving and to just, you know, show up and show that we were still committed to the project, no matter what was going on. We believed that we, you know, it would blow over because we haven't done anything wrong. We had a thorough audit done just before everything had happened. There was no red flags. You know, a big four firm had done that. So I heard this with my ears, so we were like we're going to continue, we're not going to let this stop us. So we went there, but because of the change, my body couldn't handle that, and so that's when I just started to really feel the heaviness. I started to get sick a lot. I just couldn't make decisions, I couldn't cope, I couldn't think properly, like I just was in this blur of. I just wanted to sleep, but with a new baby, you can't sleep. You always have so much to do, and then they start stretching out their naps and you know, sorry shortening their naps and you're not getting as much sleep as you, as you want to.

Brigette Panetta: 11:10

So after that, and I think, just sitting in the discomfort for so long, my body and I was just so angry as well, like I was just angry, I was upset, I was confused, I was frustrated, I, and then I, you know, then you go into self-doubt, you're like, oh, did we do something? You start to then doubt yourself and it just all these emotions, and hormonal as well I just couldn't process it. So it was sitting in my body and it just then just led to these breakouts in my skin and I just could not. Every time I would eat something I would break out in a rash and my body would essentially shut down. I'd have to just lay down and then I removed all these ingredients from my diet.

Brigette Panetta: 11:51

I went to a naturopath and things like that, and a kinesiologist as well, removed all these foods, but then I'd realized it was still coming up in the morning when I'd wake up, and Then I realized it was actually my thoughts that was creating this fear in my body, that was then triggering stress and then creating this outbreak. It took about three years for me to really just process it and understand what it is, because at the time I wasn't able to really stop. I was just, you know, as a mom, you kind of put yourself last and you think, oh, it will go away or it might just I'll just cut that food. But it just when I realised it was relentless. I that's when I my healing journey really started, because I had to fix it, because it was just debilitating.

Trudie Marie: 12:39

And look, I can totally appreciate what you must have been through I know at. As I mentioned before to you, at the bottom of my like, when I hit rock bottom, I got to the point where I was agoraphobic and I don't even, or can't even recognize that person. So it wasn't this autoimmune like you had with a rash or anything, but my body literally shut down to the point where I just couldn't get out of bed. So I totally get that experience and how difficult that must have been. What I see different, though, is the fact that I was on my own and didn't have to worry about anybody else, but you've literally got a little human being that you're trying to be a mother and you're trying to nurture, and then you just don't even have the energy. So how was James through all that? Like, obviously he was going through the same issues as well with you. Like, what was your support network like in coping with that, given that we're still probably in the heart of COVID?

Brigette Panetta: 13:38

Oh, the support wasn't amazing, and not because I don't have support I do, but it was when you're in this experience, I feel that no one can relate to in your life. It was really challenging for anyone to give me any kind of advice or guidance or support, and I understood that. So I really just isolated myself voluntarily and I just because talking about it really just stirred up these emotions that I couldn't. I didn't know how to move them out of my body. I didn't know how to process them, so I just kind of didn't want to talk about it.

Brigette Panetta: 14:12

For Emerald in COVID there wasn't that much support. We got a babysitter in here and there, but when the hard lockdowns came like we couldn't really have anyone over or I couldn't even have a midwife to the house, or they would ring me from the driveway and ask if Emeril's putting weight on and then they would say, oh, just weigh her against a bag of flour. You know that kind of it was just bizarre. It was such a weird time.

Brigette Panetta: 14:37

And James, I really just did not expect anything from him, just because I thought I said to myself again that his capacity needs to be there, because the more he is getting done, the safer I felt almost when I saw him working. I felt safer because I thought, okay, he's still going, like we're okay, and so, yeah, I guess back to your safety comment, that's why I've really taken the time to work out and discover tools that allow me to feel safe within myself and not put that reliance on anyone else, and that's one thing that I like to pass forward as well to be able to show people how you can be your own safety, because certain times happen and you don't have anyone to save you, I guess you have to do it for yourself.

Trudie Marie: 15:34

It's so true. I think so many people out there think and if we're talking greater world context as well that people are waiting for somebody to come and save them, whether that's politically or whether that's within their own social spheres or networks or whatever that somebody else external is going to fix whatever's going on. And if people only realized more that you're the one. It's all starts with you. And if you can't start to move that forward and change within yourself, then how are you expecting anybody else to do it for you?

Brigette Panetta: 16:04

yeah, you're so right, and it takes a while for your body to. When you abandon yourself through different ways of living, you know not being able to say no, being a people pleaser and just abandoning yourself, which is what I did. I really abandoned what I needed. Your body loses that trust and so it doesn't feel safe with you in the driver's seat. So you need to, I guess, reparent yourself to be able to show that you can, your body can trust you and that you will make the right decisions for it. It's such a, it's a process, but it's an amazing process to to.

Trudie Marie: 16:38

It is, and what, for you, was the turning point in being able to like? Was it one particular modality or something you read or something you saw that had you then go down this path of like no, I need to look after myself. Like.

Brigette Panetta: 16:53

This is how I'm going to get through this well, there were so many modalities that I tried and that I loved. I just kept like attracting these amazing people and healers and things my life. The first one was Reiki and kinesiology. That really helped me feel lighter. I went in in a really bad way the night before. I was probably at my lowest and I just had had enough, like I could not hear any more bad news. I just couldn't watch James struggle, the way he was Like it was just really cruel for me to watch and I kind of thought, if this is what life's like, I've seen enough, I think like this is not nice and it felt cruel.

Brigette Panetta: 17:34

I was in that real victim mentality and so a kinesiologist I found came up on my Facebook and it was around the corner and she had an available appointment the next day, so I just booked it and thought I'm going to do this. I think it's a sign of some sort. And so she was amazing in the way that she could feel what my body was feeling without me having to even say it, because I didn't know even how to express myself because there was just so many moving parts at the time, and she could just feel a lot of anger, a lot of heat, a lot of anger, a lot of inflammation. And she said you're going to need to feel these people because you're carrying all of this real dark energy and it's only going to fester for you. And it's not your responsibility to punish these people. You know they will get their karma in their own time for how they've done the wrong thing. Other people are just doing their job and they don't know they're doing the wrong thing.

Brigette Panetta: 18:30

And when she explained that, it made so much sense, because why am I waiting for some kind of conclusion? And I'm just kind of sitting in this bad mindset and this bad way of living and this negative headspace. The conclusion might not come for years and it's still. We don't have it. It's been five years now and we're still in the middle of it. We've still got things that we're moving and doing and we've got open cases and things. So I'm so glad that I took her advice because otherwise I'd still be there and who knows how unwell I would be. But the forgiveness really helped me. Just let go, even though I didn't know any of these people. We've never James has never been interviewed in five years, so he's he doesn't even know his people personally or or anything like that. So it was really challenging that I just kind of pictured a building of everyone in there and I just forgave everyone and I just kind of released that heaviness and that anger and it really just allowed me to feel light.

Trudie Marie: 19:30

That's good to hear, and I think what people sometimes forget is that you can only control what you can control, and so often we want to try and control things out of our control, and that's where all this stuff starts, and I think you just pointed that out perfectly by saying that you couldn't control all these other people and what was going on. You could only control how you were responding in this situation, and forgiveness was your first key to doing that and starting again and saying right, it's almost like a blank slate. Now I get to move forward inside of this, where you can actually start controlling what you can control and leaving the rest up to whoever else to sort out.

Brigette Panetta: 20:14

Yeah, I put my trust into the universe at that point and I thought I don't know who, because I'd lost a lot of faith and a lot of trust and a lot of hope, I guess.

Brigette Panetta: 20:24

So I didn't really believe in anyone was protecting me, or because how could all of this bad, how could all these bad events happen if someone was protecting me and there was a higher power protecting good people?

Brigette Panetta: 20:35

And so when I realized that this was happening to me, to be able to help others and to be able to pass forward and transmit this pain into something of purpose and power, then I started believing that this is why and it made me really relentless in my healing journey because I just wanted to keep evolving evolving because it was allowing me to feel free. Every single time I was able to uncover something through like a shadow work process, and if Emerald triggered me, for example, I would get to the bottom of that and work out what happened when I was young or if there's something linked to that that I guess I've been responding and reacting to my whole life. It just made me feel that little bit closer to that version of me who's then going to be able to help others. It was just such a. I put my energy, I guess, into the things I could control, which was myself.

Trudie Marie: 21:24

Yeah, I love that. And the fact that now Emerald gets to grow up like obviously her first couple of years were in this space of you not knowing but you starting to heal, then, means that moving forward you create this beautiful motherhood and mother-daughter relationship that you may or may not have had otherwise, had things gone in a completely different direction.

Brigette Panetta: 21:46

Very true. I'm so grateful I get to pass these tools on to her at such a young age and I just feel she's so intuitive and she can really sense what's going on and it's just amazing how much they can pick up. Like I don't feel a lot of people give children the credit that they deserve and how they can understand being adults. You know, they just assume our children won't know. I'll teach you when you're older. But no, no, these are the ages now so they can manage emotion and process and understand the ego and understand your higher self, and it's really amazing. I'm just so grateful that I get to share it with her.

Trudie Marie: 22:21

Yeah, that's beautiful. And going back to like obviously you mentioned that the legal proceedings are still going. Obviously that has taken not just a toll on you emotionally, spiritually, health-wise, it's probably taken a massive toll financially as well. Like, how has that played?

Brigette Panetta: 22:39

out. That's been a challenge because we, when it first started, we actually were defunded, so we we weren't able to solicit new funds, so we couldn't raise money. We then were selling assets to try and make to create liquidity to be able to pay for the legal fees, and then that got shut off. They ran to the judge and he said, oh, let's ban them from selling assets. So he couldn't do that. So then we refinanced our home and we then couldn't service the payment, so we lost our home as well during that process. And then James, he's very, very resilient. He is very much a visionary and he's just. He's resilient as anything and he's been able to create these opportunities for liquidity to keep paying the legal fees. But it's costing a lot. We've had 26 legal cases so far, I think maybe 27.

Trudie Marie: 23:34

Wow, that's like incomprehensible to me like, especially being a previous police officer. I'm just like that's a lot to go through.

Brigette Panetta: 23:44

It's a lot and it's just like that art of war.

Brigette Panetta: 23:47

It's just gotten to a point where it's just ego now, like I think, because so much money's been poured into our case, they can't lose.

Brigette Panetta: 23:55

Like it's just going to keep going and they've got endless resources which we don't. But yet we've gotten this far, and I think James is. He's just so passionate because he knows he's not done the wrong thing and I feel like he's been chosen to be some form of warrior to be able to create truth within this industry, because what's happened has not been, in my view, it's not been run correctly, like he's never been interviewed. That's the first step of a process, of an investigation. I think they thought they might have found a smoking gun somewhere, but it's been five years and they haven't found that smoking gun. Like they can keep digging, but it's just like very trivial in my view of what we're seeing, their cases, when we finally were able to represent ourselves, there was just nothing there, like it's not at all what they've kind of made out to be and it just yeah, it's a shame that we're here still as just normal people fighting against such a big organization, and it just felt like this could have been a conversation five years ago.

Trudie Marie: 25:02

I think it's incredible too that, like you said, one he has not been interviewed or like investigated and spoken to about whatever's going on. I find that surprising as a former police officer, but also the fact that, being a male, he has also not spoken up or spoken out about what has gone on for him. Like men so often internalize all their emotions, and at what point, even though you say he's really, really resilient, you often wonder at what point do they get to where it all just becomes too much in yours, inside your relationship. How has that been, because obviously these types of issues could make or break a relationship so so clearly you're still together. You're obviously incredible parents dealing with everything you've had to in raising Emerald. How has that evolved over the last five years within your relationship?

Brigette Panetta: 26:00

It's been challenging. We had plans to get married, we had plans to have another child by now, and that's obviously all not a priority. We don't just off the table because there's just too much going on, so just things like that. You know, we can't live a normal life, we can't feel like we can just make plans to go here and do this. We used to. You know, we used to just work a lot and we were able to enjoy life because we were sacrificing a lot to have a life that we created. We wanted to enjoy that as well and we had that ability to, and we could have normal conversation and we could, you know. But now our conversation is very intense business related, asset related, it's all all the things.

Brigette Panetta: 26:45

And I'm I'm a sounding board for James, which I'm happy to be. I'm just lucky, I think that I worked in the business, so that's how I'm just lucky. I think that I worked in the business, so that's how I'm able to really support him, whereas I think a lot of people who are women especially, who wouldn't have worked in a business with their partner, if they would have gone through this, they would have just been out. Then he said this is just too much for me to handle. But you know I was in legal meetings, I was in accounting meetings and I heard you know I heard sign off. I heard Just before it happened I went through the audit with KPMG and they said there's no red flags yet. Like I've heard this with my own ears. So for me it feels bigger than what it is and it feels like there is definitely a higher reason why this is happening. And I'm just going to support him and hopefully we can have a normal life after this.

Trudie Marie: 27:32

I just want to acknowledge you both in who you are and who you get to be inside of this process, because it does take toughness, strength, bravery, courage like name all those different things to actually endure this type of legal proceeding or this type of case against you. Because most people don't know and they would have quit, they would have given up. Like you said, if you're not in the process and you don't understand it, you would have walked away as a partner. But the fact that you've both held each other during this space and continued through this space, that just deserves acknowledging in its own right.

Brigette Panetta: 28:15

I get a bit emotional you saying that, because it does mean a lot and it has. It's taken a long time to get that courage. And I think to be able to get courage it's trust and it's trusting yourself. And I think James has an unwavering trust in himself and he knows he's capable and he knows his abilities and that watching him have that trust in himself has inherently allowed me to feel trust and safe in myself. And yeah, it can be scary at times because you don't know what's going to happen, because common sense hasn't prevailed in the past. It's that unknown. But we've been through, I guess, a lot now and we're still here so we know that whatever comes next, we can get through it. I think once you go through a challenge or adversity, you just get that little bit stronger every single time and it just builds.

Trudie Marie: 29:11

Yeah, that's good to hear that you are able to find a way to go through it but still remain consistent, like with each other, through that Fast forwarding, like obviously now, like you said, five years. How has that played out, even like as a mother and your experience of being a mother, given that it was so tumultuous in those early years and you were dealing with your own health issues and it sounds like you've come back from that, like you're on this healing journey how has being a mother now? Look for you.

Brigette Panetta: 29:45

I am so proud of myself, of the mum that I am today, because I feel like I'm the happiest version of myself and not just happiest version of myself, I mean, I'm just able to appreciate life as it is and not wish it was another way, whereas that's where I was living before, like I don't want this life.

Brigette Panetta: 30:09

I want to have the life we used to have, or I want the life that I envisaged in my head when I become a mother, and so once I accepted that, which is where I'm at now, I really enjoy being a mom and being able to teach Emerald lessons and things that I, you know, wish that I'd got when I was a child, and so I love, like my goal, every time I wrote a manifestation or every time I wrote anything down in my journal my top list and it took a while for me to get it to the top as a priority, and I think that's where I was struggling.

Brigette Panetta: 30:42

It was always like I want this to be over, I want this blah, blah, blah, and motherhood was always at the bottom, whereas probably two years ago it started getting closer to the top and it was always. I want to be a calm and patient mother, and that was always my goal and that's where I guess the shadow work then came in, because she was my mirror every day. She was figuring me on so many things and then that helped me, I guess, bring it all up to the surface and allowed me to really dive into the things that were triggering me, especially through the journey with James and now the journey as a mother. It's allowed me to really just rewire how I respond to those things, which has allowed me, I guess, to feel safe in this whole experience.

Trudie Marie: 31:25

Yeah, that's such a like, an incredible insight in the fact that you were saying like she was mirroring you and bringing up for you everything that you needed to work through and deal with and and face it's. It's amazing how our little humans get to be that way so that we can. Actually it's almost like a rebirth for ourselves, like I'm a mother of two and my children are adults now, but even still to this day, they still say and do things that trigger the hell out of me and it's like what's there? What am I actually experiencing here and why am I feeling that way in these emotions? So it doesn't change just because our children grow up, we never stop learning who we are as people inside of our motherhood. It's so true.

Brigette Panetta: 32:12

And you think, oh, I thought I dealt with that, or oh, I've still got more to go, Like you just. But then once you accept that you're always going to be evolving and just because you're always going to be achieving, and I guess to be able to achieve and hold that and receive that, you need to keep opening up and making space for new things to come in.

Trudie Marie: 32:36

And that's, I guess, letting and shedding layers all the time, and rebirth, like you said A hundred percent. And how then does, like obviously you said the legal proceedings are still going on in that aspect? Is there anything that you are personally working on for yourself moving forward?

Brigette Panetta: 32:49

Yeah, so this year I've started posting more on Instagram. I went really undercover for the last four years just because we had press and we had things and I just really went in hiding and isolated myself. So I finally come out and started sharing my story, which is why I'm just so grateful that I'm here today and starting to share the tools that I used to be able to overcome these challenges around different healing modalities and different shadow work techniques, the forgiveness steps that I follow. I've run a seven-day thought audit program which is basically going from being in a reaction state of mind to an observer, just things like that which I'm building out on socials, just on my Instagram, youtube. Then I'm also looking to, I guess, build out a community around other people who've suffered from adversity or gone through kind of any kind of challenges of injustice and just on a willing journey.

Brigette Panetta: 33:50

I'm also running a retreat in Bali with a girlfriend which I'm really, really excited about. That is exciting, so I'm really looking forward to that. And just, we've got women from all over the world coming to meet us. There's 10 beautiful women coming and it's just such a beautiful journey when you can pass forward your knowledge and wisdom and know that it's going to help someone. It's just such a it's like a miracle moment.

Trudie Marie: 34:15

That will be an incredible space of just bringing a group of women together, to heal together and continuing our healing journey. Because I think that that's one thing that people don't quite comprehend and, like you said, at the beginning you struggled to find somebody who had been through or understood what you were going through, and so often people think, oh yeah, that's done, you're healed now, like you're back to normal. But there is no normal, there is no back to, because you are not the same person you were. You never will be the same person that you were five years ago, 10 years ago, and people resist that change. But it also expect it to be finite in your healing. It's like you said with motherhood it's constantly evolving.

Brigette Panetta: 35:03

Exactly, I was an accountant before and after watching this, I just would never go back to that just because it didn't feel right for me and I just thought I've spent so much time exploring these modalities and exploring and applying it into my everyday life. It just feels so natural now and it's like I want to do something that really lights me up and I know can help others. And I had a moment when everything was really challenging and I just broke down and I thought I'm going to build something one day that's going to help people like me and give me like that shoulder or give me that community that I really wish I had right now. And so remembering that moment, that kind of, is my driver to be able to build something. And in the future I'd love to have a wellness center where it helps mums especially regenerate and rejuvenate and give them that ability to just find their identity and go through a lot of those things, those challenges that a lot of mums suffer with every day.

Trudie Marie: 36:04

So true, because motherhood, or parenthood in general, does not come with an instruction manual and we have no idea what we're doing most of the time and so often, as much as there are many other mothers out there, we all feel isolated in our journey. So, being able to bring people together in community to support one another the old adage of you raise a child with a village and you really do need that village and that community around you, in whatever form that takes, to be able to continue to like move forward on this life path Exactly right.

Brigette Panetta: 36:42

Yeah, yeah, you need your village and when you don't, when you go too long without it, you can isolate too much and that's not good, especially for the child as well. Like they need their village, they want to feel the love and not just be so dependent on you. You know Emerald got a little bit hard at one point. You know she wouldn't let anyone in because she was scared of people and that's my. That was me pulling my fear onto her. But now it's changed a lot, but it's because I didn't want to let anyone in either. So I guess it's good for them to be able to have that village and acceptance of love and those experiences.

Trudie Marie: 37:19

Yeah, and I think, even just looking at your whole experience over the last five years, obviously we're talking about that village now and how important that is and yet you go back five years when all this was happening, right in the height of COVID, during all the lockdowns and everything. People were isolated and that's, I think, where so many people started to realise how important their community, their network, their family, friends, whatever circle they have became so much more important, because often you don't realise what you have until you don't have it. And like I just think, like even raising a child through that time and not having all that support and help and, you know, sharing with motherhood and meeting other children, that age Emerald would have been cut off in the early days, true, because of COVID, and if you were in Melbourne during the lockdowns, that would have been so isolating. So now to come out the other side of that and just want to create community, I think that's a beautiful adventure.

Brigette Panetta: 38:19

Yeah, I'm really really excited, Just can't wait just to keep it, keep the momentum going and just build out that, that support system. It's just yeah, it's beautiful.

Trudie Marie: 38:29

Yeah, so do you have a website as well? Like you said, you were mentioning socials and building out on socials. Do you have a website as well that people can connect with you on?

Brigette Panetta: 38:40

I do, but it's not live yet, it's kind of in beta, so it's coming. One other thing I haven't mentioned was, off the back of this experience, james is actually building out his own social network, which is going to give it's more of a verified network. So when all of this happened, we did go on to Twitter and to X and it kind of really it wasn't really the reception that he wanted. He was trying to share his voice and have an avenue of speaking his truth, but it wasn't really people creating fake accounts and spamming his thing and it was just really toxic. So he's, off the back of that, created a social media platform. So I do share a lot of my stuff on there. It's called mediacom and that's where I put a lot of my story and and share a lot as well.

Trudie Marie: 39:27

Yeah, I will definitely put the links into that because that may appeal to so many people and being able to connect with you, whether it's through the wellness or the experience, because I think people feel trapped, especially when they are going through those civil type legal proceedings. Often when people think of like any type of legal proceeding, they think of the criminal side and they kind of want to shy away from it. But there is a whole other, different field in the civil proceeding world that people don't know how to navigate. People get stuck on that, and that can be anything from family court through to, like, your civil courts and your business proceedings and things like that that people just don't know where to go, don't know who to ask questions to. And so the fact that James is creating something around that, you're creating a media presence around that in your experience to be able to guide others, I think that's so beneficial to so many people.

Brigette Panetta: 40:22

Yeah, yeah, definitely, and just giving them that voice, because when you're mentioned in the press, you can't respond unless it's on your story or your Instagram, but I feel like everything's everywhere On mediacom. You can actually copy in the article and you can highlight which section is defamatory or if it's misleading or if it's inaccurate, and you can actually provide evidence as to why. So it's giving you that platform to be able to share your side of the story too.

Trudie Marie: 40:50

I love that, like you just said, in the press it's so one-sided and that story is the truth. And sometimes I just wish that people would take a step back and realise that news is a certain perception and a certain focus and it's not always the truth, it's only part of the truth, and that there is always two sides to every story and you can add a third if you want to say there's the truth somewhere in the middle. So I love that there is this platform out there where you can respond to that and give your side of the story, backed up by evidence, so that people realise that no, there is a bigger picture, bigger story here than what's actually being conveyed.

Brigette Panetta: 41:34

Yeah, exactly so hopefully that's going to help people as well, so very excited for that to come out. That's in beta state at the moment, but we're still able to post and share and people can still sign up.

Trudie Marie: 41:44

Awesome. I will definitely pop the link in the show notes. I just want to thank you so much for today's conversation. In sharing what has been a very arduous journey for you through the last five years and seeing you come out the other side and in a more positive state to continue on this journey, I think it's been incredible.

Brigette Panetta: 42:06

Thank you so much for having me. I really appreciate it.

Trudie Marie: 42:08

You're welcome, and I always finish off the podcast by asking what is the one thing you're most grateful for today?

Brigette Panetta: 42:16

Definitely my daughter. She's been my guiding light through my life so far and helped me evolve and grow so much, so she's everything.

Trudie Marie: 42:26

Thank you for tuning in to the Everyday Warriors podcast. If you have an idea for a future episode or a story you'd like to share yourself, then please reach out and message me, as I am always up for real, raw and authentic conversations with other everyday warriors. Also, be sure to subscribe so that you can download all the latest episodes as they are published and spread the word to your family and friends and colleagues so they can listen in too. If you're sharing on social media, please be sure to tag me so that I can personally acknowledge you. I'm always open to comment about how these episodes have resonated with you, the listener. And remember lead with love as you live this one wild and precious life.