From Silence to Strength: Annie's Journey

In this episode of the Soulful Speaking podcast, Lauri welcomes Annie Moussu, certified EFT Tapping master practitioner and host of the "Hush Your Mind" podcast. Annie shares her powerful story of reclaiming her voice after growing up in a codependent family, grappling with cultural expectations, and facing the challenges of a twin flame relationship. She reveals how her journey through anger, vulnerability, and trauma healing has empowered her to set boundaries and help others do the same. Annie and Lauri explore the deep connection between emotional healing, finding your voice, and how our personal relationships affect our public speaking. This episode is a transformative guide for anyone looking to harness their voice authentically in every corner of their lives.
 
 TAKEAWAYS:

1. Speaking is a gateway to your power: Finding and using your voice is key to reclaiming your personal power in relationships and on stage.
2. Boundaries build confidence, a crucial part of standing in your truth.
3. Voice lives in the body: Releasing tension in our bodies, including the throat, is key to freeing our voices.
4. Anger can unleash self-expression: Anger, often misunderstood, can serve as a powerful tool for setting boundaries and accessing our true selves.
5. Twin Flames relationships are powerful catalysts: Our relationships can act as mirrors for unresolved traumas, guiding us to face and heal deep wounds. 
6. Public speaking mirrors personal healing: Personal healing leads to confident public speaking - and vice versa. 
7. Storytelling is service: Sharing personal experiences serves the audience while healing the speaker, creating a mutual journey of transformation and connection.
8. Healing unconscious wounds allows us to speak freely: Tools like EFT can help heal unhealed traumas issues, freeing us to fully express ourselves.
9. Connection is powerful: Maintaining close, personal interactions with our audiences, despite the scale of the platform, keeps the connection authentic and meaningful.

Connect with Annie:
https://www.hushyourmind.com/interview/
https://www.hushyourmind.com/newsletter/

Story Magic
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The Speaker Alter Ego Quiz

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Chapters

• 1:55 Finding Voice Through Creative Expression
• 14:55 Twin Flames Marriage: Healing Through Vulnerability and Anger
• 21:53 Emerging from the Fire
• 23:14 Public Speaking and Personal Growth
• 26:47 Empowerment Through Speaking and Podcasting
• 33:17 Sharing Stories to Heal
• 34:04 Annie amplifies her voice through podcasting
• 43:06 Closing Questions Inspired by Bernard Pivot

Transcript

Lauri: 1:08

Hey everybody, welcome back to the Soulful Speaking podcast. I am so excited about our guest today. My new and good friend, annie Musu, is a certified EFT tapping master practitioner and host of the Hush your Mind podcast. She helps women build confidence, set empowered boundaries and enjoy healthy relationships. Welcome, annie, thank you so much for being here.

Annie: 1:36

Thank you, Lori. Thanks so much for having me. It's a pleasure to be here.

Lauri: 1:41

Let's start with and I might interrupt you as you're sharing, to ask more questions what has been your journey with speaking and finding your voice in your life and on stage?

Annie: 1:58

It's been an extraordinary journey. So I started, I'd say, as a little kid I think the context would be good to give here. I was a very shy kid. I grew up in an immigrant family. My parents immigrated to the US from Vietnam in 1980. And so I didn't know it at the time, but I definitely spent a lot of my time and energy to conforming and assimilating. It was just so natural to me.

Annie: 2:27

And on top of that I had an overly critical father and a very codependent family, traditional family where the mother is submissive and the father is very dominating, and his love was expressed through criticism. I mean, it's very Asian, unfortunately, to do that. And so he really just criticized me all the time for the littlest thing the way I dress, the way I spoke, my school performance, of course and so this journey in public speaking really began with not having a voice and learning how to speak up in class and having a really difficult time speaking loudly enough for everyone. Everyone was always saying you know, can you speak up? Can you speak louder? I can't hear you. And yeah, just not having any confidence in myself.

Lauri: 3:21

Your father and immigrating and the assimilating. Do you remember, as you're talking about it, what kind of an impact it had on you mentally, physically, energetically and emotionally?

Annie: 3:39

I was very disconnected from my body. But if I were to look back now, I'd say there was a lot of tension in my body on a regular basis and my throat chakra just blocked. And so even if I tried to speak louder in front of the class, or even just to a group of friends, they were always asking me to speak louder.

Annie: 4:01

And then at home I got the reinforcement that my voice wasn't welcome, and so I got in trouble. If I spoke up, got in trouble. If I spoke up, if I got angry, I'd get in trouble. So now, when I work with clients, I'll, of course, talk about that more. Anger is such a powerful way to really reclaim who we are when our boundaries have been crossed over time and time again, and so I learned early on that I wasn't meant to be powerful, that anger got me in trouble, that my voice isn't welcome, and so on a regular basis I saw that at school radiating out into my friendships, or I got bullied. I didn't stand up for myself because I learned that anger was bad and good girls don't get angry. So for me it was just like be the good girl, be a good student, keep your mouth shut and that's it End of story.

Lauri: 5:04

And do you remember at all when people were saying speak up, I can't hear you, and you were trying. Do you remember what you were experiencing in those moments?

Annie: 5:18

Yeah, I remember very clearly that I would try my best to get my voice, to project it in front of me and to reach the people and no matter how much I tried, it was never good enough. I didn't understand and it would demand a lot of energy from my core to project it out and my throat would tense up. It's like it was trying to push it out and just it was impossible.

Lauri: 5:48

Yeah. Yeah, I'm not a big fan of everyone in the room going speak up, because when they do that they kind of are doing it their way and they have a tendency to do what I just sort of mimicked, where it's almost like when you're talking to someone who's hard of hearing like my mother was hard of hearing for the vast majority of my adult life while she was still here on earth, and I noticed at one point that when she would say what I was shouting at her and I remember stopping and going, there's no need to shout and I would shift and say it again with love and send like the energy from my heart to hers and she could hear me every time, and that's probably part of what has created this kind of cringe factor.

Lauri: 6:39

When I'm in a room and everybody goes speak up, we can't hear you. Sorry, listeners.

Annie: 6:49

Yeah, I love that I could have used that as a kid. Yeah, I love that I could have used that as a kid.

Annie: 7:03

So what continue? I got curious. Continue with the story of how did you move forward, how did you find your way was welcome was in my choir class in high school. I had just spent the summer being a munchkin in the Wizard of Oz and I found that the part that I enjoyed the most about musical theater was the music and singing in the choir. And so that school year began and I tried out. I did the audition for the choir and I got into the advanced women's choir and I remember being in the room full of sopranos and altos.

Annie: 7:41

You know, on both sides of me there were about a dozen each and they were all very, you know, strong in their voices and in the middle we were the second sopranos and there were about maybe a handful of us and I remember we were singing this Latin song, really somber song, about slavery actually. But it really got me deep into my body and I felt the, I want to say like the heavier sounds, I guess the deeper sounds coming from the roots of me, rising up to my voice and projecting out out of passion for this beautiful music. That really inspired me to use my voice to create this harmony with everyone else, to create this harmony with everyone else. And the teacher often gestured to me, she looked at me to kind of lead the second sopranos. So I remember we got to this point in the song where it was essential that the second sopranos really honed in the note.

Annie: 8:45

It was the essential note that would create the harmony we needed at the peak moment in this whole song. And I looked around me and the second sopranos, they didn't believe in themselves. They all sang very timidly and I was really the only one who was able to hold that note. And I remember seeing my teacher, mrs Garrett, and she's like gesturing to me more, more, more. Yes, keep going and bringing up, bringing up the note, bringing up the note more, more, more. And I saw it in that moment and I felt it in all of my body how wonderful it was to get that affirmation that my voice was necessary.

Annie: 9:22

It was vital.

Lauri: 9:24

Yeah, oh, I love your choir teacher and I'm getting chills over here listening to you talk, the voice coming from the root of you, and then your voice is essential to the harmony. That just gives me chills.

Annie: 9:42

Yeah, yeah, yeah. That was a pivotal moment for me. And then I also had a wonderful creative writing teacher who encouraged us to keep a journal and explore everything about ourselves within, and he would make us do poetry readings. So I think it was every week or every month or so. He would have each of us stand up and read a poem and he had all sorts of really nice lights.

Annie: 10:10

It was like we were in a cafe. We each had our own mug and we knew that at that time, when it was time for creative writing class, we would sit down and the first thing we'd do was just make our tea, make our coffee, and we start writing. And so we'd have these regular poetry readings where everyone got the chance to share their voice and their reflections on life and their reflections on life. And I remember one day we even had to stand up on our desk and read our poem from that point of view and just own it, own our voice.

Annie: 10:41

And that day there was a really renowned young adult author, nikki Grimes, and she attended the poetry reading and I didn't feel any intimidation at all. Strangely enough, it was such a loving and warm environment. I felt so held and supported that it was so easy for me to just lean into my authenticity and to just read what I had written at 3 am or whatever. Read what I had written at 3 am or whatever and I got such a positive feedback from my teacher, from the author, from my classmates that it just I could not stop writing. I just had to lean into this more. And so that was maybe the big two pivotal moments for me in my childhood.

Lauri: 11:32

Maybe the big two pivotal moments for me in my childhood. Yeah, I love that too. For so many people that I've met and that I work with, finding their voice in writing is often a key part of the process, and I believe our soul is talking to us in different ways, and for some of us writing is like our first soul's language. And then something happens when we also take that thing that we got to have Again, it feels like writing actually comes from the root of us as well, and it's a whole nother thing to have it come out, the voice, and then a whole other thing to stand on a desk and really go see me hear me as you're doing that.

Lauri: 12:17

Yeah, so true, yeah, such wonderful teachers you were blessed to have along the way.

Annie: 12:26

Yeah, and you know that kept going. I kept doing poetry readings. That really was the trampoline for the rest of my public speaking, I guess in my youth, because after that in college I studied with some really renowned poets, kept doing poetry readings. I studied in Paris for a year and then I joined Shakespeare and Company's poetry reading group there. It's really well known and so much fun. And so, yeah, I just had a blast just finding my voice through my writing first and, like you said, learning how to share that with the audience. And it actually wasn't that difficult. I felt so grounded in my own truth that it was just such a joy to share it, and every time there was just so much positive feedback.

Lauri: 13:21

So I knew yeah, I knew that I just had to keep following the bliss and that's what I did yeah, and the more we can be grounded in our own truth, that's where it gets easier and easier and easier. Yes, rather than speaking because we think we should, in dynamic meetings or even appearing on a podcast or giving a speech somewhere because it feels like we should do that versus. There's an alignment here. There's a reason for me to speak my truth to these people at this time. I do have to say I'm so jealous. My husband and I went to Paris for our honeymoon just around two years ago. There's a Knicks play it's turned off right now so that it wouldn't be distracting and it plays a lot of the wedding and the honeymoon photos around and around and around, and I just saw the one of Shakespeare and Company within the last few days, and we went went there, of course.

Lauri: 14:32

And knowing that you, you were actually a poet there, I'm now in awe and jealous at the same time.

Annie: 14:41

Yeah, it was, it was fun, it was super fun. Yeah, it was wonderful. Yeah, an extraordinary time in my life.

Lauri: 14:48

Yeah.

Annie: 14:48

Cause I still feel like this is the personal sphere, even if I've shared my poems in public and quite easily actually, um, you know, I had a hard time finding my voice in my codependent marriage. I did not uh access, uh true authenticity in my marriage. For a very long time I thought I did. I came in thinking I knew myself, but my twin flame relationship with my husband has shown me all of the shadows, all of the ways I hide from myself.

Annie: 15:22

It has been inevitable that to confront everything that is keeping me from my own power. So he helps me balance out my yang and I balance out his yin, and we're constantly learning how to balance out our feminine and masculine energies. And so I mean, from the get-go, what that looked like was. He has a whole bunch of trauma that he brought into our relationship me as well and the way he expressed it was through anger and as a man, that is considered very acceptable in general to show your emotions through this umbrella of anger. You're not allowed to be vulnerable. You know I'd be sad no, boys don't cry, etc. So anger was the go-to emotion for everything.

Lauri: 17:28

Yeah, upsetting him, disappointment, the grief as you're saying it now it it almost feels like society, because that's the only one that men are allowed. Really, a lot of things are getting funneled through anger that, in a more healthy way, can be a whole lot of different colors of expression.

Annie: 17:56

Yes, totally yeah. For my husband. It was essential for him to learn how to shield himself for his survival. He grew up in an underserved community where he had to constantly look behind his back and make sure he's not going to have a gun to his head, for example, so it was essential for him to have this shell, and the anger is a great coping mechanism to deal with the grief that cannot be looked at right away and to protect himself in the streets. It made him look powerful and he felt powerful in the moment.

Annie: 18:34

And so when I experienced his anger, it scared me because naturally it reminded me of my dad's anger.

Annie: 18:42

My dad also learned that anger was the only acceptable emotion when he felt upset. And so here's life showing me. Look at this. Heal your ideas about anger, and through the suffering that I felt, through my experience with my husband's anger, I learned so much about all the different expressions of anger being funneled in, like you're saying, and I also got in touch with my own anger and thus my own power, because I had learned to put it away and to be the good girl. I didn't draw from that anger and I let people walk all over me.

Annie: 19:25

I let people violate my boundaries and didn't know how to speak up. And so in this, really, you know, it's a strange harmony that we found eventually balancing out his anger with my vulnerability, found eventually balancing out his anger with my vulnerability. My vulnerability brought up his anger because he had learned it's not okay to be vulnerable. You're weak if you're vulnerable. You're going to get killed if you're vulnerable, and so my natural expression when I'm upset is I'm crying. And he couldn't stand it when he saw that and we all the trauma, just like, got all mixed up in this huge muddy mess and we'd fight constantly every day for years and it forced us to really look at all of this stuff festering underneath the surface and if we were to move forward, we'd have to lay down our arms and embrace whatever is coming up.

Annie: 20:27

And so that means looking under the anger and the vulnerability and understanding that there's just a small child who's waiting for us to love it, and so my vulnerability woke up, his vulnerability and helped him embrace it within himself.

Annie: 20:47

His anger helped me remember that I am powerful and that the anger serves for me to protect myself, that I'm worthy of love. And so this 15-year journey and it's an ongoing work in progress 15-year journey and we're, you know it's an ongoing work in progress we're a happy, thriving couple. Today. We have clear communication Whenever a conflict happens. We're reconnecting with our inner children, ourselves and each other, over and over again and you know now it's pretty occasional if a conflict happens and we're able to really understand what kind of baggage is coming into the picture to create that kind of conflict, what needs haven't been met. We're now seeing conflicts as opportunities, healing opportunities, blessings. So this is a pivotal, like I'd say, in my adult life. This is where I found my power and my voice, truly as you're talking.

Lauri: 21:47

We met at a in a group called emerging women, and I'm getting the feeling of you and your husband could have been drowned by the past, almost like pulled down into quicksand and stayed where you were and had it get even worse and even more boggy, and instead, together you twin flames, you went through the fire together and you emerged emerging to the healed version of yourselves. And we know this and I'm sharing just in case there's anybody listening who's like what I thought I was coming for public speaking. This is the Soulful Speaking podcast All the juicy stuff for our voices, whether it's speaking in a relationship, in our lives or speaking on a stage. The juicy stuff is deep. The juicy stuff is like one way of saying it is it's below the waterline. So you see an iceberg and you see the tip of it and all the stuff where the transformation is is below the waterline.

Lauri: 23:07

And because we're humans, who we are in one place is who we are everywhere. So things that are showing up in our personal relationships are also showing up on a stage. If we're not fully owning our power in a relationship, it's having a ripple effect over onto a stage. We might own our power more on a stage because we've sort of been in that arena of emergence more or somebody might own it. Less on a stage and more in relationships. Yeah, thank you so much for sharing that.

Annie: 23:46

Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's such beautiful wisdom. I've definitely seen that my finding my voice in my relationship informs how I show up now when I do public speaking. I wouldn't have been able to do public speaking as I do now as an EFT tapping practitioner and helping so many people, if I hadn't found my voice in my relationship. So it is. It fuels everything I do in my personal and professional life. That's beautiful.

Lauri: 24:19

What public speaking milestones have there been along the way for you?

Annie: 24:25

one or two people show up was nerve wracking, and to be able to get through the workshop and again receiving such positive feedback, it was the motivator to keep going and so eventually there were more and more people. Never got to huge numbers. I have a pretty small audience actually, but a very committed and I'd say true fans small but very committed and you know, I'd say true fans small but very committed audience and yeah, I'm just so grateful for their presence and their support. They've shown up and participated in my workshops and they really they're wonderful at giving me feedback about what they're looking for and that really helps me, inspire me to make more content and so and talk about stuff that really they're looking for. You know this is the kind of stuff that people are looking for at, like, you know, 1am in the morning, and so that inspired me to then, you know, do more public speaking opportunities where I'm speaking to bigger audiences, and so I got invited to like a few summits.

Annie: 27:02

You know I did first a workshop. Maybe the biggest workshop has been 300 people and they're all expats like me and that went really well. People were just raving afterwards. I mean, people are just so excited to find this tool EFT Tapping because the basic sequence is so accessible. Even little kids can do it and it helps you relieve stress and anxiety in the moment and so many people are looking for that immediate relief with whatever they're going through. As soon as they're upset, someone says something horrible, they have a tool that they can use finally to ground themselves. And it truly works because we're switching off the fight and flight, flight or flight stress response and we're getting into the relaxation response. So people are just raving at these workshops.

Lauri: 27:50

When you said it was 300 people and it went really well, how was that moment different for you on the inside, your mind, your body, your throat, from the you way back years earlier who was having trouble speaking up in class?

Annie: 28:13

Oof, yeah, I still tend to. The energy tends to move up to my head. It's the excitement and the adrenaline at the same time. I have it a little bit now even, but much less than in the past. And so I remember having that happen during the 300 person workshop. And so I remember having that happen during the 300-person workshop, but I just remember seeing their faces light up and them getting the relief as they're tapping through the points, and the people looked so serene. I'm like, okay, yes, just keep going, just keep going. And I remember sitting back in my chair a little bit and remembering the, you know, the roots growing out of my feet and just, I often imagine like a white light crossing, you know, through my body from the sky to the earth. And so, you know, I felt pretty grounded actually, yeah, apart from the excitement and the adrenaline.

Lauri: 29:11

Yeah, and as you were talking about it just now and you said you were feeling just a little bit of the excitement up, and then you described the tapping it felt like your energy grounded back down, pretty subtle.

Lauri: 29:25

It's not like she's a chirping puppy. Some of us can get so excited that it's like we're a chirping puppy dog and it had me wondering. I believe, sometimes that some of the like we're a chirping puppy dog and it had me wondering. I believe sometimes that some of the stuff we're experiencing when we're speaking is coming from us and if we're empathic, we literally feel what other people feel. Some of the up could have been your own quote unquote nervousness, and some of it could have been what was going on in the crowd. So then, as you tapped for the sake of them, their energy and yours came way back down into the root. So you were serving them and had an experience yourself as part of it.

Annie: 30:06

I like that. Yes, I totally forgot to mention. Of course I'm tapping at the same time so that I'm receiving the benefits. I'm calming down as well, and it's a pretty nice advantage Sometimes when I'm just speaking and I'm not doing the tapping in front of a group. I kind of wish I could just start going like this on the side of my hand. I'm tapping on the side of my hand for listeners and it looks really weird, but it's so helpful. But yeah, it was very grounding by the end, that's for sure for everyone. Wonderful wonderful.

Lauri: 30:37

And then where did you go next after that?

Annie: 30:40

Yeah, I felt like my confidence really boosted when I got invited to a summit where there are 300,000 people in the audience and I talked about childhood emotional neglect, a very underestimated topic for a lot of people in my audience. They don't really realize including me for a long time. We don't really realize how impactful childhood emotional neglect is and it's just a term to mean you felt invalidated or unseen as a kid. Maybe you came home from school and you just had a horrible day. Maybe someone said something critical about you and you don't know how to deal with it. And then your parent just kind of ignores you or just, oh, it's not a big deal, you're so sensitive kind of ignores you or just you know, oh, it's not a big deal, you're so sensitive, and they may have good intentions.

Annie: 31:40

But that stuff stays with us and when it gets repeated over and over and over, I mean we get the message that we're not important or that we're not worthy of support.

Annie: 31:46

And so that topic was. You know, it touched a lot of people and it helped them realize I'm not crazy, uh, I. That's why affirmations don't work. It's because this stuff is in my body and I got the message repeatedly that I wasn't worthy, I wasn't loved the way I needed to, and so that that was really affirming for me to keep going as well, you know, the whole time as I'm on this journey as an EFT practitioner, doing these workshops and these speaking opportunities, I'm constantly remembering that I am doing this, I am being of service first and foremost, and so I am just relating my own experience and then I get feedback Like this is what people want to hear, because they tell me your story resonates with me. I also have an overcritical parent and I've been lost about it, and I am so grateful to have found you, that you've been able to overcome this and have a healthy relationship with your husband, like that kind of stuff, so I can just put all the doubts almost like aside Most of the time.

Annie: 33:01

That's what leads me forward.

Lauri: 33:03

Yeah, the how can you serve? And we get to have both, and I'm hearing it a lot in your story that if we share our own experience to serve others, it's part of our spiritual path while we're alive. It heals us in the process and it helps them. It gets to be both at the same time and in a lot of ways it feels like humanity lost that and now it's coming back from people like you sharing your story and helping others through the sharing of your own experiences.

Annie: 33:50

Yeah, yeah, I love having my podcast. So I started my podcast in January 2022, after a very wonderful, inspiring interview that I was invited to on someone else's podcast. So this Ayurveda coach reached out to me and she was so professional and so graceful about the whole process that I thought why not have a podcast myself? I can see myself doing this, and so I began reading my blog articles that had gained a lot of momentum. They're all SEO optimized, and so I can see the stats and the people sometimes writing to me to let me know that I've made an impact. And so I thought what if I use podcasting to amplify my voice further and reach a bigger audience? Because podcasting is where it's at nowadays?

Annie: 34:43

A lot of people love listening to podcasts as they drive their car or do chores or whatever, and I do this. Really lovely collaboration. It's a mutually supportive opportunity for my listeners to meet me one-to-one, and so I ask them for 15 minutes of their time. I get to interview them and ask them just about their challenges and who they are what are you doing in this world and I get ideas for content and my offers, and in exchange, I give them 15 minutes of EFT a free EFT session and they get a taste of my work, they can work on something that they're going through, get some relief and I think, yeah, almost everyone is so surprised how quickly things can shift in just 15 minutes and everyone walks away with this amazing stress relief tool that they can use for the rest of their life.

Annie: 35:43

I think the thing with podcasting is often we don't get feedback or we don't hear from our listeners and we feel like we're talking into the void. And this opportunity has allowed me to meet my lovely audience members one-to-one. It's such a joy and they're so grateful to get a taste of my work and to get that interaction. It's just really rare for a business that you know, as businesses and business owners get bigger and bigger, they don't have that really intimate contact with their audience and I want to keep that going.

Lauri: 36:17

Yeah, it has. It has the feeling, as you talk about it, like old fashioned shops, like in the fifties, that we see in movies, where everybody knew everybody in a deeper way. So if you walked into the ice cream shop and you tried a flavor of ice cream, yes, marketing is tasting, the goods is happening and it has the feeling of much more connection and really getting to know each other. And if the flavor of ice cream that you have is not the flavor for them, they can go home and eat their own ice cream or go somewhere else. It has a very connected, welcoming, heart-centered feeling to it.

Annie: 37:01

Yeah, that's exactly what I was looking for. Yeah, yeah, I get such wonderful feedback from my podcast listeners that I just I'm going to I know I'm going to keep going with podcasting. This is my business's home. My podcast and my blog article is my platform where I can explore all my ideas further amplify my voice, explore who I am, play with ideas.

Lauri: 37:28

Yeah, so I have a feeling that people driving along in their cars listening to this would love to know where's your shop. Where can they, where can they find you? Where can they listen to more of your stories?

Annie: 37:43

Yeah, I invite your listeners to meet with me one-to-one. Let's do this interview and free eft session, if you're resonating with that, so you can go to hushyourmindcom interview and just sign up for that, and you can also find me um in my newsletter. So that's hushyourmindcom newsletter. You geta free eft meditation and guide for people pleasing. So that shows you the basic sequence and how to work on limiting beliefs you have about speaking your truth and embodying positive affirmations, beginning the process of having it feel true for you in your body that you're worthy of being in your power, worthy of speaking truth and, yeah, worthy of love.

Lauri: 38:33

And is there anything that you haven't already said?

Annie: 38:38

Final words, final wisdom, final nugget for anyone listening One of the most surprising things on this public speaking journey is to discover that there were a lot of unconscious wounds driving my fears, and I wouldn't have been able to access them if I hadn't tapped. For me, my main go-to tool is EFT tapping, but there are many somatic practices tapping but there are many somatic practices. So I'd highly encourage anyone wanting to do public speaking and you're wondering why it's so hard and the nervousness is really, you know, taking over the situation. There might be very deeply seated fears that want to be embraced.

Annie: 39:26

A part of you is closing up and asking for protection, perhaps due to things that seem completely unrelated. So, for example, I had no idea, but the more I tapped and I'm on this inner growth journey for the rest of my life so I learned eventually that there is sexual trauma that kept me from feeling okay with being visible, and so I was unconsciously pushing away opportunities to grow as a business owner because I was afraid deep down to become visible and what that would mean. So if I had learned, being visible means I'll get cat called or I'll attract negative attention to me. Um, well, a part of you will naturally push away opportunities to protect yourself.

Lauri: 40:23

Yeah, um, if the body is, yeah, if the body is, the body doesn't understand logic like our mind does. So if the body senses a vulnerability and a danger, it's not fine tuning the difference between different types of danger. It just goes that feels dangerous. No, it just goes that feels dangerous. No. Which is part of why you're sharing and repeating again and again, like you need to go into the stuff, that is, the traumas that are stored in the body. But our mind doesn't always get that, like my mind doesn't know the difference between a bear, a past sexual trauma or an audience. It needs all of them to be healed to be fully visible trauma or an audience.

Annie: 41:13

It needs all of them to be healed to be fully visible.

Annie: 41:21

Yeah yeah.

Annie: 41:22

Another big obstacle for me was realizing that because of my past with my father, and even the bullying like being surrounded by classmates that didn't support who I was and my voice was being put to the side made me feel as an adult like I wasn't going to be well accepted sometimes in groups or I would just get I don't know, I'd probably die from all the criticism or something.

Annie: 41:44

I mean, you're right, the mind has its own logic and the body another. So I learned that I needed to heal and integrate that part of me that's still hurting from having an overcritical father because he had taught me that my voice wasn't important. Actually, now, as an adult, to go back and heal my inner child and support her so that she feels empowered as me as an adult, to speak my truth and share my wisdom. So if we felt our power was taken away, our voice was taken away as a kid, we'll probably play that out in our business or as a public speaker. We'll probably unconsciously push away opportunities that could actually have us meeting more people, attracting more positive experiences, impacting just so many more people because of those unconscious fears, we might not be able to access them right away.

Lauri: 42:50

Yeah, yeah, thank you. I'm going to go into our lightning round. This feels a bit like a hard pivot in this moment, and I'm laughing because this questionnaire is inspired by someone named Bernard Pivot, so we're going to do the Pivot pivot at this point. Yeah, let's shake it up, let's shake it up. Let's shake it up. What is your favorite word?

Annie: 43:16

it's in french exquis. It means exquisite yummy.

Lauri: 43:22

What is your least favorite word?

Annie: 43:26

racism, racism.

Lauri: 43:30

What turns you on creatively, spiritually or emotionally?

Annie: 43:36

Late night chats with my husband. What turns you off? Close mindedness.

Lauri: 43:46

What is your favorite curse word?

Annie: 43:48

Bullshit. I like how it cuts through. It cuts through the bullshit.

Lauri: 43:55

What sound or noise do you love?

Annie: 43:59

I'm thinking of a recent walk I had along the Sarth River, the wind through a forest of bamboo.

Lauri: 44:11

What sound or noise do you hate?

Annie: 44:14

Lawnmowers Hate them.

Lauri: 44:22

What profession other than yours would be fun to try?

Annie: 44:36

be fun to try. I'd love to be a voice actress for erotic stories.

Lauri: 44:41

I've actually been on one audition.

Annie: 44:52

What profession other than yours would you not like to do? Oh, I admire elementary school teachers so much. I had a time when I taught English to French kids, so I wasn't a full-time teacher, but I so admire what they do, but I would not want to be a elementary school teacher.

Lauri: 45:08

And last one what do you hope people say about you on your 100th birthday?

Annie: 45:17

You're so young at heart. Thank you for your wisdom.

Lauri: 45:23

Beautiful, beautiful. Thank you for your wisdom, sharing your wisdom here with us today, annie, it's been such a wonderful conversation.

Annie: 45:33

Thank you, laurie. It's such a pleasure and a joy to have met you and to have collaborated with you. It's been a privilege and an honor, thank you. Thank you.