Piece Of Mind Podcast

Ep 36: The 7 Things I've Been Afraid to Admit at 32

• Ashley Badman

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Vulnerability creates connection as I share seven personal confessions I've been embarrassed to admit at age 32, from parenting regrets to aging anxieties to family estrangements.

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Speaker 1:

Welcome back to the Peace of Mind Podcast. Today's gonna be a bit of a different episode and I hope you still enjoy it. Usually I come on here and we talk about a specific topic, all the things, but today it's gonna be a bit more of a raw, real, honest chat and I hope that in this episode, at some point in any of the topics that we talk about, in any of the things that I go over, it allows you to just feel really seen or heard or understood or, you know, just being able to really take away any shame or judgment that you might have in some of the things that I'm going to talk about. And what this episode is really going to be about is it's coming from a post that I did on my Ashley Babin social media so not my Built for Better Instagram page, my Ashley Babin one and it was saying that I'm 32 and I'm embarrassed to admit this. And then I listed some things that I was embarrassed to admit and, to be perfectly honest, when I shared that, I did feel a little bit nervous, which is funny because I've showed up online for what? Six years now.

Speaker 1:

I think I first started posting on that page specifically in 2019, so it's been quite a ride, quite a journey, and I am an open book and sometimes a bit of an oversharer. But there are still some things, especially now as I get more successful, or my business gets more successful or I meant to have my shit together because I'm now in my thirties and I'm not in my twenties, and I've been doing this for a long time all the different things it does become a little bit harder to be more vulnerable or it does feel like, oh shit, like if I really show these parts of myself, is it going to mean that I look like I can't run a business properly or whatever. Whatever it is. But my rule of thumb, since showing up online is never to try and be perceived a certain way. It's just to be honest, it's just to be myself, to be able to be authentic, and that has been such a gift to be able to create a business and run a business and have a social media presence, just being myself. So, doing this post although it felt like a bit of an edge, it also felt really empowering and it felt I felt inspired writing it and I was really just hoping it landed for people and it did.

Speaker 1:

I think it was one of my most like, highest viewed reels in the longest of times, especially on that page and people commenting and really resonating, and I was like you know what that shows to me that this probably needs to be a bigger conversation. And on Instagram, obviously we have like 90 seconds and a caption limit to be able to get our point across. And I am a chatty gal, I love to talk and sometimes we can put these dot points and we can't really give context and we can't really say why we feel that way or add more value to what we're actually trying to say, and I get the opportunity to do that in my podcast. So the idea of this episode is going to be basically like seven confessions from myself that relate to or are similar to what I posted in those social media points under that 32 and embarrassed to admit this post. But we're going to go into a little bit more depth. The first point that I made I'm just going to read it out and then I'm just going to chat about it. I'm just going to really riff about the things that I've put.

Speaker 1:

I wrote, I think, about all the ways I could have been a better parent if I'd had my babies now, not when I was 18 and 19. I don't regret having them, but I now realize how young I was and how much trauma and pain I was still carrying. I fear, maybe, that I've passed that on to my kids before I could work on it. This first point was probably my hardest to write because I've actually held a lot of shame and guilt around this. So when I had my babies at 18 and 19, I definitely did disappoint a lot of people around me. I don't know if disappoint is the right word. I probably did disappoint people around me, but I definitely felt other people's fear in what my life was going to look like and if I was ever going to make something of myself, if I was always going to be.

Speaker 1:

Someone who lives in Western Sydney has lots of babies. I was told that my partner's going to leave me. I'm going to be a single mom to two little babies. I'm not going to have a life. I'm not going to be able to do anything and I'm not going to leave my small hometown. I won't travel all of the different things and I now know that a lot of that was coming from a place of like. I'm scared for you and I know that you are capable of so much and I love you so much and I want to make sure that you are making decisions in your life that are going to allow you to live a life that you're proud of and with.

Speaker 1:

And I know now that it was coming from there, but I feel like since having my babies, I think I've spent a lot of that time afterwards trying to prove that I was a good mom and trying to prove that I could do this and I could handle this and I could be all the things. I could be a mom and I could still be successful, I could still travel, I could take my babies overseas and unfortunately, I think it came from two different places One from a really genuine, authentic place of like I do genuinely believe in myself and I believe in my potential and I want to build a beautiful life for myself and for my kids. And the other kind of maybe more shadowy or darker side of that, where it was more. I need to show everyone like I need to show everyone that I actually can do this and I want to prove I'm a good mom and I want to be a perfect mom, and I kind of put a lot of pressure on myself to be perfect and to never get it wrong and to always make the best decisions, and it sometimes meant that I struggled to have time for myself or put myself first or make decisions that were for myself. So you can imagine like spending your whole life from 18 years old Like I hadn't even moved out of home when I fell pregnant. I fell pregnant three months after my 18th birthday. I hadn't even had a real proper job for that long and then I was thrust into parenthood, where your whole life does become about your babies, and I love that. I love my kids, I love being a mum. But it's like I don't actually even know what it's like to just look after myself, to just make decisions for myself, like I actually don't even know what that life looks like.

Speaker 1:

And now that I've started really working on myself and I would say I started really working on myself and I would say I started really working on myself after the police. So when I was leaving the police I went through a really traumatic time. The reason I left the police was very traumatic. The process of leaving the police took a really big toll on me. It was the first time that I was diagnosed with depression and anxiety and had any dealings with mental health, and it really forced me. I don't know if forced is the right word or it really just I wanted to. I'm not really sure what the right wording is there, but it made me actually look at myself and be like who am I Like? Who am I, what's going on beneath the surface and how can I really work on myself. And then starting my business really thrust me into that.

Speaker 1:

I feel like starting a business is the quickest way to personal development because you can't hide. You can't hide in a business where you are faced with facing your own fears all of the time Fear of judgment, fear of abandonment, fear of people misunderstanding you, fear of it not working out, fear of failure, fear of success and you are faced with all of these things really, really quickly that you almost either look at it and you work on yourself and what's going on underneath, or it swallows you whole and you hate the whole process and you end up giving up or you quit or you keep going. But it's kind of like really, really heavy and a shit time. So I started working on myself around that time I think I was like 26 years old. So my babies would have been I am really bad at math 26, seven, eight and seven. I think they were 8 and 7. So, like that's not, they're not babies anymore.

Speaker 1:

I've been a parent for quite some time by this point, and I don't know if anyone else can relate to this as a parent who's then gone on to do personal development or even therapy or all of those different things that you start to learn so much about childhood and it's meant to be for yourself to learn about your own child and to learn about how that's impacted you and to learn about how you can heal from your own childhood and the beliefs that you have formed and how your nervous system has been kind of built in dysregulation. You've lived your whole life from that. But then there comes this kind of whisper in the back of your mind of like have I done that to my kids? Have I unconsciously put my own trauma because I hadn't worked on myself when I had them so young? Have I unconsciously put that onto my kids? And I really don't speak about this often or out loud, because it has been something that's really tender for me and something that I've really had to work through actively and consciously.

Speaker 1:

But when my son got sick and he got liver and bowel disease, I started seeing more and more how trauma can cause physical diseases, especially ones that are from inflammation and all the different things. And my son had to COVID we all did at the time and then he got really, really, really unwell, ended up in hospital. And this is how the journey had started, with him having liver and bowel disease, and I have for the longest time so he's been unwell for three years blamed myself. Did I do that? Having him so young? Did I like in the womb, was my trauma pushed onto him because I was in a toxic relationship? Like, did I cause this? And that has been a really hard journey for me to release guilt and to release shame and to focus on the here and now and how I can be present for him and make good decisions for him. But I won't lie that I have had those thoughts of did having them young cause this? Did my trauma that I had unhealed and my toxic relationship because I didn't know any better at the time did that cause this? And yeah, it's been pretty painful. It's been pretty painful to deal with.

Speaker 1:

I haven't also spoke about this until now. But I'm about to start the process of getting Isaiah assessed for some things ADHD, possibly, some other things and I don't want to talk about his journey too much because I just don't feel like it's my place to talk about his journey. But I have had so many thoughts pop up of like did you do this, is this happening because of you? And it's just those. Are those intrusive thoughts right, and they're not helpful and I know that, and it's something that I've really had to work through.

Speaker 1:

But I would be lying if I said it wasn't something that has come up for me and it wasn't something that I've had to learn to navigate and to learn how to have compassion for myself and surrender to our journey in life and surrender to the fact that this is Isaiah's experience and I can support him through this. And something that has really helped me and I don't know if anyone else is carrying guilt or shame with anything in their life but something that has really helped me is this realization that, even if my trauma did play a role in anything that Isaiah is now navigating which I will never know for certain and none of us will ever know things like this for certain if it is, I could have spent my whole life never healing. I could have carried that through my whole parenting journey and continued to parent, maybe through my trauma, with my trauma, from my trauma and I did it and whilst it took me longer than I would have hoped and I know that if I had had my babies after this point, I probably would have parented differently At least I have got to this point of healing myself, of learning so that I can parent my children in a way that I'm really, really proud of, in a way that is very I don't know if this is the right word but in a way that's trauma-informed, in a way that understands how their brain works, how their belief systems work, how to communicate with them, how to help them build emotional intelligence and resilience and all those different things. I know that now and I have for many, many years, and I've been parenting through that lens and I just hold gratitude for myself rather than shame and judgment for myself that I may have not have done that as soon as I have wanted to do that, but I still did it and I could have just chosen to never look at those things and to continue to blame my childhood, or continue to just never face myself, and I didn't. So I would say that one's still a bit of a work in progress, but it's definitely something that I sit with.

Speaker 1:

The next point that I had made was I'm not sure I ever get married. I've been engaged for five years and I just had no huge burning desire to plan a wedding, and if we do, I think we'll elope. I don't feel like there's much more to say on this, but the funny thing with this is always things are so much deeper for me than they probably need to be, and this isn't that deep, but it's like I have never actually been witness to a marriage that has been successful, and that's kind of sad. I mean, my grandparents could be, could be an example for me, and maybe I'm just kind of like I have this belief system, so I'm bringing in evidence to confirm what I believe, which is confirmation bias and which is how our brain works, and that may very well be happening, but I just feel like in my lifetime I unfortunately have not been witness to healthy marriages.

Speaker 1:

I've seen marriages where there's infidelity and where there's just it's just miserable and unhappy and all the different things, and I've just never had this desire to be like well, I want to do that, I want to get married. And I just think like if you do get married, or you are married or you have a desire to get married, obviously I celebrate you. I love that. My sister's getting married in March and I'm so freaking excited Like I genuinely cannot wait. I love going to weddings. I was a bridesmaid in my best friend's wedding a few years ago. I had the best time ever.

Speaker 1:

So it's not a place of like I'm not doing it, so I'm making it wrong, and I think sometimes like we do need to have nuances with conversations like this, where it's like it's not saying something is wrong, it's just like it's not my vibe and I at the moment just I already have kids. I've already been in a nine year long relationship that ended two weeks before we were supposed to get married, which is wild. And now I'm in this beautiful loving relationship with Dave and I adore him and I am just like obsessed I don't know if obsessed is the right word because it sounds like whatever, whatever it's going to sound like but I'm obsessed with my relationship. We've been together six years and I literally like just love that man so much he loves my children. Like I don't talk about this often. Should I just stop saying that we're just going to like gauge, that I don't talk about these things often? I'm doing it today, but my kid's dad is not Dave. So a lot of people on social media think that Dave is their dad, which understandably, like he's the only man that people see in our life and in their life. But their dad actually lives in a different state and they maybe see their dad once a year and they don't talk to him very often. So Dave has really become that role for my kids and he's been in their life since they were five and six years old. So they have lived with Dave now longer than they lived with their dad. So you can imagine their relationship with Dave and it's just very, very strong.

Speaker 1:

My relationship with Dave is just I just never want this to end and I don't think it will. I don't think it will. And he always tells me he's like you know, cause sometimes I can be a little bit anxious attachment guys. He's always reassuring me that like nothing, like we're in this, we're in this life together and I just don't feel like I need to get married to solidify that, and I also am just at a point in my life where my kids are 13 and 12 now and I run my own business and I have financial goals, and this year my goal was really, really focusing on financial literacy and all the different things and different financial streams. I just have no desire to spend that on a wedding. I just I don't like if I'm going to have a big bunch of cash to spend, it's going to be on a house or it's going to be on a caravan or it's going to be on holidays or it's just going to be on like 100 billion more things than a wedding. So I think if I do get married, guys, I'm going to be going to, I'm going to be going to Las Vegas and probably getting married by a priest. I mean a priest. Did I say that Lol? I mean Elvis Presley Kind of a priest. But yeah, I think that kind of sums up that point.

Speaker 1:

Moving on, I don't speak to my brother or any of my extended family. I have my mom and my sister and my stepdad and that's it. I sometimes feel guilt for cutting my brother off, but I also know that, who he was, who he is and the drama that surrounded that was hurting me. This one is still something that I guess I do feel. I do feel some type of way about and I don't know what that is. I don't think it's guilt anymore. I think I've really worked through that. But I have no relationship with my brother now at all. Like I think the last time we spoke was maybe five or no actually that's a lie. The last time we really really spoke was five or six years ago, but we did have kind of like a small interaction when my dad died in 2021 or two, and that kind of moment solidified to me why I don't have a relationship with my brother.

Speaker 1:

When my dad died, I decided to talk to my brother and we haven't spoken in years and we kind of were having good conversations and then it turned bad very quickly with text messages at 2am saying like kind of like accusing me of things, of not caring and not loving and him and all these different just very toxic. He was clearly under the influence of either drugs or alcohol something, and that's kind of the cycle of what being in being in contact with my brother was was like my brother was 10 years older than me and our childhood dynamic is weird. So my brother and sister were 10 and 12 when I was born. My sister was taken out of the home when she was around 14 years old and given to my grandparents. So then it was just me and my brother.

Speaker 1:

My dad was an alcoholic. There was a lot of domestic violence. My dad kind of hated my brother, so he would physically abuse him a lot, emotionally, mentally, all the different things. It was very, very toxic, very bad. But me and my brother were kind of close because he was really all I had and he did his best to protect me in those years because I was a toddler and a child and a baby and I couldn't protect myself. So he kind of played that role.

Speaker 1:

But he had been through a lot of trauma himself and he never, ever, ever wanted to work on it. Look at it, he kind of went with alcohol on it. Look at it, he kind of went with alcohol, drugs and just a lot of staying in chaos, being addicted to chaos, creating chaos, lots of fights. He nearly went to jail at one point and I just don't think his life was ever going to get out of that and it kind of got to a point where I was in that and dragged into that and he would kind of pick fights with me, not not, not physical fights, but just over the silliest things, like just getting frustrated at me or annoyed at me, like he didn't like my sister for a period of time, so if I spoke to my sister then he would kind of guilt me and like torment me emotionally and it was just, it just wasn't worth it. And then when I had kids and then my life started to move on from our childhood and from that environment, all the different things, I just realized that that relationship probably couldn't come with me. And it's been hard.

Speaker 1:

I've received messages from him over the years that are just just every now and then just out of the blue, that are just like are we going to move on from this bullshit? Are you ready to like put this behind us? What if I fucking died? And then you hadn't spoke to me and just very guilt, guilt, guilt and it just it's really hard. But maybe, like not even 12 months ago, maybe 6-12 months ago apparently he was in the hospital and someone had found me on Facebook that was friends with him and messaged me and sent me this. Really it was kind of like are you gonna be a good sister, are you gonna let him be alone in this period? Anyways, my mom rang the hospital when he was discharged that day and he was like, fine, but just things like that where, when I first got that message, I did feel like guilt. I was like, oh my god, like what if he is dying? What if something's wrong with him? I messaged my sister. I'm like, should we call him? Like our dad had already died and we hadn't spoken to our dad in years. And when he died I felt like shit should have made the effort to speak to him, even though he was a horrible man, an alcoholic and had no relationship with me. I felt that and I was like, am I going to feel this if something happens to my brother? And I haven't made the effort to talk to him? So that's just been something that I've had to work through.

Speaker 1:

When it comes to my extended family, my dad was adopted, so I don't actually know any of his biological family and my auntie only had one on that side and I wouldn't say we don't have a relationship, we just don't speak. She lives in New South Wales. We're not really close, but if I was to ring her or message her tomorrow to say, oh, we're in your area and to catch up. We'd catch up and it'd be beautiful and lovely. My aunties and uncles on my mum's side do not talk to them. My uncle was an absolute douchebag to me when I had my daughter Said some really horrible things. He is very mean and it kind of carried on, carried on, carried on. And then something happened last year where he kind of put something on Facebook about me randomly, for no reason at all, and that was it for me. I'm like I'm done with that, I just don't have time for that and I just I just don't care. Like you're not a very nice person, you're actually quite mean and rude and have a gigantic ego and I just don't want you in my life. So that's kind of that.

Speaker 1:

The next point was I struggled to have and hold female friendships and always have. In school I was bullied and never really felt like I fit in and that has kind of carried on into my adult life. I had a very small amount of female friends, or I have a very small amount of female friends who I love so dearly. With this point, I think the reason I was embarrassed to admit it is because I think when people see me on social media they're like you're so like happy and friendly and bubbly and social and and like actually I am those things. But I'm quite shy, which comes as a shock to people.

Speaker 1:

I get like social anxiety when I'm meeting people and I've just always had this deep seed of belief that I'm not lovable or likable or if I let people get too close they'll realize that they hate me or that I'm not what they wanted them to be. And that has been a deep, deep, deep wound that I've had to really work on. Like my dad left when I was 10 and got a DNA test to prove that I wasn't his. I was bullied a lot in primary school. I was bullied a lot in high school. Like it has been a deep seed of belief because I have had so much evidence to confirm to myself you aren't likable, people don't like you, and that has kind of carried on into my adult life.

Speaker 1:

So it's not that I can't have and hold female friendships, it's that it's gotten to a point now where it's no longer about I can't have female friendships, it's I'm quite selective of the people that I really, really let in, and I think there are two parts of that. I think that part of it is like I don't mind that about myself, because if I'm going to put time and energy into people, I want it to be people that I really love and they love me, and it's very genuine and very aligned. And I think there is a part where it's like I do have to learn to let down my guard a little bit and be a little bit more trustworthy of people. I think, because of my life and all the different things, I do have a little bit of trust issues, but it's something that I really really want to work on. But at the same time, the female friends that I have right now I genuinely love them to death. To death is probably the wrong word, but you know what I mean. Like I love them, our friendship is just so. It's just. There's no competition, there's no gossip. It's like I want to see you win and I'm here to support you when you fuck up and I'm here for you to be your real, raw, honest self. You don't have to perform, you don't have to be anything other than who you are, and I love you for that and they love me for that. It's just, it's just beautiful. So I guess I am selective.

Speaker 1:

But up until this point in my life I prior I really struggled with just having female friendships. And then last year I had something happen where I had a female friendship and it was one of the first female friendships that I really really let her in in my local area because I hadn't really met anyone in Harvey Bay and I really really let her in and the friendship ended and it was really really hard for me. I kind of questioned a lot in that whole process and it was basically yeah, there were many different reasons for that, but a lot of them were confirming to me that if I'm fully myself that people don't like me and it was really really hard to be like no's actually not true. That person is just not your person and that's okay. But that was quite recent and I've had to just continue to move forward and move through that.

Speaker 1:

And the other part of this is like my clients. So I have like one-on-one clients that I've worked with for three plus years, even just a year or even just his last 12 months that I don't just see them as clients. I'm like you are literally my besties, I love you so much, like I will help them through whatever they need help through and the deepest trauma that they need help through, or the mindset things that aren't that deep in the accountability side of that, or their business, whatever it is. But the bond and the connection that I have with these women is just fucking unmatched and I love them so much and that, for me, has also been evidence of like no, you actually are good at holding female friendships and I know they're my clients. But like if you saw our interactions or my interactions with my clients, you'd be like, okay, yeah, that's like you know, I still know how to treat them as clients. I still know how to help them. I still know how to keep them accountable. I still know how to be direct and reflect blind spots to them and all those different things. But I also know how to let them be seen in all of their power and their confidence and their strengths and that they don't maybe see in themselves. But the love that I have for them is genuine, so genuine. Anyone who tells you that you can't have friendships with your clients or love them like, okay, fuck off, that's not for me. I love my clients. So that has been really, really healing for me as well.

Speaker 1:

Moving on, oh, this one's interesting. So seeing myself age as I enter my 30s has been harder than I would have liked to admit new wrinkles, different skin textures. The conflict between wanting Botox to stay looking how I've always have and wanting to let myself accept all of me without toxins is real. Guys, I've been showing up on social media, like I said, since 2019. I think I was 27 years old. I I'm now 32.

Speaker 1:

Whilst that doesn't seem like a very long time, the girls who are going into the 30s, in their 30s or past their 30s, would know that, like all of a sudden, things just start to change. Like when you enter your 30s, you're like wait a minute, like wait, hold on a second. And when you're looking at yourself as much as I have to look at myself because I create my content, so I'm looking at myself in the camera. I'm editing my content, so I'm looking myself in the edit. I'm posting the content, so I'm looking at like that's not normal. We are not meant to see our face and stare at our face as often as I've had to over the years and literally watch my face change. So I would be absolutely lying if I said it didn't bother me at all. I would be absolutely lying if I said it didn't bother me at all and I was like slay, aging, gracefully Love it, like I want that so bad. I really want that belief and I'm working on it truly. But I'd be lying if I didn't say that there's been this part of me that's like whoa, this is more confronting than I thought and harder than I thought.

Speaker 1:

So I have had Botox in the past plenty of times. I'm definitely not going to lie about that. I've had it plenty of times and I've had some weird reactions with it, like not like severe, but the two weeks after I get it I get really, really sick, like dizzy, nauseous, and I can't really tell if it's linked to the Botox or not and all the things. But I've also been going on a journey to remove toxins from our house, eat really, really healthy and really focus on the ingredients in my food, ingredients in our cleaning products, my skincare, all the different things. And that's mostly since Isaiah has been sick because he has liver and bowel disease and it just makes sense for us to like tidy up our shit.

Speaker 1:

But also for myself, going to my thirties has been a huge wake up call of like, oh shit, you actually age, you're getting old, come on, you need to look after yourself because at some point, like, all of these things that are easy for you to do are not going to be easy for you to do unless you look after yourself, unless you eat well and eat more protein and move your body, all the things. So that's been a huge focus and then, kind of like injecting fucking a chemical, a toxin, into my forehead kind of, is like, does that really align? And I'm not judging anyone who does it Like obviously, hopefully that's clear, because I do it myself. I don't do it myself. I go to a clinic, don't worry, but I do get Botox. I'm not judging, but it's just this conflict.

Speaker 1:

And then there's this part of me that every time I get Botox it's like $350 or something like that and it lasts. It does not last long for me. I think I have a problem, I think I have something wrong where I metabolize it way too quickly, but it lasts like a month or two. I think it's meant to last like three months. So like I don't know what's going on there, but I'm like, what is the end to this? Do I just do this now for the rest of my life, like this is something I just have to upkeep? Do I want to keep doing this? Do I? Are there like side effects to this? I just, and I keep seeing all these like bad side effects and all the things and I so it's an inner conflict. I haven't got Botox since February. So what are we in now, july? I haven't got Botox since February and I will probably get it in November before my event. I did not get it for this event and I'm not going to lie. I was how many times am I going to say I'm not going to lie?

Speaker 1:

I was feeling a little bit self-conscious about how many forehead wrinkles I have. Guys, I think I have an abnormal amount of forehead wrinkles Okay, abnormal amount, I think, because I have like low eyebrows I think there's an actual term for it but like my eyebrows sit quite low and I have a lot of expression and I talk with expression. So I'm always raising my eyebrows, always raising my eyebrows, and I have since I was little. Like these wrinkles, I swear to god, I've had them since I was like 10 years, fucking old, because I'm always raising my damn eyebrows and now they're just really prominent but they're getting to the point, as I'm getting older, of like, when I'm not raising my eyebrows, you can still kind of see the lines and I'm like, and it's just so. There's just like do I have excess skin? It's like I have fucking excess skin on my forehead.

Speaker 1:

So, yeah, quite self-conscious about it, but work in progress and I hope this is like just such evidence for people of like I'm a confident gal, I've done the work, feel really fucking pleased with who I am, but I still have things where I'm like, yeah, kind of conscious about that kind of self-conscious. But I think it's okay to admit that we have things that we are working through and working on and we don't have to be perfect and that's just one of those things and I haven't kind of landed in like you know how this all plays out, but obviously I'm going to age more and more and more. I'm only getting older. So it's something that I have actively and do actively work on, just like accepting what I look like and finding beauty in what I look like and finding beauty the aging process and just reminding myself like I am so grateful that I get to age, because there are so many people that don't get to age and they would do anything to age, and if it meant having fucking wrinkly excess skin forehead but they got to live and they got to be alive, then I'm pretty sure they would choose it. So that is a reminder to myself.

Speaker 1:

The next one was I still carry a silent pressure to prove myself, to prove I'm more than a teen mum, more than a failed career in the police, more than a failed relationship with my kid's dad. I sometimes feel like I'm the kid still living in government housing, trying to prove people wrong and not be a stereotype. That's a big one, isn't it? So when I say failed a relationship with my kid's dad, I wrote that, but I just want to preface I don't mean like a failure, like that I wished that that relationship continued or that I see it as a failure. That relationship needed to end long before it did for the both of us and that was the best thing that could have ever happened to both of us that relationship ending. I'm in a beautiful relationship with Dave. He's in a beautiful relationship. He's getting married next year. Like it just all needed to work out how it worked out.

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However, sometimes I just feel like. I look at my life and I'm like you are chaos. And people always say to me like I love the chaos, I love this vibe, I love this, but a lot of the time I'm quite like, oh, I'm just embarrassed to admit how chaotic I am. And I sometimes look at my life and I'm like, oh my God, I started and stopped so many things. I was in a relationship, not joined the police, left like, was a team mom when I had this bright future ahead of me and although I'm so proud of everything that I've achieved, that's kind of how it felt at the time.

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And sometimes and I had, me and my sister aren't really emotional to each other and I obviously recently quit uni and I was really scared to tell her and I cried when I told her. This was like literally a few months ago and I said to her I just feel like I'm a disappointment to you and she's 12 years older than me, so she's my sister but and she's like I love her so much and I just really look up to her. So she's like my sister. I wouldn't say she's like my mom, because that's not the relationship or the vibe at all, but like someone that I admire and look up to. And I said I worry that, like my life and decisions that I make and you know I've moved to lots of different states and I've changed jobs and I've started a business in nutrition, then moved to mindset like whatever I just I'm like I'm worried, I disappoint you.

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And she was like, and I cried because like that just felt so heavy to think and to say, and she hugged me and she's like you could never and have never disappointed me. She's like when I look at you and I look at your life, I just think you are someone who is so brave and courageous. You are someone who is willing to try things with no idea that they're going to work out and no idea if you're going to like them and find out if you do, rather than just continually talk about what you want to do and never actually do it. She's like the only reason that you can stop and start things is because you're actually willing to start rather than just talk about what you want to do. And that was I can't even describe that conversation to you and what that meant to me, but it's definitely been something that I have had to work on of making sure and connecting back to myself, of like in your life you're making decisions because they're aligned and authentic, not because you need to prove yourself to anybody. Because I think I've lived so long of my life starting in government housing feeling like I needed to prove that I wasn't the stereotypical government housing kid so that I could still make friends and them being a team mom and trying to prove that I wasn't the stereotypical team mom so I could make people proud and like. I've just spent so much of my life feeling like I need to prove myself and my late 20s and my early 30s have been about really connecting back to myself and being like actually it's time to actually put that to rest. It's time to like put that down and stop carrying that heaviness of needing to prove that you are a certain type of way and accepting who you are. And it's been equally beautiful journey, equally hard, emotional, all the different things, but that is definitely something for me that has been. I'm embarrassed to admit that I still feel like I need to prove myself, but I don't feel it as much now.

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The last one was I think I have ADHD. I didn't write this on the Instagram post, but I added it in here for the podcast Slay, you're welcome. I think I have ADHD. I think that sentence of me just saying slay and fucking singing in the middle of that sentence is just prove that to everyone. Also the speed in which I talk. So someone actually said it to me about a year ago, maybe a bit more than a year ago. They actually like they joked about it, like it was kind of like a joke, like oh my God, you definitely have ADHD.

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And I remember at the time I was so offended, like I felt upset about it. I actually felt sad. I was like, oh my God, they think that I'm like. All the words that came to my head were, I guess, things that I worry that people think about me like so chaotic and too much and too loud and all the things. So that's not what they meant when they said it. I mean it probably is, but not in a bad way. But I got upset about it.

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And then the more I looked into it, the more I looked into like females and women with ADHD and especially women in adulthood getting diagnosed with ADHD, all of the things. I was like, oh my God, like it actually became quite validating Cause I was like whoa, I tick like literally all the boxes, like it's actually insane how many of the boxes I ticked, and I know at the moment, adhd is a bit of a buzzword, like everyone's getting diagnosed with ADHD, everyone's talking about ADHD, everyone says they have ADHD. This is not that Like. I am genuinely like wow, I think from a child I had ADHD and I wish that someone had kind of figured that out, and maybe my childhood and the support that I got in school or even how my mom dealt with me would have been different. Not really, though, because my relationship with my mom is a whole other story, but I definitely think there is some undiagnosed ADHD going on.

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Will I ever do the process to get diagnosed? Look, I don't know. I feel like the only reason I would do it was to feel validated, that everything makes makes sense now, where it's like my chaos, my changing my mind, my emotions, my singing out of fucking nowhere all of the time, like the list goes on about how many things. Where it's like if I had ADHD, it would make so much sense in my life, in my decision making, in my even just in my like freeze state where I just all of a sudden can't do anything can't make a decision, feel overwhelmed. If I have one appointment in the day, I can't do anything else for the rest of the day, like so many different things. I'm like I mean it would be quite validating, but it's expensive. It's a process.

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Will it change anything? Probably not, and really the last five or so years has about me being able to connect with myself, understand myself and accept those parts of me that maybe I've made wrong or judged, and fully, fully, fully accept them and use those things to my strength and be okay that I have weaknesses, because we can't always just have strengths. We have weaknesses and we have to learn to accept them and play into our strengths a little more rather than shame and judge ourselves. So that's kind of what I've done. I don't think having a diagnosis would change anything for me other than be like, oh cool, everything makes so much sense. Now I probably am going down the path of getting my son assessed. His dad got diagnosed with ADHD in adulthood after our relationship, lol, probably would have been nice to know that in the relationship, but anywho, I am probably gonna do that with my son just because, like I said, the same reasons like school situations, even me understanding him better. Me being able to work with his brain and how his brain works better, would be really really nice. So we'll go down that process with him, but don't think I'll go down that process with me, just learning to work with myself, because running a business requires a lot of level of organization that I definitely lack.

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However, when I am really obsessed with something and I really love something and I really love the topic of something, like try, fucking stop me from being organized, I will sort that shit out. I will get it done. If I don't like the topic, see you later. Procrastination queen is coming out, so I mean we can't always do things that we like doing. Sometimes we have to do things we don't like doing that actually help us move forward. So it has been something I have to work on and like I planned a whole fucking ass event with like a timestamp sheet of how it was going to go. Like I planned a whole event. Like there is evidence that I can plan things. My Melbourne event is already planned. Like it is like slay amazing also.

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Ps, just to celebrate for a second I sold 12. I've sold 12 tickets to my Melbourne event. That is not happening until November and there's only five spaces left. Five spaces left, 12 tickets gone. That is actually insane, mental. What are you talking about? How is this my real life? If you do want to come to the event, five tickets left, whether you live in Melbourne, don't live in Melbourne, you can travel. Someone is coming to this event from Cairns. Okay, like the people in this room are insane, you will leave with lifelong besties. You will leave with a new identity, like literally. You'll be like they're fucking brilliant, they're amazing. So if you do want to come to that celebrating myself but showing myself that I can do the things that I've always said I can't do because I'm too chaotic, too disorganized, all of the different things. That's a wrap for us on that. Seven confessions of things that I've been embarrassed to admit that I'm sharing with you.

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All that I ask from you if any of these resonated with you. Please send me a message, dm me, let me know which part resonated with you. Let me know that, even if you just listen to it, I want to hear it. And also, can you please, please, please, please, please, pretty please, take one second to leave a five star rating. You just have to click the stars. Click the star on Spotify or on Apple five stars or on Apple Sorry, I don't know what I just said.

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It helps me so much. It literally helps me know if people are actually enjoying the podcast and also, if I have more ratings, the more that my podcast will get put in front of other people. And that's really the goal, because I love having these conversations. I want to help as many people as I possibly can, impact as many people as I possibly can, and we're like a family in that now you guys listening to the podcast or following me on social media we are like a family working together to get this message out there and to help as many people as we possibly can together. It's not just me alone now. So if you could do that and if you're feeling mega generous, screenshot the podcast, share it on your Instagram stories, tag me so I can share it. That is also very, very helpful. I hope you enjoyed this episode. I'm really excited to hear if you like this kind of vibe and I'll see you in the next one.