357 Transcript: Supporting Men’s Emotional Wellbeing (with Anne Fraser)

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00:00:01 – Intro
Are you ready to expand your soul's capacity for joy? Then this podcast is for you. I'm Dr. Jen Riday, and welcome to Vibrant Happy Women. 

00:00:14 – Jen Riday
Hey there, my friends. I am excited to be here with Anne Fraser, who I met at the Vibrant Happy Women Retreat last year, and she has a really cool story of growth growth that is beyond what I've seen most humans experience in a lifetime. She's going to be talking about healing herself so that she could show up differently in her marriage and how that impacted her husband as well. Her growth work had this amazing trickle down effect that I'm interested in lately, and I know you'll love this as well. So, Anne, go ahead and introduce yourself. Tell us all about you.

00:00:48 – Anne Fraser
Hey, well, first of all, Jen, I just want to say thank you for what you said about me. It's really cool to hear you say that. I've gone through more things than a lot of people have in a lifetime, so thank you for that. And I will introduce myself. I'm a ICF certified coach. I'm a certified relationship workshop facilitator. And I also am a REBT mindset coach. And what I do is I help people build meaningful connections and resolve conflicts. I support them in rebuilding and repairing their relationships, particularly relationships that have been impacted by betrayal, trauma, addictions, anxiety, depression, and also for those couples that are really doing super well, I take them to the next level also. 

00:01:45 Jen Riday
Awesome. Okay, so you've taken what you learned on your own growth journey, and then you're turning around and helping others on the same journey. I find that to be a common theme. When you've overcome something, it's almost like a natural responsibility to turn around and share what you've learned because you don't want someone else suffering with the pain you once had. And that's also my story and so many other coaches’ stories. So that's awesome. So tell us your story, how you started out in life, the pain you experienced in your marriage and in other ways, and how you've healed all of that. We want to be inspired. Thank you. Awesome. I'd love to share.

00:02:24 – Anne Fraser
Thank you. Awesome. I'd love to share. So I grew up in what you. Would call a pretty dysfunctional family. My mother left me when I was five years old. I just don't think that she was emotionally prepared enough to deal with having a baby. And she left me in my grandmother's care and my grandfather's care, which was a blessing in disguise in a way. But at the same time, my grandfather was an alcoholic. My grandmother was an extremely needy woman, and that was really difficult to watch because the message that was passed down to me was that women earned love if they were attractive and they were good at taking care of men. And what I saw at the same time was no matter how much they did or how good they looked or how much it just was never enough. So the option was like, okay, I'll. Just accept the breadcrumbs. Right. So that was kind of like how. I grew up, and that is what I was trained to believe, basically. And that really showed up in my marriage. I married somebody who was extremely avoidant, who also struggled with addiction and who also only could give me, like, the breadcrumbs. Right. You found what had been your status quo, right? It was what I knew, so it's what I searched for, and it's also kind of what I sourced because it's what I knew. That was a big struggle. My husband was controlling. I was insecure. He made the decisions. He controlled the money. He ran the house. He even controlled how I parented. And you know what? He worked six days a week, and somehow he managed to have that hold on me because I was so afraid of being abandoned, because that's what happened to me as a child. Right? That says a lot about his – in my experience, people want to control things when they're feeling insecure themselves. They want to create predictability. So if I just control all these pieces, I'll be less anxious. 

00:04:50 – Jen Riday
Do you think that was the case with your husband? 

00:04:55 – Anne Fraser
I definitely do, yes. I think for him, I feel like he was in survival mode, and his biggest issue was trying to control his own safety and controlling everything feels safe. Yeah.

00:05:08 – Jen Riday
So you were – I'm going to put words in your mouth – be a doormat for a while, then maybe…

00:05:18 – Anne Fraser
That's a great description. I was somewhere in between a needy little girl and a doormat. 

00:05:25 – Jen Riday
Yeah. Okay. Some people stay there their whole lives, I think. What made you wake up and say, that's it, no more?

00:05:33 – Anne Fraser
Yeah. Well, I really did have a life changing event. In 2009, I was in a hit and run car accident, and my car rolled over three times. It hit the median, it landed in a ditch, and. I wasn't aware of anything. I had gone unconscious when I woke up in the hospital, I had lost the hearing in my right ear. Wow. And I had somewhere between ten and 15% cognitive deficit. There were pieces of my memory that were lost, and a lot of times. I had to relearn a lot of things. Somebody would ask me, say, Hi, Anne, how are you? And I would repeat back, “Hi, Anne. How are you?” 

00:06:22 – Jen Riday
Really? 

00:06:28 – Anne Fraser
Yeah. But in my head, I heard myself say, “I'm good, how are you?” But it just wouldn't come out like that. I had to do a lot of relearning. So I immediately got myself into therapy, got myself to doctors, and started getting the support I needed. And slowly, slowly, my brain was able to rewire itself, which I know that's one of the things that you teach. And I'm living testament of it. Your brain can rewire itself when you feed it the information that it really needs to thrive. And that's what I did. And that was like, shoot, like, a. Light bulb started going off at me, like, hey, I could have died. So I started to take myself on, and I just walked into a self empowerment workshop that was, like, five days old, five days long. Excuse me. And wow. It was like something changed inside of me. And I thought, you know what? I don't need to live the way I was living anymore. I can change my life. And I thought to myself, they gave me my own personal coach when I was there, and I thought, not only can I change my life, but I think I can impact other people's lives. And that's kind of how it started for me. So you were already on this path of, I’ve got to fix my speech, and then you happened upon this really cool self help seminar five days long, and then you got a coach, and it just opened up this realm of possibility, these couple of new experiences.

00:08:07 – Jen Riday
Isn't that interesting? You would probably describe that a lot of people would probably describe that car accident as a low, low, low point, and maybe you would too. But you also can hear and see that silver lining of, oh, the pain points in our lives help us change. And that's what it did for you. So it's really cool to see that you allowed that to change you.

00:08:29 – Anne Fraser
Yes. And when I look back at it now, at the time, I saw it as a really painful event. When I look at it now, I look at it as I'm grateful that it happened, because it changed the trajectory of my entire life. 

00:08:45 – Jen Riday
Okay, so let's get to the really juicy stuff everyone's hearing. Oh, you had this guy, you're married to this guy that treated you like a doormat. But before we villainize him, you know what? We all have our past traumas. We all have our past histories. We learned the behavior somewhere. I assume it came down the line, and he was trying to survive, just like we all are. So you started growing. I would love you to share kind of the detailed story of how that impacted his behavior and how he's different today because of your work, which is beautiful. 

00:09:20 – Anne Fraser
Thank you. I really feel like I was a big catalyst for change for my husband, because what I used to do was, like, nag and push and beg and plead, and it was just like, hey, see me, hear me, love me. And the more I did that, the more I was ignored. So I was like, okay, wait a minute. Am I worth more than begging and pleading and asking for all this attention? Maybe if I start to fill myself up and take care of me and do things that I love and just accept him for who he is. And I knew that he had a traumatic past and struggled with abuse and addiction, and he struggled. So I understood why he was the way he was, but I also didn't want to tolerate it anymore. So I think just me and not only myself, but my three children. My three children got into therapy. My three children went and did personal growth workshops, and everybody really started to just take care of themselves instead of looking to him, to fix him, hoping it will fix you. 

00:10:39 – Jen Riday
Yeah. I had that pattern in my past as well. You want to put the blame for your unhappiness somewhere. So of course, naturally, you'll pick your spouse and you'll try to fix them in the hopes it will fix you. So you flipped that whole script and just worked on fixing yourself.

00:11:06 – Anne Fraser
I discovered that I am 100% responsible for my own happiness, that it is not his job, but it's also not my job to be responsible for his happiness. He has to be responsible for his happiness. I learned with boundaries. I learned to say, if you're going to speak to me like that, then I'm going to walk away. I just stopped pushing for a difference. And you know what? The more my life and my career took off, the more my husband started to turn his own self inside out and seek additional support for himself and really work on who he was. And that really gave us, like, I would say, almost a clean slate to start with. I mean, this took about five years of up and downs, but it really gave us a clean slate to start with, to say, okay, what can we create in our marriage now that's healthy? How can we change our dynamics? How can we model different behaviors for our children? 

00:12:07 – Jen Riday
Right. I love that because energetically, the first picture you paint is you pursuing from a state of neediness or a state of lack. Of course, if you think about polarity or magnetism, when someone's coming, of course you're going to run. You think of two magnets, one will push the other away. Well, then you filled yourself up, in a sense, becoming the more powerful magnet, and you're just going this other way. And then suddenly he's kind of pursuing. Not that we want to play hard to get, and I know that's not what you did, but you became a light that filled yourself up, that it was attractive to him and he felt the difference and came toward you. Does that seem accurate? 

00:12:41 – Anne Fraser
It's very accurate because we were in that real, like a magnet, like that. Push and pull, push and pull. And that is the perfect description of anxious attachment and an avoidant attachment. So I was the anxious one, he was the avoidant one. But then if I pulled away, he'd come towards me, but if I went towards him, he would pull away. And it was crazy. It was just really that whole back and forth so, yeah, really, it was. Like creating a neutral space where nobody had to chase each other, where we could just exist with each other, with our own filled up selves.

00:13:21 – Jen Riday
Yeah. So you mentioned being anxiously attached, kind of in that needy energy, desperate for approval and love. How did you give all that to yourself? What did that journey look like healing that abandonment issue that you grew up with? 

00:13:54 – Anne Fraser
Yeah, it was really learning that my circumstances don't control who I am or how I show up in the world, that I don't have to look outside of myself for what I need. So I really learned how to fill myself up and really got to see my own value and my own worth as a woman and really take on before I had this sort of belief. Like. I'm a wife, a mom, a wife, a mom, a wife, a mom. Okay, well, where is Anne? All that know? So I did a lot of work. I did a lot of therapeutic work. I did a lot of plus, you know, when you go to coaching school, you also pour all that stuff out and decide what you're willing to tolerate and not tolerate and the changes you want to make and basically all that emptying out and relearning who I am. I got to decide who I wanted to be, basically, and embody those characteristics and qualities of women that I admired. I didn't have to be that needy, attached woman who was insecure. I could just be authentic, and I could be free from all the stuff that bogged me down and even show up vulnerable, which is not always easy for us to do because there's such a risk of getting hurt. But I got to be okay with that. Like, even if somebody said something hurtful, it wasn't a reflection of me. It was a reflection of them in the way they were. That's a huge transformation when words that formally hurt you suddenly become neutral. That's so powerful just to not have those things hurt you anymore. 

00:15:35 – Jen Riday
Yeah. Awesome. So your husband watched this, and he probably had different healing work to do. So I'd love to hear more of if it's appropriate to share. What do you think caused him to heal? Like, did he go to coaches and get help eventually? Did it start with just watching you? What was that exact path? Those of our listeners who are out there with a spouse that maybe hasn't done their work yet can hear about that journey. Maybe to have more hope, I guess. 

00:16:21 – Anne Fraser
Sure. So my husband did a lot of inner child work, a lot of healing inner child work. It's funny, but I don't know. I could imagine that a lot of women would identify with this. Like, when their husband gets in this state and they start behaving in a. Way that they don't like. It almost seems like your husband reverts back to a little boy, right? Yes. What I found, because I also did a lot of inner child work, but his was much more in depth. But I find that a lot of men go back to the age that the original wounds happen with them. Right. So if there was trauma, if there was physical abuse, if there was mental abuse, if there was sexual abuse when they were children, they revert right back to that. The minute that they're like, they go into that freeze, flight or fight mode, they're back to being a little boy. So really doing that nurturing inner child work made a huge difference for my husband and the way he was able to show up for the marriage and for his children.

00:17:13 – Jen Riday
And did you teach him that or did he learn it elsewhere? 

00:17:19 – Anne Fraser
No, I did not teach him that. In fact, only in the last maybe about seven or eight years has my husband really been open to learning the things that I teach other people. So he went to outside sources. There's a great program called ACA. It's adult children of Alcoholics and dysfunctional families, and they do a tremendous amount of inner child healing work, but it's done in a twelve step way. 

00:17:38 – Jen Riday Oh, nice. That sounds great. 

00:17:45 – Anne Fraser
That was a place where he did a lot of healing work and also therapists and also coaches. And my husband wound up going to the same transformational workshop that I went to at some point. So a lot he did a lot of work. I did a lot of work.

00:18:01 – Jen Riday
Now, I'm curious what convinced him? Did you have to put your foot down and say, look, I'm not staying in this marriage until you do some work? Because I've heard a lot of women have to get to that point. Did you have to do that? Or what got him to go to that first therapist or that first meeting? 

00:18:15 – Anne Fraser
No, I didn't really say that. I was a little bit scared to say that, to be honest with you, because I still had some down deep inside, we all carry our little fears with us. And my fear was if I said, I'm not staying, then he actually might not leave. So I was a little bit insecure to say that, if I'm being 100% transparent. But I did talk to him and say, I think we would benefit from going to some marriage counseling. And then once we got in the door, it was like, okay, you know what? He needs to be here. Okay. Deal with his stuff, and then you need to come back in and work together. Yeah. It's really a journey.

00:19:06 – Jen Riday
So you said at the beginning you grew up in a dysfunctional family. I would love to hear the before and after with your husband. Like, who was he before? How did you feel for him before and how do you feel about him now? 

00:19:26 – Anne Fraser
So what I hear you asking is, how did I feel about my relationship with my husband before I did work and after. Okay. So I think before I did the work, I was just settling. This is what life taught me. This is who I'm supposed to be with. This is what I'm supposed to tolerate. And I guess I have to settle for this, because I don't deserve any better. And I never even saw an example of anything different. I watched my grandmother chase my grandfather around and be anxiously attached to him and him being avoidant and this push pull, and he had addiction, and so all I knew, I guess this is the way it's supposed to be. I just settled for what it is. I don't think at the time I even questioned, is there more? But like I said, that car accident, it was really life changing for me. I don't know what it did, but it did something big. Events like that just shake you, and that one shook me. Yeah.

00:20:20 – Jen Riday
And how is your husband showing up differently after his work and your kids as well? 

00:20:33 – Ane Fraser
Oh, wow. Well, first of all, my kids are amazing. My kids are grown. My kids are 33, 29, and 21. And they've all done a lot of work on themselves too. And my husband is also amazing. He takes time every day to check in with each one of the kids and see how they're doing and see if they need anything. Friday, we all come together. I make a big meal on Friday night, and my kids come, and we all sit together, and we really have a good night. We can play games together as a family again. We can have conversations. My youngest daughter was just without divulging too much about her, but my 21 year old is going through some struggles, and she was contemplating possibly the idea of medication. And the first person she went to was her dad, which what beautiful, that wouldn't have happened ten years ago with any of my children. And she's like, you know, dad, I'm really struggling, and school is pressuring, and I just don't know what to do. I think the biggest change in him is he's open to receiving, where before, he was just a shut down wall. 

00:21:40 – Jen Riday
Wow. I'm still so fascinated. What got him to be open to changing? 

00:21:50 – Anne Fraser
I stopped worrying about everybody else, and I started focusing on myself. I started to accept, this is who you are. 

00:22:02 – Jen Riday
Okay. Safety from you. So that’s when you said, “I think this could really help you,” it got through. It did get through.

00:22:01 – Anne Fraser
Yeah. Because I think there might have been some fear for him too. I don't know. I can't speak for him directly, but I think there is something scary about seeing your wife, who's been the stay at home mom, the cook, the cleaner, the chauffeur, serving, caring for all of a sudden just change their lives and not make that a priority anymore. And make themselves a priority and make learning a priority and make personal growth a priority. I think there might have been something there that felt a little bit scary for him to say. Oh, I just do remember one time he said, you're getting too smart. And I think that maybe there was a little bit of fear there, too. That, oh, gosh, I can't carry on. The way I've been. It's not really going to keep working anymore. She's barely phased by me anymore. 

00:22:51 – Jen Riday
Kind of the formula would be do your work enough that you recognize they get to be their own person. The only person you can fix is you. You accept them like they are. So you had to accept him being…an alcoholic? or substance abuse?

00:23:12 – Anne Fraser
All the way around. Yes, but I will say that very early in our marriage, before we had children, he was clean and sober. But just because someone stopped using substances or alcohol or any type of addictive behavior doesn't mean that they actually change. But, yes, I did accept exactly who he is, and I just decided, I'm not changing it. I'm not going to do anything about it. I'm not going to push for what I want from him. I'm not going to get it from him. I have to find a way to give it to myself. Meet all your own needs, accept him exactly as he was, and then somehow, carefully just saying this could help you in a moment when he was receptive and not pushing or nagging. And it did work the way that. You liked it, did start the ball rolling. Yes. I don't think anyone can. Even if it doesn't work in every case, there's so much empowerment from just taking charge of your own happiness and stopping trying to change your partner or your kids or whoever else, just cutting that loose and saying they get to be whoever they are, whether that's an addict or controlling or anxious or whatever it is. Yeah.

00:24:27 – Jen Riday
Easier said than done, but well done, Anne. It's impressive. 

00:24:35 – Anne Fraser
Thank you. Yeah. We're never going to change anybody. Why try to do that? Because to me, when you love someone, you're choosing to love them and you're choosing to accept them for who they are. This wasn't like something that I just knew right away. It took a lot of work to. Get me there, but this is what it was. I chose to love him. I chose to accept him, and I chose to make a difference in my life and make a difference in other people's lives. And even today, I keep on top of all my self care and all my work and conferences and continuing education and the retreat I went to your retreat. Amazing. Helped me a lot, actually, because we all start like I got on a very automatic get up, go to work, have dinner, go to bed. I stopped taking care of myself. And I remember even saying at the retreat, like, wow, I'm so glad I took this time because I forgot who I was here I was just rolling on automatic and now stopped. Took some time for me. And since the retreat, I make sure every day I make time for my self care, my meditation, my journaling. I use the tools I learned. I even use the tools I learned at your retreat with my own clients now. 

00:26:01 – Jen Riday
Oh, cool. You mean, like which tools are you talking about? 

00:26:05 – Anne Fraser
Particularly the feelings wheel and the thought table. My absolute favorite. And I hear everybody on the podcast rave about them also, so I think it's probably a universal favorite, right? 

00:26:20 – Jen Riday
So you did that work, you keep doing that work, you constantly engage in self care. So I kind of want to bring this broader now. I was recently on a trip and on my way home I sat next to an older gentleman. But I don't know, I just felt a kinship with him and I imagined maybe that he had had a hard day. And I just thought there's pain and there's suffering in his life. And I've spent so many years focused on women, the idea that women need to be able to rise and take care of themselves and heal. And it's so true. But how can we, as women who have done our work, help facilitate the healing of the men in our lives? Because a lot of them aren't always eager to go to therapy or to think about their emotions or fix themselves. Maybe not as much as women are prone to do those things. Should women focus on helping to heal men? And what's the safe way? So we're not trying to change them? It's such a little dance. Instead of just getting out of the relationship, maybe it is that step of accepting them with all their brokenness, just like we have to accept ourselves with all of our brokenness. I don't know, what do you think?

00:27:25 – Anne Fraser
I think it's a matter of acceptance always and really choosing love, but it's choosing to come from a place of love also with your actions and with your behaviors. So I think women, we need to start listening, ladies. We need to listen to our men. We need to stop maybe nagging them as much as we do and just listen. Because I think if we listen hard enough, our men tell us what they need. It's going to take some interpreting from us. But I think we need to listen to them. I think we need to validate their experiences. And I think that's a good way to be a catalyst for change as a woman to help a man out is when you see your husband's like in this angry mood or stressed or he's shut down or whatever, maybe saying. To them, oh man, you must have. A really hard day. You look like you need some time to yourself because they don't know how to communicate that right, right. So slowly, slowly, maybe your husband will say, yeah, I really did have a rough day, so and so from the office said this and did that, and we just validate it and even empathize with it. Wow, that must have been hard. Now, I know that we want this from our men, but we need to be the way we want others to treat us, right? So we can sort of start that ball rolling by listening and really choosing to act from a place of love. 

00:29:05 – Jen Riday
Yeah. You know what pops into my head? A phrase I've even said throughout my marriage. I mean, “I would love him, but he's insensitive.” We always have these “buts.” Advice for the “buts”? How do we let that disappointment go? They're not who we wanted them to be. They have this weakness. How do we love despite that?

00:29:19 – Anne Fraser
I mean, that's a hard question because not everyone wants to accept everything about a person. So I think it's also the relationship we have with ourselves as women because we also have the but this and but that, or I would do that, but I'm scared. I would try that, but I don't know how people will respond to me. So maybe if we shut down those and buts in our own head, that we can open up a space to accept ourselves and then accept our husbands. And loving the way we wish we could be loved. 

00:30:01 – Jen Riday
Easier said than done. But you are doing it. So many women are doing it. And look at what can happen when you stop trying to change them, listen to them and come from love, like you said. Kind of a formula, really.

00:30:18 – Anne Fraser
Yeah, absolutely. And think about how women treat each other. Like we all have our best friends. How do we treat our best friends? We accept them, flaws and all. Right. And we empathize with them and we comfort them and we listen to them and we hear them and we validate them. Hey, let's treat ourselves like we treat our best friend and let's treat our husbands like they're our best friend too. Wow.

00:30:44 – Jen Riday
Okay. You've given me some work to do. It's so much easier for me to love my best friend than my spouse. Is that the case for you as well? 

00:30:55 – Anne Fraser
Yeah, sure. I think it's easier for me to maybe – I think maybe with best friends it's not so personal, maybe live with our best friends, so maybe it just doesn't affect us. But in reality, when you look at it, at least intellectually, our husbands are our partners for our lives. If we choose to have them in our lives for always. They are the person that's with us day in, day out. Regardless. 

00:31:23 – Jen Riday
Right now, I want to acknowledge not all our listeners are married, not all our listeners are. Married to men, but I think all of us have a man or two in our lives somehow. Parents, fathers, siblings, friends in general. And on average I just want to say it's my bias that I see women doing more of this work and maybe a little more ahead in the emotional intelligence area, on average, not trying to diss anyone. And so whatever role the men in our lives have, we can listen, come from love and not try to change them. And especially getting rid of the thing I see on sitcoms so often is, oh, men are so dumb, men are so clueless. Oh, my gosh, the men mocking that mocking attitude. I hope society will ditch that because I really see as much as we all talk about down with patriarchy, there is so much healing that needs to happen for men as a whole. So I don't know what your thoughts on that might be.

00:32:28 – Anne Fraser
Yes, definitely. And I think the more that they use this kind of language about men that you were talking about on sitcoms, the more it sort of just seeps into our belief system and we start to unconsciously believe this. Yeah, it's true. I think we need to set things up differently in the world. 

00:32:55 – Jen Riday
And do you have any sons? How many do you have? 

00:33:01 – Anne Fraser
I do, yeah. I have one son.

00:33:09 – Jen Riday
I have three sons, and that's where it became a wake up call. I care about them and they're eventually going to be spouses. And we've got to break these cycles and patterns as mothers but as wives and siblings and whatever role we're interacting with men in because patriarchy negatively affects men as well. Thinking they have to be tough and machismo and not aware of feelings and not doing their healing work. 

00:33:30 – Anne Fraser
100%. And I think we have to be careful as mothers also about the way we raise our sons. And I'll be totally transparent with you. Early on in my marriage, when my son was 12, 13, 14, I did find myself almost spousifying him, like because things weren't going good with my marriage, I was utilizing him a little bit like a supply for me to make me feel good. And we have to be really careful as moms not to do that to our sons and really learn how to meet our needs, because later on, my son had to do a lot of his own work to stop attracting kind of needy women because that's how I. 

00:34:15 – Jen Riday
Showed up as a, wow, I've heard about this. Every family has a child where they're kind of like the golden child. And I'm not saying that's your son, but they will grow up to seek the same relationship that they were fulfilling in childhood. And that’s what you’re saying?

00:34:34 – Anne Fraser
That's exactly what I'm saying, and I think it happens every time. Yeah, I think there's like three or four roles that children fill. Like, there's the black sheep. That's the one who goes against everything.

00:34:48 – Jen Riday
Right? That's me. 

00:34:58 – Anne Fraser
It is also my oldest daughter. But it's funny, my oldest daughter was the one that invited me to do my first bit of transformational. She had started and the black sheep also shines light at everything that isn't working, and they go against the grain. So it has a positive place also. Yeah. So it's like the golden child and the black sheep are two of the main ones. Yeah. He was like my little golden boy for a while, and I really had to backpedal with that negatively affecting him. 

00:35:29 – Jen Riday
Yeah. Wow. That's interesting. We could have a whole nother topic on that. Well, Anne, this has been amazing. I hope our listeners have some food for thought. What I heard as the big takeaways are come from love, listen and stop trying to change your partner, and hopefully they can come along on your growth journey in their own way without you pushing it. Would you add any other big takeaways?

00:35:49 – Anne Fraser
That are coming to mind is to: Focus on yourself and really decide. And I think we're actually working on this tonight in the club, in the coaching club. Purpose is really figure out your purpose in life, ladies. You don't have to be stuck in any role. Like, you get to be whoever you want to be, and you get to show up however you want to show up in life. And I think that's important. And that's where all the self work and self care takes you. So I went from somebody that grew up so dysfunctional, had a dysfunctional marriage, totally changed the trajectory in my life, and now coach other people on how to make their relationships work for them best. So full circle. We can come, all of us. 

00:36:39 – Jen Riday
Absolutely. Focus on yourself. Yeah. That's the number one takeaway.

00:36:45 – Anne Fraser
Focus on your happiness and healing yourself. 

00:36:52 – Jen Riday
Yeah. Well said. Anne, I'm so grateful for you taking that story and turning it into something so inspiring. It's really cool that you're so vulnerable and authentic, sharing it without any shame. I think that's brilliant. It shows that you've really done your work. So many people are having some shame still left from their past experiences, but you're like, no, that was the path. 

00:37:10 – Anne Fraser
I learned to be grateful for it. I learned to see what it taught me. 

00:37:18 – Jen Riday
Right. Well, I thank you. Where can people connect with you if they want to kind of learn more about you?

00:37:21 – Anne Fraser
So you can go on my Instagram @yourforwardfocus. I'm on Facebook @yourforwardfocuscoach, and my website is yourforwardfocus.com If you just type in “your forward focus,” you'll find me. 

00:37:40 – Jen Riday
Thank you so much for being on the show, Anne. I appreciate it. 

00:37:44 – Anne Fraser
Thank you for having me. I appreciate it was an honor. 

00:37:49 – Jen Riday
Isn't Anne a great example of changing your life? Even if you grew up with dysfunctional patterns or you've had a hard marriage or you've had all kinds of problems, you can leave that story behind and create a new story. You just need the tools and the support to do that. I'm so grateful Anne shared her story with us today. If you would like more support with gaining clarity and having more life awakenings and creating the friendships and support you need to change your life, join us at the next Vibrant Happy Women Retreat. It's happening in February of 2024 and I can't wait. I would love for you to join us. You can learn more and sign up at jenriday.com/retreat. Doors close on November 9 and it's not too late. We still have some spots left. And again, get yours at jenriday.com/retreat. My friends, thank you for listening once again. I will be back next week. Until then, make it a vibrant and happy week. Take care. 

Outro – If you enjoy this podcast, you'd love Vibrant Soul, the place to heal, transform and expand your soul with like minded friends. Join us at jenriday.com/vibrantsoul