Welcome to EP 055 of the CVD Podcast!!

Birthdays are usually a time to celebrate. For Barbie Garcia, her 27th birthday will be one she never forgets because it changed her life FOREVER.

Barbie was on a boat off the coast of Mexico celebrating her birthday with her friends. Sounds pretty amazing, right!? It was... until the accident.

Barbie told the captain her and a friend wanted to go for a swim. A few minutes later, she jumped into the water and got sucked under the boat while it was still in drive! Her friends lost sight of her and feared for the worst. Barbie was trapped under the boat and the propeller was cutting through her legs!

Somehow, Barbie resurfaced and a friend jumped her to save her. Back on the boat, Barbie was fighting for her life. A panic brought out. Barbie could hear all her friends screaming, but didn't know exactly what was happening. Her life was changed forever!

Six years later, Barbie is thriving! She is proud owner of two businesses and is on Mexico's National Para Surfing team!

In this episode, Barbie gives you an all access pass to that tragic accident and how she's bounced back. Topics she covers:

• Her life before the accident
  • Where she grew up and what she was pursuing
  • How and when she fell in love with surfing
• The TRAGIC accident that changed her life forever
  • How a beautiful and fun party turned into a nightmare
  • The miscommunication with the captain that caused the accident
  • All the GRAPHIC details of the accident itself
    • Being trapped under the boat
    • Resurfacing and seeing blood everywhere
    • An unlikely hero jumping in to grab her and applying a tourniquet
    • Hearing the screams of her friends once back on the boat
    • The process of getting from that boat to the hospital
    • Being in shock and the confusion of losing her leg
• Immediately after the accident
  • Trying to come to terms with the fact that she lost her legs
  • Conversations with her family and the doctors
• Being depressed and not knowing how to move forward
  • ALL the questions that were constantly circling in her brain
  • The fear and anxiety about not living a normal life or doing things she loved to do
  • The stigma of being an amputee in Mexico and how she dealt with that
• How she bounced back
  • How a friend bringing her to beach started to change everything
  • Finding "adaptive surfing" and falling in love with it
  • How she became part of the National Para Surfing Team of Mexico

Where you can find and follow Barbie online:

• Website: https://lapetitepoulainblog.wordpress.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/barbie_garcia_ritchie/
• Her Community: https://nas.io/the-big-wave-with-barbie-garcia

Please consider leaving a review if you enjoyed this episode! ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

We'd love to hear what you think and really appreciate your support ❤️

Welcome to EP 054 of the CVD Podcast!!

Have you ever heard of a professional best friend? Neither had I... until I met Cassie Heller!

She's built a brand called My Friend Cassie in which she is a professional best friend and a life and wellness coach helping creators, entrepreneurs, and young professionals reach their HOTTEST potential without burning out or giving up. Wow!

"Behind the scenes, I'm just a punny little lady with big dreams and a tall personality."

Cassie is beaming full of amazing energy, positive, and puns! What's so interesting about her journey is that she totally rejected the idea of a life coach. After securing her dream job right out of college, she realized just two years in that this was NOT for her. She started making videos online because she loved listening and helping others. She did NOT want to be "that person" spewing a bunch of life advice when in her early 20s.

So, she started the brand My Friend Cassie and then pursued other jobs.

Two jobs, one drug dealer boyfriend, two to three years of addiction, an emergency surgery, and one shaved head later... Cassie found herself coming BACK to her brand. It was calling her. Pulling her in. She decided to REALLY go after it... and she's never turned back.

In this episode, Cassie talks about:

• Securing her dream job right our of college
  • What is was and how excited she was for the opportunity
  • How she quickly learned this was NOT what she was expecting
• Creating My Friend Cassie on YouTube
  • Why she started the channel and what she wanted to accomplish
• Rejecting the idea of becoming a "life coach"
  • Why that term was so cringy and why she wanted to avoid it
• How a stint in property management and an emergency spine surgery helped her understand what was important in life
  • How her employer put her in a really tight situation during her recovery
• Why she decided to go all in with coaching
  • How she opened her mind to what "life coach" could actually be for her
  • The moment she realized SHE was her own golden ticket
• How to unblock yourself and where to start

Where you can find and follow Cassie online:

• Website: https://linktr.ee/myfriendcassie
• Instagram: @myfriendcassie
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/cassieheller/

Please consider leaving a review if you enjoyed this episode! ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

We'd love to hear what you think and really appreciate your support ❤️

Welcome to EP 053 of the CVD Podcast!!

I know you might be thinking, "how does someone get involved in human trafficking THREE times!? Let alone once! She must have been putting herself in those situations."

Now... our brains do this. We jump to conclusions with partial information. And this is wonderful in many circumstances. Other times, we need to push that judgement or conclusion to the side so we can be open to the full story... this is one of those times.

Amanda Blackwood is an absolutely amazing person who has a story unlike any I have ever heard before. Yes, she's survived human trafficking three different times, and you'll learn that every single time was completely different. The most incredible thing about Amanda and her story, is that she's taken everything she's experienced to help others. She has a podcast called Survivors - Stories of Hope Live On, she is a speaker, and she has created multiple trauma workbooks to empower others on their healing journey.

In this open, honest, transparent conversation, Amanda doesn't hold anything back when detailing her experiences. They are very graphic, so please pause the episode if you need to.

In this episode, Amanda talks about:

• What human trafficking ACTUALLY is (and what it isn't)
  • How this compares to what we see in movies and shows
  • Some alarming statistics about human trafficking
• Her three experiences surviving human trafficking
  • How a trip to Las Vegas at 18 turned into a nightmare
    • The moment she realized she had to make a decision to survive
  • What "we'll take you in until you're back on your feet" really meant
    • How a couple took advantage of Amanda when she was at her lowest
  • A 7-year relationship ending in absolute disaster
    • How the idea of a dream wedding led to being trapped in a foreign country
• How she pieced her life back together after escaping from Scotland
  • How the trafficker from Scotland continued to control her life
  • The moment she decided to speak out about her story
• How she's healed from your trauma and the work she's doing to help others
  • The process in which she gained back control of her life
  • The trauma books, speaking, and podcasting empowering others to heal through their own trauma
    
    

Where you can find Amanda and her work online:

• Podcasts:
  • Survivors - Stories of Hope Live On
  • Growth from Darkness
• Websites:
  • Deatiled Pieces (personal) | Growth from Darkness (business)
• Social Media:
  • Facebook | Instagram | LinkedIn | Twitter | TikTok

Please consider leaving a review if you enjoyed this episode! ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

We'd love to hear what you think and really appreciate your support ❤️

Welcome to EP 052 of the CVD Podcast!!

Many of us think about making drastic changes in our lives or "reinventing ourselves" in our twenties or thirties... but what about at 52!? We may think we'll have everything "figured out" by then, but the truth is that life can change at any moment. Lana McAra is the perfect example of that.

Lana is an award-winning, international best-selling author and ghostwriter of more than 40 titles with 1 million books sold (many under the name Rosey Dow). However, much of this has happened within the last 13 years, after she reinvented herself due to years of trauma.

After being raised by narcissists, Lana was attracted to and eventually married one (because that's all she knew). She had no idea that while raising seven children she would feel so alone. And when he children were grown and she decided to leave because enough was enough, her husband made her out to be the bad guy, influencing her children to cut all ties with her.

How did she have the strength, resilience, and will power to continue her writing career, reinvent herself, and push forward with life? You'll have to listen to find out!

In this episode, Lana talks about:

• Growing up with narcissistic parents
  • What narcissistic actually means and how it showed up in her life
  • Her day-to-day life like and how this environment affected her mentally, emotionally, physically
  • Deciding that enough was enough and moving out
• Being married to a narcissist for 30 years
  • Why she married a narcissist after experiencing it with her parents
  • What her life looked, sounded, and felt like during this time
  • When and how she started realizing things were very misaligned and that she had lost yourself
  • How she told her narcissistic husband she wanted a divorce
• Discovering your true self through 13 years of deep recovery
  • The repercussions / result of her divorce
  • What she started / continued doing to discover her true self
  • An important identity shift that happened 5.5 years after the divorce
  • What her life like now and how she's living an authentic life that is fulfilling and worth all the struggle
    
    

Where you can find Lana and her work online:

• Website | LinkedIn | YouTube | Books on Amazon
• Follow Lana on:
  • Facebook | Twitter | Instagram

Please consider leaving a review if you enjoyed this episode! ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

We'd love to hear what you think and really appreciate your support ❤️

Welcome to EP 051 of the CVD Podcast!!

When I met Aariz in 2014, he was strikingly handsome, extremely confident, and pursuing his passion in media. He was also part of a student organization called Enactus Windsor (this is how we met each other), working to make a positive difference in our community.

I never would have guessed that he would describe himself as a child as lonely and shy, and I had no clue that he was once very overweight with little drive to pursue his dreams.

Then, in 2018, I saw that he was working as a model and won "Mr. India Australia 2018". I was amazed and inspired by his hard work and dedication! Around the same time, I was just starting Comfort Via Discomfort and I asked Aariz to tell his incredible story - check out Episode 4 of Featured Fridays! (only a 1-minute video)

And here we are, five years later, and I had the pleasure of diving deeper into his journey and how he even ended up in Australia in the first place.

In this episode, Aariz talks about:

• Developing the mindset to embrace discomfort and fear
  • What pursuing his degree in media meant to him and for him
  • His willingness to be outgoing and get involved with Enactus Windsor
• Meeting his wife by total accident on a dating app
  • How thinking NS was Nova Scotia, Canada rather than New South Wales, Australia led to an unexpected friendship
  • How their relationship blossomed and deciding to visit her in Australia without ever visiting there before
• How being a dad had completely changed his life
  • Why the sacrifices are all worth it
  • How he is raising his son to be resourceful and resilient
• How his son was misdiagnosed with developmental disabilities
  • What was happening and the stress this diagnosis caused
  • How this stressed communication and collaboration between Aariz and his wife
  • What the actual problem was and how it was discovered

Where you can find Aariz online:

• Follow Aariz on:
  • Instagram | TikTok | LinkedIn

Please consider leaving a review if you enjoyed this episode! ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

We'd love to hear what you think and really appreciate your support ❤️

Welcome to EP 050 of the CVD Podcast!! (Yes, you read that right! Episode FIFTY already!)

Tia Wolfe is a podcaster who specializes in emotional and trauma healing. She is also an energy healer and life coach. Her life experiences also enables her to be a health/fitness coach as well as a relationship counselor.

Tia and I could talk for hours about healing, personal development, and hosting mental health podcasts (and we have lol). It's always fascinating to hear all the details that go into creating another human being. Tia is very loving, very down to earth, and always looking to help others - because she knows what it's like to feel alone, broken, and helpless.

In this episode, Tia talks about:

• Being raised in an Asian household without a father
  • Being a mother to her mother at a very young age
  • Having suicidal thoughts beginning at age 5
  • Experiencing family members constantly putting her down and then asking her for help
• Experiencing multiple toxic relationships
  • "Being whoever everybody else wanted her to be"
  • What it took for her to end those relationships
• How moving to Texas in 2020 gave her the spark to find herself
  • Feeling like a "living corpse" and realizing she needed a change
• Starting her podcast, Life with Tia Wolfe
  • What the process was like and how she overcame her fear
  • Why she continues to produce episodes and the impact she hopes to leave on this world

Where you can find Tia and her podcast online:

• Website: https://www.lifewithtiawolfe.com/
• Life with Tia Wolfe podcast:
  • Website | Spotify | Apple
• Follow Tia on:
  • Instagram | TikTok | YouTube

Please consider leaving a review if you enjoyed this episode! ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

We'd love to hear what you think and really appreciate your support ❤️

"Be a friend, say something nice to a friend, because it could change their life."

This is the tagline of The Pat McAfee Show and I feel compelled to echo this message this week.

One person I know tried to take their life last week. Another one was seconds away from taking their life one year ago and just shared this on Instagram.

I remember what that feeling was like... feeling lost, hopeless, like nothing would change, and that the only option was to take my own life. It's a very scary place to be in and its very vulnerable to tell somebody else that you're feeling this way.

I didn't tell my family members until 2019 that I tried to take my life in 2013. I know, it seems wild. And this is exactly what drives me to continue doing this podcast.

You are NOT ALONE! There are people that love you and care about you and will listen to what you're experiencing. It only takes 5 seconds of courage to open up to somebody and get the ball rolling. I know it might feel like the weight of the world is on your shoulders, but focusing on only 5 seconds can help get the conversation going.

Be a friend, say something nice to a friend. Check in with somebody today. Maybe it's somebody you hangout with all the time. Maybe it's a friend you have spoken to in 6 months or longer. Here are a few ways to spark the conversation if you're feeling stuck or overwhelmed:

• "Hey! I miss you. Let's FaceTime this weekend."
• "I miss hearing about what's happening in your life. What's new!?"
• "Hey! I'm sorry I've dropped the ball on our communication. I really value our friendship and want to start talking more often."
• "Hey! I'm free this Saturday. Want to go for a walk and catch up?"
• "Hey! I saw that you tried that new taco place. It looks so good! What else is new?"

We tend to make excuses to NOT reach out, especially if it's been a while. Embrace the initial discomfort and send that text, voice message, video, or heaven forbid a voice mail to let the other person know you CARE about them.

5 seconds of courage. You can do it :)

----

If you'd like to reach out to chat about anything you're going through or have questions about resources (books, videos, etc.), contact me however you would like :)

• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/comfortviadiscomfort/
• Email: hello@comfortviadiscomfort.com
• WhatsApp: +1-857-544-2232

Welcome to EP 048 of the CVD Podcast!!

Andrea Ames spent 35 years in the corporate world before jumping to entrepreneurship. She was kind of forced out a job when she didn't want to be and had so many questions about whether starting her own business was the right thing to do.

Well... it turns out that jump was a huge blessing. Shortly after this transition, Andrea's mother fell ill and Andrea was able to care for her regularly because of the freedom of time that came with owning her own business. The years following this change brought on many challenges that Andrea was not anticipating....

Her mother passed. Her father passed. Her uncle passed. Two of her dogs passed. These were unprecedented times and there was so much for Andrea to work through.

There were times that Andrea was grieving. And times where she was avoiding all her feelings. Eventually, she turned to personal development and everything changed.

Through a few specific experiences that she describes in the episode, Andrea learned that vulnerability was the key to connecting with others and healing herself. It's an incredible journey that cannot be overlooked.

In this episode, Andrea talks about:

• Her experience in the corporate world
  • What it was like to be forced out of a job she loved
• The bumpy transition to entrepreneurship
  • The questions she was asking herself
  • The uncertainty she was facing
• Why the switch to running her own business was a huge blessing
  • Her mother falling ill and what it meant to be able to spend time with her
  • The challenges of running a business while caring for a family member
• Death, grieving, and the healing process
  • How she navigated losing multiple family members in a short period
  • Her grieving process and how she dealt with all the emotions
  • The positive moments that she'll remember forever
• How personal development and vulnerability turned things around
  • The specific programs she was a part of and what they did for her
  • How and when she realized vulnerability was so powerful

Where you can find Andrea and her company online:

• Andrea: Website | LinkedIn | Instagram

Please consider leaving a review if you enjoyed this episode! ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

We'd love to hear what you think and really appreciate your support ❤️