Episode 189: How to Claim Peace and Ditch Shame, with "These Broken Roads" Author, Donna Marie Hayes
Release Date: 11/07/2023
How to Manage--and Change!--Chronic Pain with Pain Reprocessing Therapy and Patty Tashiro
Brilliantly Resilient
"Acute and chronic pain are processed in different parts of the brain. If you aren't healing and are still in pain, it's possible that your brain has established learned neural pathways that can continue to cause pain, which becomes chronic." Patty Tashiro ~ Is your brain keeping you in pain? The emotional responses we have to trauma--which often stay with us--can trigger the brain to continue to send a physical pain response in our bodies. Huh? Isn't pain caused by a physical issue in the body? Well, yes. Unless it isn't. Patty Tashiro experienced a mother's nightmare when her daughter and...
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Episode 213: How to Expand Diversity and Inclusion to Include Everyone, with Toby Mildon
Brilliantly Resilient
"There is diversity within diversity itself. Even people with shared disabilities have different experiences. We are all diverse. Diversity includes everyone." ~ Toby Mildon, Author of Inclusive Growth: Future-proof Your Business by Creating a Diverse Workspace, and Building Inclusivity: Making Your Workplace Equitable, Diverse and Inclusive How many people in the world are exactly like you? EXACTLY like you, no differences. The answer is no one. Every single person, because of countless factors including genetics, personal experiences, education, inherent skills--the list is...
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Episode 212: Advocating for Kids Without "a Voice," with TeamChild's Christina Sorenson
Brilliantly Resilient
The Maasai tribe of Africa greets one another by saying "How are the children?" We have to recognize that all the children in our community are our children. Christina Sorenson Attorney and Advocate for Foster Children at Christina Sorenson was in 15 different foster care homes from ages five to fifteen. Separated from her sister and eventually adopted at age fifteen, Christina has made it her life's work to provide legal and supportive aid for children and young adults in foster care. An attorney at in Seattle, WA, Christina has thoughtfully incorporated her own life experiences into...
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Episode 211: How to Live with a "Pilgrim's Heart" with Christine Eberle
Brilliantly Resilient
"Be where you are on the way to where you want to be going." ~ Christine Eberle, Author: "Be where you are on the way to where you want to be going." Um...huh? The above sounds like a riddle, doesn't it? Then again, isn't life a kind of riddle we try to figure out every day? Christine Eberle, author of , decided to seek clarity in answering life's riddle by undertaking a journey--literally and figuratively--as she and her husband walked the Camino of St. Ignatius Loyola in 2022. For the uninitiated, the Camino (there are two--one of St. James and one of St. Ignatius), is a...
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Episode 210: How to "Be Better" in 2025, with Mary Fran Bontempo
Brilliantly Resilient
I came down to those two words. Be better. I think if we can boil it down to something, 'Be better' might be the most that we should be asking of ourselves. ~ Mary Fran Bontempo, Author It's 2025. How are you feeling about that? I find the time right after Christmas to be a bit challenging. After a month of being jolly buying, planning, decorating, eating, drinking, visiting with family and friends, suddenly it's over. And sure, New Year's Eve is fun, but it's also accompanied by that feeling of 'Oh my God, now I have to improve myself again.' Enter the dreaded New Year's...
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Episode 209: Mindfulness and Honoring the Pause with Shawnta Hooks
Brilliantly Resilient
"I needed to embark on a journey to reclaim my connection, both personally and professionally." Shawnta Hooks ~ Leading Belonging and Mindfulness Speaker. Shawnta Hooks was never a believer in meditation or mindfulness. Working in accounting and corporate compliance during her 20 year corporate career, Shawnta found herself in a toxic work environment after a company reorganization, feeling completely disconnected, unseen and unheard. Her first instinct was to lay blame on the company, until she realized it wasn't entirely her work environment that was causing her challenges....
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Episode 208: New Book! From Broken to Brilliant: How to Live a Brilliantly Resilient Life, with Mary Fran Bontempo
Brilliantly Resilient
You have everything in you already to live a Brilliantly Resilient life. You have Resilience and you have your own personal Brilliance. It's already there. You were born with both of those things. ~ Mary Fran Bontempo, Author, From Broken to Brilliant: How to Live a Brilliantly Resilient Life Have you uncovered your Resilience yet? Since Covid, we’ve been reminded constantly about the need for resilience, as though every day, we must gird for battle before we wander into the unknown terrors of the world. Truthfully, that scenario doesn’t seem that far-fetched anymore. If you’ve...
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Episode 207: Finding the Brilliance and Resilience in Generational Relationships with "Gentelligence" Author, Dr. Megan Gerhardt
Brilliantly Resilient
Let's have smarter intergenerational conversations. Let's be OK and not threatened by the fact that you see this differently than me. Let's figure out why and how that could actually be helpful and beneficial. Dr. Megan Gerhardt Author of Do you work with people of different generations? Do you live with people of different generations? Do you have public contact with people of different generations? Unless you live alone on an island, the answer to at least one, if not all, of these questions is yes. And in your interactions with those of different generations, it’s almost...
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Episode 206: How to Mourn the Loss of a Sibling with Annie Orenstein, Author of Always a Sibling: The Forgotten Mourners Guide to Grief
Brilliantly Resilient
No one checks in on them, right? They often delay their own grief, put off their own mourning in order to support their parents and step up. But then? They remain there and they never really get a turn to express their own grief, or to be the mourner in the room. Annie Orenstein ~ Author of Do you have a sibling? Most of us do. And according to author, Annie Orenstein, as children, we often spend more time with our siblings than with our parents. Yet as we grow, our sibling relationships are pushed to the background as we form other adult relationships in our lives. So...
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Episode 205: Empowering Those Who Stutter, with Nolan Stuttering Foundation President, Brian Nolan
Brilliantly Resilient
“I'm trying to open stutter more. Because I I've reached a level of of acceptance that I'm proud of, but I'm nowhere near where I need to be. I interview people on podcasts who openly stutter, and I'm so proud of them because they do it without shame and that's the real issue. The real issue is shame, every day, when you stutter.” Brian Nolan President and Co-founder, Have you ever heard someone stutter? If you don’t stutter, it can be uncomfortable to know how to react. Do you try and finish the person’s sentence? Do you look away? Do you simply wait? While a...
info_outline~ Donna Marie Hayes
How many times have you avoided confrontation to “keep the peace?” How many times have you explained away red flags in relationships or situations because you couldn’t or wouldn’t face your own doubts and fears?
After experiencing great loneliness during her childhood, Donna Marie Hayes felt she was on sure footing. After two failed marriages, Donna took eight years being on her own to build a strong personal foundation. But in her mid-50’s, Donna wanted companionship, and found the “love of her life” through an online dating site. For 18 months, her relationship blossomed, until it came crashing down and she discovered she had been scammed, losing all of her money to a man who professed to love her.
On this episode of the Brilliantly Resilient podcast, Donna talks about how her childhood traumas remained to cause her to deny and deflect obvious red flags because she so wanted her relationship to be what it appeared to be on the surface. And once she realized she had been scammed, she fell into a place of shame, not wanting anyone to know what she felt she had allowed to happen to her.
As we say in Brilliantly Resilient, it was when Donna armed herself with the truth that she was able to transfer her shame to her abuser, find her peace and later, to use her experiences to help other women rebuild their lives after devastating experiences.
To learn more, tune into this episode of the Brilliantly Resilient podcast, and check out Donna’s appearance on The Tamryn Hall Show as she talks about her book, These Broken Roads: Scammed and Vindicated, One Woman’s Story.
Be sure to listen for these additional bits of Brilliance:
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I thought those eight years of just being by myself prepared me for this, but I got sucked right in, because he was so nice, because I needed that. I needed it to be real, I wanted it to be real. I talked around it (the red flags).
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How are you showing up in life? Are you showing up diminished? Are you showing up with self-limiting beliefs or are some of your childhood traumas showing up in your adult life? We can’t predict what we are going to do; we have to do some self-reflection.
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The common thread was shame. I decided to tell the story so the next woman who Googles his name is going to see what he did. I’m not going to wear your shame. You wear it.
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How can I repurpose my pain? How can I use it to benefit others?
Let’s be Brilliantly Resilient together!
XO,
Mary Fran & Kristin