Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Leanna Williams. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.
Leanna , so great to have you with us and we want to jump right into a really important question. In recent years, it’s become so clear that we’re living through a time where so many folks are lacking self-confidence and self-esteem. So, we’d love to hear about your journey and how you developed your self-confidence and self-esteem.
Like a lot of us, I spent most of my life hating my body, and myself. I could never look in the mirror and say I loved or liked myself. I was born in 1995 at the height of diet “skinny” culture and was surrounded by addiction, neglect, and abuse until I could fend for myself at 18. All those factors led to me having a very negative mindset and belief system in place for my survival. My upbringing had made me believe that I was lazy, stupid, ugly, and worthless, as a child when you are told these things by the adults around you, of course, you are going to believe it, and I did until I was 24 years old.
Since I grew up on the verge of starvation until I was 18 I never had to worry about how my body looked, because of my neglect I was already the body type the world expected of me. When I got my first job at 18 at Subway, I could feed myself and provide for the first time. I was on the verge of starving for 18 years and I now worked at a place I got a footlong sandwich for a dollar when I was on shift and discounted food while in my off time. Over the next six years, I put on a good amount of weight and for the first time, I was feeling negative about my body image along with all the other negativity that helped me survive.
During these years, I also met my husband at 19 and we have been inseparable ever since, We moved towns away from my toxic family, and after years of struggling with simple adult tasks because of chronic mental illness from my childhood and my negative mindset, I learned what it was to be in survival mode and what trauma responses were. I was diagnosed with Major Depressive Disorder and complex post-traumatic stress disorder, and now in recent months ADHD. I went to a trauma-informed therapist who helped me with EMDR therapy and helped me understand my trauma responses, triggers, and my negative mindset.
From this therapy experience, I was introduced to the concept of paying attention to the thoughts that run through our minds. At first, this was just to notice and understand how I was being triggered and how to stop a trauma thought spiral. After practicing this, I started to notice all of the thoughts running through my head, and none of them were good or nice. Around this time I also started looking into the body positivity movement and what I was hearing about the importance of how you speak to yourself in your head. For example, if I made a mistake I was so hard on myself thinking “Oh my gosh, I am so stupid” or joking saying out loud “Ugh I hate my life”. I started to call myself out on these internal thought patterns and corrected myself to ” I made a mistake, I am learning something new” reminding myself that I do not hate my life I am just not exactly where I want to be yet. After years of practice, I was able to change my mindset to be full of love for myself and have wonder and awe for every experience in life, even the challenges, and this is how I am now able to be confident and encourage others to do the same.
Let’s take a small detour – maybe you can share a bit about yourself before we dive back into some of the other questions we had for you?
Ever since Instagram came out when I was a teen I have been obsessed with social media, I have always made content and wanted to be an influencer, I had a YouTube channel around the age of 18 which was starting to grow but I was inconsistent due to mental health and life circumstances. I have always been active on Instagram but I could never figure out how people were becoming influencers and making a living creating content.
Once I was healed enough and my mental illnesses were under control for the most part, I decided it was time to be consistent and follow my dreams of being an influencer but I still didn’t know how to make it work. I started researching how to be an influencer and came across some paid courses, this was very scary for me to commit to because I have never spent that much money on anything.
From these courses, I learned that consistency alone was not enough, to gain an audience you have to add value to their lives in some way, whether that be inspiration, motivation, entertainment, or any other value type. I heard the advice that whatever you can’t stop talking about to friends and family, is a good place to start. For me, I was obsessed with telling everybody what I learned about healing our mindset, coming out of survival mode, and learning to love ourselves and our bodies.
I knew that I was not alone in the struggles I had faced and I knew other people could benefit from the information I had learned and put to the test over the past five years. I began posting about body confidence and being candid about my mental health struggles and how I overcame them, and when I couldn’t overcome them, how to give myself grace in the process of healing. I now have an audience of 21 thousand amazing people I feel so thankful I get to share these insights with. I have always loved helping people and I feel so fulfilled that I can do so!
Right now I am focusing on getting my first paid brand deal and starting a full-time career as an influencer.
Looking back, what do you think were the three qualities, skills, or areas of knowledge that were most impactful in your journey? What advice do you have for folks who are early in their journey in terms of how they can best develop or improve on these?
My number one advice is to start paying attention to your thought patterns, recognize what is holding you back, and cut it off. When you tell yourself something mean like “Ugh I am so stupid,” reply back in your brain and say “HEY, you don’t talk to her/ him/ them like that!” Start thinking of yourself as your best friend. You wouldn’t let anyone talk to them like that right? So why do we talk to ourselves this way?
The second thing I think is most important is giving ourselves grace in our healing journeys, not every day is going to be good, but we can always try again and keep fighting for ourselves when we can. If you are having a bad mental health or body image day it does not mean you have failed or are doing anything wrong in your healing journey.
The third thing I learned is to enjoy the journey, a lot of us want to be healed right now, or for instance if I said “I want to be a paid influencer right this second!”, I would begin to beat myself up for not being at my goal. There are many steps to get to the life we want and we should enjoy every single one of them.
Okay, so before we go we always love to ask if you are looking for folks to partner or collaborate with?
Yes! I would love to collaborate with anyone in the mental health or body confidence space and am looking for my first sponsored brand deal. If your goal is to help people be the best version of themselves while also giving themselves grace in the process let’s connect! I would love to make content with other influencers and content creators as well to help spread this message as much as possible.
You can get ahold of me at [email protected] to chat about any ideas!
Contact Info:
- Website: https://pillar.io/thebusyfawn
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thebusyfawn/
Image Credits
Leanna Williams
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