We were lucky to catch up with Trish MICHAEL recently and have shared our conversation below.
Trish , we’re so excited for our community to get to know you and learn from your journey and the wisdom you’ve acquired over time. Let’s kick things off with a discussion on self-confidence and self-esteem. How did you develop yours?
At age 40, I found myself ending a 20 year abusive relationship, with 3 kids. I was sick with my first breast cancer diagnosis, lost everything financially and found myself struggling on, literally, every level. What was worse, was my kids were struggling too. They were dealing with a shattered family, and dealing with self-worth and self-esteem issues themselves, often times feeling suicidal.
One of the things that I started doing to help me get out of bed in the morning to deal with my crushing situation, was to write in the morning. I had read a book called The Artists Way a few years before and there was this thing called Morning Pages, where you just write 2 pages of a string of consciousness. It’s intended to help writers break through writers block, but I was using it to get through a life block. I did this for about a month, and I started noticing patterns. Patterns of thought that I had and stories that I was telling to and about myself that I didn’t like. So I changed the game. Instead of writing what was simply coming to my mind, I started reframing it all. I’d write and then I’d see what I was writing and I would write the opposite. Instead of “I’m tired of getting screwed all the time”, I’d write “I’m ready to start winning.” I started using this writing as an exercise to write my story the way I wanted it, instead of the way it was playing out at that point in time. This was the very start of what the next 6 years would be for me… which I’ve come to learn is an actual thing in psychology called congitive rewiring. Everything that I did was to figure out why I was running a negative story about myself and then rewrite that story the way I wanted it.
This started many processes that became habit for me. Now, I wake up every morning and I still write. I write a pep talk to Trish; things I’m grateful for, things that are working out well, things that I’m excited to improve. And I meditate. I clear my mind for atleast 15 minutes every morning. I make my bed, essentially sending a message to myself that I”m going to proactively do whatever it is that is going to set me up for success. And my whole family does a thing called Five Nice Things. Whenever anyone says something unkind about themselves, they have to say 5 Nice Things out loud to counter it. These all seem like small things, but these small acts, over time, with consistency, has turned me from someone who attracted abuse, financial ruin, cancer and drama to someone who is abundant, successful, happy and in the healthiest and most beautiful relationship I could have ever asked for. And I’m watching as my kids follow suit.
And it’s all because I DECIDED that I wanted to feel better, stopped using my life as an excuse to be unhappy and realized that the only person who could build my self-esteem and confidence was me. I own my life as mine, do hard things and this has turned me into a person that has dealt with really intense, really hard things (left an abuser, finally got full custody of my kids, beat cancer 3 times) and won. And this has given me a confidence that no one can take from me. It takes time to rewire your brain, from running the stories you’ve run all your life to creating new neuropathways that lead you to better thoughts about yourself… and it can be really hard. But it is incredibly worth it. And effective.
This is why I write children’s books. My goal is to get stories into the hands of kids and parents that they can read on repeat at bedtime that are sending the right messages so that kids can start themselves off telling the right stories about themselves from the get go; that they deserve happiness, that they deserve to take care of themselves well and that they can handle anything that gets thrown their way. And the beautiful thing is that these books are helping parents to rewire their long held stories as well.
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?
During the course of the nearly 7 years process of getting free of an abuser and helping my kids to cope with their life circumstances which often times felt (and was) very out of control, I wrote them each a story. A fun rhyme full of words to help them to realize their own power, ways to remember who they truly were and systems that they could fall back on to feel better when they were struggling most. The fear of dying from my recurrent cancer was very real and so I felt it necessary to give them a small piece of me that they could have with them always should anything happen to me and they be forced to deal with our situation without me. They were written for specific situations that each of them struggled with.
For my oldest daughter, I wrote Find Your Happy; an enlightening rhyming picture book about owning your own happiness and small things you can do every day to find your happy, even when things are hard.
For my middle son, I wrote LIGHT; a powerful rhyming picture book that shares a simple system that we use to make decisions with confidence. It also touches on the subject of setting boundaries and how you can go from being a people pleaser, to setting healthy boundaries and how to deal with the fears surrounding that in a healthy way.
For my youngest daughter, I wrote The Sorry Monster; a clever and fun picture book that helps those who have a habit of saying Sorry too much, something she picked up from me and something that is quite common in many people who’ve dealt with trauma in their childhood.
When people outside of our family read these stories, they resonated with them and would tell me that I should get them published because they wanted them in their own kids’ home libraries. So I worked during the past few years to self publish them and get them out to as many kids and parents as possible.
These books have really helped me and my family as we’ve made our journey away from abuse and towards a more peaceful and happy existence, and it seems they are just what a lot of other families needed as well. Our struggles are not unique. So, so many women and kids are dealing with similar struggles. And these books are helping them to cope, helping them to find better ways forward and helping them to feel better and less alone.
I am happy to report that I’m still kicking and cancer free, and so, in the coming months, I’ll be releasing my 4th book; I Feel Super. Where the first 3 books were written for my kids, this one… this is my story; of leaving an abuser and my journey towards becoming my own hero… and how doing that was the most powerful thing I could do for my kids. It’s also written in rhyme as a children’s book with playful and colorful illustrations and reminds us all that we have the power to be the hero in our own story, even when we feel powerless.
The best thing about these books isn’t that they’re setting kids up to be happy and giving them tools to create a great life… it’s that because they’re children’s books with playful rhyme and fun illustrations… the parents that read them with their kids are open to the messages inside… there’s no resistance. If you tell a woman who’s in a relationship with an abuser to leave, there’s often an immediate reaction of defense and shame. But if a mom reads this book with her kids, the messages of hope, of being worthy, of being capable… they get in. And when you read them on repeat as many families do, these books become a form of cognitive rewiring that can help parents reclaim their happiness too. That’s my favorite thing about what I’m doing. It’s helping EVERYONE who reads them. And for someone who didn’t start this journey towards finding happiness until she was 40 years old… thinking her life was over… I know that it’s never too late to start and want to help everyone have a chance at finding their happy, young and old.
If you had to pick three qualities that are most important to develop, which three would you say matter most?
Persistence. Self-Care. Discipline.
So my whole journey has been about developing skills that I didn’t have. Learning things that would help me to move forward in a better way than what I was taught, or what I was never taught. And the only one of these three that I have naturally is the persistence. When I care about a thing, I persist and nothing can stop me. I’m super grateful for this because my life has been very challenging. And without my ability to continue to pick myself up after the hits, I’d likely be dead. But the other two are things that I had to learn. Things that I had to practice, get better at and create good habits with. And this took time (and persistence !)
So I’d just encourage everyone to realize that just because you don’t have something naturally, doesn’t mean you can’t develop it. Decide you want something and then work at developing it. I spent so much of my life thinking I couldn’t do or be a thing because it didn’t come naturally to me. Not a lot of things come naturally, but that doesn’t mean that they aren’t worth pursuing.
Self-care was one of those things for me. I grew up in a very broken and depressed household as a child and self-care was not something that I was taught. And this carried through as I lived in an abusive marriage into adulthood. Once I left that relationship and found out I was sick with cancer, I had to learn, as a 40 year old adult, what self-care meant to me. And then I had to work to make sure that every day, I did what I needed to do to feel okay. Things as small as making my bed were revolutionary for me. Finding a skin care routine. Making sure I made appointments for hair cuts on a regular schedule. And working out every day. I found that there were certain things that didn’t matter so much to me, but others that did. If I felt like shit if I didn’t do a thing… it became a must. If I beat myself up after I didn’t do a thing… it became a must. And when I found the ones that mattered, they became a part of a routine that I had to force myself through every day. Small things, over time, consistently, make all the difference. That’s my mantra on those days that I just don’t wanna (which I still have… we all do).
And discipline has become the ultimate form of self care. It’s how I stay on track for future me when now me doesn’t want to. I do what I need to do now to be happy later. Discipline is about owning your mind and your body and your power, and making good choices now. I am good at this with almost all things… except chips. Freaking Sour Cream and Onion Pringles. They get me every time…
Do you think it’s better to go all in on our strengths or to try to be more well-rounded by investing effort on improving areas you aren’t as strong in?
This is such a great question and my answer is both. And perhaps that’s because I have ADHD and get bored easily… but I also genuinely believe that we are most happy, most productive in our own lives and of most service to others when we are able to expand beyond who we are now. But that expansion tends to only happen through discomfort.
Sometimes we can find that within what we are naturally good at. I was a professional photographer for 15 years, and I’m quite good at it. Photography always came naturally to me… but because of that… over time, I’d get bored. So as soon as I got comfortable in it, I’d introduce something new to the game to make it interesting again. Halfway through my career I switched from digital back to film. I was in the learning phase again and though that was uncomfortable, it made it exciting again. But eventually, I got really good at that and ran out of ways to make it complicated again. And so I started yearning for more again.
And so I tend to like to learn as much as possible. I like to take classes, learn new things. That is an energy that I enjoy being in. But I don’t think that I’d enjoy it as much if I didn’t have things that I know that I’m naturally good at. Like, if everything that I tried I sucked at, I might not want to try and learn anything. So I almost feel like we’re given natural gifts so that we’ll have the base and confidence that we need to search out more… if that makes any sense? Something to return to… that we enjoy and that can fill us up and remind us that we’re good… so that we can venture out and become better. I personally don’t know any master at anything, who doesn’t have their foot in several different wading pools. That’s the kid of person I want to be… always curious… always learning… always a beginner at something… but with a little bit of mastery of at least one thing to return to keep me grounded.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.trishMICHAEL.com
- Instagram: @iamtrishMICHAEL
- Facebook: thetrishMICHAEL
- Twitter: @iamtrishmichael
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCwnA9pOiqFlyEk9LfHJvPcA
