Meet Ana Allen

We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Ana Allen. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Ana below.

Hi Ana, appreciate you sitting with us today to share your wisdom with our readers. So, let’s start with resilience – where do you get your resilience from?
I believe my resilience came as a survival skill early in my life. As a young child someone told me “when you smile the whole world smiles with you”. I took that statement literally. I understood this to mean you can brighten a person’s day by simply smiling at them. The converse also is true, when you simply smile, it changes your own mood too. I am certain there is science behind that but since I am not a scientist I won’t bore you with some statistics, just my own experiences conclude that this is true.

As a first born child to very young parents I would say I felt responsible for more than one would hope for in a child. Having a very happy first 4 years of life, having a sister and brother born in that time, I was a very happy child with family around to help show us the way.

Life began to twist and turn like a roller coaster of ups and downs as our parents started fighting more and creating a very scary and unstable home and ultimately, split up. This was a time I realized I had to grow up. All of my six years of experience made me an example to my sibling. How one of us behaved would be the identity of all of us. Now, acceptance, security and survival was hinging on me and I wasn’t going to let anyone down. Always trying to make the adults around me happy, I found the bright side of every dark time. Wether it was moving from place to place because we didn’t pay rent, changing schools again, having to make new friends. a new companionship for one of my parents after loving the one who left, or landing back to live with extended family and not knowing when or where or how we would be together with one of our parents again, I had to be an example to my siblings being a happy, respectful and problem free child. The only thing I knew to do to add value, was smile. The only choice I had was to find the happy in each situation and be grateful for what we had. We had each other and we had the love, care and example of our Aunts and Uncles.

I would say resilience came as a responsibility and a survival skill spinning the threads which are woven into the fabric that made me who I am at every stage of my life.

Great, so let’s take a few minutes and cover your story. What should folks know about you and what you do?
As you could probably tell, family has been the fuel for my existence. I dreamed of being a mother and wife my whole young life and was determined to do things differently for my family than my parents. I married the love of my life, John when I was 23 years old by the time I was 26 we had a son, Austin and we were pregnant with our youngest daughter, Haley. Before Haley was born John and I grew our family by 2 more children as we took guardianship of 2 teenage girls Danyel 18 and Jamie, 14. Danyel and Jamie are related to me by blood as second cousins removed. Their mother (my mother’s cousin) and father had deceased in separate tragic incidences that rocked our family but none more that the 2 beautiful young ladies that would complete our unconventional family. Life was exactly as it should be with all the highs and lows of raising children.

By the examples of how I was ultimately raised by my Aunt and Uncle I made a concerted effort to be present for our children, being a stay at home mom, while John worked hard to make up the financial sacrifices and also being present ,striving to be the parents we needed when we were children. We did our best to keep our children’s future therapy bills down to a minimum and learned the value of saying ” I will do better next time” on the areas we failed. Our children are now ALL grown and on their own We have three grandsons who light up our lives. As proud as I am that our children are thriving, I wasn’t prepared for the many layers of loss that came with the “success” of letting them go and watching them fly on their own. For the first time in my life the only person I have to take care of is me. I was lost, confused and ashamed for even thinking “what about me?” Never saying those words out loud, One day, my bestie said it for me. ” Ana, you need to put YOU on the list.”

With the support of my loving husband, I started taking steps to find myself and remind myself that I am strong and I have more in me. All the while talking to Christy every day. We talked through everything under the sun helping each other to find solutions for whatever we were going through. Hours and hours of conversations about hormones, physical health, mental health, raising teenagers, parenting adult children, making new friends, our relationships with our husbands, our parents, loss and so much more. One day John said ” do you think other women talk for hours about this stuff?” We both said ” No, but they should.” He jokingly said, “You should start a podcast!” After a couple of years of learning what a podcast even is we started to take it seriously because John was right, more women need to talk about this stufF.

Now I am the proud cohost of “Girl! Can You Talk?” podcast. In this podcast my life long best friend Christy Melgoza and I empower woman to live better, feel better and grow a community of women to do life with. Through conversations with each other, we share the hard parts of being a woman in today’s world and help each other find solutions. We ask our audience to weigh in by sending us topics they are wanting to talk about and we treat our audience as though they are friends sitting at the table with us. We do not pretend to be experts by any means, we share what we experience and look to the experts who join our conversations to gain clarity on our most requested or puzzling topics. With vulnerability and humor, we are aiming to change the narrative of the modern midlife woman. The topics we cover are hormones, mental and physical heath, fighting the clock on aging, relationships, raising kids and letting them go. We talk about the taboo topics women need to normalize talking about. like sex, pooping (or lack of) and wanting more out of life in what I like to call Act 2.

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?
FAITH: My faith? It’s the secret sauce of my life! Kindergarten at a Christian school dropped epic truth bombs about love and integrity that stuck with me. Imagine this: every high-five or grin you dish out could be the highlight reel in someone’s day – that’s the kind of viral kindness I’m all about.

EMPATHY & HUMILITY: They call me “A Friend to the Friendless” – sounds like a superhero nickname, right? I’m all about living the Golden Rule like it’s going out of style. Dive into people’s stories, folks – it’s like treasure hunting for the soul. You’d be amazed at the gems you find behind those tough exteriors.

LIVING OUT LOUD: Life’s too short for whispering – I’m all about that megaphone lifestyle. I jump into the deep end with both feet, sometimes without checking if there’s water! I cheer, I chatter, and I champion the underdog with gusto. If I could bottle up advice, it’d fizz over with: Live boldly, laugh at the mishaps, and sprinkle your days with a little ‘you’ magic.

What’s been one of your main areas of growth this year?
Almost 6 years ago, I felt like I had been forced into retirement from my dream job after 20 years of being a stay-at-home mom. Thank God I have my lifelong best friend to remind me of who I am beyond that identity, as I flopped around like a fish out of water. After 5 years of talking to Christy every day, finding solutions for ourselves and each other to feel better and live better, I found a new purpose. Sounds a bit dramatic, I am sure, but co-hosting the “Girl! Can You Talk?” podcast with my best friend has helped me grow in confidence as a midlife woman. Shouting from the rooftops that our purpose, dreams, and health are not at the mercy of the date on our birth certificate, I wake up every morning feeling blessed to have the years behind me to shape the years in front of me and the platform to share it all with women so they do not feel alone. The future looks bright!

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