But first...let's dig a little deeper!

I could vividly remember the first time I was afraid to tell my story.

I was in sixth grade and it was the first day of school after summer vacation. I was excitedly telling my best friend about meeting Mickey and Minnie and the gang, when a boy in my class overheard our conversation and accused me of lying about the trip. I was first taken aback by his attacks and then I quickly assured him and my classmates that I wasn't lying and that we had in fact gone to Disney World.

After several minutes of an "intense" (for sixth graders) argument, I just shut down. I was no longer compelled to tell my story. I no longer wanted to be heard.

It wasn't until I was recounting this experience in my adulthood, that I realised, I barely talked about my first Disney World experience because of the way I was shutdown and pretty much bullied into silence. I realised I was haunted by that childhood experience.

I've coached dozens of women who have a desire to show up more confidently on camera and in their every day lives, and the more I coach, the more I realise that so many of us are still carrying the scars from our childhood.

I realise that these childhood scars have hindered us from telling our stories, to hide in plain sight and to shy away from the camera.

What if I told you;

that the fact that you were shut down as a child is now impacting how you show up, or not, in your adult life?

Do you ever think about seven-year-old you and remember that day you had something super important to share?

Do you remember that someone told you to be quiet or didn't allow you to get a word in and that story stayed stuck, deep down inside of you?

Do you ever think that that story is still stuck there; begging to bubble to the top?

Do you ever think that being shut down as a child caused you to get passed over for that promotion on your job?

Luckily for me

I had a family that encouraged talking and telling stories about our days and lives.

I had teachers who taught me the art of storytelling and helped me to hone this skill.

I had friends who actually believed and listened to my stories.

Even with all of this support, I had to do the years' worth of hard work to overcome the self-doubt caused by those voices that didn't listen to me, that didn't believe me and that didn't want to hear from me.

In order to be able to tell my stories again, I had to heal!

Girl, listen!

You'd think that being a TV host and a national news anchor would mean that being in front of the camera came easy, right?

WRONG!

Much of my healing actually happened on camera, in real time and on the job. Every single day I had a doubt about my ability to do the job or a doubt about the importance of my voice being heard, I showed up anyway.

I quickly realised that the better I got at being on camera, the better I got at negotiating, at engaging in social settings and the better I got at...LIFE!