[CRISTINA CASTAGNINI] Please note that listener discretion is advised for this episode, as it contains content of a sensitive nature that may be triggering to some listeners. Please check the show notes at www.behindthebitepodcast.com for more detailed information. Thank you. [CRISTINA] Behind The Bite podcast is part of a network of podcasts that are good for the world. Check out podcasts like the Full of Shift podcast, After the First Marriage podcast and Eating Recovery Academy over at practiceofthepractice.com/network. Welcome to Behind The Bite podcast. This podcast is about the real life struggles women face with food, body image and weight. We're here to help you inspire and create better healthier lives. Welcome. . All right, everyone. Welcome to the show. Today I have such an inspiring guest who is here to share her personal story. I'm not going to give too much of an introduction today, other than to say that for anyone who is out there who really needs to know they're not alone or who's in a really deep dark place where you are almost convinced you will never get better or come out of the place you're in, or maybe even believe that you don't matter, then sit back, relax and take the time to hear today's show. Sue Bowles is a survivor turned author, speaker and master certified life coach. She leads My Step Ahead, an organization committed to breaking the stigma around mental health struggles. Sue helps stuck people get unstuck by discovering hope, journeying together for the next step ahead. Whether speaking on a podcast, a stage or one on one, Sue's enthusiasm is contagious, shining the light of hope wherever the listener needs, sharing them to see their dreams become present reality. [CRISTINA] All right, well Sue, welcome to the show. [SUE BOWLES] Thanks for having me. I appreciate it. I always love having people on here who have a fascinating story. I'm not going to do justice, obviously sharing anything about your story. You're here to do that. So would you mind sharing with us a little bit about your story? [SUE] Sure. Let me give a quick trigger warning. I do this whenever I speak simply because I don't want my story to hurt somebody else. Some of the things I'm about to share I have to do with sexual assault, have to do is obviously eating disorders and depression and suicide. If anything like that is triggering for your listeners, I really want them to have a self-care plan in place. If they need to put the show on pause or even stop it for now and come back later, it'll be waiting for you. Your self-care is the most important thing. So I always want to put that out there first. [CRISTINA] Thank you for that. [SUE] Having said that my story starts in first grade. There was a classmate of mine named Bobby and one day after school, we were walking home, which was very normal back in the seventies. Everybody in the neighborhood did that. It was safe to do that and Bobby enticed me into the woods over on school property and held me against my will for 45 minutes to rape me. I didn't know, he said a few words as he was needed. My mom was calling for me. That was my excuse to get out of Dodge and Bobby went out on one end of the woods and I went out the other to meet mom. Bobby's last words to me were, don't tell anybody. I didn't know the prison that was going to put me in and I didn't know the power those awards would hold over me for over a decade. Because as it turned out, I didn't tell anyone until my senior year of college, so it became a 15 year secret. You can simply look it up on the internet, but it's well known that trauma rewires your brain. So here I am at a very young impressional age where I'm just really starting to learn and develop, and my brain gets worked out by trauma. So because, knowing no one did anything wrong that day, except Bobby, it took a really long time for me to understand that and to be able to own that. The only person did anything wrong was him. Nobody knew to ask a question. Rape was not on the radar in the seventies and especially for children and no one, I didn't know what to say. My emotions became frozen in time that day. I didn't know to say anything. Even if I did, I don't know if I would've had the words. No one knew to ask. I was held prisoner by his words "don't tell anybody." So when it came out 15 years later, if you're already off base, the longer you're off base, the further away from center you get, or the way I put it is the longer, I said, my emotions were frozen in time. The longer you're in the freezer, the thicker the ice gets. So imagine going through middle school and high school with all this going on and not knowing that. In eighth grade, somebody signed my class picture book "to the girl who's always angry." I didn't realize how truthful it was. She saw something that I didn't know was there in eighth grade. Now I understand that, but at that point in time, what's that mean? That just crushes you. So all the way through high school I was troubled. I was trying to find a place to fit them. So I got through high school. Even though I was in high school, let me back up real quick, there was other sexual assaults from neighborhood kids. There were things that happened on days with guys probably didn't need to happen. So there was a lot of abuse in that way. By the time I get to college I am a very confused, hurting, troubled, young adult, and it started coming out in activity. What I've come to learn about myself since this activity became my normal, because if I became busy, I was seen. Therefore, if I had value, that's how my brain worked it out. So if I was seen, then I knew I mattered to people because I didn't know how to ask for that or didn't have that security anywhere else. So activity became my normal because if I stayed busy, I didn't have to think. If I didn't have to think, I didn't have to feel, and if I didn't have to feel, I didn't have to deal with my stuff. I didn't like my stuff. Was in denial about my stuff. So where the eating disorder came in, I was in college. I don't remember what year it was. I went to small college in Northwest Ohio which had one dining hall. If you missed the window where they were serving you the meal, so I was always there making sure I ate, but again, my breads already worked out. Then you add in all this other stuff and college is a hot bed for stress on top of everything. I would've enjoyed an extra serving of food. Very natural. Your body is designed to be hungry, to tell you when it needs fuel, but my brain warped it out where "everybody would be watching." What that meant was that Sue would be found out because Sue had painted the picture to the entire campus nonverbally, but just I've learned in my actions that I have it all together, that I was the strong one. I could do all these activities and still get good grades. I was superwoman. Well, superwoman is a fictional character. When that started happening in the dining hall, I learned to shut off my hunger. Instead of going for more food, I would dump my tray, get out of Dodge, go back to my room and snack. I would snack and that's how I curved my hunger. Now, I never called it an eating disorder. Years later, I started calling it anorexic tendencies or odd eating behaviors, but I never called it an eating disorder. It really wasn't until I got connected with a counselor that I finally owned that part of things. Where things started for me, Ed Highland was my Dean of students. Ed became my confidant all four years of college. I credit him with helping get me through college. By the time senior year rolled around, he was gone in a different position. Had told me he would still be available. Spring semester rolled around. He was not ready for the workforce. He knew I was just, I needed a lot of work and he started giving me projects and homework assignments and we'd meet the next week and go over them. Well, one week we're going over the homework and I still to this day do not remember his quiz question, but all I remember is I just went off on this thing and I just said, well, when society tells you not to say anything and my voice trailed off. Yes, exactly. Ed was very calm, but certainly picked up on something was going on and said, "Sue, did your parents hurt you?" I said, no. He said somebody else. I said, yes. He said, what happened? I did not know that my secret wanted to come out. I didn't know my secret needed to come out at that point in time. It just spilled all over his office. So I remember leaving his office, going back to the union and feeling like I had a Scarlet letter attached to my forehead. I felt like everybody knew, like their eyes were piercing right through me. I know now that was a total lie, but I was just that far emotionally gone of this, just so caught up in everything. The next week, Ed came with me at my request to see my counselor in town. I still tried the shadow box there. Ed called me on the carpet with the counselor. I wasn't answering the counselor's question. So he looked at Ed and said, ''What do you think?" Ed just looked at me and said, "I think Sue needs to quit shadow boxing and tell you what she told me last week." Ed was a very dear friend and I've had a chance to share all this with him personally since that was a very treasured moment for me. So that's where the story, the secret started to come out. I left for graduate school in Minnesota and continued counseling up there, but I never really dealt with anything. I was in counseling, but I was just went, we weren't getting, it wasn't quite hitting the mark and everything. I went through a number of different years. I even went through a number of years where I was out of counseling everything seemed fine. My eating was fine. Then in 2008, I lost a very dear friend. I'm sorry, 2005 I lost a friend. Mel passed away of breast cancer. Three years later, I'm grieving her like it's yesterday and all my red flags for my eating disorder start coming up. For me one of my red flags is when I go to the refrigerator, open it up and I can't make a food choice. I'm overwhelmed. My brain just shuts down. I can't handle it. I shut it and I snack. That was where I shut off the hunger or whatever. That was starting to happen when it hadn't happened for a while. So my pastor was able to connect me with a counselor who specializes in eating disorder. This was April, 2008. I've actually been with Amanda since, and we have gone through every hill and valley you can imagine. Because like our third session, when it came out about the rate, she's like, "Sue, this is huge. Have you ever worked through with anybody?" I looked at her and said, "I wouldn't know what it would look like to have worked through." I said, "I guess that's your answer." So even then though, and we have a fantastic relationship, she has since said that we had to get me stronger in the present before we could deal with the past. Finally, 2014, so six years after seeing her, we finally get back to it's time to start dealing with this. I was strong enough and it was starting to come up in other ways. It was time to deal with it. What kicked it was a movie that had come out. I'm a Christian and there was a movie out about a Christian musician named Rich Mullins. He was big nineties, his big song, for people listening to Christian music was Awesome God. It put out a movie about his life and some of the themes talk about your parent-child relationships and your relationship with God and living a maskless life and a life of authenticity. It was a really hard watch for me for about the first 20 minutes. The first time I saw it, I'm with mom, about 10 friends, did a lot of secret wiping at the tears because I couldn't, again, I had these masks up because I couldn't let anybody know that Sue was hurting, flash back to college. Because I didn't want to be found out. So did a lot of wiping at that fall, the movie producer and the family and friends of Rich who produced the movie, decided to put together a retreat to continue to the seams in the movie. During this time, my brother had served 18 months in prison for a driving accident. He'll be the first to say that God had to send him to prison to save him from himself. He was sober a year before he went into prison and he's been sober since. He's nine and a half years, actually coming up on 10 years sober. Which is fantastic. So anyway, he got out in August, 2014 and one of the things that really kept things for me about the whole masks and everything was he'd be in town like, "Man, Scott, I haven't seen you for such a long time. Where have you been? If anyone had reason to hide a story, if anyone had reason to be shameful of something, it would be my brother and come, just getting out of prison. Instead of saying, blowing off or something, he said, "Oh, I've been in prison." Just flat out blank. That just hit me. I was like, okay, if he can be that brave, why can't I? I looked at my counselor once I finally made the decision to go on this retreat. I said, get me ready. I just want to be authentic. We spent six weeks dealing with fears and the anxiety so when I got there to retreat, I could just do the work I needed to do on me and not worry about what everybody, what I think everybody else was thinking about. That was the whole healing of the emotional healing. With that first year, I had to own my story and that's an important part of life that I don't think people really understand is that we like to play off our story. I was in denial about my story, because I didn't like it. I didn't want to own my story. That was the first step that happened for me at that retreat. I went into that retreat, calling myself the holy exception, believing and telling myself that everything in the Bible was good enough for everybody else, but me because I was too screwed up, too far gone. I was a wasted space. Now I was back in yes, when I was back in high school, then I had been suicidal and obviously had a lot of thoughts. Didn't do anything, but came out of that. I was very depressed with everything going on. Then when I was in graduate school, long before all this, my parents divorced after 34 years of marriage. I was suicidal again at that point in time. That is when my eating disorder really kicked in. I had had my worst struggle with it. It was to the point I had, they had food out every time I was there just because I knew I wasn't eating and it was showing. I was starting to drink. I just was very unhealthy. So anyway, when we get to this retreat I'm going in with this attitude of I'm a screw up. I'm too far gone. I'm hopeless, but I'm going to give it one more try. It sounds like an oxymoron. I'm feeling like I'm hopeless, but I'm giving it one more try. I loved that retreat, being able to say and start to believe that Jesus Christ loves me and He not only loves me. He likes me and He's really absolutely crazy about me. That was a real flip for me. I went back the next year, the second retreat. I had to grieve my story because there is a lot of lost in my story that I never realized. It kind just hit me. There was just, I just started, I just finally let it go. One of my fears had been that I would start to cry and I would never stop. I just won't stop crying. I cried for a good 10 to 15 minutes and I'm talking hard crying like that, but it was what was needed. Here's the joy. I stopped crying. That's the best part. I did stop. So there was another lie in my head from my eating story, trying to tell me how weird I was. Another lie got turned down. By the time the third retreat came around in 2016, the nugget that I walked away with that really started turning things for me was that I'm valuable, that I'm valuable to God and that I have something to say that could helps somebody else. That then started this whole catapult with the book, was speaking with doing podcasts was presenting at conferences. I haven't looked back since. It has been long journey. I would not be here without so many people supporting me. But now that I'm at this point in my recovery and my healing, I can start being a voice of hope for other people. I'm now a master certified life coach. I'm a voice of hope because I want to help others who might be feeling the same way, because the way I see it is that if you are reaching out for help, you're not totally hopeless. You haven't given up all hope and I want to help fan that flight so that they can be people, my clients can see their dreams become present reality. That has been a real joy in my life. It's been incredible the last two years and just hearing things. The podcast and speaking have just been a tremendous opportunity to give back. I got a message earlier this week, late last week, someone who heard me on a podcast. She's in Australia and she wrote me just to thank me. We talked a little bit, chat a little bit, and she asked for resources. I actually gave her the name of Behind the Bite. [CRISTINA] Thank you. [SUE] I was getting ready to record this show. She's listened to a number of your resources. I believe there's a free program she signed up for. So it's encouraging just to see how simply sharing my story is affecting somebody literally half a world away that I probably will never meet or ever even new existed and all because as Ed asked me that question. Well, not just because he asked a question, but you did a lot of this work. I mean, the tenacity and this, all of the effort you put into, I mean, this is years and years in the making and so much, I mean, I'm just hearing it in your voice. I know the audience can't see you, but I'm just, as you're telling your story, there's every emotion in the world on your face. It's like pain and the happiness. I mean, it's everything. It's this whole gamut. Wow, from first grade on to here, this is just such a trajectory. I know there's a lot of people listening that can relate to your story which is a sad and unfortunate thing as well, because I know trauma, there's a lot of people who have eating disorders who do have a trauma history as well. So I am very grateful to you for sharing your story because for anyone out there listening, part of why I do the podcast is so that people who have these experiences much like yourself, don't feel alone and know you can get help. You can overcome every struggle you've been through. You can get to the point where, like you said, you can have the hope that things can get better and it's not an overnight thing. It does take time. It's a journey. For anyone listening, just listen to what Sue's saying. It's like, there's this ups and downs and ebbs and flows. If somebody did hurt you, then you do need somebodies to help you get through it too. You cannot do this on your own. This is a path, but takes some help from other people. [SUE] I tried for years to do it on my own. That's why I got as bad off as I did. I talked about being a superwoman because I didn't know how to reach out for help because I was ashamed to reach out for help thinking I had to have it all together. Because again, it all, as I think about it and the more I talk about it, I realize that all of those were part of the protective barrier to protect me from hurt because I've been hurt and burned so many people so many times, I didn't believe in myself. I want as much as I wanted to say, I need somebody to believe in me. I only need to get that through performance. So that's where the activities, I mean one year I had three major campus events, my senior year of high of college. I was homecoming chair. I did the winter form, and I did an 18 hour danceathon. I led them all while taking overloaded classes, working 20 hours a week. But that's where I was with, this is where I get my support. This is where I get my importance, my value. I've learned how shallow all that is that it really only makes things worse. That until I can get to the point where, and when somebody say this to me, I'm not ready to say, well, somebody used to say this to me. I was like, that's a bunch of Larky, good luck. When I finally got to the point saying, I like who I am. That's a turning point, because then there's this whole piece that floods you, because you don't strive for affection. You don't strive for acceptance. You don't strive for having a purpose. Instead, you're just like this is me. Take me or leave me. I'm fine with me. I'm sorry if you're not. Then you learn where you can go as you find those people now. Again, if you had told me that in the middle of everything, I would've just written you off, said, no, you don't understand you. No, no, no, it doesn't work that way for me. Because again, I was the holy exception. Nothing else. I was the one that didn't square pay, going to rabbit hole that you weren't going to choose all of it in. So it is, taking that first step is the hard part. When I speak, I share a story about being in Colorado. Christmas and New Year's 1990/1991, my parents were divorcing. My dad was an alcoholic. He is now 31 years sober, which is fantastic. All the relationships are restored and even better than they ever were, which is just absolutely fantastic. Our whole family's just done the whole 180. We had done that intervention on that, and that kicked me into my eating disorder again. It kicked me into the depression and kicked me into being suicidal again. Because I was imploding. I didn't know how to deal with things. The only way I knew was to be very unhealthy towards myself. Again, it comes back to, because, to this point, again, my family didn't know anything, so I couldn't let onto them Sue was having issues. So I'm on this ski trip in Colorado at a camp. I worked out in summer and a gentleman named Billy Sprague was there. Billy was a friend of mine. He was a Christian musician. We had lost contact for a few years. His fiancé had been killed in a car wreck on the way to surprise him at a concert. He found about that wreck before he went on stage and he went head over heels on the grief, fully to be expected. Billy was suicidal at one point. We reconnected on this ski trip and I told him, "I need to learn from something you've gone through." So we talked last day, said, "I need to learn something you've gone through." He said, "How do you go on when all you want to do is die." He looked at me and said, "What's going on?" We talked about an hour and a half. And one of the things that Billy shared with me, his last words before we went for the slopes was that's all I know know to tell you Sue, step by step. He shared a story about how when he was in the airport and he throws of his depression. His friend told him to watch his steps and he tells himself, a step closer, I'm one step closer. I can do this. I have one more step on me. He continued to tell himself that. He had me do that on the way down the slopes. My first thought, I've told him this was, it was a long journey. I'm not going to make it. That was 1991. We're 2020. I'm still here. It goes step by step. So I share that story to talk about the importance of taking that first step and reaching out because yes, when you're in the throws of it, you can't go through it alone. But no one knows that you are having challenges and want some support until you take that first step. There are a lot of people out there, I'm speaking to your listeners, there are a lot of people out there, folks that want to help you. Some are especially trained to be able to help you. Others are just like me, who have been through the journey and want to help you. Encourage them, maybe some resources, but until you take that first courageous step, we don't know you need help. We're not mind readers, and we're not superman and superwoman where we have extra vision. We need you to take that first step. We are happy and thrilled and privileged to walk that path with you once we know there's a road to walk. But you have to take that first step. That's one thing that I've walked away with from my conversation with Billy, the importance of taking that first step. Then after that, it becomes one step at a time, one step at a time, one step at a time. [CRISTINA] This one step at a time it's something associated with you. Actually I was going to ask you that. So now I know why. So if people do want to find you where can they find you? [SUE] What CRISTINA is referring to is, my company name is called My Step Ahead. It's rooted in this conversation. It also has the roots in the teaching for my church. The pastor was talking about growth and talked about what it takes to help somebody else. You only have to be a step ahead. So the whole motto, the slogan, the tagline is you only to be a step ahead to help the person behind you. What that means is that, well, I can reach out for help that I still need. With whatever I've gone through, I can reach out behind me to help the person who's just starting the journey or be a step or two behind me. Then together we form a human chain support. So there's a couple, my business name is My Step Ahead. The website is mystepahead.com. I'm also on Facebook and Instagram and Twitter under My Step Ahead. Then I'm also coach. So there's also coaching on Facebook and then website is suebowles.com. [CRISTINA] You have written a book? [SUE] Yes. [CRISTINA] Yes. Would you mind talking a little bit about that as well, in case people want to also find that? [SUE] I would love to talk about it. I'll share a thumbnail sketch of my story. As I was healing I got this urge to start writing it. It started, it was supposed to be a different. It started out the intention of being a different format, kind of life lessons. The chapter was this much I know.dot, dot, dot and whatever the lesson was. As I healed the book became part of my healing as well, getting it out and didn't realize what it was going to take to get it out and how long it would take to get out. But it finally came out, which is really cool. It actually won second place, nonfiction at a book competition in 2018. No it's 2020, 2019. They're all running together right now. So that was very encouraging for my first book. Self-Published and I got an award. That told me I'm on the right track. The book is called This Much I Know...The Space Between, and the concept is this much I know is my story. All of us have a story. Like it or no we all have a story. This much, I know. No one can take our stories from us. It's the one thing we know. The Space Between talks about the healing journey between the wounds becoming scars. I used to hate the word process. If you said process to me, I would turn you off in a flash. But healing is a process. When you break your arm, they put you in a cast because they need to immobilize things and let it heal. It's a process. It's not just touch it in your heel. Same thing with our emotional scars and our emotional wounds. When a wound is still bleeding, it's subject to infection, but as it heals, as you pay attention to it, as you give it what it needs to heal, as that wound heals, it becomes a scar. That scar has a story to it. So the same thing with our lives is we have wounds and depending on where we are in our healing journey, hopefully those wounds are not bleeding anymore. Hopefully they have gone to the point where they're a scar and they can be a story of hope for somebody else. So the second half of the book, The Space Between talks about the healing journey I went on. To share an example, at the end of the chapter where I talk about Bobby, the takeaway is this, this much I know, no matter what happens, God sees, God knows, and God is at work to make good come out of even unspeakable horrors. I never dreamed that I would have the opportunity and the privilege to do what I do because to me, it was always just out of reach and good enough for everybody else, but me. And until I, my challenge, people when I speak, when I meet, wherever I am is to dare to believe that you matter, I dare you to believe it because when you start to really believe that in your core, that becomes the emphasis. That becomes the motivation. That becomes the energy and the impetus behind being able to propel you to take that first step, that next step of reaching out. And it might just be a flicker of hope shadowing a whole lot of doubt, but that flicker of hope is all you need need, because that is what drives you to be able to pick up phone, send a text, send an email, fill on a form on a website, whatever you need to do to reach out for help, because once you do that, there's going to be a lot of people that come running to help you. But again, when you are there to believe that you matter, it makes that first step a lot easier. [CRISTINA] What a great place to end. That's such a positive message. Thank you for sharing how people can find you and more about your book. I'm sure people are going to be searching for you and reading your book and congratulations on winning the award on your first book out. That's fantastic. [SUE] Thank you. It's fun. The book is on Amazon and Kindle. There's also links to it on the website mystepahead.com and suebowles.com. [CRISTINA] Thank you so much. You've been such an inspiration and I'm sure lots of people out here listening can relate. Like I said, please go to the show notes after the podcast. I'm going to have all of the information on Sue right there. So in case you didn't get any of that down, it's all going to be there. Sue, thank you again so much. [SUE] Thank you, CRISTINA. Thank you so much. [CRISTINA] This podcast is designed to provide accurate and authoritative information in regards to the subject matter covered. It is given with the understanding that neither the host, the publisher or the guests are rendering legal, accounting, clinical, or any other professional information. If you want a professional, you should find one.