Hello and welcome to this week’s edition of Free Your Mind. Let’s talk about it with LKJ at www.womensradiostation.com. The radio station supporting women’s mental health. Today we are going to talk with a wonderful lady that I met at WOHA which stands for the empowering speech for that room when she received her award.

Stopped me in my tracks with her voice. Her voice is for the voices and her work is outstanding. Annette Greenwood is a Golden Door Ambassador.

She’s an award-winning author and recently received a Doctorate in Humanitarian Services, formerly known as Straight Talk in Yorkshire Women with a Warm Heart. Annette works globally empowering women, helping them find purpose, passion and lasting fulfillment. Annette is hugely passionate about triumph over adversity and self-belief.

Her own journey of severe depression and anxiety led to a practice derived from Far Eastern psychology and philosophically, especially in traditional Japanese Zen Buddhist practice, which transformed her life. Annette has helped a wide range of women at all stages of life, whatever their backgrounds and specialised in coaching in a women’s prison. A regular guest on podcasts interviews giving tips and advice, including Expert TV, the Expert Channel TV, my apologies, Hollywood Digest, Brilliant Business TV show, Hit Talks.

Annette has featured in magazines and newspapers, The Telegraph, Woman’s Own, Northern Echo Women, Kindred Spirit and More to Life. So as we all see, a very, very impressive bio there. So we’re holding no haste in bringing her in today.

Hi Annette, how are you? Hi, I’m very well and thank you for that lovely warm welcome. It makes me sound like I’ve done so many things in such a short space of time. Well, it’s very empowering what you’ve done, you know, and receiving a doctorate in humanitarian service is wonderful.

I tell people don’t understand that. It’s one of the highest accolades that can be given to myself, being awarded one in the USA for the Business School of Entrepreneurship for Mental Health and Humanitarian Services myself. And it’s such a wonderful recognition.

Again, with any award that’s given, it’s not the title of the crown that we wear. It’s recognition of our work that when you’re humble but alert, that you actually are recognised for doing something you’re passionate about. You, like myself, we’ve walked in adversity with mental health and I am a great believer that when you truly walk in it, you truly understand the experience, not putting aside any doctors or any mental health experts out there.

But it’s for me, having walked it, I feel it, I sense it and I know the actual reason and what happens to our brain and in my own studying and trying to find out why I suffered because I wanted answers like yourself, you know, and then once you’ve walked that path, you know, when you see people hurting from this pain, you want to help. So my first question is, I always like my audience gets to know the guests, where they’re from, background, etc. So can we just start, I need to take you back to your childhood so that the listener can understand where you grew up, how many, did you have any brothers or sisters, school life, how was home life, up until the age of 16.

So I’d like you to cover all that if you may, to interact with our listeners to say, where did this empowerment come from? Where did you, where was you born, you know, where did you come from? Okay, I was born in the city of York with my parents who were working class. My dad was a milkman and a window cleaner. My mum was a, you know, the background because they didn’t have the money to, for me to pursue my dreams of I wanted to be an actress, I wanted to be a model and all those things that you want to do as a child and I would sit outside and I would fantasize about being a writer and an actor because that was my dream and I’d sit outside in the middle of winter imagining I was this person on the TV and all those kind of things and that’s kind of probably what got me through my childhood and we moved about quite a lot to be honest, my mum was a bit of a flitter and we moved from different houses and different locations, I went to different schools and I just got settled in one, then we’d move again, we moved to the Midlands to where my father was from, then we moved back to Yorkshire again and I picked up my old school friends but by this time I probably slipped behind, you know, in my education from being moved around so much.

I’m not saying that was a bad thing, that my parents did what they thought was right, to be honest, LKJ, but we got moved around and I slipped behind and then I became where I just hated school. I don’t want people to think that school’s a bad thing because it’s not but I hated it with a passion because I just didn’t understand. Maths wasn’t my strong point, I was more interested in drama classes and games and being outside in nature and it just kind of went from there.

When we got into our secondary years I was doing my exams and again my dreams came back about being an actress or going to university to do something amazing and my parents just didn’t have the money. It was, you know, this is the path, you’re going to have to get a job. So I got a job working for the local Yorkshire Evening Press as a book binder at 15, I left school, which was quite a young age now actually when you think about it, isn’t it? You’re not grown up properly, you don’t know what you want to do.

So off I went to this job and everything and I foolishly met and married very young, probably just because I wanted to leave home because I thought, you know, I’m being controlled, I can’t do what I want. Most things that most young girls or young guys want to do these days, you know, they want to be out and do their own things. So unfortunately I got in with the wrong crowd and I met and married this guy and it turned out to be a domestic violent relationship and I didn’t know it at the time but that would be the thing that formed my passion for working with women in my older years.

I didn’t know it at the time. All I could see was I was in a situation a bit like in the film educating Rita, she was striving to do better in her life and getting nowhere because he wanted her to have children and she was hiding her pills under the carpet or under the floorboards and I was doing a similar thing. I was hiding my birth control pills because I didn’t want to become pregnant at 17 years old, just kind of 10 days before my 18th birthday.

That just wasn’t on my horizon. We were completely a complete mismatch really when I look back at it but sadly the relationship turned violent very quickly and I had not experienced anything like this at all and I couldn’t understand how I’d got myself into that kind of a situation. His family had said to him, you know, you’ve made your bed and have your lie on it.

My mother and father, you know, even though they had challenges and difficulties as parents, there was never any kind of violence and I just wasn’t used to it and with bruising I would go to see my GP with bruising who asked me how I’d done it and I made all the excuses that most women make. I’ve fallen off a ladder, I’ve bumped my head, all those kind of things. I would leave him then I’d go back.

I’d leave him then I’d go back and I guess at that point my mental health can’t have been very good. I’m, you know, I’m 16, 17 years old here, you know, getting on for 18. I’m in a relationship that is destructive by every stretch of the imagination and I’m not sure which way to turn with this and then one particular day after a real bad bout of it, he’d come home from a nightclub and he’d been drinking and he tried to make me jealous by saying about all these women and things that he’d been dancing with and it ended up where he sat on me and he started to punch me.

He was punching me in the face so I grabbed the only thing I could find which I’m not proud of which was the alarm clock with bells on it and I whacked him over the head with it to get him off and then I ran, I ran in my nightie through the streets to where my parents lived around the corner and they took me off to the hospital because I was in shock and my mum was worried sick, my dad was worried sick and they took me to the hospital and I was laid on the stretcher waiting to see the doctor and this male nurse, he was probably a gift from heaven, you know, now when I think about it, he leant into my ear and he knew, he knew that I’d been hit by my partner or my husband. He knew that I hadn’t just fallen and he just leant into my ear and said, leave him, you’re worth better, he’s not worth it and something must have really resonated with me because after I’d been patched up the following day, I went home and I just sort of sat and something, something inside me, there was a fire in my belly and I thought, do you know what, I’m getting out of this, I deserve better and this was only when I was about, I was about 19 at this point, something like that, 19 or 20 even, so up I got my bags and I left, I left him and I never went back and I filed for divorce and we went through the divorce and all the rest of it and it took me some while to be able to forgive for what he’d done and for what I’d put myself through and forgive myself for actually allowing that situation to continue but when you’re in it, you can’t see your way out. There was nothing like domestic violent charities supporting women then, I think there was one and that was about it and it was shameful to be in a relationship where you’d be knocked about, it just wasn’t talked about the way it is now so as I say, I didn’t know at the time that this was going to change my life and form the work that I do now and at this point, I’m 20, 21 years old and all I want to do is to get the hell out now and have a bit of fun which is what I did for a few years, I just went out with my girlfriends, I went on holiday to Spain, I didn’t have any heavy relationships but the scars, the scars still remained for some considerable time for many years in fact and I was very cautious and not trusting of men at all because I just didn’t want to put in that position again so I just didn’t allow my heart to love anybody in the same way I’d done then even though it really wasn’t real love at that age, I know it wasn’t now it wasn’t a real sincere deep love, it was just kind of, this is a way out and a way out that I took that probably in hindsight wasn’t the best thing but you know what, if that hadn’t have happened, I won’t be sat here talking to you now so how can I hold my past to ransom for something that’s led me into such a beautiful place now? Absolutely, you know when I was sitting there taking all that in from the young age from school, you said Yorkshire, your dad, your mum cleaning etc so a very northern life because the difference between north and south, there is a divide and we know that, how the divide is in cost of living, work weight and how people find in their social times to do it I mean my brother lives up the north and when I visit up there you go around to the pubs, they’re massive pubs but it is amazing offers for dinner two can eat for under ten bangs and everything there’s the sociable side where it was a lot of clubs, bingo, people do a lot of that where down the south it’s very very different and I will be humbly corrected and apologize if anyone wants to come and say no but it is different, it’s very different up the north as I call it and I do believe as well with that in the northern sector like you’re saying, people tend to settle down quicker up north than south generally because of the way the smaller villages where you come from what it’s like, you generally tend to be somebody you know in your town and I believe in a lot of people that I know from that and who I’ve interviewed will show that side they get married very early in that the mother knows the grandmother or somebody who knows that family and going in and like you were saying, the expression you use you’ve made your bed, now lie in it that’s when you go forward excuse me, I’ve tried putting all the naps in here but you know my girl, you’ve done this now, you’ve gone off you’re a married woman now, you’re no longer single you’ve done this, off you go, you’re a wife and a mother now you need to go in, in that expression but it wasn’t so easy and you do feel and I think a lot of us even myself when I was 16 felt older in my mind than what actually I’m thinking yes I could cook, yes I could be a homekeeper but actually at your age to become a wife and run in this home doing the challenges that come in there and you do believe you are in love you get the love and the first love sweet 16 going into 17 thinking we can do that, I’m grown up because it’s an awful age actually where it should be a beautiful age because at that age it’s all because you’re too young to go into a public house have a drink wasn’t you but you was classed as an adult if you wanted to buy your bus ticket or you wanted to entry in somewhere, you were an adult but a lot of places you wasn’t seen as one you could get married at the age of 16 to get married at the age of 16 with your parents consent because you couldn’t do it unless you’re 18 yourself and obviously you had those challenges going in but then reality hits as you’re growing up and we do see a lot of people now as they get on in their second trimester of their life is that when you’re looking and thinking that’s when they get bored and I haven’t done that or some people are going out living outside haven’t done that because we felt we were old enough at 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21 that whole adolescent age we think we’re growing up but we’re still dealing with adolescents but you had to deal with domestic violence at the same time and I said how can you not hold that trimester because you would be speaking to myself had those experiences like that life is a lesson and a journey and we don’t want to be hit we don’t want to have this pain or for our child to have gone we want to live a life that’s peaceful, kind in which we find as we get older we look more for that than the holidays the glamour, the glitz to have happiness, to have peace and live a simple life it’s more rewarding than to have materialistic things you know, this whole power somebody can have hold of you it’s just, you know, peace in your mindset and to yourself that’s why when I saw in that room in your speech how you go on and you empower people with this and your recognition from as the listener will hear in what you have done and then you went to yourself having walked in the adversity that is coming forward to then you took it to your father you started helping women in prisons didn’t you because like myself you believe in rehabilitation I do and that in itself that whole journey came about as a result of us moving over here to where we live now in the Yorkshire Dales and my really sliding down a really bad hill I don’t know the right way to describe it I slid down really badly into depression and anxiety and I didn’t know what it was at the time I actually had a nervous breakdown but I didn’t know that’s what was happening I just knew I was very scared I was going into the menopause at the same time I just moved out of York and left my family everything happened together and I just couldn’t deal with it all at once and I’d been to see a psychotherapist I’d tried counselling and none of it worked it was a very short term thing for me and I had a desire to work with people I’d always wanted to work with people but I just wasn’t in the right place I really wasn’t my mental health was really bad and I’d gone to a really dark place and I felt suicidal at one point I was driving down the road and I nearly drove myself off off the side of the road but there was a game there was that something in me that fire in my belly that said no don’t you dare do this don’t you do this and I pulled the car off the road sort of swerved it off and pulled it to a standstill and I thought no I’m going to get help I’ve got to get the right help but it was the help that I needed but it had to be the right thing for me everybody’s got their own path and this help came in the form of the Zen Buddhism that you were talking about earlier it really transformed my life and as part of that transformation I began doing training and coaching and wanting to work with women and I set a project up for a charity a local charity over here and people heard about my work and rang me and said would I be interested in working in a prison as a coach coaching women and I thought about it for about 5 seconds and I was over there like a shot because I just knew again it was that wasn’t a thought process that was starting to come from my heart I was making that journey at that point which I’d been talking about at the Wuhau rewards and that journey was taking me into my heart and I went and I coached in this prison for over 2 years and I worked with women who’d been street walkers, you know drug pushers that committed murder all sorts of crimes but the one thing that they all had in common this is what I found is that they had no self belief and their confidence was low they’d been in domestic violent relationships and all the things that I could resonate with from my own life and I was fascinated by by their stories and how what I could do to help them turn their life round maybe not in prison but outside so if I could coach them mentally from where they are at that point to where they wanted to be surely that was a way forward in a better way than actually going out of prison and then coming back in again if that makes sense yes because what happens is they become institutionalised by instalments if you do not rehabilitate then the pattern will repeat itself and will repeat itself again they will come out with some of the working with personal officers coming out from there free on the street said no get on with this take what you’ve done and within 6 weeks and actually the prison officers and the water know who will be back because they don’t know how to cope aside when they are in prison there is no mask you know who exactly everybody is who you are sleeping with in your dorms wherever you are when you eat whatever in that you know exactly who you are well on the street we all wear masks so many people wear masks to disguise what’s going on people like myself as you know I have hidden disabilities and one of my radio shows that I’ve done that hasn’t aired yet I could have rerun and re-recorded it but I chose to play it because I suffered narcolepsy one of my hidden disabilities I’m interviewing and I fell asleep but it was a trigger that sent me to sleep when I replayed it looking at it because the lady she would strip off and run through the streets it was something she did she just didn’t want clothes on her she got dirty mentally unclean going through that so she spoke most of her years on a psychiatric ward coming out but she’d lost her daughter but I’d lost my brother and she was talking about brother and the car accident the whole thing in something triggered in my mind because when we replayed it I just went straight out and I came back so it was about 6-7 minutes missing of the episode just playing as we’re recording going out with the viewers and I think what went on there so my decision was and she was like hello and she said you didn’t hear about hello so you made a cup of tea she sat herself there and was like well okay and she was going hello or you go in the end because you don’t hear anything you just completely go I was like oh my god you know and I was like oh straight on the live thing you wasn’t born on that because I was right in the middle of conversation where just my brain shut straight down like yourself when you’ve had a mental health breakdown certain triggers or stuff even when we are interviewing and we are talking amongst you know each other and our listeners always believe that the listeners are all in the same room as us and they’re just invisible but I know behind it they’re there because they’re engaged in a listener and the listener is very important to our voice because we are the voice to help that we are hearing what they’re going through we’re hearing you know it goes through the same with these ladies that need to get a change need to change and break the pattern break the mould because this institutional repeat repeat because they don’t know it’s okay to walk the other side of the road because it feels unsafe to them and unnatural like the people in domestic violence like you made excuses to that doctor when you sat with the doctor oh this is how I did it like this this lady another lady I spoke this lady I spoke to the doctor thought she had leukemia because she had that many bruises on her in the end it was domestic violence beat her until eventually he tied her to the chair and beat her with a broom but she chose to be with that violent partner because she wanted to inflict pain on herself she had to cut herself to because the pain was so bad it was releasing so as she cut, did it release or she ran next to her there it was a trauma and you know and losing her child but she was suffering with mental health issues before but that’s why I was asked like yourself and the listeners that I there is no shame in saying I suffered with mental it was very taboo to speak about it if somebody said oh you know she’s got mental health issues and they would joke it was bullying they caused an inflicted more mental health pressure on you when you had your breakdown and was like you just can’t cope depression you’re not understanding scared to speak out and with mental health people have been scared and I still believe to this day as much as we talk freely there is still a stigma and we must remove the label because when actually you sit and we sit together even through these airwaves is that we have to stand we have to look at our reflection and say I’m enough I am enough I’m not worthless as much as your mindset and those dark demons are saying to it you have to stand up and if you stand you think oh it’s like jump and jump and jump again because then you have to get your balance to balance the line of your body to come on like you when you took that steering well from the side of the road and no no because you was enough you could turn this around and by God have you turned it around in what you’ve done and like with all your voice because you went into that prison yes you knew who they were you knew their crimes but your job was to explain no matter what there has been some reason why you did this of course but there are other reasons why you took that act like when you took the clock and smacked on the head to free yourself to run in your 90’s to your parents self defence some people in violence and you know themselves when they’re doing that we’ve had it recently it was last year where she called the police and said I’ve killed my husband I hope he’s dead and they come and said I hope he’s not very and they all looked at her and said have you gone mad? No she hasn’t gone mad she’s suffered years and years and years and years of abuse and push to in the end she done it and said yes the judge gave her a two year order no life for life doesn’t but sometimes you’re pushed and pushed and pushed and you have to say no and people have to understand Dr Rhonda Wood a great friend of mine always says your no has to have value and your yes has to have reason so in your work you met Dr Rhonda Wood and Dr Tarita Women of the Hearts Awards Dr Shinsimosa got the Peace Award they were with Americans Camilla so to your work that you’re doing was like you stood up and went no and you would understand when I say no it has value so then your yes has reason so your life became your reason your reason now is the empowerment that you bring to the table because you own the table the table is yours and you can sit on that table and you can enjoy who you place around that table because the table is yours and that table knows that you’re enough and it will carry you carry your weight carry whatever you want to do you want to dance with it, it will know you because you know each other in that alignment because what’s going on with the philosophical words here and around that table where you place people when I looked at your bio and how what you’ve done and around that table you in the middle, as a centrepiece on there like your trophy in the centre of that table looking at your bio and you put in the chair each of what you’ve done and coming around what a fabulous table what a fabulous dinner party with the people that you’ve helped bring in each person in what you’ve helped and what you’ve done in the empowerment when you say about Buddhism that it took you through your depression and then to help you to be able to coach other women just for the listeners Zen aims at the perfection of personhood you sit in meditation called a zae-zae which is employed as a foundational method of practice across different schools of this Buddha way, which is not ideologically but by a way of living this is the most distinguished feature of the school of the Buddha way when it’s a contention is wisdom accompanied by compassion is expressed in the everyday life world when asserting with one’s self, other feature and nature.

The everyday life world for most people is in an unscented, transforming stage in which life is consumed philosophically speaking by either or egological, dualistic paragon of thinking in this attendant psychological state such as stress and anxiety so you know that’s just something I read out on the internet where people do what in your word rather than a computer word well for me when I went to see my teacher so he’s a British doctor he’s not practicing as a doctor now but he he worked in hospitals in London and he was a psychiatrist and he’d done all the the normal kind of trainings that you do but he also had studied in Zen Buddhism and philosophy and all that kind of thing and when I saw the information about him in I think it was the times I saw it in back then back in the day I thought this is it this is what I’m searching for and I rang him and he asked me to go and see him. He was in Cambridge, it was either Cambridge or Oxford at the time and I got the train through to see him and I thought he’d be doing similarly to what counsellors and other things that people have done and they’d be asking me about everything about my past and I’d be crying again all over this stuff again this old story that I was having to go through and he didn’t he did not do any of that and when I started to cry he gave me a tissue but he was very matter of fact but empathetic and asked me to write out a timetable for getting up and going to bed. I thought what’s this what is this? and he said well just do it until you just do it you’ll never find out it’s not for me to tell you you have to learn I thought is this serious? So I went home and I I did what he said and I did it he said do this wholeheartedly and your life will change so I threw myself into it and about a month into doing this I started to see colours again I started to see light my mood lifted I felt lighter I felt happier and this was just because I was working to this routine where I was going to bed getting up and it sounds quite indoctrinated to people but it’s not it’s about disciplining the body and disciplining over the emotions that had been controlling me for so long I was now able to continue with my life without being controlled by how I felt so if I felt depressed or stressed or anxious it wouldn’t stop me getting on with my life which is what it had been doing all those years and once I’d seen the way within that month I knew this was the path that I was going to go down now I’m not saying it was easy and that there are times where it’s been so challenging but I’ve never given up because it transformed how I felt, how I lived how I deal with things how I live my relationships that journey with the coaching training I’ve done as well from the head to the heart became much more much more understanding and why I was doing it and in fact I spoke to him today I’ve been working with him over 20 years now so he’s still my teacher in that sense and I still work and he still gives me things to do so it’s a continuous journey and I never despite all the other trainings that I do I never ever give up on this because I know it is the way for me so the daily meditation, the living in the moment, the acceptance of the now, the acceptance of my emotions, the acceptance of how life is, it doesn’t mean I’m a doormat or you become a doormat which is one of the fears when I first began it’s more about I can accept things as they are and I can make changes but I can do them in a much more structured and focused way rather than reacting to the emotions that have been controlling me for so long it was like the wild horse was now starting to be tamed and rather than me screaming and shouting in anger I could do it from a place of perspective and calm and much more rational way of dealing with things I would not not have this in my life this will be how I live until the day I die which sounds really maybe harsh to people but it’s not because your life just changes as a result of that.

Having had things like beta blockers and antidepressants and all that kind of stuff that I had back then I just didn’t want to go down that road and so this was another option, this was a choice that I made, not for everybody I totally get that but I’ve been able to incorporate my buddy’s teachings that are 21st century, I’m not walking around in a red robe or anything with the coaching techniques and work with these people and the women in prison the project I set up as an afterwards because I knew when they came out of prison they would be struggling so I set a project up that is still successfully running and it’s run by volunteers and I worked in a man’s prison as well, I worked in probation services so I took what I’d learned and adapted it for people who were really at the hard end of society and if I may, if it’s alright to do so, can I share something with you that one of the people I worked with sent me just recently? Yes, of course. Right, so she says to me you know I love you, you made such a difference to my life you helped me when I was incapable of helping myself I can only thank you because you led me and taught me to be a better person and now I can help others and if I don’t know how to do it I can find someone else who will, I’ve learnt to ask for help I haven’t been arrested in years, so completely different from 156 arrests in a year I’m off 36 meds a day, thanks to your help I’ve lost huge amounts of weight and I’m never going back you deserve every recognition you get in it, you totally deserve it you’ve saved my life and I cannot thank you enough that still fills me, that still makes me tearful, even now just to read that, and this was only a few weeks ago, and she went on to say, I found my voice and strength in you, so for me you are the most powerful inspirational person, a British Mayor Angela, now I’d never heard of, I don’t even have pronounced that right Angela, and I had to google it, and she was a civil rights activist now for her, this woman is in the absolute pits and depths in her life, and she’s been arrested so many times but the influence and the impact that my work has had on her, has made such a change, you can’t buy that you couldn’t pay me a million pounds and it have the same impact and I know that by doing what I’ve done, if this works for her, it can work for anybody absolutely, I mean and it is the empowering recognition as I was speaking to you about oh, you know when you’re in the room, when you come up, and the humbleness you are alert always got to be alert around you but always stay humble but in your passion you’re a natural leader of the voice because your inner self your persona and what you expel out to others fills that room for myself, you know when I come up please may I sit next to you I was like wow, I need to find out more I think for the listeners we need you to find out and show from that award from the Women of the Hearts Awards that those awards are given out for a reason and to have people like yourself join us on the show for mental health and what you’ve been through is a testament for the show, for the people at home when you tune in to Women’s Radio Station and on my show Free Your Mind, we do free that mind, we’re very open like yourself, I see Dr Annette Greenwood you’re like ooh, ooh, ooh but hearing your voice knowing what you are and as you say it’s wonderful to receive the award in recognition for what you do, like that letter you receive, it’s great to have that but even without the award you would do that and would challenge yourself to continue to help another person because not myself, you are humanitarian where you do believe the welfare in wellbeing of another person and you believe the same reputation, you believe in helping these people achieve their goal and understand they’re enough like yourself when it’s that you’re enough. When I come home and I go into my hair, rushing through, doing shopping doing everything, trying to get to do this interview that we had with the different things to come in to do it but we finally got there to do it which I would say chuffed to bring that and there’d be one of many input and it comes out for Christmas and touching on the work that you do and empowering people can I ask because obviously this interview will be aired on the 12th of December for a whole week so the listeners can tune in Monday through to Sunday at www.womensradiostation.com at 8am and 8pm twice a day for a whole hour so even if you’re busy you’ve got a show at the door tune back in and hear but I’m going to ask you know, through your own personal life and challenges and stuff we have Christmas approaching how do you see Christmas and the effects on mental health? It can be a time of great joy for some people and it can be a great time of stress for others so I firmly believe in the most simple approach to it that we can have because especially this year with the cost of living people, parents in particular feel pressured to buy things for the children, they don’t want the children to go without, there’s some people who won’t be able to buy things for the children so my approach is very simple, is to keep it as simple as possible now that might sound very esoteric because I’m sat here saying this to you but I know through personal experience that when we lost everything, and I mean everything, we’d had no money and we had about £20 for Christmas so we split this £10 between the pair of us and the challenge was to go and buy things from charity shops or markets and feed ourselves and buy some gifts on this amount of money and we did it, we did it now I’m not saying we ate fantastically well, we didn’t have any champagne or anything like that, but we ate I kept it as simple as I could and I actually was transparent with my friends and family and said look, this year we can’t do it I might make things, I might even just write a card on a bit of paper but that will be what we have to do and rather than feel the pressure from other people I stood up and was honest about it and for anybody who turns around and says oh well if you’re not going to buy me anything, well then I’m not your friend do you really need a friend like that? It’s all about isn’t it, togetherness and whether you’ve got £5 to scratch your backside on or a penny if you’ve got a friend or a family member or somebody that you can share it with and you can make it special, do that it doesn’t have to be about as much as you can spend not in my world anyway, I don’t know about you Now I’m very much saying that I feel like I’m in this materialistic world in decorating because that’s the thing that gets me is the goddamn decorations they put in I don’t care about the presents, the decorations I look at the ornaments the little things and I’m obsessed with them, decorations I saw these little round ones that go they look lovely on the tree the drums and the other, mine is a little drummer boy, or the berries or the oranges and the apples creating the tree, how it represents and I always find by doing the decorates on comes the music and I like old-fashioned music the old-fashioned tunes Dean Martin at Christmas that was music I’m not saying you’re not disrespect to people doing great in the music but for me being Crosby White Christmas when I’m out there and decorating like when I’m decorated the outside I had help for people to walk by, to uplift them you know the twinkles, the lights feel good even if for a couple of seconds it’s made them feel good, that’s what I believe in again I just want these two massive ranges to come in to go outside on it lots of people have but once you’ve got your stock you’ve got your stock, that’s it, it’s going out years after and it’s the first time this year because I gave all my decorations away when I lost my mum and she died on the 15th of January she was diagnosed with bowel cancer on the 19th of December so all through Christmas, New Year she died and she eventually died in my arms on the 15th of January so when I always had a passion for Christmas I hated it it was the worst time of the year, my mental health was heightened my daughter died on the 17th of October, I usually hate these months 17th of October my daughter died a varieta on the 20th of November my brother then leaving after the varieta was killed by a drink driver and then my grandmother died on Christmas day and then my mum died so you know I wanted and I always had the victory always enjoyed that because Christmas was very special my grandparents were half were Welsh my father’s side and the other side were from up north so that’s how I know as well, very different mill workers you know, like that to my father’s side being a different type of community as I would say a very different to the northern life in that for mum and so yeah, I didn’t want it mentally these cause me more triggers every month my mental health, I have to watch it more carefully I’m more reactive as a human reacting to that and when mum went I couldn’t bear it, I could not bear you know, when everyone was going Happy New Year what’s going to be happy about it you know, the anger, the rage as I laid with my mum holding her hand and past and the tears, thinking I’m not going to get through this with the challenges you never forget that but I’ve learnt a bit so I’ve demolished Christmas you know, that bridge of Christmas was gone so I’ve got rid of it it all went to charity to help people to have stuff there but this year I cannot in my own voice and being the voice for Florence is to say you have to overcome this so I’ve been shopping, oh my goodness, the prices of it have all gone out, everything but I’ve become fascinated by all the stuff and the means there’s angel wings and so much other, I’ve had myself for 23 years so to go out but I still kept it very traditional and I wrote based on about the boat and everything has had meaning so I took the challenge and with the mental health to go through what I was placing up what did it mean so it wasn’t a trigger and that’s what we have to watch out, is the trigger isn’t it I mean your help, you know, I’ve had everything, from almost being attacked by the hammer, everything it’s been a rollercoaster through it so staying in and just doing decorations, you know the good old Amazon man as well comes along, I’ve got a good shout out to Amazon he’s told me it but like yourself we are having a I’m going to be doing an event in January where I’m going to bring people like yourself together to sit around a table to see what we can do to help people through those January, February and March months it’ll be tough months and as with Dr Rhonda, myself there’s Dr Jerry and stuff out there other people just to come down, you know where we will hash out some ideas and putting a help line out to reach out to people to do it’s something I want to do like you, when you go out the passion is to say what can we do in our postings, what we do we can have our board meeting virtually or we can have a day together over coffee and cake coffee and walnut please or Victoria’s Buns you know, they’re my two favourite coffee and walnut or Victoria’s Buns but to help and that’s what you want to do and you’re speeching when you’ve got the Women of the Hearts Award but other than that, what is your next vision? So my next vision is I would like to launch a podcast or a radio show where I am sharing tips and I’m giving insights and maybe having a little bit of fun as well with it and perhaps interviewing some people that I’ve worked with whose lives have changed doing that from a place of insight rather than a place of I’m trying to sell something it’s not about that, it’s how people’s lives have changed I’ve met them and seen them I feel it’s a bit like Grand Designs five years later where they were putting down the foundations and then you’ve seen the roof go on five years later and wow, look at that house and I can stand back and that message from that lady was one of those things where I stood back and go wow why, you know, also I’ve just finished some more qualifications in something called life force coaching and that is very much about helping people with their energy levels so there’s techniques and processes that I’ve got that I can help people with whether you are a high level in your business or you’re somebody who sweeps streets for a living it doesn’t really matter, it’s about the quality of life that you live so I’m going to be focusing on that.

I also have a very strong spiritual side as well so I love to connect in with that side and talk about things from a spiritual perspective as well so all that I think coming together, meeting you has been an absolute godsend I do believe that I just feel we’ll be doing more together, I just feel that in my gut I can just tell that and giving my voice to the unspoken still as well as following my own path. That’s probably a big answer for a quick question I’m sorry, I rattled on a bit there No, no, no, that’s true because you’ve become the angels of the voice our voice is impactful and how we deal and how we unite you are connected, you meet people for a reason I believe in a constant uplift of our mindset and also I do believe in all religions and that we’re equal under one rainbow everybody knows that about myself however, I am fascinated by the spiritual world because like you, our minds are always studying like you said you’ve just got another award, always looking to feed my brain where are they? They’re watching when you get on an airplane I look at them clouds and think they sit on them clouds you know when you’re down here and you look up and you think wow, they’re watching the sky when you’re in the sky you think where are you? where are you? I can’t see you you know and different feelings and different things I’ve had happen when I wrote the boat from The Girl in the Red Shoes the house was haunted and I don’t know I wanted that con room stuff that went on and sometimes I speak out to my brother my grandparents oh come on Mum you can do me a favour help me out here and something happens how did that? you know so for me that spiritual side and not yourself is something we’re going to go and we will be bringing you back in the new year because it’d be great for everyone to see how Annette got on over Christmas and the advice as we say we’re going to be putting together this board meeting of I call it my transformational angels and myself because we are there to help we are the invisible hand and like Annette she’s the voice of voices in her work most wonderful person that was in that room but thank you for coming to the end of the show it’s gone by so quickly thank you for tuning in we will see you next week on our next one I look forward to bringing Annette back thank you Annette and goodbye from LKJ Thank you