Why so many women are scared to adventure and recognising our female role models with Tough Girl Founder 003: Sarah Williams

 

A powerful conversation with Tough Girl Challenges founder and Tough Girl Podcast host, Sarah Williams. As friends, we easily cover multiple topics across our conversations. These include how to meet fear head-on and deal with it; why Sarah is inspired by two specific female role models/mentors and the moments in her life that nearly broke her. Interestingly, she elaborates on how those darkest times taught her the most and benefitted her in ways she could never have imagined. There are references to many long-distance trails, in the UK and overseas, with the Appalachian Trail being lauded by Sarah as the most life-changing for her, personally. A female adventure epic.

 

Zoe Langley-Wathen  00:09

Well, hello, and welcome back to the HeadRightOut Podcast.  My name is Zoe Langley-Wathen and I am your host. This is a relatively new show, and I hope if you're here for the first time that you will consider hitting that follow button in your podcast app, because we need to get as many subscribers and followers as we possibly can to grow the show.

 

Zoe Langley-Wathen  00:34

I'm really excited today, because we're going to be talking to Sarah Williams, who is the founder of Tough Girl Challenges, and the host of the amazing Tough Girl Podcast. It's a really powerful episode, and although we're two friends, and we giggle a lot, and we have a little bit of a chatter here and there, we do go into some deeper stuff. Sarah gives some really strong messages of how to look at fear and how to reframe it. We discuss why so many women seem to be hesitant to adventure and where that fear might actually come from. Sarah talks about her passion for wanting to set up Tough Girl Challenges, and the podcast way back six, seven years ago now. I asked her about who her role models are and that was a really fascinating part of the conversation. So I hope you'll stick with us to listen.

 

Zoe Langley-Wathen  01:29

Today, here is a beautiful, beautiful day. It's September. It's the seventh of September, and we have just got the hottest weather at the moment and the tops of the trees are changing. There's hardly a breeze out there and the canal is still. We've had some dog barking issues. So I will say, you might hear birds tweeting and that probably isn't a problem. But if you get some interruptions partway through the recording, I apologise because there was a bit of a dog pack issue out on the towpath partway through the recording. So yes, without further ado, I'm going to head off into the introduction.

 

Zoe Langley-Wathen  02:16

Okay, well welcome everybody to another episode of the HeadRightOut Podcast. I am so excited today. I can't begin to tell you I have got a very good friend of mine, an inspirational lady and all round adventurer, challenge inspirer. She is an author. She's an award winner. I'm going to go through her bio in a minute but we have got Sarah Williams, the host of the Tough Girl Podcast and founder of Tough Girl Challenges here. So good morning, Sarah.

 

Sarah Williams  02:47

Good morning. How you doing?

 

Zoe Langley-Wathen  02:48

I'm very well thank you. So I am going to introduce you, because I just felt all of the things that you have achieved over the last six or seven years just needs to be acknowledged and I don't want to miss anything out for certain.

 

Sarah Williams  03:02

I'm getting ready to be embarrassed and ready to cringe. It's a very British thing like oh my god, okay. I'm ready for it.

 

Zoe Langley-Wathen  03:08

You've got to soak this up and enjoy. So Tough Girl Challenges was started in 2014 as a way of motivating and inspiring women and girls. My mission is to increase the amount of female role models in the media with a focus on women who do adventures and undertake big physical challenges. I am the host of the two times award winning Tough Girl Podcast wh