September 8, 2025 • 20 mins
In this deeply personal episode I share my journey with voice, creativity, and the long road from hiding to being seen. From the silence of bullying, eating disorders, and body shame, to the healing pathways of spirituality, podcasting, and creativity, this is the story of how I slowly reawakened my voice and stepped into visibility.
I take you through the beginnings of my podcasting journey, the birth of Life in Contradiction and Body Diaries, and how holding space for stories became a catalyst for my own healing. Along the way, I reflect on creativity as a force that never truly leaves us, even when buried under fear and conditioning. And how each brave step we take opens the door to even greater expansion.
If you’ve been waiting for a sign to begin - whether it’s podcasting, writing, painting, or sharing your story - this is it.
Topics Covered
- Healing voice and visibility wounds through creativity and podcasting
- Moving from fear, hiding, and eating disorders into self-expression
- Creativity as a path of becoming, healing, and stepping into being seen
Mentioned in this Episode
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Andrea Matthies (00:00):
I'm Andrea Lee Matthies, writer, photographer,
and Clairvoyant Medium, and thisis the Bold, Brave Woman Project.
This podcast is a living, breathing,unfolding of what it really
means to step into our becoming.
Born from the ashes of a failed YouTubechannel, this weekly podcast brings you
real unfiltered moments of failure, ofbravery, and of deep intuitive knowing,
(00:25):
so that you too can step into who you arebecoming with even more trust and bravery.
Let's dive in.
Welcome back to another episodeof the Bold, brave Woman Project.
Today.
I thought I would share with you mypodcasting journey because when I
(00:45):
was reflecting on it the other day,I could see how when I first started
out with my podcasting, it wasactually coming from a really strong
desire to do something meaningful.
Driven heavily by fear.
Now, first I wanna take you back, soI'm gonna take you back to my childhood
(01:06):
to paint a bit of a picture as to whatmy journey with my voice has been like,
as well as my relationship with beingseen and being heard, and being in my
authority through to now through to thispodcast and some of the learnings and
the lessons that I've had along the way.
(01:27):
So when I think, right back, and I hada chat with my mom recently just to get
a bit of insight from her perspectiveof what I was like when I was younger.
Apparently when I was reallysmall, I was quite vivacious.
I was quite creative and quite chatty.
I would stroll up to strangersand strike up conversations.
(01:50):
I was unencumbered and free.
But as I grew up and things in societalconditioning, like stranger danger,
you know, parents were encouraged backthen, and I know they are now, to teach
children, not to speak to strangers,to fear strangers, to fear, all the
things that do occur in our society.
(02:13):
This conditioning started to filterdown into me, and my mom said
there was a dramatic shift between.
Walking up and chatting fearlesslyto strangers to becoming quite
reserved and becoming quite fearful.
And as I moved through puberty andsocial expectation and trying to
fit in, particularly at primaryschool, self-esteem and body issues
(02:38):
became quite a big thing for methat I started to hide even more.
I started to pull back.
A girlfriend of mine and I, we usedto love creating these little dances
and performances with costumes and wewould knock on the, the doors of other
classrooms in the school and we'd ask toput on little performance for the class.
(03:03):
And when we were quitesmall, this was great fun
And we loved it.
But as we got older and bullyingstarted to come into play, judgment
The kids just making fun of us.
as I kind of moved into the, that10-year-old, 11, 12-year-old age
period, I also started to gain weight
(03:23):
When I reflect back, I used tosneak a lot of food because I was
using food to cope with stress.
And so between withdrawing from societyand trying to become invisible, eating
my feelings, my weight gain increased,which then increased the bullying and
the teasing and the exclusion, whichthen fueled this cycle of pulling
(03:44):
back even more and eating even more.
That it actually at that very young age,created not only self-esteem and poor
body image issues, but at the beginningsof an eating disorder, a binge eating
disorder, which later turned into bulimia.
And, here's the thing, even withall of this on board, there was
(04:05):
still a strong undercurrent ofcreativity that existed within me.
I was lucky enough that from aneducational perspective, my parents
allowed me to take some multimediasubjects, which opened the door for
me to filmmaking, to digital audioproduction, to creating my own films,
but because I had these self-esteemissues still on board, I made sure I
(04:31):
executed this from behind the camera.
Instead of being the oneperforming or dancing.
It felt much safer for me to exploremy creativity from behind the lens.
Always directing, always producing,always writing, but never performing.
It didn't feel safe to performanymore, and as my self-esteem
(04:53):
issues and my body dysmorphia, grewinto bulimia and really struggling
My need to step back further andfurther progressed that eventually even,
although I went on to study multimediaand filmmaking and I worked in film
and television for quite a numberof years, this feeling of not being
(05:15):
worthy, of not wanting to be seen, ofnot being good enough overtook that,
that I stepped away from it completely.
And it actually took me a really long timeand a number of careers, which I described
in the earlier episode to find my way backto opening the doors of creativity again.
And there was a lot of traumaand conditioning and beliefs that
(05:39):
I had to decode along the way.
There was one point where I'd convincedmyself that I wasn't creative.
And I just, I just wasn't creative.
I'd lost my ability to paint.
I'd lost my ability to write.
I wasn't even journaling at the time,like I couldn't even pick up a pen.
There was such worthlessness and suchdevaluing that had happened in my mind
(06:03):
about my value in who I was that hadreally put up this incredible block
between myself and my creativity, and
And so I spent most of my careermoving in and out of different science
or math or strategic based careers.
Until the COVID pandemic hit, and thiswas really interesting because I had
(06:26):
been suppressing this creative sideof me for decades, by this point, I
had gone through significant healthchallenges based on all of the damage
that I had done with my eating disorders.
I was even misdiagnosed as bipolarthere by a medical professional at one
point and popped on a whole bunch ofdifferent bipolar regulating medication.
(06:51):
I was basically sedated, for asignificant period of my life
But it wasn't until the pandemicthat I really decided to dig
in and start to change my life.
I decided to take my life back to takecontrol of how I was feeling and the
conditioning that was making me feeland think and act in these certain
(07:12):
ways, and to start to excavate anduncover who it was that I really was.
And so with a brave leap of faith,I decided to get off my medication.
Of course, I was medically supportedin that decision to start to tap into
my spirituality and my nature as apsychic medium, as a channeler I started
(07:34):
to reawaken the gifts that I'd alwayshad, starting with kinesiology and EFT
tapping to really strip back all ofthese layers and these masks of the
person that I had become to uncoverwho it was that I truly was underneath.
And through this I realized twovery, very important things.
(07:58):
One is that I, I had this deep desireto be in service to others, and
that was really evident in a lot ofthe career changes that I had made.
Every time I got overwhelmed inmy marketing and sales career,
I would always go and retrain insomething that was in service,
Whether it was in nursing or whetherit was in teaching, I would always find
(08:19):
myself gravitating to doing somethingthat was in service, and I knew deep
down, once I'd stripped back a lot ofthis conditioning and the shoulds and the
expectations that I'd placed on myself,that making my life be more than just
making money for others, or climbing thecorporate ladder to do something that was
(08:40):
actually meaningful and enabled me to getto the end of my life and look back and
be like, I lived a life that was not onlyin service of others, but was meaningful
and purposeful, and made a difference.
And the second thing that started toreveal itself very, very quickly was
that I wanted to reignite and reconnectwith my creativity and my creative
(09:04):
side, that side of me that had beenthere since I was a little girl, but
got suppressed and compressed undertrauma and under expectation of what
was good and what was successful.
When I started to realize these twothings, I was in a massive transitional
period in my life where I was steppingout of a relationship that was no
(09:25):
longer in the highest of my healthand in the highest of my good.
I had had the beautiful opportunity tobe a stepmom to a beautiful little boy.
And stepping away from that relationshipmeant leaving him behind and taking
off that hat that I'd worn foralmost a decade as a stepmom and
(09:47):
putting it to the side, and no longerhaving that relationship anymore.
It was such tumultuous time of who am Iif I'm not a stepmother, if I'm not in
this relationship, or wanting to have thelife that I had just fixated on building
for such a long time, who am I andwhere am I and what am I gonna do next?
(10:07):
And as I transitioned outta thatrelationship, I had to sell the
home that I had worked so hard tobuild and move into my own place.
I changed careers at the same time.
I transitioned from one corporateorganization into another because I just
needed to clean slate on all levels.
And soon after all of thistransitional period into this new
(10:29):
career and this new place, COVID hit.
And that changed everything in thatit really slowed everything down.
I was fortunate in that mywork was able to continue.
But like all of us, everythingelse, all of the distractions, all
the extracurricular stuff stopped.
(10:49):
I had all of this time to reallyreflect on who am I, where
am I, and what do I wanna do.
I started to paint, I started todraw, and this amazing idea, which
I'd never had up until this pointto create a podcast popped into my
mind, but I wanted it not to just bea podcast for the sake of a podcast.
(11:13):
I wanted it to be meaningful.
And I had been doing a lot ofreading at the time around racism and
systemic privilege I thought, I know.
I'm gonna create a podcast thatinvites voices of people of color
onto the podcast to open up channelsof communication around where we're
(11:34):
actually getting it wrong and what wecould actually do differently to start
to address some of these problems.
I created the very first live streampodcast with a video feed into Facebook,
for a show called Life In Contradiction.
And each week I would live stream anepisode with a guest who would come on and
(11:58):
talk about their experiences with racism.
And starting to hold theconversation of what could change.
And this project, honestly,it changed my life.
There was something about holding spacefor difficult conversations that really
fueled me and I realized that I loved,creating space for stories to be told.
(12:23):
For asking hard questions for people.
Really challenging my point of view.
I I realized very quickly thatcreating these kinds of platforms
and spaces and conversationswas what I really wanted to do.
And whilst Life In Contradiction onlyhad one season, and it was mainly ended
because I ended up in a major healthcrisis that resulted in some major
(12:47):
surgery, That feeling never left me.
The surgery that I had to havewas actually a hysterectomy.
And it had taken me on this pathwayof one minute I am a woman with
all of the complete body parts, tohaving to swallow the fact that the
body parts and the things that madeup a woman and a mother were no
(13:10):
longer going to be there and dealingwith the emotional fallout of that.
And I had already, as I'd mentioned,been on such tumultuous journey with
my body to realize that we don't talkabout the journeys of our bodies a lot.
And all of a sudden I'm laid up onthe couch in this recovery period.
(13:32):
Why don't I create a podcast thatcreates space for women to come
on and talk about the journeysthat they have with their bodies?
Everything, the good, thebad, the hard, the unspoken,
and so Body Diaries was born.
And I set about reaching out to womenright across the world to see if there
(13:53):
was anyone who had had a journey withtheir body that they wanted to come
and share and talk about, the thingsthat that helped them get through.
That was an incredible podcast.
We had so many different women talk, aboutall sorts of journeys, everything from
escaping domestic violence and alcoholismto overcoming eating disorders and even
(14:15):
managing and living with adult ADHD.
It was a beautiful podcast and don'tworry, that podcast is still around.
It is gonna be back in itssecond season very soon.
But it took me on this journeyof realizing that stories matter.
And the most interesting thing aboutBody Diaries is that it started to
awaken in me this desire to startstepping into being seen again.
(14:40):
It was amazing how using your voiceand telling stories, being brave enough
to finally tell those stories into amicrophone just chips away another layer
of fear that we put on ourselves, aboutspeaking up, And it opened the door of
this curiosity that I had about, well,what if I was to explore being seen?
(15:04):
And performing and being on stages,and so soon after Body Diaries
launched, I became very curiousabout taking some improv classes.
And improv led to acting, led back toimprov, led back to more performance.
And before I knew it, I had overcomethis fear of being seen by putting
(15:28):
myself out there, by starting toallow the world to see me on stages.
I got better at showing up on socialmedia, on video, and sharing my thoughts
and feelings that soon I realized Iwanted to do more than just have podcasts.
I was ready to not be hiding behind themicrophone or behind the camera anymore.
(15:51):
Part of my journey and part of mydestiny is to be seen, is to share, is
to be on stages and is to be on screens.
I wanted to share this because whatcan feel as a fear and as hiding can
transform into something incredible andbeyond even more than what you think.
(16:15):
If you had have told me that one dayI would be declaring to the world that
I wanted to have my own show and be ahost back when I was stuck in the eating
disorder in the dysmorphia, in the feelingof not being good enough and hating being
in my body, I would've called you crazy.
I would've said, no way.
Like, I don't need, I can't see that.
(16:36):
I can't feel that.
That just feels impossible, and it isabsolutely categorically not what I want.
Because at the time, I was inthat frequency of hiding, of being
contracted, and allowing my fearsto rule the frequency that I was in.
Whereas now through the journeyof all of the healing that
I've done, it feels possible.
(16:57):
but not just possible.
It feels desirable.
And so if you've got a project that youwanna start At whatever level that you're
at right now, if it's just speakingto a microphone, if it's showing up
on camera, if it's writing a book andputting everything into the words right
now, because you're not ready to be seen.
Do it, embrace it because it willopen the door to the healings that
(17:23):
are needed for you to then step intothe full potential of who you are.
That next chapter, that nextlevel of expression of creativity.
Because within you, no matter howsuppressed it is, no matter when it
got shaken out of you, creativityand expression exists and it lives.
(17:44):
It's just waiting for you to findthe channels to open the door to
let the light in enough for it to bestirred up and vibrated and poured
out to then lead to the next thingand the next thing and the next thing.
I'm personally really excited to seewhere this chapter flows for me, and I can
guarantee you that wherever I end up inthe next 12 months, 24 months, five years,
(18:10):
10 years, it is gonna be even further andeven bigger than what I can see right now
But what I promise and commit to myselfto doing is to continue to dream.
To continue to hold visions and ideasof expansion for myself, because every
step I take allows just that little bitmore creativity and expansion in which
(18:33):
then can catapult us to destinationseven beyond our wildest dreams.
So if you have been looking fora reinforcement to go and do that
thing, take that first step oreven the 50th step further into
your creativity and expression.
Here it is.
(18:55):
And of course I wanna hear all about it.
I wanna hear about the dream.
I wanna hear about the steps andthe progressions and the bold moves.
So please reach out to me,send me a dm, send me an email.
I wanna celebrate you because takingthose steps is really bold and it
takes so much courage to keep goingand to not let the fear overtake you.
(19:18):
So the more I can celebrate youto put more energy and excitement
behind you to keep flying forward,that makes me so happy, and it is
something that I would just loveto be able to do in service of you.
And I cannot wait to seeyou in the next episode.
As always, thank you for being here.
(19:39):
If this episode stirred something for youand you wanna book a channeled reading,
jump on the link in the show notes.
There's only a few channel readingsessions available each week.
And of course you can reachout to me anytime on my main
Instagram handle @andi.matthies,
or follow all of my art and photographyon my art feed @pathandnine on Instagram.
I'm Andrea Lee Matthies, writer, photographer,
and Clairvoyant Medium, and thisis the Bold, Brave Woman Project.
This podcast is a living, breathing,unfolding of what it really
means to step into our becoming.
Born from the ashes of a failed YouTubechannel, this weekly podcast brings you
real unfiltered moments of failure, ofbravery, and of deep intuitive knowing,
(00:25):
so that you too can step into who you arebecoming with even more trust and bravery.
Let's dive in.
Welcome back to another episodeof the Bold, brave Woman Project.
Today.
I thought I would share with you mypodcasting journey because when I
(00:45):
was reflecting on it the other day,I could see how when I first started
out with my podcasting, it wasactually coming from a really strong
desire to do something meaningful.
Driven heavily by fear.
Now, first I wanna take you back, soI'm gonna take you back to my childhood
(01:06):
to paint a bit of a picture as to whatmy journey with my voice has been like,
as well as my relationship with beingseen and being heard, and being in my
authority through to now through to thispodcast and some of the learnings and
the lessons that I've had along the way.
(01:27):
So when I think, right back, and I hada chat with my mom recently just to get
a bit of insight from her perspectiveof what I was like when I was younger.
Apparently when I was reallysmall, I was quite vivacious.
I was quite creative and quite chatty.
I would stroll up to strangersand strike up conversations.
(01:50):
I was unencumbered and free.
But as I grew up and things in societalconditioning, like stranger danger,
you know, parents were encouraged backthen, and I know they are now, to teach
children, not to speak to strangers,to fear strangers, to fear, all the
things that do occur in our society.
(02:13):
This conditioning started to filterdown into me, and my mom said
there was a dramatic shift between.
Walking up and chatting fearlesslyto strangers to becoming quite
reserved and becoming quite fearful.
And as I moved through puberty andsocial expectation and trying to
fit in, particularly at primaryschool, self-esteem and body issues
(02:38):
became quite a big thing for methat I started to hide even more.
I started to pull back.
A girlfriend of mine and I, we usedto love creating these little dances
and performances with costumes and wewould knock on the, the doors of other
classrooms in the school and we'd ask toput on little performance for the class.
(03:03):
And when we were quitesmall, this was great fun
And we loved it.
But as we got older and bullyingstarted to come into play, judgment
The kids just making fun of us.
as I kind of moved into the, that10-year-old, 11, 12-year-old age
period, I also started to gain weight
(03:23):
When I reflect back, I used tosneak a lot of food because I was
using food to cope with stress.
And so between withdrawing from societyand trying to become invisible, eating
my feelings, my weight gain increased,which then increased the bullying and
the teasing and the exclusion, whichthen fueled this cycle of pulling
(03:44):
back even more and eating even more.
That it actually at that very young age,created not only self-esteem and poor
body image issues, but at the beginningsof an eating disorder, a binge eating
disorder, which later turned into bulimia.
And, here's the thing, even withall of this on board, there was
(04:05):
still a strong undercurrent ofcreativity that existed within me.
I was lucky enough that from aneducational perspective, my parents
allowed me to take some multimediasubjects, which opened the door for
me to filmmaking, to digital audioproduction, to creating my own films,
but because I had these self-esteemissues still on board, I made sure I
(04:31):
executed this from behind the camera.
Instead of being the oneperforming or dancing.
It felt much safer for me to exploremy creativity from behind the lens.
Always directing, always producing,always writing, but never performing.
It didn't feel safe to performanymore, and as my self-esteem
(04:53):
issues and my body dysmorphia, grewinto bulimia and really struggling
My need to step back further andfurther progressed that eventually even,
although I went on to study multimediaand filmmaking and I worked in film
and television for quite a numberof years, this feeling of not being
(05:15):
worthy, of not wanting to be seen, ofnot being good enough overtook that,
that I stepped away from it completely.
And it actually took me a really long timeand a number of careers, which I described
in the earlier episode to find my way backto opening the doors of creativity again.
And there was a lot of traumaand conditioning and beliefs that
(05:39):
I had to decode along the way.
There was one point where I'd convincedmyself that I wasn't creative.
And I just, I just wasn't creative.
I'd lost my ability to paint.
I'd lost my ability to write.
I wasn't even journaling at the time,like I couldn't even pick up a pen.
There was such worthlessness and suchdevaluing that had happened in my mind
(06:03):
about my value in who I was that hadreally put up this incredible block
between myself and my creativity, and
And so I spent most of my careermoving in and out of different science
or math or strategic based careers.
Until the COVID pandemic hit, and thiswas really interesting because I had
(06:26):
been suppressing this creative sideof me for decades, by this point, I
had gone through significant healthchallenges based on all of the damage
that I had done with my eating disorders.
I was even misdiagnosed as bipolarthere by a medical professional at one
point and popped on a whole bunch ofdifferent bipolar regulating medication.
(06:51):
I was basically sedated, for asignificant period of my life
But it wasn't until the pandemicthat I really decided to dig
in and start to change my life.
I decided to take my life back to takecontrol of how I was feeling and the
conditioning that was making me feeland think and act in these certain
(07:12):
ways, and to start to excavate anduncover who it was that I really was.
And so with a brave leap of faith,I decided to get off my medication.
Of course, I was medically supportedin that decision to start to tap into
my spirituality and my nature as apsychic medium, as a channeler I started
(07:34):
to reawaken the gifts that I'd alwayshad, starting with kinesiology and EFT
tapping to really strip back all ofthese layers and these masks of the
person that I had become to uncoverwho it was that I truly was underneath.
And through this I realized twovery, very important things.
(07:58):
One is that I, I had this deep desireto be in service to others, and
that was really evident in a lot ofthe career changes that I had made.
Every time I got overwhelmed inmy marketing and sales career,
I would always go and retrain insomething that was in service,
Whether it was in nursing or whetherit was in teaching, I would always find
(08:19):
myself gravitating to doing somethingthat was in service, and I knew deep
down, once I'd stripped back a lot ofthis conditioning and the shoulds and the
expectations that I'd placed on myself,that making my life be more than just
making money for others, or climbing thecorporate ladder to do something that was
(08:40):
actually meaningful and enabled me to getto the end of my life and look back and
be like, I lived a life that was not onlyin service of others, but was meaningful
and purposeful, and made a difference.
And the second thing that started toreveal itself very, very quickly was
that I wanted to reignite and reconnectwith my creativity and my creative
(09:04):
side, that side of me that had beenthere since I was a little girl, but
got suppressed and compressed undertrauma and under expectation of what
was good and what was successful.
When I started to realize these twothings, I was in a massive transitional
period in my life where I was steppingout of a relationship that was no
(09:25):
longer in the highest of my healthand in the highest of my good.
I had had the beautiful opportunity tobe a stepmom to a beautiful little boy.
And stepping away from that relationshipmeant leaving him behind and taking
off that hat that I'd worn foralmost a decade as a stepmom and
(09:47):
putting it to the side, and no longerhaving that relationship anymore.
It was such tumultuous time of who am Iif I'm not a stepmother, if I'm not in
this relationship, or wanting to have thelife that I had just fixated on building
for such a long time, who am I andwhere am I and what am I gonna do next?
(10:07):
And as I transitioned outta thatrelationship, I had to sell the
home that I had worked so hard tobuild and move into my own place.
I changed careers at the same time.
I transitioned from one corporateorganization into another because I just
needed to clean slate on all levels.
And soon after all of thistransitional period into this new
(10:29):
career and this new place, COVID hit.
And that changed everything in thatit really slowed everything down.
I was fortunate in that mywork was able to continue.
But like all of us, everythingelse, all of the distractions, all
the extracurricular stuff stopped.
(10:49):
I had all of this time to reallyreflect on who am I, where
am I, and what do I wanna do.
I started to paint, I started todraw, and this amazing idea, which
I'd never had up until this pointto create a podcast popped into my
mind, but I wanted it not to just bea podcast for the sake of a podcast.
(11:13):
I wanted it to be meaningful.
And I had been doing a lot ofreading at the time around racism and
systemic privilege I thought, I know.
I'm gonna create a podcast thatinvites voices of people of color
onto the podcast to open up channelsof communication around where we're
(11:34):
actually getting it wrong and what wecould actually do differently to start
to address some of these problems.
I created the very first live streampodcast with a video feed into Facebook,
for a show called Life In Contradiction.
And each week I would live stream anepisode with a guest who would come on and
(11:58):
talk about their experiences with racism.
And starting to hold theconversation of what could change.
And this project, honestly,it changed my life.
There was something about holding spacefor difficult conversations that really
fueled me and I realized that I loved,creating space for stories to be told.
(12:23):
For asking hard questions for people.
Really challenging my point of view.
I I realized very quickly thatcreating these kinds of platforms
and spaces and conversationswas what I really wanted to do.
And whilst Life In Contradiction onlyhad one season, and it was mainly ended
because I ended up in a major healthcrisis that resulted in some major
(12:47):
surgery, That feeling never left me.
The surgery that I had to havewas actually a hysterectomy.
And it had taken me on this pathwayof one minute I am a woman with
all of the complete body parts, tohaving to swallow the fact that the
body parts and the things that madeup a woman and a mother were no
(13:10):
longer going to be there and dealingwith the emotional fallout of that.
And I had already, as I'd mentioned,been on such tumultuous journey with
my body to realize that we don't talkabout the journeys of our bodies a lot.
And all of a sudden I'm laid up onthe couch in this recovery period.
(13:32):
Why don't I create a podcast thatcreates space for women to come
on and talk about the journeysthat they have with their bodies?
Everything, the good, thebad, the hard, the unspoken,
and so Body Diaries was born.
And I set about reaching out to womenright across the world to see if there
(13:53):
was anyone who had had a journey withtheir body that they wanted to come
and share and talk about, the thingsthat that helped them get through.
That was an incredible podcast.
We had so many different women talk, aboutall sorts of journeys, everything from
escaping domestic violence and alcoholismto overcoming eating disorders and even
(14:15):
managing and living with adult ADHD.
It was a beautiful podcast and don'tworry, that podcast is still around.
It is gonna be back in itssecond season very soon.
But it took me on this journeyof realizing that stories matter.
And the most interesting thing aboutBody Diaries is that it started to
awaken in me this desire to startstepping into being seen again.
(14:40):
It was amazing how using your voiceand telling stories, being brave enough
to finally tell those stories into amicrophone just chips away another layer
of fear that we put on ourselves, aboutspeaking up, And it opened the door of
this curiosity that I had about, well,what if I was to explore being seen?
(15:04):
And performing and being on stages,and so soon after Body Diaries
launched, I became very curiousabout taking some improv classes.
And improv led to acting, led back toimprov, led back to more performance.
And before I knew it, I had overcomethis fear of being seen by putting
(15:28):
myself out there, by starting toallow the world to see me on stages.
I got better at showing up on socialmedia, on video, and sharing my thoughts
and feelings that soon I realized Iwanted to do more than just have podcasts.
I was ready to not be hiding behind themicrophone or behind the camera anymore.
(15:51):
Part of my journey and part of mydestiny is to be seen, is to share, is
to be on stages and is to be on screens.
I wanted to share this because whatcan feel as a fear and as hiding can
transform into something incredible andbeyond even more than what you think.
(16:15):
If you had have told me that one dayI would be declaring to the world that
I wanted to have my own show and be ahost back when I was stuck in the eating
disorder in the dysmorphia, in the feelingof not being good enough and hating being
in my body, I would've called you crazy.
I would've said, no way.
Like, I don't need, I can't see that.
(16:36):
I can't feel that.
That just feels impossible, and it isabsolutely categorically not what I want.
Because at the time, I was inthat frequency of hiding, of being
contracted, and allowing my fearsto rule the frequency that I was in.
Whereas now through the journeyof all of the healing that
I've done, it feels possible.
(16:57):
but not just possible.
It feels desirable.
And so if you've got a project that youwanna start At whatever level that you're
at right now, if it's just speakingto a microphone, if it's showing up
on camera, if it's writing a book andputting everything into the words right
now, because you're not ready to be seen.
Do it, embrace it because it willopen the door to the healings that
(17:23):
are needed for you to then step intothe full potential of who you are.
That next chapter, that nextlevel of expression of creativity.
Because within you, no matter howsuppressed it is, no matter when it
got shaken out of you, creativityand expression exists and it lives.
(17:44):
It's just waiting for you to findthe channels to open the door to
let the light in enough for it to bestirred up and vibrated and poured
out to then lead to the next thingand the next thing and the next thing.
I'm personally really excited to seewhere this chapter flows for me, and I can
guarantee you that wherever I end up inthe next 12 months, 24 months, five years,
(18:10):
10 years, it is gonna be even further andeven bigger than what I can see right now
But what I promise and commit to myselfto doing is to continue to dream.
To continue to hold visions and ideasof expansion for myself, because every
step I take allows just that little bitmore creativity and expansion in which
(18:33):
then can catapult us to destinationseven beyond our wildest dreams.
So if you have been looking fora reinforcement to go and do that
thing, take that first step oreven the 50th step further into
your creativity and expression.
Here it is.
(18:55):
And of course I wanna hear all about it.
I wanna hear about the dream.
I wanna hear about the steps andthe progressions and the bold moves.
So please reach out to me,send me a dm, send me an email.
I wanna celebrate you because takingthose steps is really bold and it
takes so much courage to keep goingand to not let the fear overtake you.
(19:18):
So the more I can celebrate youto put more energy and excitement
behind you to keep flying forward,that makes me so happy, and it is
something that I would just loveto be able to do in service of you.
And I cannot wait to seeyou in the next episode.
As always, thank you for being here.
(19:39):
If this episode stirred something for youand you wanna book a channeled reading,
jump on the link in the show notes.
There's only a few channel readingsessions available each week.
And of course you can reachout to me anytime on my main
Instagram handle @andi.matthies,
or follow all of my art and photographyon my art feed @pathandnine on Instagram.
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