Hey All!

I know how you LOVE to read podcast transcripts!!! Here is a throwback to my very FIRST episode!!!! Don't have time to read! No worries, hop over to the audio version here! 

https://open.spotify.com/episode/2TNCN2LkqQhymE1PXit8ek 

Love, 

Rachel Coudron 

Host of Step Into Your Sunshine Podcast 

Good morning, good afternoon, good evening, wherever in the world that you are.

I thank you for tuning in for this first episode of Step Into Your Sunshine by me, your host,

Rachel Coudron.

I want to dive first into why did I create this podcast and what does it mean and what

kind of platform do I want it to be?

I created this podcast so that I and others could have a voice in a world where we have

been beaten down or told that we aren't enough in some kind of capacity and that through

our life experiences, we have chosen to walk into our sunshine, walk into our authenticity

and walk into our truest selves.

It is such a powerful statement just to say this is me.

I created this space so that others could listen in and be empowered.

They could be uplifted.

They could learn from mine and others' experiences and implicate that on their lives and they

could see change and they would know that they aren't alone.

The essence of this podcast is designed to showcase women that have been pushed into

the shadows, whether that be because they've been told they aren't enough.They're too much.

They have too much personality. They're too loud. They're too direct. They're too emotional.

And society has tried to limit them, has tried to create a person that society wants them

to be, but in their hearts, they know that that's not who they are.

And once you come to that realization that all these people and all of these things have

tried to limit me, but I have chosen to step into the sunshine and step into the personality

that I know is most aligned with me.That is where true power comes from, is owning all of ourselves, the good, the bad, and the ugly.

I want to show you guys and share with you a time in my life, one of the very first experiences

where I was shoved into the shadows. But before we get into that, I want to talk to you about vulnerability because the story I'm going to share with you and the stories that I will continue to share with you throughout the season is all about vulnerability.

What do you think of when you think of vulnerability?

Do you think of it as a strength?

Do you think of it as a weakness?

I can remember watching a special on Brene Brown on Netflix and she asked the crowd after

delivering a really vulnerable story, how many of you think that I showed strength sharing
the story?

Almost every hand in the audience goes up.

The next question she asked is, then why do we keep our vulnerable stories to ourselves?

By her sharing her vulnerability, it allowed people to relate to her.

It allowed people to feel like they were one with her.

If they had gone through a similar experience, they had realized that she was one with them

and it made her powerful in their eyes.

This is what vulnerability really is.

When you're being vulnerable and you're owning all of your emotions and all of your experiences in your life, that could be past, present, and potential future situations that will
put you in a vulnerable state.

It becomes powerful.

When you choose to share those with other people, you open your world to who you can impact, who you can uplift, and who you can empower because we need to share our stories.

As women specifically, we need to know that there is another person who has gone through
this.

There is another person that's been through this fight.

There's another person that has experienced this level of trauma.

Collectively, as a group, we are powerful.

I want you guys to hear from me today that you are powerful.

Your story is powerful.

You owning your unique self is powerful.

Another example that Brene Brown gives throughout many of her books is she quotes this beautiful quote and the idea behind it is that if you are in the arena, the arena of vulnerability, the space where you're putting yourself out there day in and day out, then inevitably there's going to be people outside of that circle that choose to judge you, that choose to tell you that you're not enough, that you're too much, that you're being too honest, that your podcast doesn't matter, that your business doesn't matter, that you're not parenting the right way, that you're not being the right type of life. There's going to be somebody somewhere that is going to hate on your approach towards life.

But we have to remember that they are outside of the circle.

They are not the ones that are inside the circle being vulnerable, sharing their stories, collaborating with others and trying to impact women and men around the world.

I am also a business owner and what that looks like in business is the hater saying that you're not enough, that your products aren't enough, that your services aren't enough, that you're being too direct, you're not relatable, oh my goodness you don't have on makeup, you don't have the right clothes.

There's constant negativity coming in from all the people outside of the arena.

And we have to remember to focus on us and focus inside the arena where we are choosing
to be vulnerable and we're choosing as a business owner to share our stories, to share our struggles and that we know inside that we are uplifting and empowering other individuals across the world.

As a mother what this looks like is other people from the outside, maybe it is people in your family, maybe it's your friends, maybe it's people you don't know, maybe it's colleagues,maybe it's people from your child's school telling you that you should be doing this or you should be doing that or you shouldn't make your child do this or you should make them do this or you should discipline like that or you should discipline like this.

Yet for them they are inside your arena at home.

They don't know what goes on behind closed doors, they don't know what type of person you are and they don't know what kind of what type of child you are trying to raise.

We must remember that we are in our arenas and only the people that we choose to interact with within that arena and only those people that we are close to, their opinions matter.

We cannot be spending our time and our energy focused on those people outside of the arena.

What does this look like from a life point of view?

I'd like to ask all of you if you guys are husbands or wives, what does it look like for you?

What does your arena look like?

For me I can tell you I have been with my husband since 2010.

We are going on nine years of marriage here at the end of September of this year and we are an intercultural marriage.

So what I mean by that is that I am an American and my husband is French and what comes from that is a beautiful blend of cultures but what also comes from that is some clashes between cultures and clashes between what role should I play, what role should he play, how do we parent, how do we parent together, what is our approach towards our culture where we live here in France, how do we blend that, how do I blend that as an American, blend into a European society because I am telling you that it is different.

It's not bad different or good different, it's just different.

People want to tell me constantly about what I should be, how I should do, what I shouldn't do, how I should accept things and I have to remember that they are not inside my arena.

They haven't lived my life, they don't know what I've gone through, they don't know what me and my husband have gone through and they don't know what you've gone through.

They're not inside your arena.

If I tell you guys today when we are being vulnerable, remember that this is a choice.

You're choosing to be vulnerable and put vulnerability on a large broadcast to be opened into the world.

It doesn't matter what those outside of the arena think because they aren't willing to put themselves inside of the arena.

What does vulnerability mean to you?

I'd love to hear your thoughts.

Next I'm going to go into my very first time that I can recall very specifically being pushed into the shadows.

This time was when I was in middle school.

So that would be age about 12 to 13.

And I will let you guys in on a secret.

I was an overweight child.

It wasn't because I was active or inactive.

It wasn't because I ate all of this stuff constantly.

It wasn't because I just sat and played video games.

None of those things were the case.

But all of those are assumptions from people when you see an overweight child.

Now looking back on my childhood, I can see that it was just the phase that I was going through.

It was the phase of kind of losing the younger baby fat, younger kid fat, and becoming a young woman.

But at this time, all that mattered was that I was larger than all of my classmates.

That I can remember, one of the largest females, girls in my year.

And that year specifically, I chose to try out for the basketball team in middle school.

I loved basketball.

I loved the camaraderie between teammates.

I loved being part of a team.

But I was helped back because of my weight.

I didn't feel comfortable and I also wasn't made to feel comfortable.

After school and before practice, we would go into the locker rooms and we would have to change and prepare for our sport, for basketball practice.

We'd have to change.

And many, many days, I would be laughed at or mocked or told a joke or avoided because of my weight.

And that made me feel really alone.

That made me feel in a space where I wasn't wanted, that I wasn't accepted.

And this mentality that I wasn't enough also played into how I performed during practice and ultimately during my basketball games.

Before practice even started, I already felt that I wasn't good enough.

So do you think that I gave my all at practice?

Well, I gave all that I had left.

But I knew inside that that wasn't enough.

I knew that I was being held back by my personal thoughts and by my experiences that I had had in that locker room.

And every day, it weighed on me.

Every day, I wanted to only be skinny like everybody else.

And I can remember this particular day where I had just had enough.

I came home after practice and I was crying.

My mom talked to me and she wanted to know what was going on.

I explained the situation.

And then she told me a story that really helped me move on from that experience.

She told me that when she was younger, that she went through a similar phase at about the same age, that she was a bit chubbier.

And then when she hit 13 and 14, she grew about a foot in a year.

And she slimmed out and she had a totally different body.

Now to this day, do I know if that was an actual true story?

I do not.

But I do know that my mom spent the time telling me the story so that I could see myself in her and I could know that this wasn't the end of my story.

And that I knew that if my mom could do it, then I could do it.

Because it's not that I believed in me.

It's that she believed in me.

And I took that lesson that day and I took it to practice.

And did those comments just stop all of a sudden?

No.

Did those laughs and snickers and mocking stop all of a sudden?

No.

But what did happen was a transformation of myself, of my confidence.

And I knew that if I worked hard and I just stayed the course, I knew that my body was going to change.

And I will let you guys in on a secret.

I played basketball for two years and at the end of that second year, I had a completely

different body type than I did at the beginning.

I grew almost a foot and I thinned out dramatically.

And all those comments stopped.

As my listeners, have you guys had a similar experience?

Especially around weight.

Because it is such a hot topic in today's society.

Our weights, how we look, our curves, especially if you're a woman, how you dress your curves,
how you reveal your curves.

All of those things that people have an opinion about.

And get this, most of those people that have opinions are outside of the arena.

They aren't the ones that are going to practice every day and experiencing this themselves.

It's the ones that are judging you from the outside and saying all those same things that those teammates are saying.

They're not the ones that are sitting here creating podcasts or creating new content for their business.

They're the ones that are keyboard warriors and judging every single thing you put out into the world.

And someone close in that I felt like that was within my circle, my mother.

She is the one that helped me get through this process.

So I want to ask you guys, what can be done in our society right now for a better future
for our young girls and boys that are constantly advertised to about their weight or their shape?

I want to know your thoughts.

For me, what can we do right now for a better future is that we can share our stories, our vulnerability.

So many times in my life when I was growing up and in the times that I was most definitely overweight as a child, I felt like I was the only child in the entire planet that was overweight and so many children, women, men feel the same way today.

That they feel so alone and so powerless and so incapable from the amount of times that they have been beaten down about their weight.

And we need to change that story.

We need to show and share our stories about a similar situation.

We need to as a collective society uplift and empower people.

We need to understand that just because a child is overweight does not mean that they sit in front of the TV and play video games.

It doesn't mean that they're inactive.

It doesn't mean that their parents only feed them fast food.

It could simply mean a phase.

This is the same truth when you're an adult.

For me, I've gone through many shapes and sizes in my lifetime.

I've gone from that overweight child to a very slender teenager and to my young adult life.

And then I was diagnosed with hypothyroidism.

And my shape changed again.

And then I had a child and my shape changed again.

We are meant to evolve.

We're meant to have different phases of our lives and we cannot stay attached to one version
of ourselves throughout our entire lifetimes and beat ourselves up about it.

Sharing our story allows other people to hear our vulnerabilities and to learn and grow from them.

The amount of children that are committing suicide in our world today is astronomical
and it's horrifying.

Some of their stories start with a story that I just told you.

That they were the outcast.

That they were made fun of.

That they were mocked.

That they were not enough and they were told again and again and again and again.

And they were never allowed to step into their sunshine because society held them back.

Held them in the shadows.

They were never allowed to know their potential.

They were never allowed to step into their authentic selves.

And this is a tragedy.

We must be here and share our stories so that other people can relate, can blossom, can

feel empowered by our vulnerability.

This is the purpose of Step Into Your Sunshine.

My advice to those that have had this experience similar to mine is to know that other people you are not defined by your size.

Your worth is not tied to the size of your body.

Say it again.

Your worth is not tied to the size of your body.

One more time with me.

My worth is not tied to the size of my body.

For those of you that are young adults and your body is changing, whether that be from a chronic disease, whether that be from a pregnancy, whether that be just from the normal and natural evolution of your body, continue the mantra.

We are not unworthy due to our size.

Let's flip that to be positive.

My size does not determine my worth.

My size does not determine my worth.

One more time with me, guys.

My size does not determine my worth.

I want to thank all my listeners today.

If you are not aware already, my name is Rachel Coudron.

And I am the designer and Etsy boutique owner of Coudron's Curiosities that can be found
on Etsy.

My purpose in life is to share with you, to share the vulnerabilities, to share the uplifting stories and to empower people around the globe to take their step into their sunshine.