What if the "perfect life" is actually the most convincing hiding place for emptiness? In this episode of Wickedly Smart Women, host Anjel B. Hartwell welcomes Silvia Resnik, a fulfillment and purpose coach for high-achieving women. Silvia shares how a lifelong ache for connection shaped her drive to achieve. The conversation also goes deeper into the tension between honoring cultural traditions and evolving practices that harm women, including the urgent reality of female genital mutilation and how Silvia's organization, Empower Her, is working from within community partnership to create change through education, support, and empowerment.

What You Will Learn:

Why "looking successful" can coexist with feeling emotionally empty.

How early experiences of not feeling seen can quietly shape adult identity, ambition, and relationship patterns.

The hidden motivation behind perfectionism: trying to earn love, belonging, and "enoughness."

Why external achievements don't automatically create self-worth.

How a single experience of deep community can interrupt lifelong loneliness and recalibrate what matters.

What true connection can feel like in the body.

How indigenous culture can offer profound healing while still containing traditions that require conscious evolution.

A grounded explanation of FGM in the Maasai context, including the rite-of-passage framing and the high human cost.

Why sustainable change must be led from within a community, not imposed by outsiders.

How education becomes a protection strategy for women and girls.

What it means to "bridge two worlds" in coaching: bringing connection back to high achievers while also resourcing underserved communities.

How travel can become transformational when it's relationship-centered rather than consumption-centered.

What a purpose-led business transition can look like when it grows out of lived experience, not branding.

Connect with Silvia Resnik

Simple Life Journey

EmpowerHer

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Wickedly Smart Women: Trusting Intuition, Taking Action, Transforming Worlds by Anjel B. Hartwell

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"We wake up every morning as a soul in a human body. That alone should be so incredibly fascinating to us." What if the hardest things you've lived through weren't punishments, but assignments your soul chose to help you grow? In this episode of Wickedly Smart Women, host Anjel B. Hartwell welcomes Steffani LeFevour, modern-day soul strategist and author of You Are a Badass Mom and the forthcoming book Soul Assignments. Stteffani shares how childhood trauma, an alcoholic father, and the tragic loss of her sister cracked her open to a lifelong search for spiritual truth.

What You Will Learn:

The impact of childhood trauma and grief on emotional development and identity.

How growing up with an alcoholic parent shapes beliefs, coping mechanisms and adulthood patterns.

Why families often end up on "grief islands" when they lack tools, language or support to process loss.

How early exposure to death can spark a lifelong search for meaning, spirituality and healing.

The role spiritual teachers and books can play in offering language and comfort when religion wasn't present at home.

How alcohol can become an unconscious way to avoid feelings, fit in socially, or suppress unresolved pain.

What it looks like to break generational chains of addiction through awareness, boundaries and intentional behavior.

How to examine your own relationship with alcohol and shift from unconscious use to empowered choice.

The importance of creating an alcohol-free "safe house" environment for teens and modeling a different norm.

The concept of soul assignments and how reframing painful experiences can move someone out of victimhood.

Why radical acceptance of past experiences becomes the foundation for emotional freedom and conscious creation.

How thoughts, words, feelings, beliefs and stories function as "power tools" that shape every experience.

The difference between using those power tools unconsciously vs. consciously.

How to identify outdated stories and rewrite them into truer, more empowering narratives.

The process of finding gifts inside even the most difficult events and how that transforms inner resilience.

The value of viewing life from a soul-level perspective rather than only through a human-level lens.

The path from learning spiritual principles to embodying them, teaching them and serving others with them.

How a long-held dream can manifest through clarity, courage and consistent sharing of one's message.

Why owning your unique perspective allows your voice, work and mission to expand in powerful new ways.

Connect with Steffani LeFevour

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Wickedly Smart Women: Trusting Intuition, Taking Action, Transforming Worlds by Anjel B. Hartwell

Listener Line (540) 402-0043 Ext. 4343

Email listeners@wickedlysmartwomen.com

"Horses don't care if you're afraid. They care if you're honest." In this episode of Wickedly Smart Women, host Anjel B. Hartwell welcomes Sue Willoughby, founder of Willoughby Coaching, certified equus coach, real estate investor, and a woman who has rewritten her life more times than most people dare to dream. Raised by a single alcoholic parent and a two-time high school dropout, Sue charted a path from instability to a six-figure career, a multidimensional portfolio of work, and a coaching practice rooted in the intuitive wisdom of horses.

If you're feeling the whisper that something in your life or career needs to change, this episode gives you permission, perspective, and possibility.

What You Will Learn:

The emotional and psychological impact of being raised by a single alcoholic parent and how early instability can shape lifelong patterns of independence and resilience.

What it feels like to reach the moment where corporate life becomes unbearable, and the emotional complexity of leaping from stability into entrepreneurship.

How passion projects and side ventures can become bridges out of corporate life without risking everything at once.

How horses instantly sense incongruence between what you say, what you feel, and what your body is actually communicating.

Why humans store emotional stories in the body while horses process, react, and release without carrying narratives, resentment, or drama.

How corporate teams can use horse-led experiences to learn authentic leadership, strengthen team dynamics, and understand each other's communication patterns.

Why it is never too late to reinvent yourself, take risks, pursue a new career, or bring long-buried creative visions into reality.

A simple daily practice for reconnecting with presence and intuition.

Connect with Sue Willoughby

Willoughby Coaching

Connect with Anjel B. Hartwell

Wickedly Smart Women

Wickedly Smart Women on X

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Wickedly Smart Women Facebook Community

Wickedly Smart Women Store on TeePublic

Wickedly Smart Women: Trusting Intuition, Taking Action, Transforming Worlds by Anjel B. Hartwell

Listener Line (540) 402-0043 Ext. 4343

Email listeners@wickedlysmartwomen.com