Episode Summary – In this powerful and emotional Episode 21 of the Shining Brightly podcast show, my guest Angela Legh shares her childhood with an abusive father and angelic mother that included a fire where she lost everything. She repeated the cycle of abuse in her first marriage. She has overcome much and uses her life experience to help children learn how to manage their emotions in children's book series, The Bella is known Santini Chronicles.

Mentioned Resources

Website:  https://www.angelalegh.com

FB: https://www.facebook.com/AngelaLeghauthor/

Insta: https://www.instagram.com/angelalegh.author/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/angela-legh-6b913b184/

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC_lBXc1PnwRQP5O8v5AfyuQ

Twitter: https://twitter.com/Bellasantinibo1

About the guest – Angela Legh had an alcoholic father and an angelic mother; both had a profound impact on her life. Her father taught her the behaviors of others made her a powerless victim. Her mother taught her to be loving to everyone, including those who hurt her. Angela grew up marrying an emotionally abusive man; she stayed for 32 years because she didn't want to hurt him. A wildfire in Northern California was a catalyst for her personal growth. The Tubbs fire destroyed her house. When everything in her life was gone, she had to examine the only thing left, her relationship. She realized it was toxic; it was not going to get better; she left. Angela is now an author and self-development mentor. Her children's book series, The Bella Santini Chronicles, has received high praise and is known for helping children learn how to manage their emotions. 

About the Host:

Howard Brown is a best-selling author, award-winning international speaker, Silicon Valley entrepreneur, interfaith peacemaker, and a two-time stage IV cancer survivor. He is also a sought-after speaker and consultant for corporate businesses, nonprofits, congregations, and community groups. Howard has co-founded two social networks that were the first to connect religious communities around the world. He is a nationally known patient advocate and “cancer whisperer” to many families. Howard, his wife Lisa, and daughter Emily currently reside in Michigan, and his happy place is on the basketball court.

Website - Http://www.shiningbrightly.com

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LinkedIn - https://wwwlinkedin.com/in/howardsbrown

Instagram - @howard.brown.36

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#victim #alchololic #family #fire #abuse #love #welbeing #childhood #healthcare #growth #quality #referrals #visibility #credibility #motivation #education #inspiration #podcast #download #share #shiningbrightly

Hello, welcome to Shining Brightly your host

extraordinaire Howard Brown here today. What a great day. We are

so lucky. We have Angela Lee with us today. And we are going

to talk about emotional intelligence that matters. It's,

it's not a subject that you probably often think about. But

I think when you get finished with this session, you're gonna

find out that it's really needed and Angelo, welcome. Welcome.

How are you today?

Thank you so much, Howard. I am doing amazing. I am

just so happy. I'm happy to be here. I'm happy to talk to your

listeners and have a great chat with you.

I'm so thrilled and I'm here in sunny hot

Michigan and and you're in Taos, New Mexico? Probably lovely. A

little cooler. No. Cooler. Yeah. Excellent, excellent. Well,

we've chosen this emotional intelligence and why it matters.

It's really important. But I think we've got to give a little

bit of background. So I'm going to just do a short bio, and

you'll fill in some of this, but you had quite quite an

upbringing. And you had a dad who was an alcoholic, you call

your mother angelic, I want to learn more about that, with a

profound impact on you. And I think that the audience and the

listeners and viewers are going to want to know about behaviours

that that, you know, make you powerless, because I think

that's a very common theme in today's society. And, you know,

sticking staying in toxic relationships, Why'd it? Why

would someone do that, and people do that all the time. And

then you got you are in a big tragedy, the Tubbs wildfire in

Northern California, you lost your house, you lost everything,

you had to start from scratch.

Just the clothes on our back. That's it.

We're gonna go there, too. And then you talked

about relationships. And so with my book coming out with Shining

Brightly coming out, I have to tell you, I've had to examine

that too. I didn't have the wildfire. But I had another fire

in my life called stage four colorectal cancer. And the

emotional, physical, financial relationship toll that it took

was something that I do talk about in my book, but I want to

hear it from your point of view. And you've also written

children's books that are really helpful. We're gonna get to

that. So we got a juicy little segment here. So okay, don't

tell me. Where do you where do you want to start? Where what

part of your bio, do you want to start?

Oh, gosh, um, well, you asked about my mother. So

let's go to mom. Yeah, let's start with some shining

brightly. My mom, she I never heard her ever make a judgement

about anyone. She was able to accept people as they are. And

even though, you know, I know that my father was challenging

for her because she would get phone calls from us little kid's

complaining about what he was doing to us while she was at

work. And yet I have no recollection of her ever coming

down on him. She just did her best to up lift him and, and,

you know, hold him in a space of love as opposed to blame. And so

yes, she

was she too passive? It seems like she was

somewhat passive was Was he physically abusive? Or is he

just, it was anger management. And

it was, I call him a raging alcoholic. And his rage

was a huge thing in my young life, our young lives. He was

emotionally and physically. And it's possible. I don't know if

this happen. I have repressed it so much that I don't remember.

But there is some question about whether there was sexual abuse

or not also, so you know, I'm not really going to go go there

too much. Yeah. He was just a very hurt man, who. I'm gonna

back it up to his childhood. My understanding of my father was

hugely opened up when my aunt said Jimmy was such a sensitive

child. Now, he was born in 1925. So if you can imagine in the

Depression, being a sensitive boy was not acceptable for to

anybody So his father tried to beat out of him his sensitivity.

He always knew that he never measured up in his father's

eyes, he was not good enough. So my father, no matter what he

did, it was not good enough. So he turned to alcohol to numb his

painful feelings, his painful feelings of not being worthy,

not not having his dad's love. And when he was drunk, his

behaviours caused his family to see him as not a good enough

dad. And so he just perpetrated that perpetuated that feeling

throughout his life, by his choice to numb the feeling with

alcohol. And if he had been able, if he knew the tools that

I now know about how to face a painful feeling, he could have

made tremendously different choices in his life.

I would say that he kept the cycle of his own

dad's treatment towards him, but but he came out when he was

numbed with being drunk. And he wasn't able to alcohol and

drugs, very powerful, wasn't able to heal himself. And he

perpetuated it and kept it and he passed it on. And that cycle

continued, and it affected you and your siblings and your mom

greatly. And thank you for one sharing so openly and raw. It's

your You're breaking my heart. But I like I'd like you to

continue on and see what lessons we can learn from, from this

harshness that you had to deal with as a little girl and

growing up.

You know, and I'm not alone. And there's lots of

people who have experienced really terrible things in their

youth. And one of the decisions I made when I was very young,

was the anger or rage is terrible. And it's a feeling

that I should not express and I, I judged everyone who ever

expressed anger. When you think about a little three or four

year old, on the receiving end of rage, you can see where they

get where a young child would get that idea, this isn't good,

this is really bad, I should never have this. But the

repression of my own anger led to some poor choices in my life.

And when we, when we disallow any emotion, whether we think of

it as good or bad, then we are denying a part of ourselves

because our emotions, our information, they're there,

they're there to alert us, Hey, we are having this problem, or

hey, we really liked this, their information and nothing more

their energy, the flow of an emotion has been biochemically

measured to be about 90 to 120 seconds. So when we allow the

flow of an emotion, instead of repressing it, pushing it away,

escaping it, it'll leave us really quickly. The problem is

that when we have really deep emotions, grief, anger, these

really overwhelming emotions, that there seems to be no way

out of them. You need to basically allow that emotion

every time it comes up. And that slowly unbuilt, that mountain of

feeling that you're experiencing. So before I go any

further I want to give the tool that allows this Yeah, because

it's really important. It what this does is disconnects your

mind from the emotion because when our mind becomes involved

in the emotion that extends the amount of time we feel the

emotion. I call it the story when the story is in the

emotion. It goes on for a long time. But when we can just

witness the feeling that's when it can flow and it can leave us.

So to witness a feeling, you feel it. You pay attention.

Where is it in my body? What? How strong? Is it? What does it

feel like? Does it feel like this black knot in my belly? Or

is it in my throat when, you know, just notice it? And then

name it? I am feeling sad, mad, happy, whatever. And then give

yourself permission. Allow the feeling that's it.

Too often. Yeah, too often, we just shout back

and let the anger build. I agree. I know from my

grandfather to my dad to me, especially when I was on

steroids. But that's not an excuse. Yeah, I have a temper.

You know, and it's not a temper with friends. It's a temper

within our family. We're really shows. And it's a discipline

that, you know, I have to work on, we'll have to work on

because we live in emotional roller coaster times. And we

started they started they in, in the 1920s. But there wasn't any

cell phones, there wasn't this digital information, the process

in two seconds flat and make a split second decision, we need

to slow it all down. So I think that those are very wise words

is to own it, and to name it. And I think it's really

important. So you've had you went on, unfortunately. And you

basically it says here that you what do you learn from you

married a man that actually their their main emotion was

anger, too. So you replicated the cycle? Is that true? I

did. Oh, yeah. Yeah. And worse yet, I judged

him for being angry. If you can imagine the toxic cycle dynamic

of that marriage, he would become angry, I judge him for

being angry, he'd get matter. And it was just a downhill toxic

cycle. But you stayed for 32 years in that

relationship?

I did. Yeah. And I this is in no way blaming,

because I don't believe in blame. I think I learned from my

mother that everyone deserves love. And I know that that's

what I kept saying, you know, hey, everyone deserves loves no

matter what their behaviour is. And, and so what I worked myself

into this corner, because I mean, every few years, I got the

idea that my life could be a lot better if I left the marriage.

But every time I had that thought, I thought I can't

leave, that would hurt him. And I can't be responsible for

hurting him. And it took the wildfire really, for me to wake

up to the reality that by stain. I was hurting him by judging him

every time he got married. I hurt myself too. And I

was hurting. Yeah, and you saw your mother do it.

And you stayed for for three decades. There is

accountability, that these other guys we're not upholding your

end of the bargain there as well.

That you know that's true. And I can see in

both cases, they were men carrying a lot of pain. Okay,

and hurt people hurt people. It's, you know, it's everybody.

Every time I say that people say yeah. And, and it's a truth when

we can you know, the bottom line is I love my ex husband. I love

him unconditionally. When I was there I could not because you

can't be unconditional in your love when you're the recipient

of rage and blame. When that when you're in that

circumstance, you have the condition that you're treated

better. Oh, there was no way For me to love him unconditionally,

scales

weren't balanced. I can see that. Again, I

obviously never met your father or this man, but it doesn't

sound like the scales were balanced. And so you're in this

long term relationship. And then devastation happens. This Tubbs

wildfire. Yeah. Let's let's talk about let's talk about losing

everything here.

You know, it's I went to bed that night 1010 30.

So it was October 8, ninth went to bed at 1030 on October 8, got

awakened by a phone call at 130 saying evacuate immediately

looked outside the entire hillside at 130 in the morning,

it should be black. But it was an orange glow. But worse yet,

there was this sound that stays with me. I still remember it.

It's that you know how noisy it is when there's a 65 mile an

hour wind. It's very noisy. When you add on top of that the roar

of a buyer it was there was like unworldly. This noise and I I

just shut the door and I ran downstairs and I said we got to

we have to leave right now. So 15 minutes later, we were out of

the house. I had grabbed the the photographs, the photo albums

because I knew of everything. Those were the least

replaceable. And we got the dog and we got out. At 2am we were

we were at my mother in law's house. And at 2am There was a

notification that they opened the it was the fire it the

headquarters where were all the people involved in safety would

report with this fire. And my job at the county at the time

was to be the health person at this agency in the fire ops

looking after the employees health making sure that they

were taking breaks, making sure that they got food, you know,

making, making sure that they were okay as they were trying to

do their work. So at 2am I said, we that we have to go to work.

And we left my mother in law's house and tried to drive to this

agency in the middle of town. But couldn't because there was

fire all around. So as we're driving there with fire on both

sides of the street, and we're driving through the fire. It was

a horrendous night. And the next morning we walked to our house

not sure if it was there. And it wasn't. It was. And this is the

part that like I just can't wrap my head around this. A 3000

square foot suburban home, you know, that had stood imposingly

on the street was now a two foot pile of ash. And all that was

left was Foundation. And this front stairs, brick stairs that

went up to the front door. So I had a stairway to heaven.

You did and so you Wow. I mean that's a lot to

throw at anyone. And so you you have to kind of figure out

what's next. And that's not easy. So what's next?

Well, I have such a recollection of going into

WalMart, all the shopping centres are closed, everything's

closed but Walmart was open. I needed shoes. I needed

toothpaste I needed, you know, makeup, hairbrush, everything

you need to go to work the next day and I at one point I look up

from the cart, but then I'm pushing and all around the store

are people buying the same things I am because there were

5000 homes burned. And so it was you know, they talk about

pulling the rug out from under you. I imagine that's a little

bit like the day you get a cancer diagnosis. It's like your

whole world goes upside down. That's for sure. Yeah.

So how did this change your life?

Ah, well, when I lost everything, except the

relationship I had, I was forced to look at the relationship in a

way that I had not previously. Because, you know, what I really

learned is that possessions are all replaceable, they don't

matter, people matter. And so it was an act of self love. The

first time I ever truly put myself first, but six months

after the fire, I left my husband. And it was the hardest

decision I ever made, because I don't want to hurt anybody. But

I also recognise that by stain, I was hurting him.

I appreciate that. It's so you, you're gonna then

you know, you've now focused your work on, you know, you've

dealt with your dad with alcoholism, and you've lost you

lost all your possessions. And now you're you're basically I

call it putting Humpty Dumpty back together again, I've had a

couple different times, but many people do. And, but this time,

your new version of Angela is going to come come forward. And

you decided to focus your work on children and emotions. How

did you decide? How did you come to that?

You know, many of my, my father's life decisions,

and my life decisions, were based on emotions. And I

understood that, you know, this line generational line of trauma

and abuse that was woven through my family, the history, I

understood that that was all connected to painful feelings,

that in the case of my father, he tried to escape, you cannot

escape painful feelings, they follow you. They're like

magnetically charged to you, and they just stick. So having the

tool knowing how to witness your feeling. It's like gaining

freedom from the prison that you create when you try to escape

your feelings. And people don't really get that. If you look at

my father, he started drinking as a young man. And he had to

drink more and more and more and more in order to numb those

feelings. He died an alcoholic on Skid Row. You know, this was

not a good life that he had. But that is a prison that he chose

that he built for himself. Unfortunately, he didn't, you

know, nobody talked about the importance of emotions and the

importance of knowing how to deal with your emotions. When he

was a kid, that was not taught. When I was a kid, it was not

taught. And fortunately, it's starting to be taught because

many schools now have SEL, which is social emotional learning.

And, you know, I really see my books as a adjunct to an SEL

programme because through story, we can take in information that

we will not take in through lecture. So, when children

either have their parents read the book, my books to them, or

when the children read the bugs, they might recognise themselves

in some of the story. And they might have like, oh, well, I

never considered looking at it that way. And so it just might

open there, expand their awareness of, you know, there's

a different way that we can look at things that doesn't make us a

big them. And it's stepping out of that victim energies, you

know another very empowering thing that we can do. When I was

married, I was the victim of that relationship. And there's a

very powerful energetic triangle. So victim persecutor

rescuer. And we go through that triangle, when when we're in

victim energy being on any leg of that triangle means you're in

victim energy. So, for example, my husband would yell at me, I'd

yell back. So first, I'm the victim, then I'm the persecutor.

And then next day, I would try and save us by, by coming up

with a way that maybe we could not be that destructive to each

other. And, and so I just played in that triangle of energy. And

it was only when I quit blaming him for his behaviour, and

understood that if I'm being triggered by his behaviour, it's

not him. That's the problem. It's me. Because I have within

some reaction, reactive energy that is responsive to this

behaviour. And so once I had that realisation, taking radical

responsibility for my reactiveness plucked me right

out of that victim energy. Once we take responsibility, we're

not victims. Once we take responsibility, we have the

power to create whatever change we want, if I am reactive,

because I have this energy, maybe based on something my

father said to me when I was little, then I can use tools to

heal that part of me. So that I'm not reactive anymore. And

now I'm empowered. I'm not anybody's victim.

So I, this is one of my more serious podcasts. I

mean, this one, we're talking about raw motion here, we're

talking about your real life experience. And it's it's raw

and heartfelt. For those that might be wondering, the Bella

Santini Chronicles are is the name of the series of books you

have to do. And you have a third one on the way, what was the

first one we did that we did that focus on?

So the first book of this series is really

introducing the whole concept and the characters. And I would

say that theme of that one is really about knowing how to feel

your emotions. And one of the chapters, Bella the main

character and one of her compatriots, and up in an

alternate dimension, that is peopled by emotions. And so the

discussions that they have about how to get through these heavy

emotions that they're experiencing, in order to

achieve their goal of getting a relic retrieving a relic. They,

the discussions are very informative, but it's not a

lecture are telling kids how to do it. It's a character saying,

hey, you know, this breathwork pattern really helps keep you

calm. Or, or, Hey, have you heard of EFT tapping? It's a way

to manage your emotions. And so through these character

discussions, the kids can absorb this information and it's, I

call it edutainment.

You're so you're telling stories that kids can

absorb or parents can read that are teaching some serious

lessons but they don't they'll take it you know if their ages

34567 where they're not, you know, ready or grounded to take

on the seriousness of it, but you're giving them some lessons

and they're able to then understand it. If they can

recognise you know, certain situations if they're being

yelled at or they're being hit or abused. They can understand

maybe and deal with it, but also hopefully tell Someone so that

they can get helped. So, so do you. You know, you've been

through a lot. But you're I would say that you you're, you

know, the embodiment of emotional resilience, I actually

like to say that I'm resilience to hope. Because I'm growing on

that path. And I like to focus on positivity and, but I don't

ignore the world around us. We are in a difficult world, there

is a lot of negativity. It's all in a blink of an eyelash, we

had, you know, the shooting in the Chicago parade, going to a

fourth of July parade, not even safe anymore going to school,

right? There's, there's a war there's, there's stuff going on,

that's just messy. And it's all in a blink of an eyelash. And

it's I fear for the kids today that are growing up digital. You

know, I have a daughter who's 20. So she's, she's growing up

digital. And it's the amazing the amount of emotional

complexity coming out of COVID. And I'm coming out of cancer and

COVID, my wife, my caregiver, cancer and COVID. And, and we're

trying to put our pieces back together again. And I want to

ask you a final question before we'll share some information how

to get back in touch with you. But so you have seemed to kind

of clearly now it says, you know, what, what do you want to

embody and now in your lifetime, and you've chosen a really

interesting path now that you want to share with others and

not go through what you went through. And I'll just relate

that to you is that, in my story, I tell people to get

screened for colon cancer. If you go get screened, we it's

called cologuard, which is poop in a cup and into a lab, or you

get a colonoscopy, you can save yourself and prep prep for

that's not fun, you cleanse yourself out. But I don't want

anyone to have to go through the chemotherapy, the surgeries,

radiation, the side effects that I had to go through, you can

avoid that by getting your colonoscopy which takes 20

minutes you wake up typically they tell you you don't come

back for five years. And you're on your way. So I see that

you're trying to save, save people. Right on that. That's

what your one on one body in this lifetime.

Yeah. It's interesting, because there's

that save, which is part of the victim triangle.

Tell me when

I say I, I plant seeds, emotional intelligence.

And what I figured out, you know, you mentioned the school

shooting, or it wasn't a school shooting in the Fourth of July

shoot. In Chicago. Tomorrow, I'm talking on six seconds.org

network about how to help kids who have experienced that kind

of trauma. And most of my work is done in in the prevention of

that kind of trauma. Because what I believe if every kid is

taught self love, and emotional intelligence, then they're going

to be free of all of these horrible things, suicides,

substance abuse, alcohol abuse, self harming behaviour, over

eating. All of those are driven by painful emotion as our school

shootings. And when we can teach our children self love, and

emotion, emotional intelligence, the world is going to change.

Can you imagine what these adults how brilliant adults

they'll be? Because they're not going to be emotionally

triggered by behaviour there, they're going to have the tools

to deal with it. They're not going to one of the things I

posted after the last school shooting is that no child who

has self love would purposely choose to harm another. And no

child with emotional intelligence would plot and plan

and execute that kind of thing. So I honestly I believe deep in

my heart that these two things are more important than most of

the things that are taught in school. And we need to create

this within our world so that kids can grow up in a safer

environment.

Amen to that. I mean, I'm on Team Angela because

I'm going around speaking about resilience to hope and

Inspiration and accountability and authenticity and values. And

I, that value of self love needs to be felt and needs to needs to

be taught to our children because we'll make the world a

better place together. I do want to actually just say that if you

are, you know, listening and you're coping with stress, or

any type of issues, please get help. There's there's hotlines,

the national suicide prevention hotline, it's an English and

Spanish, get get help, really make that call, get yourself

help. And because the world is a tough place, and I hope you'll

do that, this has been a really, this is this is not easy issues

to talk about, either. So I'm glad you came, Angela, how can

someone get in touch with you get your books and, and explore

this further with you because you are, you know, self

development mentor, but you're also you've experienced life

and, and had some harshness and real tough stuff coming your

way. And you're, you're trying to ask spread this love and, and

spread the emotional seeds of resilience. So I decided to get

in touch with you.

My website, which is Angela Legh, Angela L E G

H.com. And I do want to just add on to what you said about

getting help because everything single person matters. Every

single person is a unique soul that brings to Earth their own

special gifts. And if you're feeling like you don't matter if

you are feeling like this, everything's too hard and you

you need to get out of it. Please take a moment and feel

your own heart and know that you are love. And then call the into

because there are people there who want want you to survive.

They they want to have you in this world and you need to know

that there are people like that.

Thanks for reinforcing that. So this this

is this is serious business today. Angela, you have Shining

Brightly with us. Thank you for coming and sharing your story.

It's raw. It's tough, but you are here to help others and we

are we are certainly thankful and grateful for you to come on

today and I'll share this with with my network. Everyone needs

to hear the message. And I know that since I know you're you

know, Richard, he you are his angel and you're now an angel to

the Shining Bright the world as well. Being here today,