Episode Title: Finding Your Voice with Life Coach Barb PastuszkoEpisode Title: Finding Your Voice with Life Coach Barb Pastuszko
Recovery Recharged with Ellen Stewart Pushy Broad from the Bronx
When you find your voice, you don't find some new thing inside of you; instead, you find a little more of you. You find a little more freedom to speak, express, and to let yourself be heard. You find that your voice isn't anywhere other than inside of...
27:59•12 Jun 2024
Finding Your Voice After Years of Staying Small with Life Coach Barb Pastusko
Episode Overview
- Recognise when you have gone "small" by constantly taking a back seat and avoiding speaking up.
- Practise positive affirmations such as "I love you" and "I believe in you" to build self-kindness and confidence.
- Break fears into smaller parts and tackle them one piece at a time so they stop feeling paralysing.
- Treat midlife as a new beginning, focusing on health, wellness, and honouring your own boundaries.
- Use small decisions—like choosing dinner plans or scheduling self-care—as stepping stones to a stronger voice.
“"Fear is just excitement on pause."”
Understand the complexities of addiction with insights from a life coach who knows what it feels like to "go small" and almost disappear from her own life. Recovery Recharged with Ellen Stewart brings on certified life coach Barb Pastusko to talk about women over 40 who have lost their voice, sometimes for decades, and are finally ready to be heard.
Barb shares how the birth of her first child, financial trauma, and undiagnosed health issues led her to quietly withdraw: "I went small. I became more mute, and almost disengaged from the rest of the world." Years later, the pandemic and losing her job forced a turning point: she realised she "can't do what I've been doing" and began a deep personal journey to understand why she stayed in the background for so long.
The conversation speaks directly to women who take a back seat—mothers, partners, carers—who give kindness to everyone except themselves.
Barb now centres values like loyalty, respect, and kindness, and points out, "I wish I would have shown kindness to myself." She talks about self-care, health and wellness (mental and physical), honouring boundaries, and seeing midlife as "not the end, this is just the beginning." Together, Ellen and Barb call out common reasons women lose their voice: codependency, financial stress, health challenges, hostile or abusive environments, and relationships with active addicts or alcoholics that slowly erode self-worth.
Barb’s practical tools include practising affirmations in the mirror, stepping out of comfort zones in small ways, and breaking fear into pieces so it stops being paralysing. Her favourite reframe? "Fear is just excitement on pause." If you’ve ever wondered, "Who am I to want more?" this conversation gently challenges that doubt and reminds you that small choices—like saying where you want to go for dinner—can be huge turning points.
Ready to start speaking up for yourself, one brave sentence at a time?
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