Erica: Hey, girl. By now, you know I have Her Collective, my online community for ambitious women who are done doing it alone. Her Collective is for the women who are smart, capable, and driven, but they find themselves stuck on the sticky floors like self doubt, burnout, and waiting for permission that quite honestly never comes. Inside HER, you get more than motivation. You get real support, real strategies, and real momentum.

Erica: We work on things like clarifying what you want now and what's coming next, building confidence without burning yourself out, navigating hard conversations, career moves, and leadership moments with clarity, and surrounding yourself with women who actually get it. This isn't about hustling harder. It's about moving intentionally with the right tools and the right people in your corner. If you're ready to stop spinning, start choosing yourself, and build a career in life that actually feels aligned, I'd love to welcome you inside her collective. You can learn more and join us at www.joinhercollective.com.

Erica: Because, honestly, girl, you were never meant to do this alone.

Caroline: I would say she's never told me she loved me. I've never been kissed. I've never been hugged. All I've ever heard is how awful I am. And and I was determined to break that cycle, and I did with my own three children.

Caroline: Took work. It took overcoming the eating disorder. But for me, that was the biggest, most shameful Achilles heel of my entire life, which was, you know, who doesn't have a mother who loves them?

Erica: Caroline Miller is my guest today, and she is going to steal the show y'all. She is the number one goals and grit guru, a motivational speaker, TEDx check done, best selling author, and positive psychology expert. So y'all know we are gonna get into it today.

Erica: She comes to us today with her own sticky floor story that you don't wanna miss. Caroline, I am so grateful you're here today. Thank you so much for being here.

Caroline: Wow. It's so nice to meet you, and I gotta say you're one of those authentic people who doesn't just say you support women. I mean, I've already seen in one short month how much you've done it to me. And we just met, so I just wanna get that on the record right off the bat. Oh.

Caroline: So thank you.

Erica: I love it. I love it. You're welcome. So I gave a nice little high level blurb of you, but I'd love to hear a little bit more about who you are and what you do.

Caroline: So I am an executive coach. I work primarily with CEOs, male and female, from around the world. My specialty is goal setting, and, I wrote the book Creating Your Best Life, reissued in 2020, first evidence based goal setting book ever published for the mass market. I got a master's degree at Penn in 2006, which was really fascinating because it changed me as a as a mother, as a woman, as a professional. Just learning the science of flourishing changed my DNA.

Caroline: And so I was one of the first 32 people in the world to get this cool master's degree sitting at the feet of these giants. And I think a lot of things in my life have shifted because once you hear what flourishing does and how it impacts you, I think you it's a minute past midnight. You cannot look away from it. So I think when I think about who am I today, it's with me as really trying to pay it forward and share that with as many people as possible. And then if I'm gonna throw in my last back story.

Caroline: I overcame bulimia almost forty years ago when there was no cure, no hope. Nobody got better. There's nowhere to go. And I, in my eighth year of bulimia, I hit my last bottom in '84, and I ended up saving my life. And I wrote the first autobiography by anybody who got better and stayed better, and we're taping this right before National Eating Disorder Awareness Week.

Caroline: And I am in unbroken recovery, and I'm really proud of it. And I just think it's something if women have eating disorders in their past. I think we need to tell more stories of hope and recovery because I think those stories give other people hope to keep fighting and going forward. There's so many women with sticky floors, partly because of how they feel about their bodies. And they haven't had the confidence or hope that their lives could get better, and that holds them back in so many different ways.

Erica: I was, watching a Netflix documentary with Brene Brown the other day, and she was saying that for women, the number one vulnerability that we have is with our bodies.

Caroline: Wow. I hadn't heard her say that.

Erica: Right? So for women, our number one vulnerability is our bodies. And with men, it's being being weak. Right? Because we don't want men to appear weak.

Caroline: Wow. I'll have to go watch that.

Erica: Yeah. But yeah.

Erica: So you kinda touched on it. I mean, you have written a couple books. I believe it is eight, you said? Yes.

Caroline: That

Erica: is amazing. And your first one was this book on bulimia. Correct?

Caroline: Yes. My Name Is Caroline. It is still selling. And it was the shot heard about the world when it came out. I was like, what?

Caroline: This woman is admitting to this shameful, horrible behavior? And so, consequently, I was on every freaking cell in the world, every magazine, every newspaper. But it was mostly like I was a chemistry experiment. I'd go on these shows, and they'd look at me like, what did you do? And I remember the New York Times Sunday book review was very similar to the Washington Post review, which is who wants to read about this disgusting disorder.

Caroline: And, she embarrassed her husband. And, frankly, it just shows you how far or maybe how not far away it come at that point that it was still considered embarrassing that a woman would acknowledge her eating disorder and who in the world could it possibly help. It was so disgusting. And think about the impact it had on the man in her life. That's a piece of why I think so many women are still so silent about it.

Caroline: But that was my first book. And then I did write a few years ago the first book ever written by someone who had stayed in recovery. And that, I think, is still the unicorn out there in the eating disorder field. Who who's staying better? I think it's still thought to be not possible.

Caroline: Like, women just switch addictions and go to credit card addiction or gambling or alcohol or opioids or whatever. I mean, we are in the midst of this unbelievable epidemic. Women dying at midlife earlier than ever before of diseases of despair, you know, despair about their lives. And eating disorders, the piece of what, you know, what's happening. So I think I needed to step away from being an executive coach and a motivational speaker because that's not my field is not eating disorders.

Caroline: And I thought I'm gonna I'm gonna open the kimono one more time, and I'm gonna talk about how I stayed in recovery because that it used to be the holy grail was, can anybody get in recovery or did they just die like Karen Carpenter? But now it's can you stay in recovery? And, I wrote that book, Positively Caroline, and I talked about the things I hadn't had the courage to talk about, and my name is Caroline. But I also included the field of positive psychology and how that can help with addiction recovery and eating disorders, in particular. And I think it's the field has been very slow to adopt so many of the precepts of flourishing, whereas the alcohol and drug addiction field's at.

Caroline: So what's that about? I don't know.

Erica: Very true. So when I think about my sticky floors and I talk about them with a lot of the women that I work with, I talk a lot about my big sticky floor was wine. Right? And abusing wine and using it to numb out. When you think about your sticky floor, do you think about it in the terms of, like, the eating disorder was my sticky floor or the shame that you were mentioning?

Caroline: Actually, my sticky floor was my borderline mother. My mother, did not like me. In fact, the last thing my father said to me before he died was, you know, your mother never loved you. And it was it was literally like I suddenly felt not crazy anymore because borderline and borderline mothers usually have one child to torture. The the phrase in the field is they feel kind of steal that child's soul.

Caroline: And there's a whole subgroup in psychology that studies daughters of borderline mothers. And my mother did everything she could to destroy me, And, my sticky floor was being seen for who I was, not for who she told the world I was. Mhmm. And maybe that's right. Why I wrote nonfiction books.

Caroline: Maybe that's why the book was called My Name is Caroline. It was like I was being born again. And right up until her death, it was really just a tragedy for me that Mother's Day would come around. I would see the Hallmark ads and all about, you know, your mother loves you, and she, send her a car. And I would say, she's never told me she loved me.

Caroline: I've never been kissed. I've never been hugged. All I've ever heard is how awful I am. And, and I was determined to break that cycle, and I did with my own three children. It took work.

Caroline: It took overcoming the eating disorder. But for me, that was the biggest, most shameful Achilles heel of my entire life, which was, you know, who doesn't have a mother who loves them? It's it's like something's missing from the computer chip of who they are. And the reason why you only come to grips with that in your thirties, usually, daughter of a borderline mother, because that's when you usually have your own small children, and you look at them and say, I don't feel anything like what I know my mother feels about me. I don't feel those emotions.

Caroline: I love that child. And that's why it's such a falling through a trap door and, realizing, well, if your mother doesn't love you, who does? And what is your self worth? So that was my sticky floor, and it was a horrible one.

Erica: Yeah. I mean, I can imagine. So, I mean, I'm curious because that's challenging sticky floor to overcome. How do you begin to work through that?

Caroline: Good question. I think the first thing I did was just identify my mother is a borderline. It was only in the late nineteen nineties that this whole set of books came out, overcoming the borderline parents, understanding the borderline mother. I mean, it's relatively new. So, you know, name it, claim it, get rid of it.

Caroline: I had to finally name it. This is what's going on. I had to and, actually, my father's death in '97 was a gift because people would always say to me, oh, you know, they're jealous of you or she has her own special way of expressing love. So you're always being gaslit. Like Mhmm.

Caroline: You know, just like what you know and what you see isn't true, Caroline, because no mothers behave like that. And so, I had my father saying your mother never loved you set me free because it's like, well, it's true. I always knew it. There was all that abuse I went through. But this is the reality.

Caroline: Even borderlines do their work behind closed doors, and they leave no fingerprints. And that's why it's so devastating because the rest of the world doesn't see them. I had good therapy. Positive psychology really helped me. It's interesting.

Caroline: Once I started to talk about it, I developed an entire set of friends of women who are spectacular women, all of whom have borderline mothers. And part of why they've become successful is needing to be seen for who they know they really are even if they weren't seen, by the woman who gave birth to them who should have been their primary role model.

Erica: Hey there, listeners. If you have ever felt like you're stuck in a place, held back by self doubt, perfectionism, or that pesky inner critic, you're not alone. We all face those sticky floors that keep us from reaching the heights we dream of. But guess what? It's time to shatter those limiting beliefs and toxic behaviors to uncover infinite possibilities.

Erica: My book, Glass Ceilings and Sticky Floors, is your ultimate guide to smashing through barriers, overcoming limiting beliefs, and stepping into your full potential. This book has been endorsed by none other than the great Mel Robbins, best selling author and motivational powerhouse. It's also been featured in Success Magazine, so you know it's packed with insights that work. Inside, you'll find real life sticky floor stories, practical strategies to help you navigate your own sticky floor moments, and a whole lot of inspiration to keep you climbing. This isn't just a book.

Erica: It's your road map to success, confidence, and freedom. Grab your copy of Glass Ceilings and Sticky Floors today at www.ericaandersonrooney.com. Whether you're in the boardroom, the classroom, or just starting out, this book is for you because no one, and I mean no one, deserves to stay stuck, no one deserves to feel small, and you have glass ceilings to shatter. Let's do this.

Erica: Needing to be seen and needing to belong are such long. Basic human function and need. Yeah. It's one of the most core pieces of it all.

Caroline: Yeah.

Erica: So to have to

Caroline: walk through your life,

Erica: yeah, feeling that and feeling gaslit too, like you said. Right? Everybody else

Erica: is telling you're wrong about the what you are experiencing.

Caroline: Yeah. And, Caroline, you're such a bad human being for writing that book. My name is Caroline because you embarrassed your family. And, and I didn't I didn't detail the abuse in that book. I actually kept secret, which I went into and positively care on it because I thought, alright.

Caroline: If people have gotten this far in my story, they deserve to know the truth about the last time my dad hit me was the night before I got married. It's it's about time to say, you know what? Blood is not thicker than water. And if you wanna overcome an eating disorder and stay in recovery, you may have to break ties with your family of origin. And, frankly, there's no winner when you do it.

Caroline: You're damned if you do. You're damned if you don't. And I thought I have to, you know, I have to tell that story. But my mother would do these really insidious, awful things. It's it's barbaric to say it, but I just remember it was my norm.

Caroline: When I was a little girl, we would pull up in traffic next to a car at a stoplight, and she would say things like she would look at the people in the car next to us and say, those people know who you really are and how awful you really are. I mean, I'm a little girl, and those people are strangers. And, of course, they don't know who I really am, but it was like that twenty four seven. And, I did have to learn how to belong. I did have to find a tribe.

Caroline: I think this is why for me, my eighth book on it was an ebook I wrote, because I just felt I wanted people to write it, download it, and back then was on why every woman should be in a mastermind group. Every woman should form a group of women who they know, who have their back, who support them unconditionally, and who will cheer for them as they go for big hard goals and be their soft place to fall, and I never had that. And so mastermind groups are really important to me. And I also think it's helped me deal with this mean girl issue, which I've also had. I mean, my original mean girl is my mother.

Caroline: I mean, how much how much more worse is that? I mean, I know I know how bad it can be because it started at home. But then it just it's followed me the rest of my life, and I thought, alright. Couple years ago, six, seven years ago, I said, I'm going to look at this from a research perspective. I wanna find out why we're doing this to each other.

Caroline: First of all, establish that it's a real thing. Secondly, why are we doing this to each other? Third, if I'm gonna talk about it, I have to talk about it with a solution that I believe will work. So I spent six, seven years doing nothing but drowning in research. And part of it, I think, was also just to deal with my original wound, my mother.

Caroline: Like, I had to understand this. And there are biological reasons why women do it. It's not the whole shooting match, but it is there. Maybe you know? Who who knows?

Caroline: But damaged people do damage other people.

Erica: It's very true. And and I would love to talk about the work that you're doing around Mean Girls. Because as someone in corporate America, I see it all over the place. You know, aside from, you know, your original Mean Girl being your mother, where did you see it, and how did you experience it?

Caroline: Oh my god. Where did I not see it? Where do I not continue to see it? It's everywhere. I went to a private school in, Washington, DC, National Cathedral School for Girls, one of the best schools in the country.

Caroline: I thought there were being girls there. I think, you know, if it's your win, it's not my win. If you get into that Ivy League school, you've taken a spot from me. There was always that competitiveness. Now I am descended from Olympic gold, silver, and bronze medalist, so there is a competition gene in my family.

Caroline: So I was innately competitive too. And I probably have been a mean girl myself at times. I'm not thinking right now. I can't give you a story, but I've probably, you know, taken water out of another woman's bucket in envy, in, whatever, sadness, feeling like it diminished me in some way. None of none of those things are actually true.

Caroline: I mean, being jealous is true, but, I don't know. I've I've seen it everywhere. I've seen it on sports teams. I saw it on a rowing team I joined in my late forties, early fifties. I was the oldest competitive swimmer, went back to master swimming.

Caroline: And in the rowing team, I took an erg test. And an erg test is something where it's just a test of your physical strength. So I'm I've always been very fit. I've been lifting weights for twenty five years, three times a week. I'm strong, swimmer, long legs.

Caroline: I'm built like a rower, but I'd never rode before. So and my daughter had rode. So I knew that this erg test was just one thing that indicated strength, not technique, not skill. So I popped an ERG score that was the best ERG score on this entire established woman's rowing team, and that was the day my life ended on that team. People stopped talking to me.

Caroline: People would turn their backs when I walked in a room. They would openly make fun of me in a boat. I mean, we're talking adult women. Wow. And, one of the other people said, oh, don't worry about that much just the way they are.

Caroline: But it hurts. It hurts when and I would think to myself, wait a minute. I know that it's not everything. I know that technique is only part of it, certainly not enough to get voted in a good boat. I was not ignorant.

Caroline: I had performed well for my daughter.

Erica: But they must have felt, well,

Caroline: I must think I'm all that simply because I had this good erg score. I ended up stopping rowing because of it. It broke my heart because I just couldn't deal with that any longer. Went back to just swimming all the time. That's just one example.

Caroline: You see it in the neighborhood. You see it you see a professional I was giving a speech once at a big, big, I'll say network television thing. And there were two women in the room who started to make fun of me while I was presenting, and it was an all day workshop. I've been contacted to present. And this isn't something I've presented with the Wharton Education Executive Education School.

Caroline: They would have been seen by the people who brought me in. And these two women begin to heckle me, make fun of me, laugh at inappropriate times. At lunch, they pulled me aside, wanting me to get to the point. So what I found out later that afternoon was they've been written up by the powers that be in that organization who would come in and observe me going through this as the two mean girls. In the organization, they said they were gonna stop bringing in female presenters because of it.

Caroline: I mean, that was just a few years ago. I mean, are you kidding me?

Erica: Really? It's wild.

Caroline: It's everywhere. Don't you think?

Erica: I think I mean, those are some extreme examples. Right? Like, those are some pretty bold faced people that are acting that way, and I think that it says a lot more about them than anyone else. Right? I see it a lot showing up in almost quieter ways so that it's almost not even so much recognized.

Erica: Like, if I go out to, you know, my group of moms in the neighborhood and I'm just like, what a week. It's been so hard. And they're like, well, let me tell you about mine. You know? It's like it's always this competition to Yeah.

Erica: Out tire, out exhaust, out complain. You've got a bad I've got it worse kinda thing. And it's like, you know, I don't wanna be in competition about those things.

Caroline: Right. Right. It was interesting because I think there are reasons why women do this, and some of it is biological. But some of it is also simply because, we think there's, you know, scarcity theory, and we believe if she if she gets an award, if she has something going on with her, then, it means that I can't have the same things going on. Men are not like that.

Caroline: Men grow up to being accustomed to being aggressive and competitive and shaking hands at the end of a whatever. Little girls are so verbally, accomplished at such a young age that the put downs end up being devastatingly nonverbal. And so this shaming and shunning that happens with women where they simply sometimes won't talk to you. The tall poppy syndrome in the office is alive and well. A woman who gets acknowledged in a company newsletter, something is said about her on LinkedIn, whatever.

Caroline: The most common thing you'd see in the research about this is other women go silent. It's not that they're openly mean. It's that they're passive aggressively destructive by avoiding saying anything. And that is hurtful because the oldest cultural way to hurt somebody is to throw them out of the tribe. And women do this for no real reason with a lot of other women, sometimes just because their her kids are successful, sometimes because, she went to a college that's perceived as better than where you went.

Caroline: And it's sickening to me because we do so well with the tend and befriend. Women have this biological kinda oxytocin thing where we always tend to each other when we're hurt, when we've lost something, when we're in need of something. And so women come together to do the, you know, casserole brigade or whatever. Mhmm. We're wired to take care of women who are hurting.

Caroline: What we're not trained to do, and we don't have enough role models for, is to believe and achieve. If another woman achieves, why don't we go towards her in admiration instead of only coming to women when they're in need and hurting? There's something about that we have not been acculturated to believe is something we can and should do. Instead, we have these tropes. Mean girls is just like a show playing on Broadway.

Caroline: The television shows. I mean, I think we've just concluded, you know, erroneously that women are just mean, and that's just the way it is, and there's no changing it. So let's just just know that women go out each other and cat fights. There's no there's no synonymous word for men fighting with each other.

Erica: I was just about to say that. I was just about to say there's no dog fighting name for men or anything like that.

Caroline: That's right. And, you know, one of the things that I was really on a search for, Brene Brown and I, I think, we're on the same, you know, highway at times, is 15 Years ago when I was at Penn in this masters of applied positive psychology program, one of our professors stopped the class and said, okay, everybody. I wanna know. Can any of you think of the word that's the opposite of Schadenfreude? You know, taking pleasure in someone else's misery.

Caroline: And I think we all sat there stumped in silence and never came up with anything. And then Chris Peterson, who was, you know, the cofounders of positive psychology, he died at a young age. But I kept looking. And a couple 2019 Australia, I stumbled into a workshop. I had just been part of a, appreciative inquiry thing on thriving women, thriving world might help lead that.

Caroline: We talked about when women thrive, the world thrives. But I afterwards, I went to this workshop where there were all these Israeli linguistic experts, and they're talking about words. And at the end, I raised my hand. I was like, do any of you know a word that is the opposite of schadenfreude? Is there any word that means happiness when someone else gets something good?

Caroline: And to my complete astonishment, this woman said, yes. There is. There is an untranslatable Hebrew word, and it's, means join another person's, joy. And so I started promoting a few years ago, and only recently did I hear Brene Brown and other people have made up a word. But we don't need to.

Caroline: There is a word. Firgun is what she and other people are talking about. We have to talk about the fact that there is a word, firgun. And the fact that it's untranslatable is fascinating to me because all this linguistic scholarship says if a word doesn't exist in a culture, the behavior doesn't exist there either. And so most cultures don't have a word that means if you are happy because you've succeeded, I can be happy for you.

Caroline: And then the last thing I'm gonna say about this, because I'm gonna show it on the speech I'm giving this week, in 2019, the Miss World pageant, it came down to three women at the end. One was miss Nigeria, another one was miss something, and then there was miss, Jamaica. And so the announcer said, miss Jamaica is the winner. And all of a sudden, you see this beautiful dark skinned woman just running around the stage dancing, just excited, like tears, and you're thinking, she's the winner. And, no, that wasn't it.

Caroline: It was her friend. Can I say miss Nigeria? Miss Jamaica had won. Miss Nigeria was the one running in circles, and it broke the Internet. It broke the Internet.

Caroline: The number the thousands, if not millions, of people who commented on the fact that why don't women do this for each other? It was so shocking to people to see this obvious display of firgun that everybody said, what do we have to do to live in a world where this can happen? So I've really been trying to well, so that's how I came up with mastermind groups. I narrowed it all down to we have to now deliberately create mastermind groups where we come together with the right women to support each other's goals. And if we don't, god help all of us.

Erica: I remember seeing that because I remember people just being so confused by it.

Caroline: You know? And then Yeah.

Erica: I think people were going, oh my god. Did did she

Erica: not hear the right name? Like,

Erica: this is gonna be embarrassing.

Caroline: You know?

Erica: And they were like, no. No. She's genuinely so excited for them.

Erica: I and it makes me think about I believe it was Meryl Streep in one of the academy awards something was up for it against somebody else, and the other person won. But in the background of this picture that they capture, you just see Meryl Streep being like, yes. Like

Caroline: Wow. And it was amazing. Gotta get my hands on that.

Erica: I will. I will find it, and I will share it.

Caroline: Find it. You know? But it's considered like unicorn behavior.

Erica: It's it's abnormal. Yes.

Caroline: Abnormal. And so this perpetuates this trope of women are just mean. And I and I'm curious about the fact that you go to any great prep school that's preparing women to lead the world, and they'll have all these anti bullying workshops and all these things, how to shake hands more firmly, how to do the right resume. I have never in all of my years, and I've spoken at thousands of places since my first book came out. I've never once seen a school, a university, a women's group offer a workshop on how to be happy for another woman when she succeeds.

Caroline: Like, why are we teaching this? Why are we saying this is the way we need to be? We're shooting at each other inside the tent. We act like this behavior is so abnormal that it can't possibly be, you know, replicated. I mean, are you kidding me?

Erica: Because I feel like it's almost taught as if this is how we act, but we don't say it's how we act. Right? Because we have to be nice on the outside. You know? Oh, which we do.

Erica: Undermining and behind the back kind of stuff. You know? So Yeah. No one would ever admit that.

Caroline: Some people do. I was at a workshop. I'd, I spoke to senior women of some international really, it's the international company, and we talked about Mean Girls. And this woman on the stage who was a big partner at, big accounting firm, she said I was a mean girl. I was a mean girl.

Caroline: Here's why I did it, and here's why I don't do it anymore. And the whole audience just, like, stood and applauded. Like, she admitted it. Now I was fascinated when I wrote the book #IHaveYourBack, which is on my website, the download. Why can't we talk about it?

Caroline: Why is this so taboo? Why do we throw women out of the tribe for just talking about it? The reason why is that when we're growing up as little girls, we are, again, acculturated to believe that women are in a sisterhood. Women are in dyads, friendship dyads, girls have best friends. And so to go to that place where you say, no.

Caroline: They're not all best friends, is you're going against you're going against the stories. You're going against the expectations. And it's too embarrassing for people to acknowledge that they too have been thrown out of a tribe. So it's not okay. And other women attack me openly, not all, because almost everyone has a story, for talking about it because they say it takes the spotlight off of me too, what time's up, you know, or what men have done to women.

Caroline: And and I'm the first one to say, I have an abuse story from men. Every woman I know has a story. That reckoning is way overdue. I think it's both and. I think you can have that kind of abuse, and I can, you know, seek, you know, justice for that in all kinds of places.

Caroline: But to pretend this other thing isn't also ankle weights on women, pulling us back, keeping us from making enough money, may any kind of parity, because it is holding us back. I can't tell you how many CEOs I've coached to tell me about other women on board who've made it onto a board who refused to pull other women with them. Maybe because they believe there's only one seat at the table for a woman. Maybe maybe that's not true, but they're they're acting like it is. But I think it's too easy to say you mentor and sponsor other women because there's often no witnesses to that behavior.

Caroline: You can say it. We're supposed to say it. And if you don't say it and you don't say that the sisterhood is where you reside, then it's all good, then it's like you're essentially dead. You can't be a woman and say that. That's why I came up with a word that I hope becomes word of the year, Ampliship.

Caroline: I think mentorship, sponsorship, allyship are missing a key thing, and that is the muscle of being accountable for supporting other women. And I think Ampliship is when you amplify other women's good news and success in front of witnesses. There have to be witnesses to this behavior because there are too many women who are getting away with saying they do it. And I know for a fact, and I've been told this by count with other women, I know these people, they don't do it. And this is why what stood out when you and I met was within an hour.

Caroline: You were talking about me in a really nice way that somebody else with the power to do something really important for me. You did it. And I remember I wrote back. I was like, this says so much about who you really are. It's so rare, but you do it.

Caroline: Yeah. And so everyone you're touching is seeing that, yeah, this is a norm in her world. Maybe it can be a norm in mine. Maybe it could be contagious in my life. So, anyway, I have a lot of admiration for you because of that.

Erica: Thank you. Yeah. One of my favorites is and it's just a small thing, but I every Friday, I do a queen bee scene post, and it's all about amplifying women. Even if it's just a meeting or a connection, it's like, let's bring everybody with us. Right?

Erica: Like, let's do it all together.

Caroline: That's true.

Erica: I love it. I love Ampliship. I love it as the solution to Mean Girls. I think that's so powerful. Caroline, if you could go back and, you know, tell the little girl who's dealing with the borderline mother a piece of advice, you know, with everything that you know now from all the things you've learned in your life overcoming bulimia, overcoming the borderline mother, what would that piece of advice be?

Caroline: Oh my god. Oh, that was so painful. Oh, that's sad little girl. But she's lovable. I mean, if I had just even once thought to myself, someone's gonna love me, and I am lovable.

Caroline: My grandmother loved me. But, you know, when your mother, the woman who gives birth to you, tells you that she doesn't want you, didn't want you, all those things, makes fun of you, puts you down. Your success, it is her pain. You you don't she she would lock me in a cage, actually, in the basement, when I was a little girl. And I think you just kind of start to believe no one's gonna want me.

Caroline: And if I could've just had that one message, you are lovable, someone loved you, life might have been different. But I like who I became. I think all that adversity actually served me well, and I think it actually served the world well. And if if something happens to me, I know that I've given hundreds of thousands of people hope that they could overcome an eating disorder, bulimia, and stay in recovery. And if that's on my tombstone, I'll be proud.

Caroline: You know? So it made me who I was, and that's pretty good place to be.

Erica: Well, I love it. And, Caroline, I certainly look up to you in everything that you're doing and everything that you've done. I mean, it's just it is amazing work. So thank you.

Caroline: That's all I can say.

Erica: Thank you so much. Amazing. But thank you for being here today. I absolutely love talking with you.

Caroline: Wow. You're very kind. Me too. Thank you. We'll do it again.

Erica: Oh, didn't you just love that episode with Caroline? She has become one of my most favorite people and someone who I deeply admire for all of the work that she is doing for women. So let's take a page from Caroline's book and do some Ampliship right here. If you could rate, review, and subscribe to the podcast, y'all know it. It will help it land into the hands of a woman that needs to hear it today.

Erica: See you next time.