SHE Asked Podcast
Welcome to The SHE Asked Podcast with Anna McBride—a space where the stories we tell ourselves are challenged, reimagined, and rewritten to unlock personal transformation.
Hosted by former therapist, storyteller, and lifelong seeker Anna McBride, this podcast dives deep into the power of narrative. Through personal stories and intimate conversations with guests, we explore how shifting our internal dialogue can change not just how we see our lives—but how we live them.
Each episode offers what Anna calls “practical hope”—real tools, lived experience, and emotional honesty for anyone feeling stuck, lost, or ready for change. Whether you’re navigating divorce, grief, reinvention, or simply trying to understand your past, The SHE Asked Podcast invites you to become the author of your own story—and the hero in it, too.
Follow along for weekly episodes filled with compassion, perspective, and the courage to ask yourself:
What story am I telling—and is it still serving me?
SHE Asked Podcast
Who Is Recovery For? (My Story of Healing)
Welcome back to She Asked: Tools for Practical Hope with your host and friend, Anna McBride.
Let me (briefly) walk you through decades of recovery.
Not just from one addiction or label, but from a lifetime of trauma, codependency, and loss. With honesty and some hard-earned wisdom, I walk you through how she reclaimed my voice and inner knowing.
This episode is for anyone walking a recovery path—from love, food, control, substances, or the lingering wounds of growing up in a dysfunctional home. If you've ever wondered why your patterns persist or how healing really unfolds, this conversation will meet you right where you are.
✨ In this episode, we explore three powerful lessons from the healing process:
1️⃣ Healing is non-linear
2️⃣ You’re not broken—you were adapting
3️⃣ Community is the medicine
Thank you for listening. If this episode resonates, know that recovery is possible and that you are not alone.
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#SheAskedPodcast #RecoveryJourney #CodependencyHealing #InnerChildHealing #EatingDisorderRecovery #ACOA #SLAA #12StepRecovery #TraumaHealing #AnnaMcBride #PracticalHope #YouAreNotBroken #EmotionalHealing
Welcome back to. She Asks Tools for Practical Hope. It's your friend and host, anna McBride, and I am so glad you're here. Today's episode is one I've carried close to my heart for years. It's about recovery, but not just from one addiction or label. It's about reclaiming our inner knowing, our dignity and our right to heal. If you're listening, maybe you've walked or are walking your own path of recovery. Maybe it's from food, love, substances, control or codependency Whatever brings you here finances, control or codependency Whatever brings you here. I invite you to take a breath with me now. Take a long, slow, deep breath in and then exhale. Let it go. My hope is you can now listen with the part of you that is already brave, as you may know by now.
Speaker 1:I like to begin my podcast with a story. Today I want to share how my own path of recovery unfolded. My journey with the 12-step path began in 2003 when I finally decided to come clean about my eating disorder. I wish I could say I was coming clean because I had hit a bottom and knew I needed help, and then sought it. It was because my then husband and I were separated for the first time, and it was in that separation I felt I couldn't live without him. Think about that statement for a moment. I was so codependent that I actually felt I couldn't live without him. Think about that statement for a moment. I was so codependent that I actually felt I couldn't live without him. So my sick mind thought it was a good idea to confess my shameful secret and get healthy. That way I could show my husband that I was worthy of reconciliation and his love. Getting help for codependency or love addiction hadn't occurred to me. I was just so desperate to hold on to my marriage so desperate. My therapist recommended I attend Overeaters Anonymous, oa, as a part of my healing from my eating disorder, which I did. Unfortunately, or fortunately, I didn't stick with OA and my marriage continued to struggle for another 16 years. So did my eating disorder.
Speaker 1:In 2017, after the death of my younger sister Tish to alcoholism, I was cracked open by grief. I was cracked open by grief and I walked into my first Al-Anon meeting not knowing what I was looking for. Just that I couldn't carry that grief alone. Two years later, after my marriage ended, I found a sponsor in Al-Anon and began working the Al-Anon steps. Slowly, I began to see how deeply my childhood, growing up with two alcoholic parents shaped everything the way I loved, the way I coped, the way I over-functioned. This led me to ACOA, which is Adult Children's of Alcoholics, which I learned there that I was living out. Emotional blueprints formed long ago and recently I entered another 12-step program, slaa the Sex and Love Addicts Anonymous Program.
Speaker 1:After another relationship that I had devastatingly fell apart and it was there that I found the language for my anxious attachment, my fantasies and my patterns in romantic relationships. Alongside all of this was my decades-long struggle with disordered eating. I began restricting and binging at age 12. It wasn't until I found Overeaters Anonymous and worked through my pain in therapy that I began to truly heal and eventually I became a therapist for families of addicts, supporting them through the same storm I had weathered.
Speaker 1:As I moved through these programs, I started to see patterns, not just in myself but in so many others, my clients especially, and it wasn't just anecdotal. It was something that's been studied and deeply understood in the recovery and trauma world studied and deeply understood in the recovery and trauma world. Dr Janet Warditz, one of the earliest research in adult children of alcoholics, identified traits common among those raised in homes with addiction. These traits include difficulty with intimacy, over-responsibility and a constant search for approval. I saw myself in all of them. Wardet's work helped me realize I wasn't dramatic, needy or broken. I was shaped by the instability around me. I adapted and now I had the power to unlearn and to heal. This shift in understanding gave me permission to soften, to stop fighting myself, to start reclaiming a new narrative. So what has recovery taught me, not just as theory but in practice? What wisdom has emerged after all the meetings, all the tears, journaling and all of the spiritual surrenders? Let me share three life lessons that continue to guide me today.
Speaker 1:Number one healing is non-linear and holistic. Recovery taught me that healing doesn't follow a straight line. One layer reveals the next. I didn't plan to get an SLAA when I first sat in an Al-Anon meeting. In fact, my sponsor recommended it from the beginning and I thought no, I'm not a sex addict, that doesn't apply to me. But open-mindedness allowed the path to unfold organically. Healing has looked like letting go of timelines, like recognizing that the grief from Tisha's death still visits me, like admitting that I'm still learning to receive love, not just offer it.
Speaker 1:Lesson number two you are not broken. You were adapting. My ACOA work helped me see that my need to fix others, to anticipate emotions, to over-function these were all protective adaptations from childhood. These were the ways I tried to keep the peace in my home, where unpredictability was normal. In recovery, I learned to hold those parts with compassion, not shame. I've learned to say thank you for protecting me, but I'm safe now.
Speaker 1:The third lesson community is the medicine we heal in relationships, whether it's a sponsor, a fellow from recovery or a client family. Every step forward was co-regulated. Recovery reminded me that vulnerability is a bridge, not a burden, and that true belonging doesn't require me to perform. It only requires me to show up. As you reflect on your own life, I invite you to listen for the threads of survival that once served you and the stirrings of a new way that calls you forward. So ask yourself what have you survived? What parts of you were simply doing their best to cope? Let those questions sit with you as gently as a breath and I invite you to write about it, journal about it, share about it, so that you can have some clarity about what might be holding you back and also what to do about it.
Speaker 1:Remember, recovery is not just about abstaining. It's about re-becoming. It's about saying I deserve tenderness, structure, truth and freedom. Today, I walk with an open heart, not because I have no wounds, but because I have learned to love myself through them. I want to offer you this affirmation that I often say and it goes like this often say and it goes like this I welcome the path as it unfolds. I trust that every turn is a part of my becoming. Thank you for tuning in and until next time. I'm your friend, anna, and this is she Asked, where healing meets practical hope. So until soon, be well.