March 23, 2025
Breaking Free: Healing From Toxic Relationships
What does it really take to break free from toxic relationship patterns and transform your pain into purpose? Aneta Waclaw's journey offers a roadmap for anyone stuck in cycles of unhealthy connections.
From the outside, Aneta's life in Chicago looked perfect—pursuing her dream career as a hairstylist. But beneath the surface, she struggled with poor self-image and found herself in a marriage that slowly dismantled her sense of self. "He hated how I looked, how I dressed, how I talked, who I hung out with—everything," she reveals about her ex-husband. "I truly had to lose myself to find myself again."
Her healing journey wasn't instant. Even after divorce at 23, she continued attracting toxic patterns until making the radical decision to move abroad where nobody knew her. This brave step became the foundation for profound inner work that eventually led to her creating the "Nourished from Inside Out" podcast and writing "Blooming with Self-Love," a positive affirmations and gratitude journal.
Aneta shares practical wisdom on rebuilding self-confidence through daily mirror work, setting boundaries to protect your peace, and recognizing relationship red flags. Perhaps most powerfully, she reframes personal struggles as purposeful stepping stones: "Your challenges, there's purpose in them. You just have to look a little deeper to see the positive side." Her final advice? "Always date yourself. Be your best friend, be your best date." This conversation offers hope that no matter how broken you feel, healing and finding your purpose are always possible.
Want to be a guest on Living the Dream with Curveball? Send Curtis Jackson a message on PodMatch, here: https://www.podmatch.com/hostdetailpreview/1628631536976x919760049303001600
Ready to transform your own relationship patterns? Listen now, and don't forget to subscribe and share this episode with someone who might need this message of hope and practical healing.
00:00 - Introduction to Annetta Walklaw
02:54 - Breaking Free from Unhealthy Relationships
05:23 - Nourished Inside Out Podcast
08:03 - Rebuilding Self-Confidence After Toxic Relationships
09:04 - Setting Boundaries to Protect Your Peace
11:10 - Recognizing Relationship Red Flags
14:15 - Turning Healing Journey Into Purpose
17:20 - Blooming With Self-Love Book
19:45 - Final Thoughts on Self-Worth
WEBVTT
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Welcome to the Living the Dream Podcast with Curveball, if you believe you can achieve.
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Welcome to the Living the Dream with Curveball Podcast, a show where I interview guests that teach, motivate and inspire.
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Today, I am joined by Annetta Walklaw.
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She is an author, speaker and host of the Nourished from Inside Out show.
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We're going to be talking about how she helps people recover from unhealthy relationships and take the leap of faith to live the life they want.
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So, annetta, thank you so much for joining me.
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Thank you for having me, Curtis.
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It's an honor to be here.
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Why don't you start off by telling everybody a little bit about yourself?
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Absolutely so.
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I'm originally from Chicago.
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Absolutely so.
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I'm originally from Chicago and I was born and raised there and I love the city and I love the life that I was living over there.
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I have a previous background as a hairstylist, actually.
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So I was working at the salon and pursuing my dreams of being a hairstylist and I loved every bit of it.
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But the problem was I was actually in a really unhealthy relationship at the time, and I can't blame the relationship because it was also a self-reflection of myself at the time.
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Um, at the time I had a really bad self image of myself.
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I was emotionally and mentally unstable and I just didn't view myself the way that I should have.
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So, in regard in because of that, I cultivated and attracted an unhealthy relationship that literally broke me apart and has given me no other option but to rebuild myself from it.
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So when I was 21, I graduated beauty school and I actually ended up marrying that guy who I was in an unhealthy relationship with, and then we lived together for about a year and a half and when I was 23 years old, I told myself this is just way too chaotic, this is not for me and I need to get out.
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So then, when I was 23 years old, I decided that we were just going to file for divorce and go our separate ways and we did unhealthy relationships because I wasn't taking my healing journey serious and I wasn't properly recovering from these unhealthy relationships.
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It was, I thought I was doing the inner healing work on the surface, but then on the inside I wasn't, because I was still attracting unhealthy cycles, was still attracting unhealthy cycles, so it went from an ex-husband unhealthy relationship to an ex-best friend and then it went to an unhealthy work environment and I really wanted to take my healing journey serious and more deeper.
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So I decided that I was just going to move abroad, go somewhere where nobody knows me, and that's when I really started to heal on a deeper level and that's when I started writing and my podcast Nourished Inside Out.
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All right.
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Well, since you mentioned your podcast, go ahead and tell listeners about it and what they can expect when they listen to it.
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Yeah, absolutely so.
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Basically, my podcast is a self-improvement and educational show, because I want to give people the education and the tools that I once needed during challenging times, and that goes with building your self-image, building and cultivating healthy relationships, not only with yourself, but with the people around you, whether it's friends, family members, co-workers.
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I like to interview people who are experts in their areas so that way, people can start to learn to nourish themselves from the inside out.
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I worked at the salon for four, four and a half years and it's so easy to do the physical appearances the hair, your nails, your eyelashes, skincare.
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It's so easy to do that.
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But what was always lacking is that nobody talks about the inside.
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Nobody talks about what are you telling yourself and how do you view yourself?
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How are you treating other people, what are people skills?
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And those are things that I've lacked in the past.
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So now, since learning those skills and those lessons, I want to share them with other people.
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I want to share them with other people, so talk about or give some best practice tips on people who are needing to rebuild self-confidence after a toxic relationship.
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One of the most important things that has really helped me on my journey is learning to fall in love with yourself, really get comfortable in your own presence and get comfortable in your own skin, Because at the end of the day, you spend the most time with yourself.
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You deserve to be happy on the inside and the outside.
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So for me that looks like really just looking at myself in the mirror for a couple minutes a day and telling myself things that I love about myself.
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At first it was challenging because I didn't fully believe them, but the more that I would sit in the mirror and the more I would say those things to myself, I would start to believe them, and then you really start to feel that weight lifted off of your shoulders.
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So I always start with learn to fall in love with yourself and who you are, because everybody has different skills and talents and techniques and everybody has a different purpose that they can bring to this world.
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But it all really starts with falling in love with yourself.
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Okay, well, give the listeners some top strategies when it comes to breaking free from emotional attachments from the past yourself.
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So by telling yourself positive affirmations or doing a new hobby, or trying a new hobby going out with friends and family that you enjoy spending time with.
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Something that also has really helped me is learning to set boundaries.
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Set boundaries with people, because boundaries are not to hurt you.
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Boundaries are for you to protect your peace.
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So the more that you can learn to protect your peace and get comfortable with being who you are and in your own presence, that's when you can really break free, because you're not people pleasing anymore.
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You're not looking for people to fill that gap for you anymore.
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You know so many times us as humans.
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We're looking at people, places and things to fill a gap for us, but in reality we're the only ones that can fill that gap by learning to love ourselves and be comfortable in our own presence.
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Well, for someone who is in an unhealthy relationship, what are some of the signs or the red flags that they can look for to say, yeah, this is an unhealthy relationship?
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Everybody's relationship is going to look different, but I can only talk on my experience.
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I experienced a lot of red flags at the beginning and the middle and the end, like throughout the whole relationship, but I personally didn't have the self-confidence to walk away until about three years after.
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But some things that I noticed were really big red flags.
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They may seem small but they're really not like somebody picking at how you look.
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Somebody picking at oh you know, that color doesn't look good on you, or this top actually looks better on you.
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You should try that.
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Oh, you know you should get your nails done.
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And just always picking at your appearance, who you hang out with, whether they're gaslighting or they're love bombing or they're trying to manipulate you, to mold you into being somebody you're not.
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Because the second, that somebody does not appreciate you for who you are and they try to pick you apart and mold you into somebody else, that's also a red flag, because you are no longer living in your authentic self.
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You are now living up to the expectation of what that other person says about you.
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For example, my ex-husband hated everything about me.
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He hated how I looked, how I dressed, how I talked, who I hung out with and everything.
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So he was just trying to mold me into somebody that I wasn't, and because of that, I started to look for approval and fulfillment from him in almost every single area of my life, and that's when I started to lose myself.
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So I truly had to lose myself to find myself again.
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So when it comes to red flags about being in an unhealthy relationship, I believe it starts with when they don't accept you for who you are and they try to remold you to somebody you're not.
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Well, talk about, you know, for someone who might want to turn their healing journey into a business or a passion project, kind of like you did, you know what advice would you give them?
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Something that I would recommend is that if you are facing challenges and you are facing struggles right now I always say struggles right now I always say you won't be given anything that you can't handle.
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So your challenges, there's purpose in them.
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Your struggles, there's purpose in them.
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You just have to look a little deeper to see the positive side of things.
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For example, when you want something, something new, it doesn't come to you on a gold platter.
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It comes to you in the form of challenges and struggles and because of that, it gives you the opportunity to grow and build yourself into the person that you say you want to be.
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For example, I really wanted to be emotionally stable and I wanted to be more mature mentally.
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So I got put with my ex in front of me, who literally tore me apart.
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Like every weekend, every single day, we would argue.
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Every weekend we would argue.
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There would probably be two or three days out of the week that we would spend making it up to each other, and then the second we would be mutual.
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Again, we would argue and just break it apart, and I didn't really really understand it at first, but that was actually teaching me how to be more emotionally stable and more emotionally mature, Because every time he broke me down, it was my opportunity to use that hurt as stepping stones to get to the person that I want to be.
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And I think that everybody has a purpose in this life.
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We're not meant to struggle, we're not meant to live in lack.
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Those challenges and those struggles are just stepping stones to find your purpose.
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And for me, I've always had a passion for educating people.
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But because when I was working at the salon, what made me stand out as a hairstylist was that I was constantly educating my clients, whether it was how to take care of their hair at home, how to use their hair products, anything about hair.
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I was always educating and I loved it so much that I wanted to take my education and my lessons from my previous relationships and help other people with them.
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So that's kind of how I came about it as well okay, well, you're also an author, so you know, tell us about your books, your writings, you know what we can expect when we read them and where we can, you know, check them out yeah, absolutely so.
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I wrote my book blooming with self-love about six or seven months ago and I really wanted something to start cultivating positive mindsets into other people, because it's not it's so easy to believe what other people say.
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I heard this quote the other day and it said if you can't explain why you believe what you believe, then they're not your thoughts, and if you can't explain it, then there's somebody else's thoughts.
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And when I heard that, it really resonated with me, because a lot of times we're walking around these days believing so many things that we can't even explain why we believe.
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And if there's one thing you should believe, especially about yourself, is that you are worthy, you are loved and you have purpose in you and you are created for more.
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So I created my book Blooming with Self-Love as a positive affirmations and gratitude journal.
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A positive affirmations and gratitude journal because for the longest time when I was in my past relationship, he was constantly beating me down with negative words like you're ugly, you're stupid, why are you doing this?
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Or he would always laugh at me and make fun of me for what I'm doing.
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So I really had to learn to recultivate my mindset and that's when I really took positive affirmations and journaling more serious, so I turned it into a book.
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Okay, what's your contact info so people can keep up with everything that you're up to?
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no-transcript.
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Tell us about any upcoming projects that you're working on that listeners need to be aware of.
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So I am working on writing another book, but I am also doing virtual summits, so virtual seminars like one or two days.
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I have one coming up April 26, and April 27.
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And that will be a live virtual summit, and that's something that I'm working on doing more consistently in the future as well.
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Close us out with some final thoughts.
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Maybe, if there was something I forgot to talk about, that you would like to touch on any final thoughts you have for the listeners.
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Yeah, I just want to remind everybody that you are worthy of your dreams and you are capable of achieving them.
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Just because you're going through struggles and challenging times right now doesn't mean you're not worthy, or you're married, or you just got out of a relationship and you're single right now.
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Always date yourself.
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Take yourself out to go get your favorite coffee, go take yourself out for a bike ride if you want, or can, go get your favorite lunch.
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Never stop dating yourself and continue to cultivate that gratitude, because gratitude always attracts more gratitude.
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So, be your best friend, be your best date.
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That's the best advice I can give you.
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All right, ladies and gentlemen, there you have it.
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Be sure to check out Annetta's book and her podcast.
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Follow Rate Review.
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Share this episode to as many people as possible.
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Jump on your favorite podcast app.
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Check us out.
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Leave us a review.
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Share this episode to as many people as possible.
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Drop on your favorite podcast app.
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Check us out.
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Leave us a review.
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Share the show.
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If you have any guests or suggestion topics Curtis, jackson, 1978 and attnet is the place to send them.
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Thank you for listening and supporting the show and, annetta, thank you for all that you do and thank you for joining me.
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Thank you for the opportunity, Curtis.
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It's been a pleasure.
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For more information on the Living the Dream podcast, visit wwwdjcurveballcom.
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Until next time, stay focused on living the dream, the drink Drink.
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