Feb. 25, 2025

From Corporate Success to Faith-Driven Impact: Ana MegRelishvili's Transformational Journey

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Ever felt like you've achieved your professional dreams only to find yourself yearning for something more meaningful? Join us on an inspiring journey with Ana Megrelishvili, founder of the Christian Professional Network Worldwide, as we explore her remarkable transformation. From a challenging upbringing in Georgia, Eastern Europe, to corporate success in the United States, Ana's story is one of resilience and rediscovery. Hear how a profound encounter with God led her to leave behind the corporate world and create a network that not only fosters professional collaboration among Christians but also emphasizes giving back through philanthropy and community service each month.

Our conversation takes a deeper dive into healing from childhood trauma and weaving faith into a professional life. We unravel the enduring impact of trauma and the pivotal role of mental health support, spotlighting therapies like EMDR. Discover how understanding your worth through faith can revolutionize self-perception and personal growth. We also shine a light on movements like "Christians at Amazon," encouraging the open expression of faith in the workplace. Through Ana's personal insights and experiences, we inspire you to embrace both your faith and healing journey, acknowledging that every challenge is a stepping stone to greater growth.

www.cpnworldwide.com

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

00:00 - Christian Professional Network Worldwide

11:50 - Overcoming Trauma and Integrating Faith

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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 Anna Meg Relishvili.

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She is the visionary founder of the Christian Professional Network Worldwide.

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It's a network that transcends traditional business values with service-oriented values.

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So we're going to be talking to her about everything that she's up to and how she integrates Christian values in with business values.

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So, ana, thank you so much for joining me.

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Thank you for having me, Curtis.

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It's such an honor to be on your podcast.

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Why don't you start off by telling everybody a little bit about yourself?

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Yeah, absolutely.

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I think a lot of people get really surprised when they learn what I do now and meet me to learn where I come from.

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But I think where we come from shapes who we are today.

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So my story actually began in Eastern Europe.

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I grew up in Georgia.

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The country, and you know, my family was very dysfunctional, so I grew up experiencing things like hunger, abuse just a lot of traumatic experiences growing up, and I was an atheist.

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I actually refused to believe that there is God because my thought process was if God exists, then I want nothing to do with him.

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Because of all those horrible things that I've experienced as a child, I don't want to be part of any of it, and so my goal growing up became to never be hungry again, and wealth acquisition became my God really for majority of my life.

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So I knew I wanted to get out of my circumstances by all means necessary, and at that point it was only two pathways for women growing up in Eastern Europe.

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It's either through marrying up and exiting, you know, by marrying a rich husband or by education, and I felt like education was the more definite path for me, and so that's the one I pursued, and I got a full scholarship to come to the United States in 2008.

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So I pursued business degrees and then I got my MBA and then, you know, really had a very, very successful career for over 10 years in sales, doing really well.

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And then I hit this time where I achieved my biggest goal that I had, which was to purchase a condo in the middle of the city, and I purchased it in 2020, renovated it, put in thousands of dollars in renovations and moved in.

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And about a month later I was sitting on the couch and this thought crossed my mind and it was like well, what now?

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I have worked so hard to achieve this dream of mine, only to again feel unfulfilled and unhappy.

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And it only lasted.

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My happiness lasted only 30 days, and I felt that this was unsustainable way of continuing to live, just working more to acquire the next biggest thing only a month later to feel the same emptiness and void that I kept feeling.

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And so that kind of started the journey of me wanting more and to find my purpose and find my joy in working.

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Find my joy in working.

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So I actually had a quite unexpected encounter with God a few months later, and it was middle of the night when I was awoken and I heard this audible voice that told me to go to the store, prepare food and feed the hungry.

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And so the next day I didn't go to work and instead I did just that prepared 24 bags of lunches and started going in downtown Atlanta feeding the homeless.

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And after about an hour I came across this large group hanging out together.

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And when I gave all the lunches away, one of the homeless women called me over and she said honey, I have a gift for you.

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And I was like, wow, you have a gift for me.

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I should be giving you more than lunch.

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So I was really touched by it.

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But what she gave me was this little bird made of clay, and on its chest it was written now in God's hands.

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And that was the moment that I felt like something like a lightning struck my heart and I burst into tears, got in my car sobbing and the only thought that was going through my head was God is real, god is real, and that's it.

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That's when I knew that the life I lived before is never going to be the same.

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So eventually, just to fast forward and it's much longer story but I quit my corporate job After I got baptized.

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I went on a year long sabbatical and then after that I went on a silent retreat at the monastery and that's when I received the vision for Christian Professionals Network Worldwide and everything that I'm doing now.

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So entire life transformed and this is a very short version of, of course, much longer story of everything that transpired during that period of time.

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Well, tell us about the Christian Professionals Network Worldwide.

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Tell us you know what it's all about and what you guys do.

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Yeah, absolutely.

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So.

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I realized when I became a Christian that sometimes I felt unfulfilled to connect with other Christians about topics that are work-related.

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It felt like a church.

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I could only limit my conversations to certain topics, but sometimes I needed somebody who had the same values, had the same faith, with whom I could decide and discuss, you know, just work related issues.

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And so I started searching for a networking organization for Christians that met consistently in Atlanta, georgia, where I'm currently residing, and I really couldn't find any that met consistently.

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So I said, okay, I'm going to start this organization.

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And so we started a networking organization so that Christians could come together and really, you know, just work together, work on the business ideas, meet new friends, expand their network and friendships.

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But also for the purpose of philanthropy, I wanted to create a space where we became servant leaders to our community.

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So it wasn't only about networking, but it was also about what do we do as a community to uplift our city?

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So we actually, every meeting that we have every month, we feature a different nonprofit, and so we uplift their missions and make sure that our community supports them not just financially, but also we do a lot of volunteer projects.

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But on the other half of our organization.

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We also have our own nonprofit foundation where we actually mentor the homeless in Atlanta.

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So we learned that relational poverty, which is lack of genuine connections, is the leading cause for homelessness, and so a lot of the shelters and different organizations were helping the homeless focus on their physical needs, which, of course, are very important, but this need of community and connections is not fulfilled.

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And so that's where we come in by pairing professionals with someone who's experiencing homelessness so that they can become friends Number one thing that we solve.

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When you survey majority of people who are experiencing homelessness, they can put down zero emergency contacts, and that's a really sad thing.

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I've spoken to somebody who exited the homelessness, asking him what was the challenging thing during your time when you were living under the bridge as a homeless man, and he said I felt like if were something to happen to me and I died, there would be nobody who would know and would check on me, and I would just be a nobody.

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And that just made me so sad, because that is not how God views us, right.

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We are all beloved children of our God, and so the fact that somebody could feel this way is just unacceptable.

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And so, at minimum, what we can provide is for every person to feel like there's at least one person who cares about them, and if something were to happen to them, there will be one person who will check in on them.

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Yeah, Okay, well, talk about the challenges that you face, you know.

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You know you kind of talked about in your intro how you came from Eastern Europe and transition to the United States to start a new life.

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So talk about some of the challenges that you face, while you know, making that transition starts over in the new country just faces a lot of challenges.

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Just, you feel very lonely because you don't have community until you create it.

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Adjusting to new culture, to new norms that's definitely very challenging because Eastern European mentality is very different than the US mentality in many ways.

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I had a lot of challenges when it comes to healing.

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So when you experience a lot of traumatic experiences as a child, it carries a lot of triggering points within you as an adult.

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So one thing that I thought was a beautiful thing that US has that is challenging to get in some countries is mental health professionals to speak to.

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I remember when I first moved to the US and I was in college, I started seeing a counselor every week, just going through some of the painful experiences from my past, and that really opened up my eyes on how much trauma I was carrying, how much anger and resentment, and when you carry it you really can be your best self.

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I think throughout the years, every type of therapy there is I probably have gone through it and have experienced it.

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You know, one of the latest realizations I've had is that healing is a journey and not a destination.

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So I always talk about it with people who want to, you know, go through some of the past experiences and heal.

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For them not to really beat themselves up, because sometimes you go through healing and then you get a step back.

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Something else happens.

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So sometimes it's two steps forward, one step back, and that's completely okay, because what you need to compare is who you were yesterday, and if you're a little bit better today than you were yesterday, then it's working.

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But really the ultimate healing that I felt was after I knew who God was and how God views me.

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I always felt like my worth is only by what I bring to the table and the things I do for people.

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I never felt like I was enough to be loved, and that changed when I realized how much I'm loved by God and how he views me as his daughter, and that really transformed just how I view myself.

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And that really transformed just how I view myself.

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It's allowed me to grow as a person and be integrating faith into you know, business or your professional life.

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So talk about your personal experience of you know integrating faith into your professional life.

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What is that like?

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Yeah, it's not easy, because I feel like in today's society, it's almost a taboo topic to talk about your faith within workplace almost a taboo topic to talk about your faith within workplace.

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However, the way I look at it, we are not meant to only have our faith on Sundays when we go to church.

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We're called to live it every second of our lives, and so I encourage other believers to be bolder in their faith and not to shy away from work experiences.

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Obviously, when I say what I do, my faith is in the name of my organization, so that immediately opens up the conversation and people know what my faith is.

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It might be more challenging for people who might be an accountant at a large organization, but even so, there's little things that we can do to let people know that we believe in Jesus, or you know God and what your faith is.

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I recommend that you don't shy away from little things, like if you want to pray for somebody when they're going through a difficult time, it's okay to say, hey, I'm thinking about you, I'm going to pray for you and for your family.

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Imagine about it.

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Remember the time when you were really in love with someone?

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That first you know few months when there's butterflies in your stomach and you cannot wait to just talk about your loved one to anybody who will hear it.

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To me, that's how we should be about our faith, right?

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If we are truly followers of Christ and we are supposed to love him with all of our faith, right?

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If we are truly followers of Christ and we are supposed to love him with all of our being, then we should be able to talk about it without any reservations.

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There's many examples of Christians stepping up and creating movements, even within organizations like Amazon.

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Creating movements even within organizations like Amazon, which you know is absolutely corporate.

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But there is a movement within the Amazon organization called Christians at Amazon that now has hundreds of people joining, doing Bible studies together.

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So, if it's possible to at an organization like Amazon, what makes you think that you cannot do something like this within your sphere of influence?

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I think it's really being bold in your faith.

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This is what you believe and that cannot be taken away from you.

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Absolutely Well, kind of talk about your childhood trauma as much as you would like to, and talk about some of the things or the methods that you use to overcome your childhood trauma and be the person that you are today child sexual abuse and this is a very dark and taboo topic still in our society.

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But the reality of it is that the conservative estimates says that one in six children experience it, but I really think it's closer to one in four experience some sort of sexual abuse before they're 18.

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Half of it is from other minors and so that is such a profound traumatic experience that has long term effect on people.

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People go through alcoholism, addiction problems, promiscuity, just a lot of wrong relationship choices.

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There's so much that goes on within that trauma and there's statistics that says it takes on average over 20 years for somebody who experienced it to be able to even vocalize and say that they have experienced it.

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So you can see that that trauma really pulls you in the darkness, and I have done all kinds of different therapies, from just regular speaking to a psychologist.

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I'll speak about two that had really incredible effect that might help somebody else.

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So one is called EMDR and this stands for eye movement, desensitization and reprocessing.

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This method is actually used a lot on men and women who come back from deployment and they're suffering from PTSD.

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A lot of the times when you experience childhood trauma, you also struggle with PTSD.

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So what this does.

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Basically, if I could summarize it, it separates your trauma from your identity, and that's very, very important, because I hear a lot of the time, speaking with other survivors, the same stories, and then they say something like I don't understand why do I keep doing this, why do I keep repeating this cycle?

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And the important thing that I tell them when I hear this is it's not you, it's the trauma response.

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We really need to help people who've gone through traumatic experiences to understand that their identity is not their trauma, is that they're beautiful souls and then they're created to do amazing things in this world and that healing is possible.

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And so, if you are struggling with PTSD, I highly recommend this therapy, because it really truly allowed me to now even talk about anything that happened in my past in any detail and not get emotional about it, because I it feels like it happened to somebody else, even though mentally I understand that it happened to me, but it doesn't cause me to have an emotional response to that episode anymore.

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And the second therapy that has had a tremendous effect on me is called hypnosis therapy, and so during that particular therapy, you go in, under supervision, into hypnosis.

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Now, I don't want you to think that this is something what you do, and maybe like Las Vegas show, where you know you get on stage and then hypnotherapist is telling you to start barking like a dog.

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It's nothing like that.

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You actually are fully present.

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You remember everything that's happening.

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However, you're guided into your subconscious and so a lot of our deep memories get suppressed.

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So if you have a lot of gaps in your memories from your childhood, that means you have experienced some sort of trauma during those years and your brain is trying to protect you, but, however, it's all still there.

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So what I didn't realize is that I had a lot of suppressed anger toward my father who abused me in my childhood, and I didn't even realize it until I started going through hypnotherapy and a lot of memories and a lot of suppressed feelings started coming up, and so during that time I was able to get that anger out on the surface and deal with it, and eventually I came to forgiving somebody who hurt me the most in my life.

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And that's an amazing feeling, because you feel like you had this huge load on you that just suddenly got lifted and I feel nothing toward him.

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So when I think of him, I've forgiven him.

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There's really no negative nor positive feelings, which is a very liberating feeling to have that whoever hurt you can no longer have effect on your life.

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Okay, well, tell us about any current or upcoming projects that you or the Christian Professional Network worldwide working on that listeners need to be aware of.

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Yeah, thank you.

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Well, we're actually working on expanding outside of Georgia.

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So we started in Atlanta, georgia, two years ago and started with networking organization, and then we started our foundation where we mentored the homeless, and so our goal is to take this mission worldwide, and we're really looking for partners in other cities who want to come together and start up the chapter and allow our light to shine in the city.

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Start the same model, start with the networking organization, first Bring like-minded individuals and then later on, to start really mentoring the homeless within that community, and so the long vision that we have is that every major city in the US has a chapter of Christian professionals and we're really there to support and solve the homelessness issue in our entire country and then worldwide.

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Okay, well so listeners can keep up with everything that you're up to.

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Throw out your contact info.

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Yes, the easiest way is to go onto our website, and it's cpnworldwidecom, and then you can get connected with me directly or send us a message and we'll get back to you.

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Okay, close us out with some final thoughts.

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Maybe, if that 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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Thank you.

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I always want to say that change is possible and I want you to find the courage to change your circumstances.

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I believe that no matter what darkness you have gone through, that pain, pain, does not need to be purposeless.

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That pain can be used to lift yourself up and can become the source of your greatest strength.

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And as I now use my past pain to inspire and encourage others, I know that you can do the same and I believe in you, and I know that God loves you so much and I want you to find your purpose and your light and just live a happy life.

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All right and throw out that website one more time.

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Yes, it is cpnworldwidecom worldwidecom.

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All right, ladies and gentlemen, be sure to check out that website, check out everything that Anna's up to.

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The Christian Professional Network Worldwide is going to be coming to a city near you soon, so please be sure to keep up with everything that she's up to Follow.

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