#143 Reclaiming Your Voice: From Struggle to Strength

Transcript of Interview

Find Your Voice, Change Your Life Podcast

Podcast Host: Dr. Doreen Downing

Free Guide to Fearless Speaking: Doreen7steps.com

Episode #143 Maria Semple

“Reclaiming Your Voice: From Struggle to Strength”

(00:00) Doreen Downing: Hi, this is Dr. Doreen Downing, and I am excited to introduce you today to a new friend from halfway across the world, at least my world here in San Francisco. And we often communicate kind of midday because that’s when she’s up and I’m still working. So hello, this is Maria Semple. Let me introduce you.

(00:22) Maria Semple: Hello from across the world. It’s a pleasure to be here. 

(00:27) Doreen Downing: Yes, it’s just so amazing that I get to make friends through this marvelous technology that we have. Plus, you and I share such a passion for transformative work. That’s one of the reasons I enjoy introducing people like you, who not only just have come out learning that, but their life is what taught them how to be a transformational coach, so let me read the bio you sent me. 

Maria Semple is a coach and mentor, and the founder of New Life Coach, a coaching practice dedicated to help women in their late 40s and 50s reclaim their vision and rewrite their story so that they can create a ripple effect in their lives and in their communities.

Maria also is the author of the book, Everyday Stories from Ten Remarkable Women. This book highlights what happens when life meets determination, creativity, contribution. Maria emphasizes that the perfect time to step up and throw your hat in the ring is now. N-O-W. That’s a big now. All capital letters there.

Maria’s Six Step Program provides participants with or through an inner and outer—oh, okay. I get it. You take people through an inner and an outer explanation to unearth lost visions. I’m going to say that again—lost visions—and navigate life’s complexities. Of course, this is all drawing from her own journey. Maria provides practical tools to reclaim your vision and rewrite your story.

(02:21) Maria Semple: That is the aim. 

(02:22) Doreen Downing: And what you are doing today with us is to not only give us an insider’s view like, “Hello, who are you and where did you come from?” It is more about the journey. But you didn’t start this transformative “Rewrite Your Story, Reclaim Your Vision” programs. It came out of your own journey. 

So let’s go back and just see what comes. That’s usually the way I like to do the interview is allow yourself to wander back, and notice what pops that you think might be relevant to people who are looking for their own voice and may still be or have had some kind of trauma or challenge growing up.

So, when I ask you that question, what comes to mind, Maria? 

(03:17) Maria Semple: Thank you so much once again, and what comes to me is a deep reflection that brings the whole tapestry of one person’s life, and knowing that I came from an undeveloped country, Venezuela, that I had parents that were born in the early 20th century, my father was 1914 and my mother 1925. 

They had a different kind of life when they started reproducing and forming a family. I was the last of a family of five. When I put all that in context, and then I migrated to Australia many years after growing up and so on.

I can’t reflect on that tapestry of Venezuelan life and the culture, the gregariousness, and the community spirit that they have, the joy and the happy and the dancing. You have to learn to dance when you are a young woman.

(04:31) Doreen Downing: I want to take that in because just as you said dance, my body started to feel like I wanted to dance with you like we’re becoming friends now later in life, but oh, how fun it would have been to be with you dancing in Venezuela as little girls or something. 

But yes, you’ve got this kind of culture that is on one hand, sounds like it’s a fun way to grow up, but I would imagine there might’ve been challenges. 

(05:00) Maria Semple: Oh, there were incredible challenges because also they lived through a political upheaval and uncertainty of dictatorships —early developments of the country, if you want to see it that way in the early 20th century. 

When I was born in the 1960s, there was the renaissance of a different kind of prosperity economically, and then people were thriving a little bit more. 

Being the fifth child of this lovely family. I grew up with more perks or more privileges, if you want to call it that way, because my brothers and sisters, they had to suffer more during the time of a transition, a political transition of dictatorship.

For example, my mother told the story that one day, people came knocking on the door and searching for some men that had escaped somewhere and they were hiding in these buildings and they lived in the top floor of this building in Caracas, the capital city of Venezuela. These people, these two men escaping, knocked on my mother’s door and she was scared and she said, they were bringing a message from your husband.

Because my father used to work shift at the Telegraph, she believed him, and she opened the door, and this man said, “They’re looking for us. You have to hide us.” My mother was so scared she had five kids there on her own, and being a very religious woman during this, she said that she closed the door and she prayed and prayed and prayed and prayed in front of that door and the police and the people, the army looking for these men knocked on every door except my mother’s door. 

So that is the power of faith. I grew with these kinds of convictions in a way, but also the trauma of these struggles, because when you are a child, and you, being a psychologist, you understand how we have that imprint of the good and the bad and the ugly at that stage. 

(07:25) Doreen Downing: I love that idea that you just said the imprint, which is true. We have the cultural context in which we grew up and you’ve been talking a little bit about that. Then we have our own unique family culture that we grow up in and then you head off to school and then enter into society and society has all these different ways of expecting us to be who we are, who they want us to be, so it’s a challenge. 

One of the things you did write in the work that you sent me was about, and that’s what I’m looking for, some more of the challenges or the struggles being the last of five kids.

(08:11) Maria Semple: Well, yes, it’s true. Being the last of five children, I was 10 years apart from my eldest sister and I was a baby. They were much closer together, so there was a gap between my previous brother that I was five years younger, and so these people were playing together, and my mom and dad left us home alone, the five kids, my sister being 10, she fed me, she gave me my milk and all that type of thing. 

And so, you also learn to cry and to speak loud because you need to be heard. You want to be heard by the number of people around you that are much older and bossing you. I learned that with the process of finding my voice.

(09:08) Doreen Downing: Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. I’ve heard so many stories about people in the larger family, but the fact that you just pointed to what it’s like that five year difference and what it means. Yes, you are the young one, and even though you talk about having advantages and privileges because you were coming into a society that was more developed by then, it still feels like that within your community, meaning your family, your sisters and brothers, there was some way in which it was harder for you to be able to speak up and be heard.

(09:48) Maria Semple: That’s exactly right. I think another thing that I should say is that that culture and perhaps other cultures that I can’t really point out, but particularly Venezuelan culture and Latin cultures, you have to stop and listen to your adults and wait for them to ask you for you to speak. If you say, “Mommy, mommy,” or “Daddy, daddy,” no, shut up and wait until I tell you.

(10:18) Doreen Downing: Oh yes, I’m so glad you pointed to that because I’ve heard other people mention children are to be seen and not heard, but the way you just demonstrated it was very clear. It was just like you acted it out and the whole shut up at the same time, what happens? Thank you for giving us that insight to some of what it was like to be in your family. 

Well, what about your parents? Was there a challenge for you in being the youngest and then paying attention? 

(10:52) Maria Semple: Yes, so I think what I have found is that because I was the youngest and they were all 10, 9, 8, and 5 and I was a baby, as I kept growing, when I was 5, my brother before me, he died. He had a brain tumor and he eventually died. 

What happened is that I was sent away to my aunties and she had children similar to mine, so I went to my cousins. At that stage, again, is that imprint stage development period, I suffered. I wanted to be close to my mother and I identified a lot of grief. I cried for her, but I couldn’t really understand why she was over there and I was with my cousins. 

Over the years growing up as a mature woman I identified that this was a challenge for me, and a grief that I carried for many years. It marked me because, in a way, part of that sense of seeking significance and seeking belonging, when you then move countries and so on, comes from that stage. 

(12:14) Doreen Downing: Yes. This feeling secure and feeling like you belong and there was some, without getting clinical about it, some disruption in that natural, what could have been a natural growth for you. 

Yes, I felt that when you said about your mother and I felt the grief there and then how long we carry our childhood experiences with us into later life, but as you journey through life, it sounds like you’re quite not only an explorer of the inner realm that’s obviously changed countries. 

Let’s talk about how did you come to terms? How did you get to know yourself? Because yourself is what the voice is all about. That is always some kind of journey that we need to do, and it’s usually an inner journey, so say something about how you found your voice. Let’s put it that way. 

(13:10) Maria Semple: Yes, I could say that over the years, not only maturing, but also experiencing the changes of cultures between coming from Venezuela, I came here to Australia in the late 80s, and I married a man and I had two children of my own, so I came with my two kids, and so 10 years later, after I came here, my marriage ended and I had to experience life in a more vulnerable and facing uncertainty.

When we refer to the cultural background that shaped me I felt that that sense of pride and that sense of resilience that I also witnessed, it helped me to make a choice, and the choice was either the boat sinks or the boat floats on, sails away, to put it in that kind of analogy.

For me, I needed to present or wanted to present that sense of resilience, but being congruent about it, it needed a lot of inner reflection, and because I was then a mother of two young kids, and in a new country, I find a lot of solitude in meditation, in creativity, in time with myself in embroidery, and that gave me that exploration of life and the inner world, but also life as a journey that is full tapestry of richness.

(14:59) Doreen Downing: Yes, I love the way that you talk about tapestry because I do get the sense of the threads of you and all of what you learned before, and of what you were learning as you were maturing and going through the separation, and making that decision to have your sense of boat being on top of the water sailing as opposed to sinking.

(15:29) Maria Semple: Absolutely. I put myself as I was outside my country of origin. I came to Australia, so it was like I was a beacon of example for my children and for others because I have an accent and in Australia it is very common that people would say, “Where’s that accent from?”

Then you say, “I was born in Venezuela, but I’ve been here X amount of time.” “Oh, and you still have an accent.” “Yes, and I will never lose it.” It’s part of being that example of my cultural background in a way, even though I became a very proud Aussie person. 

(16:11) Doreen Downing: Well, I love the feel of claiming who you truly are and even the accent seems to be something that you embrace and say, “This is me.” That’s what I’m getting mostly today.

I’ll just reflect back what I feel like I’m getting from you and that what you’re giving to my listeners. I know I have to take a break, but I want to say this before I take this break. You use the word earlier—pride in who you are, where you come from, even though there were challenges, it feels like it’s all part of me, right?

So, I’m going to take a break and we’ll come back because I do have some more questions about what happened next to you as you went on in developing this beautiful soul that you have. Thank you.

We’re back now with Maria Semple, my new friend from Australia who was born in Venezuela and has some great stories. If you want to go back to the beginning and are just starting to listen, make sure and hear where she came from and what her family was like and the challenge growing up as the fifth child, the young baby of the family.

So Maria, what I just reflected right before the break is how I’ve been inspired and touched by your strength. The fact that, yes, you did change countries, you did get a separation and had two young children, and you did make a decision to move forward in life, and then you started doing things like meditation, a lot of self discovery. What else? What else was that around finding yourself and finding your voice? 

(17:55) Maria Semple: Yes. I value, connections. In terms of finding my voice and being in a new country, because I wasn’t born in Australia, I found it very valuable to create networks and connections of people that will bring me new opportunities or show me different ways of thinking or being.

I was naturally, and I still am, I’m in my 60s now, believe it or not, I am naturally curious. That sense of curiosity has helped me and guide me to continue developing myself, my sense of inner reflection, but also to how can I put all this together to be of service. Because I had that natural curiosity plus all the challenges that life presented and my decision to keep the resilience and being a beacon of strength for myself and my children and also for others to see me in a way—I chose this path of, it has to be something more to life than this nine to five job.

So I studied quite a lot. I studied to be a mentor, a coach, and studied business. I found a lot of reflection studying. Also I want to mention that after my marriage broke up, I found a lot of reflection creating and recreating the ceramics of Venezuela and all of a sudden I sold in craft markets and so on and people started to enjoy these colorful ceramics and they had a story behind it.

And, of course, that story had a background of the resilience of the Latin culture and the culture that I had witnessed. All of the sudden, I created a business, and because my marriage had ended and I was facing uncertainty, all of the sudden, new opportunities were there. For I feel that sense of being, that beacon of light through the ceramic and through giving work to other women. Otherwise, I would have been another stat of a single mom facing poverty or what have you.

But once again, it’s that sense of where you create something and you don’t really have any expectations. All of the sudden, it represents your inner strength, your voice. I hope this is making sense. But yes, that’s how it has pieced all this part of the puzzle. 

(21:06) Doreen Downing: It makes total sense about how you found out of in your favorite word today, my favorite word and listening to use resilience and that “Here I am. What do I do with myself, my life, my children, in this particular country?” You reach back into your roots and brought that forth in this business that you did, which helped other people, as well as helped you, and I think that that might have to do with what I’m picking up today, how much you are claiming true strength, not only just whatever you do today, but where you came from. I think that that integration of your past and your present seems to be really clear to me today. 

We’re going to end pretty soon. I want to make sure that we give you an opportunity to point to the work that you do right now and how people can find you.

(22:02) Maria Semple: Sure. Thank you. So I have to point quickly that because I study to be a mentor, a coach in business and so on, but I still was working for somebody else. I chose to work in contracts for the state government here in Australia, and therefore it was difficult to juggle my ambitions and the vision that I have of myself to be a kind of a teacher, a mentor of some sort.

That was my vision when I was a child in Venezuela. Therefore, the pandemic came and as you know, it created a lot of revolution and inner storms inside that people reassess the way they walk and the way they live. The pandemic created this challenge and the challenges for me was that I needed to make a decision because I didn’t want to go back to an office after this period.

So, I decided to go and take a sabbatical and during this sabbatical was when I decided with all this experience, with all this knowledge that I have acquired, with all this inner work that I have done. When are you going to step up and claim that vision of yourself, to claim your voice? That was the period where I had already put together my program, even though it didn’t have a name then. Reclaim Your Vision, Rewrite Your Story.

But during the sabbatical period, I was traveling in a camper van with my dog with no destination. I had these enormous trust in the unknown. It’s something that I do not recommend to anyone to do it. But it needs a huge amount of courage. I traveled and throughout this journey of being somewhere, no expectations, blank canvas. Every moment, I receive this strength to finally step into what I am called to do.

This journey is to be this mentor, be this teacher. That’s how I come to meet women, empowered women like yourself that are also on a mission, regardless of cultural background, age, or race, or gender. I felt compelled to put this program together. I was traveling on east coast of Australia, now sort of subtropical, and I was offered to come back to Melbourne, and I felt that it was an opportunity for me to immerse fully into the development of the program, into then spreading the word, and I created Reclaim Your Vision, Rewrite Your Story. It’s composed of six steps that focus on the inner world, in your inner focus of your limiting beliefs. What values do you bring or what values are conflicting here from your imprint era? What is your story? 

Let’s create a manifesto that will bring more ideas to what you want to create in your life. Let’s stretch out setting goals, and I call them visionary goals. Then let’s speak out and help how are you with having goals, having values, having challenge or limiting beliefs, and having a story. How are you going to communicate these? 

The last step is about seizing opportunities, which is about networking, creating community, inviting people to connect with you. It’s a long-term process on the last step, but in that sense, it helps you to develop your message and put it out into the world.

So the aim of this program is to help women that are working full-time, but they are uncertain of their future in that particular role, in that particular organization. They want to develop their own ideas of creating a business perhaps, or a consultancy of some sort, but they are not ready.

They’re not in the business stage of having a website, a domain name, a business name. They are in this ideation stage. There are many. 

(26:58) Doreen Downing: The visionary stage. Of the steps that you just laid out, it feels like you’re here on a podcast. You’re in step six—networking, getting out there, getting heard, getting seen, getting visible, like what your program leads people to do.

How do people then find you? Is it online, your Reclaim Your Vision and Rewrite Your Story? 

(27:22) Maria Semple: It is going to be online. I am creating, right now, a process of a masterclass, the technology issues are delaying a little bit, but people can find me. I have a website. It’s called newlifecoach.com.Au. I am in LinkedIn mostly, and that’s where you can find me as well. 

I have a Facebook page that is called New Life Coach. It was created 10 years ago when I wrote my book, Everyday Stories, and we didn’t get to speak about that, but that’s fine. You can send me a message. I have a YouTube channel as well called New Life Coach, and here we are. It’s a pleasure to be here. 

(28:10) Doreen Downing: Yes. It’s not only a pleasure. For me, it is giving you a platform to stand up and speak out and point to how important some of the things that you’ve spoken about today are for people when it comes to finding their voice.

Again, that word just sticks with me. There’s several words that stick with me today. The resilience, the fabric, the tapestry, and the sound of you feels like the resonance, not just your words. People who might be listening, if you get a chance folks, go to YouTube and watch the video because Maria has such an engaging, charming smile. She smiled the whole time practically as she was talking, so she’s a very positive force for all of us who are looking at ourselves and want to get inspired to be the more that we can be. Thank you, Maria. 

(29:10) Maria Semple: Thank you, Doreen. It’s a pleasure to be here and yes, look forward to strengthening our connection.