196. Discovering Hope & Healing After Brokenness (with Toni Collier)

By cpaine | January 31, 2023

Today’s guest Toni Collier is the founder of Broken Crayons and is also the author of the new book Brave Enough to Be Broken: How to Embrace Your Pain and Discover Hope and Healing. Toni shares her journey, discussing how her life took a turn for the worse when she was a child. She defines what brokenness means to her and how that led to her getting counseling and seeking change.

Toni discusses her belief in the importance of hope, arguing that it’s not pain that causes the most damage to us but rather hopelessness. She emphasizes that, even though she found redemption and love, her journey toward a happier, healthier life did not happen overnight and was a real struggle that involved a great deal of roadmapping and anxiety.

Her book also has some practical things at the back, including gratitude practices, and she emphasizes the importance of practicing gratitude, how to get out of a toxic and difficult situation when we feel trapped in it, why building a healthy community is crucial, and so much more! This was such an amazing and emotional interview, and I encourage you, especially if you enjoyed this interview and are struggling to find hope and healing in your life, to purchase Toni’s book!

In This Episode

[00:35] – This was today’s guest’s second attempt to be on the show!

[02:16] – Toni tells us a little bit about herself.

[03:24] – What does brokenness mean and look like to Toni?

[05:49] – Toni had to become more self-aware to realize why she was being abused.

[07:37] – From where did Toni find hope?

[09:01] – How does one go about embracing pain?

[10:28] – I point to a specific quote from Toni’s book about trauma leakage.

[12:49] – Toni reveals how she had the courage to step into a second marriage.

[15:29] – Healing is not linear and is very painful, Toni asserts.

[18:14] – Fear can either lead us to wisdom or cause us to hide, Toni argues.

[20:02] – Toni emphasizes counseling, reading