Episode Details

Angela Rushing is a world traveler, adventurer, trust and freedom seeker, health and fitness enthusiast, animal advocate, and author.

After a successful career in the beauty industry as a top hairstylist in Los Angeles, it looked like I had it made, although my life felt empty and incomplete, unfulfilled and deeply depressed. Having grown up as the only child in an alcoholic family, I self-medicated well into my thirties and forties to numb the pain of my childhood and adolescence. I finally reached a point where I knew I had to make a significant change and find real meaning in my life, or I would likely die.

Her message rings true: You can't overcome obstacles in your life while in 'victimhood.'

My book is called The Birth Mother Roller Coaster: Navigating through guilt and fear and arriving at self-love and completion. It is an account of how I became a birth mother. I share my lonely childhood growing up in an alcoholic household, my teenage and young adult years of depression and my own drug and alcohol use. I knew my experience leading up to my adoption/placement and the feelings that came with that must be shared with the world.