You Always Have A Choice - Even When It Doesn't Feel Like It With Rosie Aiello

SPEAKER_1 (0:00)

Welcome to EPIC Begins With 1 Step Forward, the podcast that reveals how to plan, achieve, and enjoy the journey of creating EPIC results in your life, business, health, and relationships. Here's your host, bestselling author and motivational speaker, Zander Sprague.

Zander Sprague (0:23)

Hello, EPIC people, and welcome back to another exciting episode of EPIC Begins With 1 Step Forward. I'm your host, Zander Sprague, and today I got a good one for you. I am joined by Rosie Aiello.

Rosie, welcome. Tell us who you are and what you do.

Rosie Aiello (0:42)

Hi, Zander. Well, I'm so glad we were introduced by Cindy Lee. You've been such a delight when we've chatted before. I am Rosie Aiello. I am CEO and co-founder of the Love Is Kind Network.

My daughter and I had created this in response to international escape from domestic violence.

This is a movement and a business to really give women a voice for themselves, to celebrate their freedom from abuse. What I do specifically is I work with women who have been in toxic relationships, don't want to get into another toxic relationship, and to really help them find kind love and to really know what that means. I've spoken to women who've been out of relationships for divorce 10, 12 years, and not until they heard me speak, did they even know they were in a domestic violence relationship. Unless you know what you've actually experienced, because I didn't have vocabulary then, I was in it for decades before I even had the vocabulary. I really talk about what the vocabulary looks like, what it is, and what vocabulary, what it looks like to have kind love. That's only half the question. People talk about abuse all the time, domestic violence all the time, but we don't want to stay there. I don't want my ladies to stay there, and they don't either. Right. How do you move forward?

Zander Sprague (2:07)

Absolutely. I would agree that we all have a degree of not good things that happen to us, right?

We have a choice every day.

Do I want to stay there? Like I say when I talk about sibling loss, define your loss, don't let it define you. And I can imagine in an abusive relationship, you may not want to sit there and go, I am the victim of domestic violence. You may say, I'm here. That was part of my past. I'm not forgetting it. It's an important part, but I'm redefining myself here, which is good. If you don't mind, let's go back and talk a little about this not healthy relationship you were on. You said you were international, so where were you living with your daughter?

Rosie Aiello (2:58)

Well, we were in the Middle East. As soon as I say I was in the Middle East, people will automatically come to the conclusion that everybody in the Middle East is bad. They're really, it's very patriarchal. Part of it is true, but it's like that everywhere around the world. I want to just say that there's no difference. There might be a degree, but I've spoken to women literally all over the world. It's like we're all married to the same man.

We had a few complicating factors. I lived in a lot of a war zone many of the times. And so for me, it was more of, there was terrorism on the outside of my doors and within the four walls of my house, I felt like I was living in my own personalized terrorist camp.

Zander Sprague (3:43)

Okay.

Do you want to share what country you were in? And you don't have to, I'm just curious.

Rosie Aiello (3:49)

I'm not sharing it now because I'm writing a book and we're having some legal issues about it.

So I'm just going to, I haven't quite figured that. But it is in the Middle East. It is in a kind of a hotbed.

Zander Sprague (4:01)

Okay, totally fine, Rosie. Unfortunately, in the Middle East, there are many places that are, meet the criteria that you just said, where there's ongoing terrorism and stuff. So for you, what was that epic moment where you decided no more?

I have a choice and my choice is not to do this anymore.

Rosie Aiello (4:22)

Well, this is a really good question because for me, it was many moments and I'll tell you why.

In the Middle East, where I was living, I think most of the Middle East is that I have a daughter, I had a daughter, and custody automatically goes to the father between the ages of 7 and 18, and there was no way in heaven I would ever, in a million years, leave without my daughter, or leave and then have her taken away from me because it was breaking the hate convention. So I had to take that all into consideration.