Kathy Tuccaro

And even though like I'm struggling to like we had self-esteem classes, boundaries, anger management, sexual assault, like all these things to help me along the way.

But there's still that there's so many layers to to self-esteem that it took until the day when I was in training on heavy equipment.

I that particular day I was on the excavator.

And for the first time, and I'm loading a rock truck, so I'm digging in the dirt and I'm loading this truck.

And holy crap, it hit me like a ton of bricks.

I could do this.

I'm like, oh, my God, I can do this.

Right.

And I'm jumping up and down.

The girls from the class are jumping up and down.

The trainers, he's on the radio.

Can I marry you?

You're a smooth operator.

So that day, like that feeling was so overpowering because all of a sudden I knew and I believe that I could do it.

And the transformation, it was I can't even begin.

It was life changing, life altering, because as I'm walking home from that class that day, I knew that my whole life, 42 years of being told how stupid, how useless, how fat and ugly and

never amount to nothing, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, that it was all somebody else's opinion.

And it was so life-altering for me.

I can't even begin to tell you that from that moment on, when I knew that I could do this and everything was a lie, well, then nobody else, nothing else has ever affected my decision-making.

You know, I didn't depend on somebody else.