Vicki Anstey

I did it to set up a boundary at work at the time that I would leave work two nights a week at six o'clock.

Hmm.

in order to take this class that I'd fallen in love with and you know and then of course it just has this huge kind of knock-on effect into every other area of my life and I transformed myself physically and emotionally and in lots of other ways did you think that would be enough at that point did you think this is it this is the thing that I've been searching for this is this is going to make me feel yeah kind of I am Vicky this is the person I'm meant to

I don't even know if I thought that at the time.

I think it was literally just I probably should move my body a bit.

This is a really good excuse to leave the office on time, not even early, but on time twice a week.

And then I just fell in love with it.

And it was like reclaiming a part of myself that I hadn't.

I didn't even know was there at the time, which now when I look back, it just seems remarkable.

I mean, and I did.

And I think in a way that was a huge shift in my marriage at the time.

You know, that wasn't the person that he'd married necessarily.

And then I think, of course, the physical resilience tips easily, doesn't it, into emotional, mental resilience.

And I suddenly started seeing things, I think, for...

what they were.

And and and then I think perhaps his behaviors changed in response to that as well.

So it's certainly not to say that the whole 20 years was miserable because that's absolutely not the case.

But it just reached a point that I couldn't tolerate.

Just challenging certain things that I think I'd always accepted and starting to see through the...

constructed complexities of the life that we were living, you know, and he took control of my business and I didn't have my own bank account and, you know, all these things that I look back on now actually with, to be completely truthful, embarrassment that I'd let that become the case.