32: World Dance Champion & Sexual Assault Survivor // The Story of Anya Katsevman

Desire to be on stage and to be seen and to be an entertainer and a dancer. And all of the things I was constantly told, it's never going to happen, it's never going to happen, it's never going to happen. And so my first rock bottom was that moment where I had to choose that it was going to happen. But at the end of the day, all maybes aside, you got this. Because if you didn't have this, it wouldn't have happened to you. That I truly believe.

Welcome to From Rock Bottom to Rockin It. I'm your host, Eric Gilbert Williams, and this is the podcast where we explore personal stories of people who hit absolute rock bottom, then got back up, wiped off the dust, kicked failure to the curb, and now they're rocking it like you'd never believe if you didn't hear it. Live Right here we cover subjects in business, sports, and life in general. If you like this podcast, please share it. These interviews are intended to inspire, to motivate, to give hope and vision. So please share this episode with someone who needs it. Use your Instagram account, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, hand signals, trained pigeon sent smoke signals up in the air. Use Morse code, whatever you like. Just share the love and share this episode. Also, email me anytime. Podcastricilbertwilliams.com Send me questions you would like to have asked of future guests and I will incorporate them. Or just send me some suggestions on how to run a better podcast. Or just say hello, I'd love to hear from you. That's podcastericgilbertwilliams.com I know you're going to love today's interview, so let's get started with us here today on From Rock Bottom, the Rockin it is one of the best dancers I've ever met in my life, my friend Anya Katzfeman. To give you some context here, Anya is a champion in both salsa bachata, but also in ballroom types of dance as well. Some of the accreditations you'll see when you look her up is that she's a two time World Salsa Dancing champion, a two time San Francisco Open Salsa champion, a two time New York Congress Salsa champion, and also a Eastern United States champion. There's so many, I'm going to list a couple more, but the list goes on forever. She's also a US Open champion and basically she trains the majority of the world's salsa and bachata champions. If they're a champion, the odds are that she's trained them to some degree, but it all hasn't been glamour and sparkles the whole time. There's some things here that almost knocked her out of the dancing game and the sport for good, which she's going to tell us about today on the show. And it took all of her strength to work through it. Now, I met Anya for the first time some years ago, back when I was competing in Salsa cabaret at an amateur level. And the more we chatted, the more I learned about the strength of her character. And I'm very grateful right now to have her here on the show today to share her story with you, everyone who's listening. And with that, Anya, welcome to the show. How you doing?

Good. Thank you for having me.

Oh, I'm really grateful to have you here. So I'm glad that we're able to make this time to connect. And you're in New York right now, right?

Yeah. And your background says you're in Calgary, but you're not?

No, I'm a nomad. I'm everywhere. I'm in Kitchener, Ontario, right now, just visiting with some family. And then I'm going back to Calgary, and then ideally I'm going back to California. That's where business is. And that's also where the sun is.

Well, there's no sun in New York, that's for sure.

Yeah, fair enough. Is it fair to say that you're in New York or that you're in, like. Because I know there's a lot of neighborhoods and there's like, some, like, you don't want to say. So if you're in Brooklyn or if you're in Queens, you know what I mean? Where are you actually? Where do you identify?

I'm in Queens, but that's New York. That's as New York as New York gets. Okay.

Every time I say something to New Yorkers about where they're from, like, no, I'm from Queens. They're like, no, I'm from Brooklyn. I'm not in New York. And it's this weird thing.

Oh, well, I mean, New York State is huge. Right. So I think sometimes if you're from New York City and someone's from New York State, it's like really not the same person. But all the five boroughs are considered New York City, so I'm safe on both accords, regardless of how you look at it in New York.

And you're basically teaching virtual at this point, because as a dance instructor with COVID you can't really see people one on one. So you're doing a lot of this virtually. Now I'm thinking, right.

Majority of my Work, Yes. So I'm doing some in person private lessons because it's easier to, you know what the person is doing precaution wise. It's easy to keep your distance and you have plenty of space. And I'm doing my very first group class two weeks from tomorrow in person with all of the precautions. But most of my work has been virtual and really pivoted. I'm stealing that term from you. It's pivoted because I'm used to preparing everyone for the big championships. But right now there are no championships, so my clientele had to change a lot. So I started working more with people that dance for other reasons than to win championships. And it's been fruitful. I've been enjoying it.

And how old were you when you started dancing? You were a kid, right?

Yeah, I was. It's funny, I think I lie. Okay, it's not even that I forget. I think I lie all the time when someone asks me this question. So I'm going to try to not lie right now. And the reason I lie is because I remember.

Don't lie to me, Anya. Don't lie to me.

I just did an hour of breath work. This is as honest as I'll ever be. I did some classes as part of an after school program back in Ukraine, but I don't really think that counts. I mean, maybe it counts, I don't know. So if that counts. I started before we immigrated in 1993. We came from Ukraine to Brooklyn, which is in New York. And I remember when we first arrived, there was really no dancing for kids. There was no ballroom dancing for kids to be found anywhere. There was a whole bunch of jazz, tab ballet, and there was this thing called Pro Am, which is when adult social dancers dance with an instructor. So there were Arthur Murray and Fred Astaire type of schools that gave ballroom dance classes. But there was like no sight of a competitive program for kids to join. No schools, nothing like that. So this was kind of like. My older brother is a professional ballroom dancer and he says he moved the family to New York because if we were going to immigrate, it had to be somewhere where he could dance. And he got in touch with someone from Kiev that used to dance, and they just started to find their own way. So it took a good two years, I think, before I started to dance. So this is why I lie, because that's quite an explanation. I think I started in 95, which would have made me 10 or 11 at the time, but I can't be sure. Yes, I've been dancing ever since I can remember, or lie.

I remember when I met you was in Calgary Salsa Congress probably five years ago or something like that. And you've been doing a lot of work with the Calgary salsa scene as well. And right now you're focused more on like salsa bachata than you are in the ballroom world. But you started more in the ballroom and then migrated. Right?

Right. So I started because my brother did it and my parents kind of needed it. Was my babysitter. Dance was my babysitter. I don't ever remember asking to go to dance class. Maybe I did, I don't know. But I don't remember. I just remember that was his thing. That was what he did. And I liked the glamour. I remember that. I liked the pretty costumes, the girly things, the. And I was always drawn to the stage. So I liked it because I could compete and people would watch me and I always had this fire up my ass. So when I started with ballroom, it was great and I was very successful. And I had a great dance partner who everyone can see on Dancing with the Stars. His name is Val. Yes, that's my dance first dance partner. And we were awesome. We kicked ass. We won everything. And then I overgrew him because I'm two years older. And you get to that awkward stage where the girl starts to look like your mom. And ironic because now he's like six foot, so seven. And I'm four foot nothing. But once we split up, it got a little harder. Even though I was very young, still it got really hard to find a good partner. And in ballroom, the man sort of dictates the success of the partnership. I think to this day it's very ironic you're judging a couple. Well, actually, it's not ironic at all. It makes perfect sense. But you're supposed to be judging a couple. But a strong man with a weak woman historically has always had stellar results. Right. A very outstanding male dancer, regardless of the level of his partner, could become a champion. But a strong woman with a weak man wouldn't make it past the quarterfinal round. So it was, for whatever reason, cosmically planned, really challenging for me to find a good partner. So the results that I was seeing, my brother have. He's an 85 million time national champion. He's won. He's won Blackpool, which is the most prestigious event for ballroom dancers that was. I've won things. But that it wasn't to that international extent and it was challenging. I didn't know that I would be a dancer I grew up with my parents supporting my brother because he had the results. And they, you know, were supporting me to either become this academic scholar because I have a good head on my shoulders, or the ultimate dream, a wife of a rich nobleman and give them loads of grandchildren. So that those were sort of got to love parents for sure, especially Soviet ones. So that was it. So finding salsa was a little bit of a blessing because it was my first time in 2007, I found salsa in this dance school that was teaching everything. So I went in there to be a ballroom dance instructor. And one of the prerequisites is you had to learn salsa because everybody wants to dance it. So if somebody came and you were the only instructor available, you had to be able to teach it. So I started to learn it and I started to like the freedom. But more than anything, it was the first time I was a dancer outside of my brother's shadow. Right. I was in an environment where nobody knew who he was. I was in an environment where there were no really competitions. It was just people wanting to be better. So I. That was the first time I got to look in the mirror and realize that I was actually really good at the things, that I was a good performer, that I was a good competitor, that I was a really good teacher. So it was nice to have that. And opportunities started to knock, to be honest. I did the Dancing with the Stars tour, I did the Burn the Floor tour, but I kept learning salsa. And I met an individual that was very talented and he wanted to learn some ballroom. And I started to teach him and he could pick up things in an hour. That took me a year. And so I just started to be in awe of his talent. And he was a salsa dancer. And I asked him, I said, what are your dreams or what are you ranked? Because as a ballroom dancer, you're ranked. He said, no, I just do this for fun. And that just disgusted me. I was like, what do you mean? You have all of this talent and you're wasting it on fun? No. And so we made this really funny bet. Well, I. Not we. I met this bet, I guess, with the universe where I said, okay, you teach me this salsa thing and I'll teach you to be a champion. And that's how I became a two time world champion.

That's really cool. I didn't know that part of the story. I love hearing those stories.

Okay, that's good to know because I'm very good at talking, so if I start to ramble, you have to stop me.

Well, now we switch in some of the tricky stuff, some of the difficult stuff, right? And it's not all been fun and games, right? And there's been some serious challenges that almost knocked you out. And here you are on stage smiling with the glamour and the glitter, just like you wanted. When I'm having a bad day or a bad moment in my life, sometimes it lasts a couple years, of course, and I have to do a one on one meeting or a meeting with five people or whatever it is. It's one thing to put on the smiling face for a few people, but it's a different thing to put on a smiling face for thousands of people in an audience or hundreds of people continuously over and over, Right? Because when you got two minutes on stage as a salsa performer, 2 minute, 10 seconds, I think is the average length or whatever it is for a song. And everything that you train for comes down to those two minutes and how you feel on stage gets projected out. Right? So we'll come back from this short little break. We're going to come into what you had to go through and how you were able to maintain this strength and this vision to get you through the challenges that you experience. So as soon as we come back from this short break, I'm gonna ask you those tricky questions. I sincerely hope you're enjoying today's episode with Anya. And this is a little break where I get to talk about a charity which I think would be of great help to anyone that's listening going through some of maybe the same challenges that maybe Anya was experiencing in her past and today. The nonprofit organization I chose to support here is called you are More Than. And the website is www.yamt.org. that's yamt.org. and I'm gonna read you their vision from their website. By the way, I just went on there and made a little donation to them. So even if you're not experiencing or a survivor of sexual assault, or even if you don't know someone that is, every little bit helps. I just went on and donated myself right now. It was really easy, just a few clicks. And anyways, from their website here, their vision is that Yamt envisions creating a world where mental health, education and financial stability are no longer barriers to success for sexual assault survivors. They envision a world where survivors are seen, heard and understood in their own lives, communities, and through a wider lens of society's views. It's a really cool website. Check it out. There's lots of resources. You can reach out to them, send them an Email, call them. They work a lot with the LGBTQ communities as well. And anything that's related to being a survivor of sexual abuse, they believe that every survivor should have the right to well trained, trauma informed mental health professionals that'll guide you towards building a foundation of emotional growth for the future rather than limiting their potential through the past. And I'm just reading from their website, but it resonates with me very strongly. So this was referred to me by a friend. This is a group out in New York, so check it out and remember to share this episode with someone who needs to hear it. And now back to the show. Okay, we're back. Now here on From a Rock Bottom to Rockin it with my friend, Anya. Anya was telling us a little bit about her history and how she got into dance. And now we're going to talk a little bit about the rock bottom moments. And of course, that's what this show is about. This show is about spilling the beans, right? And opening up that heart to talk about what were the deep challenges that happened and how did we work through it. And now we're rocking it anyways, starting with this rock bottom concept. I remember you sharing with me that you had some challenges with your nervous system that essentially was threatening to knock you out of dance. And I'll let you just take it from here and explain some of this in your own words. And what happened?

Well, you said something really interesting. You said, you have to, I do it in front of one person, but you have to do it in front of hundreds or thousands. But the reality is that part's easier. I don't know, I didn't want to let that go. I wanted to comment on it. That part, it's easier when it's a lot of people. It's the intimacy factor that makes it harder because when you see a lot of faces, you don't really see any one person, right? So so subconsciously you don't process that each of those people is watching just you, because that's not your nervous system experience, Right? You're processing a lot of information, which almost always equals you're not processing any information. So it's actually an escape. And being on stage and being celebrated and being lucky enough to receive accolades from thousands, it's actually an escape. So a lot of my life was challenging and I didn't do a good job at acknowledging those challenges in the moment because when you have a goal to reach for, when you have expectations of yourself and when you have a paveway like a stepping stone, One thing my brother or the universe did for me by giving me this situation of having an older brother that does the same thing that I do is I always had a stepping stone for what my career should look like. And at the time of my life where that was true, I didn't have time to process trauma. I didn't have time to process the hardships. Yeah, it was hard. It was hard being in his shadow. It was hard being a girl who is equally as talented, if not more, but not celebrated. Not by my parents, not by the judges, not by anywhere in society. Right. It was so hard to be equal to someone and not seen that way. So. But I never got to process that. I never saw it, I felt it, but I didn't process it. And so even though there were so many different components and variables that I think eventually led to my nervous breakdown at age 30, I'm just going to call it a nervous breakdown because a whole bunch of things happened to me that couldn't be explained and still aren't. So I'm just going to call it a nervous breakdown. But essentially I had this. There were. There was a lot. To just highlight this one moment and say that was my only sense of rock bottom would be unfair. So I'm not going to. But it's the one you want me to talk about, so I'm going to talk about it.

Well, you explain how you feel is the right way, however you think, because there's a lot of people listening that are having their own rock bottom right now. And rock bottom isn't what I say it is, it's what you say it is. So just feel free to go in any direction that you think is appropriate.

And so briefly, I'm going to say not being celebrated is a rock bottom. Right. Being in this environment where you see certain things get celebrated, just not you. For me, my first rock bottom was that pivotal moment where before I found salsa, it wasn't clear that it's okay for me to dance. Right. It wasn't clear that I'm allowed to be an artist for the rest of my life, that I'm not going to go hungry or be homeless if I choose art. But it wasn't clear. And so my first rock bottom was that pivotal moment of deciding do I continue with my academics, a place that made me miserable even though I had stellar grades, or do I continue to pursue something I'm constantly told I am not good enough to do or don't have the accolades to. To justify? Right. Because being within this environment that's what it always felt like. You're not enough. You're not enough. You're not good enough. This is not going to happen for you, right? And so for any artists out there that are listening, you can definitely. Or anyone attempting to be an entrepreneur or just walking against the grain, we all experience that, right? And so because we all experience that to a certain extent, you don't give it the credit that it deserves, right? Because it's hard for everyone. And of course, there's only one Jennifer Lopez, and there's only one Madonna, and there's only one Michael Jordan, and there's only. And there's only. But you know what? I just named 50 names, so really there isn't. But why do we do that? Right? And so for me, that's what it felt like. This dream that I had inside of me, this desire to be on stage and to be seen and to be an entertainer and a dancer and all of the things I was constantly told, it's never going to happen. It's never going to happen. It's never going to happen. And so my first rock bottom was that moment where I had to choose that it was going to happen. And I didn't know how. It's nice to look back and say, oh, salsa fell into my lap. And that's how I knew I would be a dancer. But the reality is, I think I made that choice before salsa fell into my lap, right? And it was hard. It was hard. I chose to leave school. I didn't know if I would be a makeup artist or a fashion designer or an actor or a dancer or any of the things, but I knew I wasn't going to be an academic, and that was really hard. And luckily, salsa fell into my lap and I started to succeed. And then my next rock bottom was, well, here you are. A white Jewish girl succeeding in a predominantly male Hispanic world. That was hard, right? Being a salsa world champion, coming from the ballroom world, being a female of Russian Jewish descent telling Latino men what to do, that was really hard. And it's still hard. And the. As soon as someone says something kind to me, there's five people trying to take it away. And I don't know if it's because I'm a girl or because I'm white or everything or nothing, but it's hard. It's hard to stand in your light. And I have strong opinions, and my opinions usually help people become world champions. And you would think that would be enough to. But it's not because it's hard, right? It's hard. Just this summer I was Facebook torn apart by an ex student of mine that was saying I have no right to call myself the Queen of Salsa because blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And like, really? Okay, Right. And so those things are hard and they tear you up. They really tear you up. But because they're common, I think we don't give them enough credit. And so I've lived through all of that just like you, just like everyone else. But I don't think I gave it, I didn't give myself the attention that I deserved. And so I had a nervous breakdown at age 30. I started to experience these. 30 or 33. 33 is a lot more poetic. So I'm going to say 33. Yeah, well, because the symptoms were at their worst at 33. But I think this all started to. I think it all began when I turned 30 and got divorced and had an affair and did all that. You start acting out first. I think when you're given a lot of rock bottoms, there comes a point where you act out too, right? Because that's what happens. The universe is just gonna tear things from underneath you until you line up with who you are. And I think even though I've accomplished so much, slept through 33 years of my life doing what I was told, and yes, I always go against the grain, but still think too much, doing what I'm told and affected too much by all of these things outside of myself. So, yeah, at some point I lost my voice and that, that says everything right there. I went to work in Costa Rica and I remember just being on that plane, wanting to get off the. I had a connecting flight in Atlanta and I just wanted to get out in Atlanta and not get that plane because I just wasn't feeling well. But you're not feeling well. Show must go on, right? You're, You've been in this industry for 20 years. Who gives a shit how you feel? There are people to serve, right? And I work with people to this day that are like, what do you mean? You can't do a nine hour shift without going to pee. How dare you? We'll hire someone else, right? So I, I got on the plane, I went to work, I went to judge, and my feeling stages got progressively worse and really felt like I was sick. Sinus infection, sick, something. But at some point during that trip, my vision went blurry and that shit was scary because, well, as you can imagine, that's scary and it has never happened to me before. So I, I've experienced a couple of Ocular migraines, but never this, because it was consistent. It wasn't going away, and I didn't know what to do. So I kept trying to take decongestants, whatever I could. I got through the work trip, and I just remember, like, I can't wait to go home. I can't wait to go home. I got home, I didn't come home to the most nurturing environment. And I think that just set it off into a cycle or a loop. And so the state of blurry vision, numbness in my face, not being able to speak, seeing flashes all the time, just like nervous system stuff, right? And then it persisted for a good month of my vision actually being blurry. I went for another trip in Toronto to work, and that one I actually had to pull out. I couldn't do my job, and I didn't know what to do. And so then you start with the goose chase of the doctors and all of their opinions. And for, like two years, I thought there was an infection in my tooth. And I eventually had my tooth pulled. And the thing is, when you start looking for stuff, you'll find stuff, right? So you find a little here, you find a little there. Maybe it's a concussion. I have been hit in the head. I'm a professional athlete. Maybe it's migraines. You try all the Botox and all the antidepressants. So I tried everything. I've genuinely tried everything. There was no one diagnosis. And the minute I stopped looking for a diagnosis and just started to heal, I realized, okay, this is something internal. And one of the things that brought me there was I went to therapy and the therapist said, well, let's look at all the symptoms, okay? You can't speak. And that. Have you been repressed or something? You start, so why. What's this thing with your eyes? And I just kept. I was afraid I was going blind. So you wake up one day and your vision is blurry and you have all of. I had all of these ocular symptoms. And she said, well, why are you afraid of that? Is someone in your family blind? And we just started following the breadcrumbs. And I remembered I used to know this person at this dent school where I started working. And he was the only person that ever asked me that question. He said, what's your biggest fear? And I said, well, I don't know. I know I don't think about things like that. I never thought about things like that. I said, I don't know. I guess going blind. And he said, well, your Biggest fears tend to come true. And I think that stuck with me. And I'm sitting in this therapist chair and thinking, oh, I've uncovered Pandora's box. This is amazing. That's it. It was just this one guy that scared me into feeling like I'm going to live a self fulfilled prophecy. Let's dive deep. And my therapist wasn't having it. She was like, well, tell me more about this person. I was like, why? This is it, this is it. She's like, tell me more. And the more she kept digging, the more I kept recalling little things that I. This is someone I haven't. This is someone I knew very briefly, right? Maybe cumulative 10 hours of my life. And I remembered, okay, what are the details? Okay, this is a person that tried to date me, but he was going out with one of my best friends in the studio. I think he took me on a date, but I was too naive, like I was barely 20 years old to even know that it was a date or that this person had any romantic I. It never felt to me. But we went to some kind of meal or we must have had someone on one time for us to have had that conversation. But I remember my biggest curiosity was he always talked about magic and that's something that I liked. So he told me he's a wizard and he would pique my curiosity with mystical things that are very attractive to me. And then as I kept talking, I remembered, oh, actually I was in his house once because he said he was going to show me some books. And actually I remember him offering me some water because I'm Russian and this was way before the whole America is trying to be healthy things. So I didn't drink water. So it's like awkward that you offer someone water. In my household we don't do that. Like I'm drinking homemade food punch right now, right? So I remembered it distinctly. And then I remember not remembering. And when I was barely 20 or 21 or. But again, we know me already. I lie about these things, but I must have been 20, 21 or 22. And I remember not remembering. And then I remember waking up one day and feeling like, oh, that was really bizarre. I remember not remembering. And then I remember looking at him and saying like, what just happened? I don't remember. And he told me, oh, we did, like we had a mystical journey. And I took it for what it is because I was young and naive and I went home and I don't know, I could feel things. And then I started talking about maybe seeing something on my panties that day. I was very inexperienced, very young, and at that point, my therapist looked at me, and she said, well, I'm really sorry to tell you, but I think you were drugged and you were raped. And she delivered it in that way. And I was. And I just remember being completely indifferent. Like, completely indifferent, because this is something I do not have memory of my body remembers. So it was tugging at me for 10 years, and it was incredible. Once you start putting the pieces together. Oh, I must have been 23, because this happened when I was 33. It was literally 10 years. And I started to take into consideration that was real. I never doubted that what she told me was true, but I was so disconnected and disassociated from the experience. Experience that it was like, oh, okay, yeah, okay. That happens to people. And it was. It was. It's still to this day for me to look at you and say, well, yeah, I'm a victim of sexual assault. I can do that. Because that's what people say, right? But to look at you and say, like, yeah, I was raped. Which makes it so much more personal because I don't have a recollection of the incident. It's something that I know it happened. My body stored the information, and I had to do a shitload of work to get rid of it. And interestingly enough, when I started to do the work to get rid of it, one of the things I did was emdr. And EMDR is a form of therapy that tries to regulate your nervous system into processing the experience differently. So there's a physical component to it. And so when I had the EMDR session around it, besides the things that the practitioner saw happening in my body, which, if you don't believe in the mystical, might be boring for you, but 10 days after I did the EMDR, I got a message out of nowhere. These are people I have not spoken to in over a decade saying, oh, our dear friend Leo passed away. And so that was incredible to me because that. I don't care how much you want to call it a coincidence. That's. It was. It was a very powerful moment for me to feel like I had to do this work and release it out of my body. And I'm pretty certain that me releasing it out of my body is somehow tied to this person's death, which he died of cancer. But that's when it happened, right? So it was literally that day is when it happened.

So how do you call those coincidences? Right? It's almost impossible.

I'm trying to be Neutral. But for me, it's not a coincidence. For me, it has meaning. Right. Like you. You free you. In any case, there was more therapy I had to do there, Right? Because you get to the bottom of the secret that you've been harboring for 10 years from yourself, you uncover it finally. And then the one person that you can confront and hold respect responsible chooses to die. Right?

Yeah. And now, for some people listening, there's a lot of different types of thought process around life and death, right? There's the concept and the perspective where there is no choice to live or die internally, and it just sort of happens to you. And then there's the. If we look into a deeper, more energy state perspective, then there is a certain conscious choice that influences how our experience is in the world and how we live in or when we die subconsciously. And so regardless of which perspective you're coming from, I'd ask you just to open your mind for a second and acknowledge that whether you're religious and believe in God or you're mystical or very spiritual, whatever it is that your background is, if we all acknowledge there is a universal, some sort of truth that's difficult to put into words, that guides what happens in this world, whether in a deterministic perspective or in a choice perspective. Either way, sometimes when things like this happen that are a little bit too strange to be coincidence, maybe there is something going on behind there. Maybe there was a choice there to duck out of responsibility and die instead of face those realities. How would you elaborate on that, Anya? Because there's so many perspectives on how life works, and I know that you hold the perspective, and it seems that way to me as well, that that was a way to duck out of responsibility.

Yeah. I mean, again, I have to be fair.

And other people would say that he had no choice about it at all, and that was the consequence, the karma, of what he was doing to you. And we have to presume others ate him alive and ultimately killed. There's probably several other interpretations as well that maybe are different.

Well, when it first, when it occurred, I saw it as I set him free. For me, it was like the experience released him. Maybe it was gnawing at him. Maybe all of these things are the reason he got cancer. I don't know. That's not for me to decide. But internally, when this happened, it felt to me like I released him because I worked through this experience and bringing it to light, bringing it to my awareness, allowed him to be free. I saw it in this beautiful, romantic way. I had no anger towards him. I had none of that. But the more I kept going to therapy, no. One of my really wonderful coaches said, anya, he didn't give you an opportunity to confront him. This is cowardly. And now all you are is left with your anger. And at which point I gave her my romantic story. It's like, I'm not angry. Da, da, da. And at that point, I realized I don't know how to be angry. I. I am angry. I'm just in denial about it. I'm just not feeling it. And so for me, like I said in the beginning, I can tell you a million stories of what felt like rock bottom. And this is definitely a drastic one, but I can. There's still a part of me that can look at you and say it like a story, like it's not my story. And that disassociation from my own emotions, that disassociation from my own body, from my own anger, that, for me, was my rock bottom, right? Because that's me not being whole. That's me trying to. I don't know, fit in all of the things. I don't even have to list them, right? But it was hard, I can tell you. It was hard for me to actually get angry. This person raped me. He drugged me and he raped me, and then he died. And it was really hard for me to get angry. And that. I don't know that just. That's a huge lesson in a whole bunch of crazy. So I. To answer your question, because I realize I haven't answered it yet. To answer your question, I believe. I believe. We all believe whatever we need to believe in the moment, right? But I do. I do a lot of mystical, spiritual work. So I can tell you the things. I can tell you for my belief system, when I did the emdr, there was something physical that actually detached itself from my body. I can tell you that this coincidence of receiving that email and he died, I can tell you that two months later, I ran into someone we both knew, right, that was friends with him, that proceeded to talk to me about it again. Someone I haven't seen in 15 years. Oh, look, I lied. 10.

It was in the past.

In the past, long time ago. And I dumped my anger on that person. He would. He was talking to me. He was so lovely and so sweet. And he started to talk to me about Leo, the guy that raped me. And then the anger showed up, and I just looked at him and I had to stop him. And I said, look, don't talk to me about this guy. Because he raped me. And I just burst this bubble for this individual that was his friend, right? And so that was kind of mean of me. I didn't know. But you know, and so it's a cycle, but it took all of those things. So, yeah, I believe that he chose to have cancer. I believe he chose the easy way out. I've also done some past life regressions and have been told of the horrible things my soul has done to his soul many eons of lifetimes ago. So I can't. I. Because I know all of this and I believe in all of it. I can't talk about karma and I can't talk about spirituality because I know that there's so much we don't know. What I have learned is you have to feel your feelings. What I have learned is that you're entitled to that. You are not supposed to hold on to it and become a victim. You're not supposed to hold onto it and feel like it gives you a self righteous walk about the world. But the more you can feel them in the moment, the less chances there are of you having a nervous breakdown. And the more experience, literally, the more you can process them and not become the person that hurts someone else. Like I did with this innocent man that was just trying to have a nice conversation. I mean, granted, I didn't rape him, but I didn't have to do what I did either.

He was an outlet, right? We have this bottle. Anger doesn't just go away for me anyways. The more I deny it, the more it just bottles up. And then for me, I don't know about you or anyone else listening, but for me, I end up getting angry at the people that I'm closest with. I'll duck it away and hide it. For example, I'm going through a lot of challenges with the company right now and we're in a very difficult time. It's been an extremely stressful couple weeks. And just last night I'm hanging out with my friends on Zoom because we can't hang out in person. And I was a grumpy asshole for two and a half hours. I was a grumpy asshole being a dick to my friends. And I saw it and we talked about it while it was happening because I'm like, what the hell's happening right now? Why have I been so nice to everyone all week? And now that I'm with people that I actually really care about, I'm being a jackass towards, right? And I know that I was, but that's how it goes, you can't bottle up anger forever and pretend that it's not going to be there. It is there, and it comes out probably differently for each person. For me, it was with my friends, and for you it was with this guy randomly. It's there. Yeah.

So clearly I love my friends much more than you love yours. I did it with a stranger.

For me personally, when I'm bottling up something like a little bit about my past when I was a teenager, basically I was just a loner. I had no friends, I was stuck. And I ran away from home, dropped out of school and got into drugs and ran away and got arrested and all that stuff. And it was this big spiral of challenges and in my child's mind, holds people from my past responsible for those choices that I made. Now I made those choices. Not. So then when we go to the next level of working through it, it's like, okay, well, even though they're not responsible for my choices, these people from my past in school or at home or teachers, authority figures, they created a situation, they created an environment which I felt so tormented in that it led me to seeing no alternative other than choose choices to, like, run away and get into drugs and get in a lot of trouble for a while. And so I'll hold them responsible for creating the environment. And it took many years to figure out that anger actually existed. I think it's fair to say it's still there to a degree. It comes out once in a while. And as much as like to pretend that anger just goes away, it doesn't. It has to come out somewhere. And if nothing else, I'm glad you got angry at this stranger to let a little bit of that steam off the top of the volcano so it doesn't burst in some other fashion.

Yeah, me too. For sure. I mean, it's unfortunate that there was an innocent bystander, but. Yeah. And it was quite innocent. Yeah. Well, I mean, I shouldn't paint a worse picture than it is. I just literally revealed the truth. I didn't do anything bad. But, yeah, the reality is I'm glad it happened also because I needed to learn what that feeling is. It just makes me angry that I was disassociated from my own emotions for 33 years. Right. Or however long. And that that for me is as rock bottom as it gets, because then you're living a life where you're not making your. When you were telling what you were saying right now, my brain just kept saying, but at least you got to make those Choices. They were your choices. You made those choices. They were your choices. Right? Because somehow internally, I feel like I didn't make choices. I'm a dancer.

Well, I wasn't drugs, right. I had cognitive ability throughout all that. And there's a huge difference there for sure.

Right? But. But that's to constantly go back to the summary of the rock bottom, right? Just for me, having this conversation with you today is just really obvious that it could be a whole bunch of these situations, but it's not. Right? Any of the stories could feel like a hardship or a rock bottom, and I had to reinvent myself with each single one. My body had to literally start disassociating from me because I was so disassociated from it. Right? Because the signs are subtle in the beginning. Your body is extremely intelligent, and it always knows, and the signs are always subtle. And it keeps knocking and knocking louder and louder until you hear it. Right? And so my body got so frustrated with me that it was like, yeah, you're not going to listen. I want to take away all the things that are important to you little by little, right? Which is my work, my livelihood, my. My dancing. And I still, to this day, it's been four years of my healing journey now, and I still go on stage and see the lights flashing instead of the spotlight, right? So it still lingers. I'm still working through it. But the reality is I. I had to pay attention to my own feelings, right? That was the lesson. Because I was living in this place, my brain still did that to me, where I didn't feel like I was making any of my own choices. Oh, I dance because my brother dances. Oh, I do this because this. Oh, this is like, Right. Even this rape, right? This wasn't my choice. I didn't drug myself. Right? Yes. You could argue and say you went there, but okay, fuck you. Don't make that argument. That's cruel, right? I didn't know what I was walking into. I didn't know that water is dangerous, right? So whoever had that thought right now, fuck you.

Don't do that.

I'm sorry, are you gonna bleep me out? Did you say, kids, listen to this? No, no.

This is exactly as it is. Like, this whole show is about being raw and honest. It's about revealing stories, right. And people listening. There's a point I want to make, too, here in the past on. We're at, I think, episode 31 at this point. And if anyone listening, if you relate to the subject of sexual assault, I encourage you to check out the episode with Samra Zafar, a child bride from Africa who's essentially sold to a husband and forced to have kids and had to escape. She's done amazing things with her life. Or Sheldon Kennedy, NHL All Star, hall of Famer. Right. And sexually assaulted dozens, I think, hundreds of times by his coach when he was a teenager. Or Josh Darling, and he doesn't even talk about that. The sexual assault aspects of his childhood because it's too difficult. And these are all episodes. Jessica Minas from New York, also working with sexual assault victims nonstop. You know, check out some of these other episodes, because one of the things I'm finding. And then for me, I've never been the victim of a sexual assault experience. So I strictly hold into the host perspective and try and have a conversation that lets people be comfortable to share what happened so that other people can hear it, so that we know we're not alone. Because we're not alone, Anya, you're not alone in this. And people listening, you're not alone in your rock bottom moments, whether that be sexual assault or you're going through a medical illness or divorce or bankruptcy or Covid challenges, or you lost someone to Covid and you couldn't go to their funeral. Everyone's got a rock bottom moment. And frankly, we probably all have many. And this whole show is designed about, first of all, talking about it, right? Let's get it out so that it doesn't turn into a big outburst and something worse than it has to be. Second, let's be honest, right? Let's be totally transparent and honest with each other. We're all humans, you and me, Anya. We're human. And people listening, we're human and we're all having these challenges. So let's stop the Facebook prettiness about talking about what's good in our lives and acknowledge that it's also good to release this stuff and to get it out. What's more good than living a holistic, fully rounded life that's honest and integrity with people that you trust, right? That's the environment I'm hoping that I'm contributing towards here as well, with the charities that we support in the show. So speak your raw emotions, Anya. Tell people to fuck off. Get it out, right? This is what it's about. Go on the top of a building and scream your lungs out to let it out of the system, right?

It happens, right? Like it happens. I'm sure I've caught myself, right, having those thoughts. That's why I can imagine others will, too. It happens, but at the end of the day, it all happens. And so for me, the true core lesson that I learned is that you have to listen. Yeah. The goal is what you just so beautifully put into the words that you just said. You have to be present with yourself and you have to aim for an honest, holistic, well rounded self. And yes, thank you. It is important to get it out. And I appreciate the opportunity to do that here with you today and with everyone listening.

People I'm sure listening are just. It's such a relief to know that I'm not alone in my struggles and for other people to know they're not alone in their struggles. So on behalf of everyone, I thank you for sharing.

Thank you. I appreciate that. I mean, I think for the longest time and I'm sure many of you can relate. I was under this impression of. But your struggles are not real struggles, right. I thought I had a wonderful childhood until I realized I didn't. But because I didn't suffer the kind of abuse or things that you hear, right. I never gave myself the proper outlet to be angry, to be upset, to be less than grateful, to feel the things that I felt in the moment. And so they started to pile up and pile up to the point where I suffered sexual assault. I was drugged and raped. And still that didn't seem like a big deal to me. Right. Still, it was like, okay, but you survived and you're lucky. You don't even remember all the things. And so for me, the biggest rock bottom I'll keep coming back to it is just not having enough self respect to say, stop, this means something to you. That's all that matters. This means something to you. And that has to be the only thing that matters. And you don't need a sliding scale or some kind of rhetoric of measure to feel valid here. And so I just really, I could tell you that I did all the therapies, I did all the yogas, I did all the holistic practices. I did it all, I learned it all right? I can give the healings now to a certain extent because I've studied so many modalities in order to heal myself. But at the end of the day, probably what helped the most is your own internal validation. The minute I started to just look in the mirror and say, why is everyone else's opinion more important than mine? Which is, it's crazy because you knowing me, right, you know me well, you probably would never think that, right? Like, my professional Persona is pretty strong and, and I don't understand how that still comes across energetically, right? Like the true value of who you are comes across energetically. But I have to be honest and say I probably felt the truth of who I am until I was seven and I'm probably just relearning what that is in the past three years. And so whatever that math is, so I don't lie. Again, I don't know who I was, but I wasn't Anya.

And on that subject, I want to ask you two questions, probably my two favorite questions in the show, right when we come back from this short little break. Thank you so much for sharing this show and spreading the love. Every time you click that share button or put it on your social media, it makes a big difference to those who listen to it, to the guests that I have on here as well, and to me personally. This is a passion project. And so all of your help, sending me feedback, sending, sending me an email, clicking that contact me button on my website, all of that is amazing and it really touches my heart because when I was little and struggled, I dropped out of school, I got into drugs and violence. It was very difficult and I hit rock bottom. My own rock bottom in that context was when I was around 17 years old and I thought I was going to jail for a long time and didn't know what was going to happen. And I got out because people reached out to me and helped me. People picked me back up and gave me motivation to move forward, just like you heard hearing in these interviews. So this really is a passion project for me and I'd love it if you checked out my book as well. I tell my whole story on there. You can find it on my website, ericgilbertwilliams.com just click on my book. I would love for you to download a free copy of the intro and prologue. It's there right now anytime. There's an audio version as well. And now we're going to go back to the interview. Talk to you guys soon. We're back now here on From Rock Bottom to Rockin it with my friend Anya. And first of all, thank you for sharing. From the bottom of my heart, thank you for sharing the deep inner emotions that you went through on your journey here. Just on wrapping up right now, I wanted to ask you two specific questions. One, you might have already answered this one, but I want to just double check if you were to go back in time, let's say 10 years, when you're 23, or even earlier, wherever you think when you were in your rock bottom moment, the Absolute, lowest, whatever it is that you in your mind believe that is and feel that it is. Imagine you were to go back to yourself back then, and you had, you know, 30 seconds just to say something to your old self back then. What would you tell yourself?

Don't drink the water.

That's a good one. Now, question for you on that. Was the environment one where perhaps in hindsight, you should have been skeptical, or was it a fully trusting opening? This was totally out of. There was nothing to be suspicious about at all. You know what I mean? It's hard to differentiate. But in hindsight, because you might be right, maybe that is the biggest thing, is be aware and don't drink the water from strangers. Or was this a really trusted environment that totally violated that trust?

Well, you see, you kind of just gave me that fuck you moment a little bit, right? Really? Water? Really? I mean, there. There are many. Like, you see, it happens. We do it naturally. I know you didn't mean it, right? But it happens. Like, I was at a friend's house with a glass of water.

Okay, so it was in the fully trusted, open environment that was a complete violation, is what you're saying.

Yeah, it depends. Right? My mother, if she would have known about this, would probably tell me, what are you doing? You're crazy. You don't know this person. They're male. Right. She would probably pick at other things about the individual. Right. But it depends. It depends. It all depends. What did my body feel in the moment? I don't know. That's maybe the advice I would give myself. Can you listen to your body? Maybe that is the advice I would give myself today. So the body knows, but the environment. It depends who you're asking. Right. I'm a girl. I need to be aware of every man. Thank God for Covid and Zoom that you're not in the same room as me right now. Right. So as a woman, do I just fear all men and all glasses of water?

I'm glad you touched on that subject, because it's like, where's the line? I have no idea. I mean, you're right. I am a man. It's not something I've ever really did to really think about. There are men on the show who have been victims of sexual assault as well, but for me, it's a foreign concept completely. I'm not envious at all of that concept of being needing to be skeptical of the opposite sex.

It's so deep and broad and all of the things all at the same time. Right. I live in New York City, and I take the subway at midnight. And this is something my mother tells me not to do. Right? The same way she would have told me not to go over a strange man's house. But at the same time, what am I going to say? I'm going to say to her Mom, I'm 36 years old. I'm going to take the subway. It doesn't get any darker at midnight than it does at 8pm, right. What am I going to do? Stay home? Take an Uber everywhere? Right. You do the things that you need to do. It's the reality. The possibility is always there. And it could be a stranger, it could be your best friend. Right? The possibility is always there. This is an incident that happened outside of an intimate relationship. But have I been violated in that way within my intimate relationships? I have been. Right. So it's just. It's a real thing. It's a real thing and it happens. And there's no pointing the finger. I think that's the only thing that could be truth. There's no pointing the finger.

Now, the odds are someone listening right now has just gone through their own rock bottom. Perhaps that sexual assault, or perhaps it's something else, and they're going through it right now. They're right now in that rock bottom. So, Anya, if you don't mind, what would you say to those people? What would you say to that person that's listening right now?

The thing is, we are meant to feel our feelings, but we are not meant to be victims of them. So I'm not sure to what extent I can say this with as much love and empathy as I mean it, because. Russian New Yorker. But I hope my words will do what my tone cannot. I think it's really important to learn from the grievances that occur in your life. I think it's really important to forgive yourself and others. I think it's really important to not be a victim. So that said, I think it's also from my story. If there's anything you can learn from my story is it's really important to validate yourself and feel your feelings. So it's a process. My only advice takeaway for anyone listening that's going through it is you have to be okay with it being a process, and you have to be okay with it taking as much time in whatever phase that you need to take it in. But. But it's really important to go through that phase of acceptance and feeling it and expressing it and releasing it and being mad about it and being angry about it and really experiencing it in the body, in the mind, and doing all of the release work that you need to do. But it's equally as important to regroup, redefine who you are. Who were you then? Who are you now? Who do you want to be? How did this help you get there? And when I say help you get there, maybe it's as simple as you got so super mad you wanted to prove everybody wrong. It doesn't matter what your fuel is, but ultimately it comes down to this depth of there is you and all of the things that get in the way of you being you. And this is just one of them. And maybe this is the hardest, but it's still pointing you in the direction of you and where you're meant to be and what you're meant to be. And I'm fortunate enough to say that as many times as I've hit my rock bottoms, I've always been who I'm supposed to be. You were able to read off of me the energy that's truly there, and I'm grateful for that and for all the times I didn't give myself the opportunity to feel it appropriately. I gave myself plenty of opportunities to feel it inappropriately. And so there was a part of me that wasn't appropriately angry at the bastard who had raped me, but that wounded part of me got angry at myself for not choosing dance and for just doing it because my parents put me in it, because my brother. And that's just really misplaced because that's a place where I can just be grateful and say, oh, life gave it to me kind of easy. I got transplanted to the best city in the world. It didn't have to be my choice. I would have chose it anyway. I got fed into this career that I didn't even have to choose. It was just right there for the taking. And I was good at it since I was 8 years old or whatever age we decided I started, right? And so you have to allow the process to be, but you have to eventually be strong enough. And this is not to take away from the value of anyone's pain and how hard it is. It's not easy, but you have to be strong enough to look at it and say, how did I contribute to this if I had? Because that's something I can do differently in the future. And what has it done for me? How did it serve me, if anything? Maybe it didn't. Maybe it was just one of those things that I don't know. Like I said, I'm in this spiritual point of my life where I don't try to pretend to have the answers. But nothing. Sorry, I'm filtering because it's a sensitive subject, not because I'm trying to be discreet about anything. But I think it's very rare for things to happen that you can't handle. I think that's really rare. And I think it's really rare for the universe to be against you. And so I say, feel it, go through it, honor yourself. But get to a place where you ask, how are you serving me? How is this helping me? And get to know what you're truly made of. And know that you are so supported and so divinely guided, even if it's rough sometimes. Maybe that's showing you that you were off course. Maybe that's the redirection that you needed because you didn't listen to the other ones. Maybe. But at the end of the day, all maybes aside, you got this. Because if you didn't have this, it wouldn't have happened to you. That I truly believe. So the sooner you can. Well, there's no time. But that moment exists. And when things feel really bad, maybe that's something to think about. That moment exists. And maybe you need to feel like shit today, but know that tomorrow could be the day. You have that moment.

I can really feel those words, Sonia. That was deep. I really appreciate you introspecting so much in order to articulate what your message and how you really feel about this subject. And as we wrap up now, because it's time to go, I want to wrap up with just echoing what you're saying for me. Anyone listening right now? Because by default of you listening to the show, you've made it through and you are making it through that rock bottom moment that you experienced. You're here. You've survived it. And although we don't get to choose exactly what happens to us, perhaps on a conscious level, subconscious is a different conversation. We don't get to choose what happens to us, but we do get to choose what we're going to do about it. And today, right now, this moment and tomorrow and the day after are yours. And you get to choose what you want to do about it. And I'm excited to hear what you do about it. Message me. Reach out. Say hi to me and Anya. Anya, if people wanted to reach out to you, what would be the easiest way? Or do you not want to be contacted at all?

I would love to. To be contacted. I would. I'm so welcome. All interaction you can find me any social well on Facebook or Instagram. Nyakatsevman okay and we'll put a link.

To that on the show. Notes to this Episode Please share this episode with whoever you feel needs to hear it and re listen to it if you like as well. Thanks everyone for joining us here on From a Rock Bottom to Rockin It. Anya, thank you as well for sharing your heart out and telling me to fuck off. I really enjoyed that too. This is the relationship we have and it's good. I really appreciate the authenticity and we'll keep in touch. Obviously talk to you again soon. And everyone listening, have a rockin it day. Keep that chin up. You got this and that's it. My friends, for this episode. We will see you next time. Please send me an email, say hello, give me some feedback, let me know what you think, give me some tips and suggestions. I'd love to hear from you. Also, please share this episode with whoever you think needs to hear it. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, doesn't matter. Just get it out there. I really appreciate it and we'll see you next time on From Rock Bottom to Rockin It. Have a Rockin It.