Michelle Anhang truly embodies “Courage in Action”. For 10 years she carried a secret veiled in shame; she had lost her beloved husband and best friend to suicide. The stigma surrounding his mental health locked her into a cover-up. With the help of people who had earned her trust, she found the courage to take action: Michelle broke her silence and shattered the stigma by telling her sons the truth… and she was free! Today she is a certified coach dedicating her life to helping families navigate mental health challenges and supporting individuals break free of shame.

Are you tired of pretending like everything is perfect and that you're succeeding at everything you do? Check out my interview on Dismantling the High Performance Narrative podcast, where we have an authentic and vulnerable conversation about high performance, mental health, perfection and life.

We’re never stuck where we are. We always have a choice. There's always a way out. It just comes down to taking ownership of our life and deciding we’re going to do things differently.

“I often talked about how I would carry my backpack of shame,” says Michelle Anhang, BA, PCC, CPCC, and Certified Life Coach. Michelle coaches individuals and families living with mental health challenges and moving forward after loss; she is also a motivational speaker who shares her story navigating stigma and shame after becoming widowed at age 34 when her husband died by suicide. In this episode of Desperately Seeking Self, Michelle shares what it was like to hide the fact of her husband’s suicide for ten years, and what it finally took to realize that she deserves more from her life than shame and guilt. As a single mother, Michelle didn’t believe that finding her own joy was part of her life. She tells Brooke: “I felt like my life wasn't supposed to be about what I want. It was really about how I’m taking care of everyone else, and filing whatever their voids are.” But after forty-five years of working a job she hated, struggling through toxic and emotionally abusive relationships that didn’t serve her, and refusing to look at the ways she was perpetuating her own pain, Michelle finally broke open. She went to tons of therapy to help her end the cycle of trauma, and now she helps other people suffering from mental illness, grief, trauma, and shame find their way out of the hole and into the light. Michelle’s message for listeners? Even if you don’t know what it’s going to look like, invest in fixing yourself. Acknowledging your own power, and refusing to accept toxicity in your life, is the first step.

A series of fireside chats in support of Bell Let’s Talk Day.

Podcast interview with Dr. Katerina Thomas.

Michelle Anhang lost her husband to suicide, and was left with 2 young children to care for. In our episode Michelle tackles the stigma, and shares her journey back to happiness.

We explore niche marketing, Leadership and Mental Health with Mental Health Entrepreneur and Leader Michelle Anhang.

Dealing with a spouse or partner with mental health issues is difficult. Then when it leads to suicide, the living spouse is left with unanswered questions. What more could have been done? What do you tell other people? Could I have stopped it? Michelle Anhang will address those issues and will discuss how her family handled it.

Michelle Anhang lived a lie for a almost a decade before she finally came clean. When she was 34, her husband died by suicide. As if this would not have been already tragically enough, Michelle hid the true nature of her husband's death: A suicide turned into an accident. Grieving something that actually did not happen, not being honest to her family as well as friends and therefore not with herself, Michelle faced the consequences of living a lie for such a long time. In this episode, Michelle talks about being the spouse of someone who died by suicide, how she found the strength to tell the truth and how her own experiences shaped her own career now.