YDGM Ep 008: Rebecca McColl

In adversity, determination, resilience, purpose and conviction will get you out of it with flying colors.

No one said life is easy, and one of my most important mantras is, "Stop making excuses." As human beings, we are often 'stuck' in our stories, keeping ourselves from creating a life that is meaningful, purposeful, and gratifying.

Rebecca lives by this full-on. She's a perfect example of someone being accountable for her choices and actions.

"Funnily enough, I planned to have a baby that young. I was actually pregnant at 15. So I had my daughter when I was 16. And I thought I had, um I was in love, and I'd been with this person forever and I thought I knew everything and I wanted to be a mum."

Rebecca is the first woman I've met who's chosen to be a mum at 15 years old. To me, that sounds unique. She explains why she thought this was what she wanted at the time, and how she coped with her life as a new mother at 16-years-old.

Her relationship with her daughter's father turned into a domestic abuse situation, which she was able to get out of, and then remarried at the age of 21. Most women at that age are partying at university, with motherhood and marriage even remotely on the radar.

Rebecca chose a different path.

Then, after nearly nine years of marriage, and having two more daughters, she divorced at age 29, and has lived with her girls as a single mom since then.

As she was telling me her story, I couldn't help but think about how downhill her life could have turned. She didn't allow herself to be positioned in a situation of being another statistic of poverty, domestic abuse, and dysfunction. We hear so much about these tragic stories, and Rebecca never saw herself in becoming that.

She admits how challenging it was and how she had to sacrifice valuable time with her daughters for a budding career to support her family.  She had the opportunity to step into a career where she excelled and learned a great amount of skill in sales, and chose to earn a comfortable and successful lifestyle.

"It was extremely long hours, on average 16 to 18 hours days. It was hard. I really want to give the girls a good education and the opportunity to do sports and things like that that I might not have been able to do when I was younger. I often thought 'do I keep doing this or what' because you are sacrificing time with them. Sometimes they'd have their, 'oh you know we're at our friend's house and such-n-such's parents baked afternoon cookies and they did this and that' and of course they did have that with me because, you know, I wasn't there."

Then, five years ago, she was diagnosed with a very rare autoimmune disease. She was told that she was only 1 in 19 other people in the world with this disease. Her kidneys were affected, and one day she woke up with nine kilos of fluid accumulated in her body from the waist down. This forced her to take off from work for three months.

She realized that she needed to start paying attention to herself, taking care of her mind and body, and focus on healing. 

She shares about how she needed to listen to her body and how she chose to look after her health, which put her on a path to her own self-development and self-discovery.

Tune into listen to Rebecca's incredible story of motherhood, adversity, determination, self-development, and success.

To reach out to Rebecca, visit her website http://www.rebeccamccoll.com/.

You can also connect with her on Facebook https://www.facebook.com/rebecca.mccoll.566