August 16, 2025

How Childhood Trauma Can Actually Become Your Greatest Business Asset

Podcast Episode: The Power of Forgiveness: How Finding My Father Freed My Future

I’ve been hesitant to share this story publicly because it’s raw, it’s real, and it reveals parts of me that I’ve spent years healing. But as I look at where my business is today and reflect on the journey that got me here, I realize that my success isn’t separate from my healing – it’s directly because of it.

If you’ve ever wondered how someone goes from being abandoned as a child to building a 7-figure business, this story is for you. Because the truth is, your past doesn’t have to define your future – but you do have to be willing to face it.

The Beginning: When Everything Falls Apart

I was born in Queens, New York, to parents whose marriage was already crumbling. My father was a Greek taxi driver who smoked Marlboro Reds and made choices that broke the sanctity of their marriage – gambling, cheating, all the destructive behaviors you can imagine.

I grew up in a house where my parents slept in separate rooms. My father would sleep in my bedroom while I stayed downstairs with my yaya (Greek for grandmother). This dysfunction was just normal to me as a seven-year-old.

By the time I was eight, my father had gambled away enough of our money that people were knocking on our door. My mother had no choice but to put the house up for sale and get out. That was the beginning of the end of their marriage.

And then my father just… disappeared.

After my mother remarried my wonderful stepfather Cliff, my father never called again. Not once. I went from having a dad who lived in my bedroom to having no father at all, and I was nine years old trying to make sense of it.

The Grandmother Who Broke Me Down

If losing my father wasn’t enough, my yaya became someone who was incredibly hard on me. I was the rebel, the defiant one, and she handled it the way she knew how – through physical punishment. I was the only one of the four children in our blended family who regularly got hit.

I remember the first time it happened, there was a voice inside me that said: “Never let her see you cry. She just wants to see that you’re upset. Don’t fucking give it to her, Vicki.”

And I didn’t.

That moment created my identity as the tough, hard-as-nails, “you’ll never hear me cry” kind of person. It shaped how I showed up in the world for decades to come.

The Stories That Run Your Life

What I didn’t understand then was how these experiences were creating the operating system for my entire life. The stories I was telling myself at nine years old became the lens through which I saw everything:

Everyone will leave you
Everyone will abandon you
No one really loves you
You’re on your own, kiddo
You’re not good enough just as you are

These weren’t conscious thoughts – they were the underground beliefs that drove every relationship, every decision, every fear I had for the next 25 years.

When Love Meets Trauma

In my mid-twenties, I met Keith, who is now my husband. He’s this enlightened, peaceful, go-with-the-flow person who reminds me every night that “everything’s going to be okay.” He’s my grounding force.

But here’s the thing about trauma – it doesn’t care how amazing your partner is. I couldn’t trust him. I couldn’t trust anyone. The little abandoned girl inside me was convinced he would leave, just like my father did.

This doesn’t work for a marriage. You can’t join your life with someone when your underlying belief system is that everyone abandons you.

The Landmark Forum: Facing the Mirror

Keith had done this program called the Landmark Forum and suggested I try it. My first reaction? “This shit is a fucking cult.” I literally signed up and then canceled because it felt so weird.

But years passed, and I kept living inside those same stories. Don’t trust Keith, he’s going to leave. Don’t trust anyone. I was bringing so much distrust to my relationship that it was destroying us.

So I signed up again and actually went.

The Landmark Forum introduced me to a concept that changed everything: There are events that happen in life, and there is the meaning you attach to the event.

As children, we don’t have the capacity to separate these two things. The event IS the meaning, period. When parents get divorced, children often blame themselves. Not because they’re not smart, but because they don’t have the context to understand that their parents’ choices have nothing to do with them.

The Moment That Changed Everything

During the forum, I got up on the microphone and shared my story. I told 150 strangers about my father leaving when I was nine and never calling again. I explained how it shaped my beliefs about men, trust, and love.

The forum leader, an Australian man named David, looked me straight in the face and said: “Vicki, you need to find your father. You need to call him and tell him you forgive him and that you love him.”

My response? “You’re on fucking crack, David. That ain’t happening.”

But it sat with me. And slowly, I began to accept that if I ever wanted true inner peace, I needed to face the person at the end of my journey and take back my power.

The Six-Month Search

I hired a private investigator. They told me my father was either dead or living in another country and they couldn’t help me. Someone suggested I email the Greek embassy in Manhattan.

I sent a generic email to their customer service address explaining who I was and what I was looking for.

The next day, someone emailed me back saying, “Hi, my name is Sotiri. I know your father personally. Here is his cell phone number.”

I still get chills telling this story.

The Phone Call That Freed Me

I called my father. He answered. He was an old, decrepit Greek man who barely spoke English. I asked him why he left.

He said he couldn’t tell me over the phone – he had to write me a letter. He was sobbing. I was furious. I thought, “You’re validating everything I felt. You’re a coward.” I hung up hating him even more.

Four weeks later, I received a handwritten 12-page letter from Greece.

The Letter That Changed My Life

In that letter, my father explained why he left. He wrote about the feelings he was experiencing, what his life had been like since he left, and why he made the choices he did.

Reading that letter gave me automatic peace around the entire situation.

Why? Because I realized I had been looking for 20 years for reasons that would make me feel better about why my father left. But the truth was simple: He was a broken man who didn’t know how to handle what life was giving him.

Was it okay that he left? Of course not. But I finally understood that he did the best he could do with the skills he had.

That sentence – “people are doing the best they can do with the skills they have” – is written all over my office because it’s a constant reminder that changed how I see everyone.

From Forgiveness to Freedom

After that letter, I didn’t wish my father ill anymore. I didn’t hate him. He followed me on Facebook. We Skyped. When he died alone in Greece a year and a half ago, I had complete peace about it.

I also had to forgive my grandmother, which I did through therapy since she had already passed away. Same principle – she did the best she could with the skills she had.

This forgiveness work didn’t excuse anyone’s behavior. It freed me from carrying their choices as my burden.

How Healing Created My Success

Fast forward to 2023 when I entered the digital business world. The little girl who learned to never let them see her cry, who learned to be resilient and strong, who learned she could only count on herself – she became the foundation for my success.

My “truth-telling persona” online isn’t a persona at all. It’s who I’ve always been – someone who’s gone to work on herself to free herself from the chains of childhood trauma.

The energy of someone who has done that inner work is magnetic. It’s authentic. It’s powerful. And it’s what allowed me to build a following of over 100,000 people and create a 7-figure business.

The Connection Between Healing and Success

Here’s what I want you to understand: There is no separation between personal development and business success.

When you see successful people, it’s not because their circumstances were better than yours. Most of the time, they were exponentially worse. It’s because they had an inner drive that didn’t allow them to fall victim to their circumstances.

The inner drive to want more in life is directly correlated to how badly you want to heal your past so you can show up as the person others trust to lead them on their journey.

Can you see how the eight-year-old girl who was told she wasn’t good enough and abandoned by her father used that pain to fuel her success? Can you see how the journey to heal those wounds led to the resilience, strength, and authenticity that people are drawn to?

When Success Wavers, Healing Sustains You

When my business hits challenges (and it does), when the money isn’t as consistent as it once was, when I face setbacks – that little girl inside me doesn’t just have the ability to succeed. She has the ability to be resilient, to pivot, to evolve, because she always had to.

That’s the real gift of doing the inner work.

Your Permission Slip to Heal

I’m sharing this story to give you permission to go on your own healing journey. Where do you start?

Go to therapy. Real therapy with a professional who can help you unearth the stories that have shaped your life.
Consider transformational programs. I recommend the Landmark Forum (yes, it’s culty and weird, but look past that to the transformative work).
Understand that inner work isn’t passive. It’s not listening to podcasts or reading self-help books. It’s actively unearthing and examining the stories that run your life.