Rebuilding Confidence After Leaving: Taking Up Space Again

Rebuilding confidence after starting over doesn’t happen all at once. It happens one small, brave choice at a time. In this episode of Pulling Threads, Cammy De shares what it really looks like to reclaim your voice and take up space again while you’re still in the middle of healing.

Cammy didn’t expect to be starting over at forty. A mother of three, farmer, speaker, and stand-up comedian, she’s rebuilding her life after leaving an abusive marriage and business partnership, walking away not just from a relationship, but from a successful career, a way of life, and the communities that came with it. Instead of waiting until she has it all figured out, she talks openly about healing in real time: the uncertainty, the grief, the small wins, the laughter, and the surprising ways we find our way back to ourselves.

She and Leslie get honest about the fog that only lifts once you get distance, why confidence built on achievement can vanish overnight, and what it means to rebuild, a career, a voice, and a sense of self, without an existing platform. They also talk about the tools that actually help: humor, stand-up comedy, listening to your body, and letting healing move in seasons.

In this conversation:

• Living a “double life,” confident in public, silenced in private

• How clarity comes only after you create distance

• Rebuilding confidence from who you are, not what you’ve done

• Finding the joke in what was meant to hurt you

• Reclaiming your voice (and the surprisingly hard “mirror practice”)

• The role AI, algorithms, and podcasts played in her healing

• How to know when to rest versus when to push forward

If you’ve spent years taking care of everyone else and lost touch with your own voice, this one is for you.

👉 Follow Cammy: @Cammy.De.Speaks on Instagram and Facebook.

💬 If this resonated, leave a comment with the one small brave thing you did today, and subscribe for more honest conversations about rebuilding, reclaiming your voice, and taking up space.

⏰Chapters:

00:00 Welcome & meet Cammy De

00:40 Starting over after divorce at 40

01:45 Building a successful farm while being silenced

05:10 Why clarity only came after leaving

09:25 "The clarity came when I walked out the door"

11:20 Gaslighting, finding support, and rebuilding confidence

17:25 Leaving everything behind to reclaim herself

22:45 Finding her voice after abuse

24:40 Rebuilding confidence from within

28:30 Starting over one small step at a time

32:00 Using comedy to reclaim power

33:05 Reclaiming your voice after being silenced

42:40 Why hearing other women's stories matters

43:35 Learning to rest instead of constantly pushing

49:45 Healing through life's seasons

54:00 Recreating the life you thought you lost

56:35 Celebrating small wins while healing

1:02:00 The relief that comes after divorce

1:05:30 "You are worth it"

1:06:40 Where to find Cammy De

Keywords: rebuilding confidence, starting over at 40, reclaiming your voice, healing after abuse, taking up space, healing in real time, midlife reinvention, rebuilding your life, women rebuilding, finding your voice again

#RebuildingConfidence #ReclaimYourVoice #StartingOver #TakingUpSpace #PullingThreads