Speaking Up Saved Me: Finding Freedom Through The 7 Anchors of Emotional Intelligence
- Jul 31, 2025
- 4 min read
By Brandon Bishop, Founder, TrueEQ
When people try to silence you, or systems demand your compliance, consider that your cue to speak louder.
I was born to a fifteen-year-old girl running from her own childhood. My mother was addicted to drugs, alcohol, and a revolving door of men. By the time I was a toddler, still in diapers, I had already learned that trust was a dangerous thing.
One day, I wandered into the house of a long-time neighbor, someone who had been safe so many times before.
He wasn’t.
“Don’t tell,” he barked as I bolted, barefoot and panic-stricken. I didn’t stop until I found the only hiding place I knew: beneath an old aluminum fishing boat in the front yard. I crouched there, trembling, convinced he was coming for me.
The fear faded into confusion. Why? I was too young to name what I was feeling, the betrayal. But I knew I couldn’t carry it alone.
So I went to someone safe: my grandmother. My mother’s mother, who had taken me in while her daughter partied away the responsibility. Through sobs, I told her everything.
For years, I refused to walk past Mr. McCaw’s house. I’d cut through the neighbor’s yard, just to avoid his gaze. He still stood outside, watching my cousin and me as we walked home from the bus stop. His gaze was more threatening than a sword.
Then my mother got out of prison. She got married. And my grandparents, desperate to reclaim their own lives, told her it was time she raised her son.
So she did.
She married a man haunted by Vietnam, addicted to crack, alcohol, and prone to fits of rage no one could contain. The fights were constant, loud, and violent. I’d retreat into myself and silently hope for better days.
By sixteen, I was starving for belonging and stability. I found hope in a religious movement. The organization provided me with a community, belonging, and direction.
So I gave myself away, not just my time, but my identity. I became the role they handed me, burying the truth of who I was and what I needed: approval, acceptance, and love, especially from men. But I couldn’t say that out loud, not in that world.
So I wore a mask. And beneath it, I quietly suffocated under the facade of being the archetype of the perfect Latter-Day Saint.
For most of my life, I lived in shame. Shame about the violence I’d witnessed. Shame about my mother. Shame about what happened in Mr. McCaw’s lap. Shame about the needs I couldn’t name, much less express.
Through years of introspection, spiritual exploration, and brutal honesty, I learned the power of breaking silence, not as rebellion, but as reclamation. Telling my truth didn’t just change my life. It gave me back my life to live.
That little boy under the boat, choosing to crawl out and speak, became the foundation of my healing.
Being brave enough to tell the truth, even when power demands silence, is the recurring theme of my life and my first book, The 7 Anchors of Emotional Intelligence. It’s about reclaiming power through radical self-awareness. It’s about listening to the child inside who once had no words, and finally giving him the mic.
Because when you find the courage to be heard, you also find the freedom to be whole.
I called my book The 7 Anchors of Emotional Intelligence not because I’m a scholar, but because I’ve lived every chapter. Each anchor is a hard-won truth, a shift from trauma to transformation, from hiding to healing.
The first anchor? Radical self-awareness. You can’t be free if you don’t know who you are. For me, that meant confronting decades of silence, naming the abuse, the shame, the needs, and still choosing to stand as my full self.
Then came boundaries rooted in empathy, not just saying “no” to those who hurt me, but believing I deserve better. That’s not something you learn in the environments I came from. It’s something you build, one brutal choice at a time.
Through these anchors: self-awareness, empathy, resilience, integrity, growth, compassion, and mindfulness, I realized my story is a blueprint for others taught to shrink, perform, or hide.
Freedom is not about escape. It’s about integration, holding your past in one hand and your purpose in the other. It’s about living openly, as a partner, a survivor, and a friend, with no apology and no mask.
I write this for anyone who’s ever felt their story disqualified them from being whole, who thought their wounds made them weak. I’m here to tell you the opposite is true.
Your story is your strength.
Your silence doesn’t protect you; your voice does. And if you’re willing to do the inner work, to sit with the hard truths, to stop running and start listening to the quiet knowing inside you, freedom isn’t just possible, it’s inevitable.
This July, HANNA Magazine is honoring those who have found their freedom through their voice. The kind of freedom you claim when you stop waiting for permission and start owning who you are and living with authenticity.
If my life has taught me anything, it’s this:
The most revolutionary act you can commit is to be fully, unapologetically yourself.
Speak up. Someone out there is waiting to be set free by your story.
Connect With Brandon
X: @brandoncbishop
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