In this episode, Harry sits down with Pritha Lal ~ HR professional turned authenticity life coach, global citizen, and mother. Pritha spent the first seven years of her life with selective mutism, unable to speak a word outside her own home. Raised across Kolkata, Kanpur, Delhi, Mumbai, and Kuwait, and now living in Utah, she's built a life and a career around a question she spent decades answering for herself: what happens when you stop looking outside yourself for permission to be okay?

This conversation goes deep. We talk about the second-grade teacher who broke her silence in a single sentence, surviving the first Gulf War as a teenager with no word from her father for three and a half months, three car accidents in one month that led to an undiagnosed depression, and the moment in front of a bathroom mirror that finally pushed her toward the work she does today. This isn't a story about arriving. It's a story about learning, again and again, to trust yourself over the crowd.

What We Cover

• Growing up selectively mute, and the second-grade teacher who handed her the class and changed everything

• Moving across five Indian cities and Kuwait, and what that taught her about difference vs. sameness

• Surviving the 1990 Gulf War, and 3.5 months without word from her father

• Choosing to remain childless for 15 years, and the judgment that followed her and her parents

• Three car accidents in one month, and the PTSD-induced depression she didn't know she had

• Her therapist's "strings" exercise ~ learning to cut the ties that let outside things control her

• The difference between confidence and self-trust

• Becoming a "recovering people pleaser" and what that recovery actually looks like

• The bathroom mirror moment that pushed her toward coaching

• Building "Be the Sequoia" ~ why authenticity is the root everything else grows from

• Writing a book on high-functioning depression in high-achieving people

• Rapid fire: favorite book, song, quote, and her definition of strength

A Moment That Will Stay With You

"For the first time in my seven years, I decide I am worth more than my silence."

"The mirror is good enough for me to tell me how I look today. I don't need a compliment."

"You cannot stay in your part of the forest forever. At some point you have to come out."

Connect with Pritha Find her coaching practice, Be the Sequoia, and follow her journey online.

www.BeTheSequoia.com

@bethesequoiacoaching

Listen & Subscribe Available on Spotify and YouTube. If this episode moved you, share it with someone who needs it today.

A quick shout-out to today's sponsor, Sri Krishna Jewellers ~ over 50 years of craftsmanship, now serving the Dallas community from Frisco, Texas. Visit srikrishna.com or call 430-231-1111.

Portraits of Strength is a podcast where everyday people share the extraordinary stories that shape their lives. Hosted by Harry, the Anecdotist.