#166 Anna Astwood: Teen Dating Violence Survivor Turns Pain into Purpose

What does it take to turn trauma into triumph—and silence into advocacy?

In this raw and inspiring episode of the Healing Through Love Podcast, we speak with Anna Astwood, a survivor of sexual assault and teen dating violence, who is now the co-founder of the nonprofit Love Doesn’t Hurt Inc. Her story is heartbreaking, powerful, and ultimately transformational.

Anna opens up about being assaulted at just 12 years old and enduring a toxic relationship during high school. For years, she kept silent—afraid of judgment, disbelief, and the stigma surrounding abuse. But healing came when she found her voice through writing, counselling, and eventually advocacy. She began speaking her truth, and in doing so, created a movement to protect and empower others.

Her nonprofit educates teens about healthy relationships, boundary-setting, and how to recognize early signs of abuse. Anna’s perspective as both a survivor and a counsellor gives her a unique ability to reach youth in a way that’s compassionate, relatable, and deeply impactful.

This episode will leave you feeling empowered, informed, and reminded that no matter how dark your beginning, you can still write a powerful ending. Anna’s mission is proof that healing is possible—and that love, when healthy and respectful, never hurts.

🎙 Tune in to discover how Anna turned her pain into purpose, and how you or someone you know can too.

📌 Don’t forget to subscribe, leave a review, and share this episode to help spread awareness and healing.

📩 CONNECT WITH ANNA

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/LoveDoesntHurtInc

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lovedoesnthurtinc/

Website: https://www.lovedoesnthurtinc.org

♥ ♥

Transcript

Voiceover | 00:02
Welcome to another episode of Healing Through Love. Each week, we share ideas, experiences and resources to increase the awareness of domestic and family violence and to empower survivors to grow and thrive. We talk with experts who share their advice. Or with people who have experienced abuse, no matter where they are on their journey. This is all about healing through love. And now, here are your hosts. Sharlene Lynch and Rose Davidson. 

 Sharlene | 00:42
Welcome to the Healing Through Love podcast. I'm Sharlene Lynch and together we're shining a light on hope, resilience, transformation in the journey to end domestic violence. Each week we bring you inspiring interviews with changemakers, survivors, advocates and experts who are making a difference in the lives of those affected by family and domestic violence. Whether you're on a healing journey yourself or on a journey to healing, we're here to help you. Or you're assisting somebody who is and you're holding the space for them. This is the place for powerful stories, practical tools and heartfelt inspirations together. Let's heal through love. And each week we have an amazing guest and this week is no different. We have the amazing Anna Astwood with us and she's all the way from Florida. 
 So we're excited. It's very early in the morning here. It's late in the evening here. 
 So and I think we're a day ahead. So I'm speaking to her from the future. Now she is the co-founder and founder of the co-founder and co-president of Love Doesn't Hurt Inc. With a background in psychology and counselling, she's spent over a decade as a high school counsellor, supporting at-risk teens and teaching healthy relationship skills. A survivor of sexual assault and teenage dating violence herself, Anna is passionate about ending teen dating violence and guiding others towards healing, empowerment and love. Hello and welcome, Anna. 

 Anna | 02:09
So much for having me. I really appreciate being on today. 

 Sharlene | 02:12
It's great to have you here. Okay, so wow, you know, being a teenager is volatile at the best of times. And delivering this type of information in a school environment, wow, you know, that can be challenging as well. 
 So how do you get the information to the teens at risk at schools? 

 Anna | 02:33
Yeah, luckily I worked as a school counselor for... About 11 years, and so I know a lot of people in the community, and so I use the connections that I know to get into the schools. And I we go in and we do presentations to classrooms or in large groups of students, and I can say when we go in and do presentations to kids. They are locked in. They are asking questions. They are with us. They understand what we're saying because they are experiencing it. And every time I present. Without exception, we have students afterward saying, This is happening to me or a friend of mine, or they're in tears because it really hits home for them. And that really allows me to know we are doing the work we need to do. 
 And then I think just word of mouth after that we, you know, people start talking. And so that's kind of how we get into schools and keep going, keep this going. And we do community groups as well. I run groups in my home with my neighborhood kids. I'll have come over and we run groups once a week for kids. 
 You know, six weeks or so, just trying to get to as many students and kids as we possibly can. 

 Sharlene | 03:53
It's like a two prong effect, isn't it? So we need to educate the survivors. 
 Yeah. And we need to educate the perpetrators. 
 So they might not even know that what they're doing is. Is crossing a line and how do you teach teenagers to have a different level of self-esteem and self-worth so that they're bulletproof so yeah so it's a complex ecosystem isn't it. 

 Anna | 04:25
That's a great way to put it. We do a lot of prevention work is my hope is that we can prevent this from happening. But I know we do have survivors in the group. And we do have perpetrators in the group. And I work really hard to try and make sure that I am touching each of them. Right. We're trying to prevent the ones that have not experienced it, kind of support and give love to the ones that have, but talk to the ones that may have done things that they didn't. Maybe not necessarily realize what they were doing was crossing the line. One of the things I do talk about with each group is I was assaulted at 12 when I was in school. I talk about that. I talk about how I had a 12 year old, she's older than 12 now, but how difficult it was for me to put her on the bus when she turned 12 and send her to school and how. I'll always tell them if you hear nothing else but this today, I'm Please keep your hands to yourself. That split second decision that you make to touch somebody will change their life forever. Your life may not change, but that person's life has. 
 You know, and that is for them, They look at me and I'm like, My life is still will always be altered by that moment when I was 12. And that now affects my children. I try to really get them to understand the impact of their decisions. Even if it's a split second, you think it's funny or you don't Think you just do it. Those things impact people in a significant way. And I do it in a way that's not, in a very open, honest... Compassionate way. It's not, you know, belittling them it's just letting them know how it makes other people feel Yeah. 

 Sharlene | 06:29
So if the, I'm like, I'm, I shouldn't just be saying girls or boys because it can be the other way around. Let's face it, we're living in a huge dynamic power shift between women and men and girls and boys, so it could easily be happening the other way around, we don't know. But what could we do for the people who are likely to give off that vibration, give off that, you know, I'm not okay, so it is all right to touch me inappropriately. What can we do for them to help them become more bulletproof? 

 Anna | 07:07
Really need to start working on self-esteem issues at a younger age. We I did create a curriculum for elementary school kids because we realized, gosh, this stuff needs to be taught when they're little. Right. The communication skills, the self-esteem skills, we've got to start going earlier. And that's what we do. We do elementary school, like third to fifth grade kids. We go in and we do a six week program that we talk about, Who are you? What are your boundaries? What makes you comfortable and uncomfortable? What do you love about yourself? How can you speak up for yourself if something happens? 
 Like let's practice that actually verbalizing something. Those skills are extremely important to then be able to give them the tools to be able to say, I don't like that. Don't do that to me. Right. But. And those things I think will help significantly with that. That issue, you know, giving them the voice, let them use their voice because they have one and it's powerful. We just got to help them learn how to use it. 

 Sharlene | 08:15
Yeah, and in a school environment where the curriculum is already very heavy, let's face it, they've got lots of boxes to tick, lots of things, lots of hoops to jump through, even at a young age. How do schools manage to fit a subject like this into what they're already doing? Does it form part of a subject they're already covering or is it part of an elective or is it delivered at an assembly? 
 Like how does it incorporate into the curriculum? 

 Anna | 08:44
All of the above. Every school is very different in how they want me to come into their school. It is increasingly difficult to have these type of discussions in some schools, given the climate that we're in right now. But yes, I've done assemblies. We will pull from PE classes and we'll get a big group, maybe like 100 kids in at a time. Elective classes. I'll go into private schools will allow me to come in and do presentations so kind of all of the above. I've done parent nights, where we just kind of talk to the parents, mental health awareness nights, things like that but yeah it is. It is very tricky and I'm going to have to get a little more creative, I think, and how I can. Get to the students because it is getting a little more difficult to get into the school day. 

 Sharlene | 09:39
Yeah, because they've got so much to do. But we're now faced with different layers of this bullying, different layers of this inappropriate behavior that in some places, I'm not saying geographical, but it could be, it's becoming almost the adults showing us that some behaviors are appropriate, and they're actually clearly not, but they're modeling on adult behavior. 
 So how do you get, yeah. Let's get creative. How can you get that information in there? 
 So kids love games. So do you play games with the kids? 

 Anna | 10:21
Even activities with the little kids. Yes, we do. We do a lot of activities. A lot of the curriculum is more activity-based versus just me talking because they're little and they need to get engaged with it. And that actually, I found the activity part and there's a lot of coloring that we use and they can use markers and things to kind of be more artistic and creative. And I think do, and actually there's been studies to show that when you're, working with kids and you're using more art, they are more likely to open up and be more comfortable. But it is quite a challenge when the adults are not showing the behaviors that we want to teach. And we talk about that because a lot of the behaviors that they learn. Is normalized just because it's normal doesn't mean it's healthy. And we talk about those things quite often with the kids, For an example, a lot of the students will say, this is asked what if I don't give my significant other the passwords to my phone, they know they can go through it and look at they'll break up with me. And I said, well, then maybe you guys should break up. Everyone does that everyone shares their location everyone shares their passwords. And again, it's just because it's normal doesn't mean that it's healthy. You are allowed to have your own private space. You don't have to give up everything to your significant other. But there's a lot of that, You know, where do we learn things? Where do we learn? When do we learn? What a healthy relationship looks like. And for many, it's, from TV, from movies, people aren't sat down and talked about what are the healthy traits of a relationship that would be. Flourishing, right? We just assume that they're going to get it. They're going to just pick someone who's healthy. And that's not always the case. 
 So that's what we teach. I am very. I teach healthy. What does that look like? We teach the cycle of abuse. Very important to teach those things. 

 Sharlene | 12:34
So how does the cycle of abuse How does that come into the equation? Like, do you show the cat, the dog, the kid, the parent, like, you know, like almost a comic? Or is this something that you have a more serious conversation about? How do you broach the subject of this cycle that is probably generational And they're just living out the challenges that their parents lived out that are unresolved. 

 Anna | 13:07
Yeah, so I actually have a, we created a graphic for the cycle of abuse. We have four different, you know, places through it. And you start kind of in the calm area where things are great. 
 You know, I talk about how this time period could be anything from a week to months to, for me, it was six months. And then you move more into it. The grooming phase. Right where boundaries are starting to be tested within the relationship and At some point, it will go into an abuse has occurred. If it's sexual, physical, emotional abuse, and then very quickly, I talk about how it goes into a honeymoon phase. Right where they're going to say I'm sorry I'm so sorry I never meant to do that, you know, and try to get forgiven but what happens is. Your brain goes back to the calm. It goes back to the good times and that, it can be great. It was a mistake, but then you don't realize you've You are now caught in that cycle. And if a student has a parent that has been in an abusive relationship, so they have seen that it really kind of reinforces it even more. The cycle of abuse is a powerful tool that abusers use and they are really good at it. I was in it and I had no idea that. I hadn't heard about the cycle of abuse. I had absolutely no clue that I was part of that cycle. And so every presentation I give, I always teach the cycle of abuse so that at least people have heard it and kind of know the steps through it. And that way, maybe it would just ding in their brain if they ever experienced something like that they would then, you know, say, I hold on, this doesn't sound right to me. 
 So it's very fastidious. It is, it will. Kind of capture your life. And it's hard to get out of. 

 Sharlene | 15:09
It wouldn't be great if we had common language around the world for this cycle so that we could like. Children could feel comfortable to tell their parents even or a teacher that, like, this is where they are right now. 
 And then we would know the language and we can talk to them about that. That would be an amazing world to live in. And obviously that's going to come from you getting into more schools and having more beautiful conversations and getting in front of more parents to be able to see that even if they think their child's okay, that they're in an environment where things might not be okay. 
 So their children need to become bulletproof. Their children need to understand this is not a good time. This cycle and that even though it might not be happening for them right now, that if they've got that level of awareness, they can make different choices. 
 Yeah. 

 Anna | 16:05
Absolutely. Absolutely. I think that we have to equip kids with knowledge. I think we need to focus on our relationships with our kids. And have it be one where we can talk back and forth without judgment. And I think that will help. Right. If you can talk to your parents without judgment, you won't be afraid to come forward. 

 Sharlene | 16:28
So I'm I love it. 

 Anna | 16:28
Wondering, yeah. 

 Sharlene | 16:30
I love it. I'm wondering whether or not if to get it out to more schools, this could be something that a teacher teaches, like it's a piece of curriculum that the teachers teach so that all of the children have been connected to it. Is that an approach that you've tried? 

 Anna | 16:49
- We have and, you know, where I live is not the most accepting of this type of material. And so it was not. It was not accepted as something they were interested in doing. 
 So, I may have to go to other surrounding areas to see if they would be more interested in really taking a stand and saying we're going to address this, but it is very difficult to get some people get very nervous when you talk about these types of things. Yes. It's quite the challenge. 

 Sharlene | 17:27
Yes, it is. But nothing beats statistics. 
 Like nothing beats statistics. Teenage death, teenage rape, teenage suicide, like nothing beats statistics because they're facts. 
 So, you know, leading with that, letting them know that these schools have an obligation, a responsibility to ensure that the children that are at those schools have got that opportunity to know that they're – they've got an opportunity to make choices and that they if they understand these cycles of abuse that they can get a better understanding. This is such great work. I really love it Anna and I can feel that your heart and your soul is attached to it and that you really want to make a difference here. I love it. I love it. 
 So I've taught a couple of classes internationally online for different subjects. And so that was mainly during COVID, but it was really popular in some of the kids that were like 12, 13, 14. And they would stream us in because all of the schools, all the classrooms now have got televisions in them. And they would just stream us in via Loom and it was set up so that they could teach the students and then they could ask questions if they were at the back of the room. Room and I couldn't hear, the teacher would repeat it. But for the most part, I could still hear everything. And that was great. It was a great opportunity to get in touch with more kids globally and talk about, I was discussing obviously teenage suicide. And that really gave a great opportunity for me, but for the kids to have conversations about, are you really okay? And yeah, so look, you know what? Where there's a will, there's a way, Anna. And I believe that, you know, having this conversation today and it could make a difference. 
 So we'll share this on our platform so that people know more about the good work that you do there in Florida. And if you ever went online, we could have it here in Australia, just saying. Yes, I love it. And, you know, sometimes we have to travel not just across the street to get attention and to get eyes on our works, Sometimes we have to travel abroad because sometimes the people that are closest to us, the schools that are closest to us, the business that are closest to us, they can't see the trees for the forest. They can't see that there's a problem because then admitting it, then, you know, that would be part of, am I part of the problem? 
 So I get it. I get it. I get it. I love it. If you're listening today and you're a survivor of family and or domestic violence, you need to be an adult though, just saying. If you'll reach out to Healing Through Love, we'll point you in the direction of one of our Pamper days that's in your local area. 
 So think day spa on steroids So imagine going to a location and having 25 practitioners hold the space for you So have your hair done your makeup done have a facial done. I have a massage have your nails done the whole thing for free from women who have survived themselves family and domestic violence and a living proof out there running their own businesses and they want to show you what's possible and just hold that space for you so if you if you're curious reach out to Healing Through Love and we'd love to point you in the direction of one of our local events and if you're listening today and you're a practitioner and you have got a heart for change and even if you've got a backstory and you really know what it's like to have just one person do a kind deed for you, then look, come and have a chat with us. We'd love to hook you up with another event coordinator in your local area so that you can be one of the practitioners. 
 So proud to say Healing Through Love has won a Global Peace Ambassador Award for the work that we've done globally with these beautiful Pampa Days and holding the space for a safe place for people to land. It's been such a privilege and pleasure to chat with you. And I just want to finish off today with. What would be your final words of wisdom to our audience? 

 Anna | 21:29
Thank you so much for having me today. I really appreciate it. It means a lot. I think that our message of... Love and healing love doesn't hurt. 
 Right? Love doesn't hurt. And the more awareness we can gain, we can prevent this, we can heal from this. 
 So thank you so much for giving me the platform to speak today. I really appreciate it. 

 Sharlene | 21:52
It's such a beautiful thing to have you in our proximity. I'm looking forward to having you back later on during the year. It's been a fantastic opportunity. It's a goodbye from us at Healing Through Love and a goodbye from Anna. 

 Anna | 22:04
Bye-bye. Take care. 

 Voiceover | 22:09
Thank you for joining us for this episode of Healing Through Love. You can get further resources See the show notes or simply reach out to us via our website at htlaustralia.org. Thanks so much for joining us and we look forward to your company next time on the Healing Through Love podcast.