Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Stephne Hockenhull. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Stephne, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. What do you think matters most in terms of achieving success?

It takes courage and confidence to live life on this earth with those that want to control your life, by bullying you. It takes courage because you have to be able to speak up for yourself and you have to be able to exude confidence when you do speak up, otherwise the bully senses your fears, and will amplify the control that they have over you. It takes courage and confidence to become successful in overcoming bullying.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

I am Stephne Hockenhull. I’m an author, a speaker, and founder/owner of a nonprofit organization, “Love Misunderstood Institute.” I started creating events and speaking at events in January 2016. I was speaking to, and empowering groups of women and mentoring girls. In December 2017, I understood something that I had experienced for many years but I hadn’t been able to identify it.

I didn’t grow up hearing the words (I love you) and I really desired that. I allowed a lot of unhealthy, toxic, people in my life because I thought if I were nice to them, they would change how they were treating me and show me the love I desired and expected from them. I was a people pleaser, which made me vulnerable to bullying, abuse, and mistreatment in my life.

One day while watching the news, I heard a little boy crying and saying to his mother, “I don’t know why people have to treat me so mean because I’m different. I don’t understand why people can’t just be nice.” This video went viral. The second time that I heard it, I had just been fired from my second job. That is when I understood what my experience had been for many years. I had been bullied as an adult in the workplace, but did not identify it as bullying because it was coming from adults.

So, I went on a journey and did extensive research on the different types of bullying. I was able to clearly identify what bullying was, the effects that are associated with it, and how it was impacting my life.

Through this journey, I learned how to love myself and not to expect unconditional love from others who didn’t even understand how to love themselves. I also learned that we aren’t able to love others without the intervention of a higher power and that power resides on the inside of us.

I want to help other adults understand what they are experiencing, so that they can acknowledge the power they have within themselves to combat bullying and to be able to create healthy boundaries for themselves.

What I am most proud of is that I was finally able to identify my experiences and learn from them in order to inspire, empower, and encourage others, so that they will learn to stand up for themselves and create boundaries, like I did and I still do today. I am happy most of the time now. I love to laugh, smile, have fun, and love on people, no matter how mean they may be. Everybody has issues of some type, but I have learned to live, love, and laugh my way through a lot of stuff. There is joy and power in laughter and it’s enough to change everything that tries to bring you down. Choose to be happy, laugh a lot, and live happy on purpose!

What do you think is the goal or mission that drives your creative journey?

I felt hopeless and helpless for all of those years, not knowing how to recover from what I was experiencing. I cried a lot and was talked about because I cried. I constantly heard things like, “She’s so doggone sensitive. You have to walk around on egg shells to be around her because she gets her feelings hurt so doggone easy. She wears her feelings on her sleeve.” Those things would make me feel even more defeated. I wanted to be stronger and not cry so much, but I didn’t know how to. I don’t like seeing or hearing people humiliating and insulting others because they are not like they think they should be. You never know what someone else has experienced in life or why they are the way they are, so to beat up on others is unfair and the ill-treatment is uncalled for. The mission that is driving me is to learn all that I can and to share it with others because I am fed up with seeing people hurting other people. I have experienced lots of ill-treatment and bullying and I know how it feels. My aim is to help as many as I can, overcome like I have.

Where do you think you get most of your clients from?

The best source of new clients for me is social media. Social media is where so many people spend their time. No matter where you go, you usually see people on their phones, even while eating at a restaurant. Because most of my experience has been in the workplace, I know that my clientele can be found on LinkedIn. LinkedIn has more businesses and more people that are about business on there to engage with. I have learned to spend more time learning about LinkedIn and how to work it to grow my businesses.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.lovemisunderstoodinstitute.org/
• Instagram: love_misunderstood_institute
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/lovemisunderstoodinstitute/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stephne-hockenhull/
• Youtube: www.youtube.com/@lovemisunderstoodinstitute6340

Image Credits
Abigail Unfred