The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Little Girl Lost by Brittany Mishler

Episode Date: May 16, 2026

Little Girl Lost by Brittany Mishler Brittanymishwrites.com https://www.amazon.com/Little-Girl-Lost-Brittany-Mishler/dp/1804394688 In this thought-provoking lyrical tragedy, Brittany Mishler carves out an unfortunate childhood of a little girl that has had to experience her growing years held in the clutches of pain, abuse, and loss. Growing up, sadly, has been no different. It is a reality not uncommon and often spoken of yet is just as heart-wrenching for every individual. From a little girl shrunken by the beatings from an excuse of a father to a grown woman fighting off the demons and stuck in a cycle of abuse, she wonders how the man who now claims to have found God tended to forget He exists when her life has become a big question of why she was never good enough to make him change his ways.

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Today's featured author comes to us from Books to Lifemarketing.co.uk. With expert publishing to strategic marketing, they help authors reach their audience and maximize their book's success. Anyway, guys, so we have an amazing young lady on the show. We're going to be talking about her book, Little Girl Lost by Brittany Mishler. We're going to get into with her and find out some of the interesting things about some of the poetry she's put in this book and written about. She's been writing poetry for most of her life Brittany has. She developed a passion for it early on, and she writes about her life experience. and hopes her words can help people.

She's 35 years old and married to her loving husband, Nate. She has a 10-year-old stepson, Nick, two kitties, Mugsy, and Jacks, and she currently lives in Pennsylvania and works as a customer service representative for Thorlabs where she's been for the last six years. Welcome to the show. How are you, Brittany? I'm doing very well. How are you? I'm doing excellent. It's wonderful to have you on the show. give us any websites.com, social media,

wherever you want people to find out more. I have a website. It's Brittany-Mishwrites.com. So, B-R-I-T-T-A-N-Y-M-S-H-R-H-Rates.com. And it does have links to where you can purchase my books. It has a more in-depth autobiography about myself, as well as a poem written on there that you can kind of get a taste of what you're getting into.

Ah, poetry. Yes. So give us a 30,000 overview of this book. Little girl lost. It's mainly what I took as a way of healing a lot that went on in my life. I write a lot about my life and what goes on, but there's also many poems in there that are a little open to interpretation. But really overall, it was about the healing of myself and my inner child. And I got a lot more healing to do.

I just want to show people that healing doesn't have to be linear and we can do it together. And do you find that writing sometimes is healing, sometimes putting these things pen to paper, tends to help get them out of our system and see what maybe what we need to work on or maybe explore this is that and what does it mean maybe? Absolutely for me. It's very healing. I am a chronic overthinker and I do have a lot of trauma that I tend to think about on the past. And I've noticed once I started writing poetry and getting these feelings out, it's really helped me not to overthink them as much and just kind of work it out in my own way and just kind of realize that this is how things are.

Maybe more people need to do that. Maybe that's a, all the greatest people, let's not supposed to put great people. All this is successful by monetary aspect people. See what I did there? Not Twitter. The taken journal and write stuff down and they are always seen with books. Speaking of Twitter, I don't think I've ever seen him with book in his hand. But a lot of great people that have been successful, they do a lot of journaling and writing. And I'm an homework thinker too. I have really bad OCD and ADHD. Not so bad on the OCD, but the ADHD is... You know what that does me, probably.

I'm the same way. And a lot of us are built that way from our childhood trauma response because we're trying to, our brains are trying to keep us vigilant from the danger of repeating prior trauma. And it's great disease. It's the CEO disease, the ADHD. A lot of CEOs have it and it makes it so we can be maniacal, mock a million leaders. One of the things that used to drive me mental is at night, my brain would just beat me up, trying to sleep about all the stuff I'd have to do the next morning. If I had to fire somebody or write somebody up or whatever, I would literally have dreams about my business meetings the next day. That was how much I was up in business.

I'm just like, can I think of a pretty girl on the beach sometime? Like Bo Derek running down the beach? Does it always have to be next to tomorrow's meeting that I'm dreaming about? It was like I was living my business 24-7. But so I found that by writing down at night, whenever I was worried about, okay, don't forget to do this. Don't forget to do that. And by keeping a notepad beside my bed and writing it down, it made that brain go, okay, he's got that on paper. So idiot boy is not going to forget it.

And I found that was real calming of the mind. So I'm glad you found that too. Absolutely. I also struggle with ADHD as well as many mental bipolar anxiety. And I do have a journal that I write in constantly to get all those feelings. out because I also have borderline personality disorder. So certainly things can be misconstrued. Yeah. But also with lists, I do all of that. I just feel like writing in any capacity basically heals me and solves many problems. Can I answer this? Because we talk a lot about trauma

and we talk a lot about psychology on the show and mental psychology. And I think you've found an excellent outlet for dealing with these issues. Do you find that, have you ever tried verbal therapy? and do you find that maybe this writing stuff maybe is better than verbal therapy? I am actually also in therapy right now. I do have a great therapist, but I feel like the writing helps me a lot more. I'm not going to lie. When I'm writing poetry specifically, because I can be as dreamy about it or I can use specific words and things like that and put it together and it's just right there. Whereas therapy, sometimes you get overwhelmed, you're going off at the mouth, this is coming in, that's coming in.

once you're writing that poem, it's just coming out exactly how you want it to. Yeah. Maybe we should have more therapy that's a writing therapy. I think that'd be great. There's all these things nowadays that the kids have, the sound bass and all this crystals and all this sort of stuff. And I'm like, that's cool, but maybe you go to therapy, but then a lot of people don't do well in therapy.

Yes. And it's a weird design, how therapy is. But like you say, I found it very cathartic to write my stuff out. And I really, I keep telling myself to start a journal, but somebody has ADHD. But in fact, there's one here somewhere that tells you I can't find it. Oh, there is. But it's a journal that I'm supposed to be queued on the Daily Stoic with Ryan Holiday. And it's like stoicism prompts.

But yeah, I think I've done five whole days in it over an hour or any years it's been here. But no, it's a good thing. Now, poems tell us about, but you mentioned when you were young, you started writing poems. I did too. I was writing like Dr. Seuss, like stuff about people in my class at fourth grade. When did you start writing poems and find that was an outlet you really enjoyed? I started more seriously in high school, probably around 16 years old, because my high school was great and they actually did a lot of poetry in the English classes. So we went over a lot of that, read a lot of poetry, and then we got to create our own. And that is really when I was like, I love this. And then when I was a senior, I was,

was able to do a free writing class, and I picked poetry. And it was just being able to get out so many emotions at once, because at that point, I'm still a very traumatized teenager. I haven't been able to heal very much. And just being able to write a poem that makes myself cry, because I'm like, I'm feeling all of these emotions come back. But I feel it healing me at the same time was just very great. Can I ask you something? Do you have, are you, do you have the ability to have an inner dialogue with yourself? Or do you see me? maybe in pictures or audio. I have an inner dialogue.

Do you? Okay. Yes, I sure do. That's interesting. Yeah, some people, I found this out because I have an inner dialogue too, but I found this out that most people don't have an internet dialogue. I heard that. Some of the pictures, someone's thinking video.

I was just kind of wondering, maybe all ADHD, that is our problem. We have internet dialogue while we're thinking. Yes, she never shut up. Yeah, that says. You got to love that brain. Yeah. Sometimes you have to necessitate with some sleeping pills, but other than that or some edibles. So in this book, Little Girl Lost, this is a collection of poems. Do you want to tell us how many, the amount of the poems, or maybe some of the setup and how do you delve out the book? I don't know. I just kind of went by, it's a very weird process for me. I always just go by my favorite poem and just kind of go towards the end. I like to have the least ones in the middle and then build it up to the end. I like the best one in the back. But every time I write, it's just such a free-flowing process for me.

I don't have a distinct way to go about it. That's the great thing about free verse poetry is that you don't need any rhyming scheme. You don't need any correct way to go about it. It's just whatever comes out and how you fit it in there as long as you're speaking poetically. So I don't really have any distinct way that I go about that. So it's not like Dr. Seuss where everything's writing. No, no. It's like I said, it's funny because when I was in high school, I tried every form of

The haiku, with the rhyming. And I feel like that locks you into such a box sometimes when you have so many different emotions and feelings going on. Why not just write them out? So you just write them out. And that's the great thing about free verse poetry. This is a great thing I'm going to suggest to people. Because sometimes I've had people say, I just don't do talk therapy well. And it's one size isn't fit all when it comes to repairing trauma and dealing with issues.

Yeah. Is there a favorite poem or a hard poem that it was to write in the book and talk about? Tell us about maybe some of the ones you liked or enjoyed or found were cathartic and helpful. Yes. The hardest for definitely Lynn and then also where is your God? Lynn was rough because it was about my mother and dealing with her as she was in the hospital. She had ended up in a vegetative state and just how depressing hospitals can be when you're waiting for something to happen that you know is not going to happen. Yeah.

And how hard it is to watch somebody that was there for you all those times, not know who you are anymore. I was very close to my mother. She was my best friend. So that was definitely the hardest for me, I think. Yeah. And I'm going through that now with my sister, where she's disappearing in dementia from MS. Yeah. And been in a care center for a long time.

And, yeah, it's heartbreaking. It's to watch someone disappear and it doesn't know you anymore. And then they're usually very confused and upset because their world is that way. So it's quite an interesting thing to go through. How did you, now this is your first poem book? Yes, this is my first book. And then do you have some more I think you're working on, I believe? I sure do.

I have started shopping around for publishers as well as getting everything into place. I have a lot of poems. I had a lot of trauma in my life and I have a lot more healing to do, I believe. But the next one's going to be called Fall from Grace. I already have it started with, if not as many poems, more poems than Little Girl Lost. and I think it gets a little deeper. It was like I was playing it safe a little on Little Girl Us because I knew my family was going to read it.

You know what I mean? I didn't know what people were going to think about me. Fall from Grace is a little bit more like this is how it is and this is how I'm healing and you get all the good parts with the bad. So it's going to go a little deeper even. Hey man, your journey healing, your healing journey. Am I dyslexic? Probably.

Your healing journey is your business, man. Yes. People need to give you some grace. You know a certain degree unless you're running people over with a car. No, not doing that. Yeah, the judge says I can't do that anymore. But for the most part, this is how what happened to you and how to reconcile it. And people need to respect that.

Exactly. I think we all go through trauma. I think the whole world needs to go through therapy after COVID. And maybe what else is going on? But I think we lost that over COVID, really, at this point. Looking back, I'm really starting to think that it was a serious break in our society. Yeah. But it's what it is.

may live in interesting times, say the Chinese. Now, did you find this pretty healing for you? Did this sometimes, let me, before I have you answer that, let me set this up a little bit more. So I remember watching, it was the Michael Jackson story, documentary of the two boys, and I forget what, leaving Neverland is what it was called. And it was after this movie played,

there was a thing where Oprah interviewed them personally after the show and the big premiere. And there was a guy who got up, And he had been an NFL star, huge, big NFL guy. And he talked about how he'd been molested by a police officer in his neighborhood. And those are people of trust. And he held it in for so many years. It became like poison.

It was destroying himself. It was destroying his life. And it wasn't until he wrote his book. And he finally told his what he'd been carrying all these years. And he said, man, you've got to get it. out. You've got to talk about this stuff. Because if you hold it in, it's like basically holding in poison and you won't feel, you know, you won't start to normalize until you open up and say, hey, this is what I'm dealing with. And then you find you're not alone. You find probably other

people are going to be inspired by your book on some of the things maybe they've gone through and the cathartic moments and then recovery. Do you find that's maybe what you experience as well? Yes. It was very, like I said, very healing for me. in the sense, too, that I have been known to act out in certain ways with drugs and this and that, the other, and cutting, self-harm. And instead of doing those things, I looked deeper inside and was able to write them down and get them out. And I really do hope that people can read this and they can be like, oh, this really hits home. The best thing I ever heard is when my mother-in-law read it. And she was very honest with me.

And she said, it reminds me a lot of the stuff that happened in my lifetime. And I said, good. get it out. You know what I mean? Why are you holding it in? It's not doing anyone good to hold it. Like you said, it's poisonous. It's bad for you. It causes you to act out. It causes you to treat people in particular ways. Everybody should get it out. And I just really hope that people will read this and be like, this sounds like me. And I just want people really to know that they don't have to heal alone. That's what I wanted, particularly in the beginning. I didn't want to heal alone. I think we're better as a group. We're better when we're trying together. And just, putting it out there that I'm like this. There's many other people like this. Maybe you'll get something out of it. A lot of people experience trauma from a lot of different variations. There's big T trauma and little T trauma, not to minimize people's trauma, but there are certain levels to it and impacts that it makes across a lifetime. This is the beauty of sharing stories and why we love the show is because people share their cathartic moments. And there's so many people,

especially when you write a book, that you'll be able to touch and inspire and help. and sometimes save. And you may not meet those people all the time or they may not tell you what they went through. Sometimes people come up to you and they'll be like, yeah, I read your book and, wow, you saved my life with that thing. And you're like, wow, I didn't know that would make that big of a difference. But wow, that's cool. There's a story behind Where's My Mind? Do you want to tease a little bit of that out to us?

So where's my mind started from very weird dreams that I had. And that was all it was. I had taken so much and where is my God and Lynn and this is everything was all about my life, my past, what's going on. I needed something kind of simple to go in between to break up how harsh reality can be. And it was just simple ideas that I would literally wake up and I'm like, man, that was the weirdest dream I've ever had. But I remembered the whole thing, which is so rare that I was like, I need to write this down and

it needs to become something. And I even have continuations of it, I think, going up to poem four, five, six in the next book of Where Is My Mind? Yeah. Yeah. It's what do you hope people come away with when they read your book? Just that realizing that they're not alone in the world, that like you said, trauma happens to everyone. We all heal a little differently. Just even though my healing path, my healing way has been writing, it can be any art for any person. You know what I mean? As long as anybody gets into art and they're healing in that particular way, I want them to take away that they're not alone.

We're all healing and we're all trying to do the best that we can. A lot of unhealed people out there and they're still dealing with generational trauma and this, that and the other. And I think they need to take away from that, step away from that, and just learn that we're all in this together. We're all just trying to do the best that we can. Do the best that we can. Yeah.

And that's all anyone's trying to do. but knowing that you're not alone. A lot of people, they isolate when they go through caracic moments. They self-lagulate. They're like, why me? The world hates me. The universe hates me, whatever. Well, bad things always happen to me.

Sometimes it's easy to find yourself wallowing in the mud pit, but the only way out is to get up and walk out. I always joke about, I call it the pig pit, the mud pit. If you ever been to a farm, like when I was a kid, my friend used to have a pig farm. And all of the pig farm was just a giant. poo mud muck pit. It was nasty. Let's put that way. We needed to go in there with boots on.

And there's some people that they just spend all their time rolling in there going, hey man, I'm miserable. And I got this going on. And you're just like, hey, man, if you just get in the mud pit, quit rolling in it. You might be, you might make some progress somewhere. I remember I went to a Tori Amos concert years ago, decades ago. And she told the story about how for a while she used to be stuck on this. loop of victimhood.

And she was like, one of her friends came to her and said, hey, get off the cross. We need the wood. And basically the implication that is, is you just, you put yourself on the cross. We're all seeing what you're doing. Get off the cross, man. We've got to make some progress here. Well, I know. I was like that very heavily when I was younger because I had bipolar disorder with high

anxiety, all that. I was diagnosed when I was 12 with bipolar, but my mother chose not to medicate me because she was not medicated. for hers. See, that's the generational trauma we go through. But, and I was very stuck in that way. Why is this happening to me? Why are they hitting me? Why am I getting yelled that? But it was very, and I think that's why the writing when I was in high school came out so much, because it was like, oh, it doesn't have to be all about me anymore. I could push it out to someone else now, and they can read about it. And it could be on them, too. Yeah, yeah. And it's great to,

it's great to process this and understand it and get all. the healing and stuff. It's just, it's really healthy for people. Good on you and good on sharing your message. I went through, I've told the story a lot of times on the podcast. When my first dog died, it was instant. It was 30 minutes of seizure and then it was done. I had to take her to the hospital to have them finalize it. And so it was actually a little bit longer experience. But still, she was gone within probably minutes of the heat from the thing. They said pretty much cooked her. And it was a shock. It was a huge shock. I never had. anything die or anyone die around me that was close to me for 27 years I think it was and so I had no

buildup for being ready for that and I wrote this big long lengthy soul bleed out a wreckage thing for saying you know telling people that she died a lot of people on Facebook follow my dogs and I remember sitting in with it for half an hour 45 minutes going I don't want to publish this this too personal this is too scary this isn't No one's going to give a shit about this. I'm going to be like, boo-hoo, whatever, your dog died, man. And I sat with it. And I was like, I don't know, drinking myself to death that night, are trying to.

And finally, I just got tired and worn down and was ready to pass out. And I just finally had send. And then I was like, should I not? I'm like, I just don't give a fuck out, but I'll wake up in the morning anyway. I drink a lot of vodka. And the next morning, people were calling me and riding me and trying to check out my health. And, but it changed so many people's lives when I wrote. I had all these people writing in the comments.

They're like, yeah, I realized through your self-crucrucifixion or whatever you want to call it, I hadn't gotten closure with my dog dying. I didn't got closure with my dad or my mom dying. And you helped me get there. I'm crying too now because you helped me get through, realize that I had got closure and I could live through what you, bled out on the page. And that was real powerful.

People still remember that to this day. That thing was in 2014, I think it was. People still come up to me this day and you go, man, that post you wrote, really saved me. And I thought it was selfish. That's why I didn't want to share it. I was like, this is just a total selfish me thing. No one's going to, people are going to be like,

what the fuck, dude? No, man, it was sharing that journey and then having other people realize they weren't alone and me really realizing I was. was alone and the power of just sharing our stories. Yeah. That was one of my biggest things, too, for continuing writing. When I was in, when I had gotten to college, I was in an honors program for poetry. And I had a poetry teacher that absolutely loved me the first year, thought everything I made was great. And then the second year, I had gone through a lot that summer, more traumatic events, and I started writing about that. And he had come back to me and said,

it's too personal. Nobody's going to like this. Really? Exactly what he said. It's too personal. too personal. I did end up dropping out of that because college just wasn't for me, but that was a big reason why I wrote the book too with a lot of my life stories in it. You're basically saying no one's going to care. Let's see how much no one cares. You know what I mean? When they're going to all like it and they're going to be like, this reminds me of me and this is something about trauma healing and everything like that. So that was a big stick to him, I think. And that was a big reason why I continued writing. So I guess thanks to him in the end.

Yeah. And that's interesting because that's, That's how I was thinking of my brain. No one's going to want to eat. Chris Voss is boo-hoo. Everybody has dog, guys, no one. And I never really experienced what the whole thing was about in death. And it was really hard for the first time in 27 years to not have a kind of callous to death. Everyone experiences that throughout their life.

And I just had this long run. I was starting to think my dogs are going to live forever. But sharing the stories of our journey, that's what we do on the Chris Voss show. That's what the authors do that come here and tell stories of novels or fiction and fiction, nonfiction, whatever. Sharing the stories, those are the fabric of life. I mean, collecting stories, sharing them. You learn that you're not alone and that you're like, hey, somebody else went through this crisis and they found a blueprint. They found a way to get out of this crisis or cathartic moment.

And they survived. And I think some of that, the survival message is really important maybe as well. that, hey, this happened to me too. And I survived and I'm better now. Or I'm working to be better. And I can identify what the problem is. And yeah. So as we round out, we talked about the future book.

Anything next door? Anything more coming out that you haven't just been a release date for the second book? I don't have one yet. I am just shopping for publishers right now and getting it all in order. I want to take, I feel like a little part of the first one was kind of like, rushed a little bit. So I really want to take all of the time I have to really focus on this and do it right. Because like I said, there's a lot more deep, traumatic, darker things in it that I would like to make sure all comes across in a certain way and I want it done right. I also want to have the pictures. I had the beautiful pictures in Little Girl Lost that I would like to continue with this book.

So I need to work with hopefully the same illustrator that I worked with the first one and get some ideas going on that. just have a nice base for it and then get it out there. As we go out, get people, excuse me, your final pitch out to buy the book and where they can get to know you on the interwebs, dot coms, etc. I think everybody should absolutely buy little girl lost. You can go right to Brittany Mishwrites.com. And there are links. You can buy it on Amazon. You can get it on Kindle.

It's just really the story of a young girl who was traumatized through being young and as she got older that dealt with it. distinct ways and I think so many people can relate to it and if you can't relate to it you can at least have the empathy to realize that this is sometimes how people grow up and what they have going on in their lives. Yeah. And we can give each other maybe a little bit more grace and care for each other. We need more empathy in this world. We definitely do for all the crap we have going on here. So yeah, the better empathy we can get, the better things can be for everyone else. And then we can all work to maybe we all need to go in therapy together and it needs to be a giant concert venues of stadiums where we get group therapy yeah except i'd probably be angry still from the traffic and

people getting in my way on the way to the same so you know what are you going to do it's been delightful to have you on thank you very much brittany we really appreciate it thank you for having me thank you and thanks around us for tuning in order up her book where refined books are sold And it's called Little Girl Loss by Brittany Mishler. We'll be having that on the Chris Foss show for the family, or for the show, your family, friends, or relatives. Go to goodreads.com, Fortresschast, Chris Foss, LinkedIn.com, Fortresschast, Chris Foss,

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