Tiny Buddha

Tag: heal

  • How I Found Myself on the Other Side of Survival

    How I Found Myself on the Other Side of Survival

    “Until you make peace with who you are, you will never be content with what you have.” ~Doris Mortman

    For most of my life, I believed my worth was tied to how well I could perform.

    If I looked successful, kept people happy, worked harder than anyone else, and stayed quiet about my pain, maybe—just maybe—I would be enough.

    That belief didn’t come from nowhere. I grew up in a home where fear was a constant companion. Speaking up brought consequences. Being invisible felt safer. I learned early to smile through it all, to stay small, to never be a burden.

    I carried that into adulthood—into my marriage, into motherhood, and into the corporate world.

    I became the high achiever who never asked for help. The professional woman who had all the answers. The mother who always held it together.

    I was the one who volunteered for every project, who stayed late to make everything perfect. At home, I kept up appearances with themed birthday parties, spotless counters, and a schedule packed to the brim—all while quietly falling apart inside. I thought if I could hold everything together on the outside, no one would see the cracks within.

    But inside, I was unraveling.

    The Moment Everything Shifted

    One night, my husband exploded in anger. That wasn’t unusual. But this time, something different happened.

    He lunged toward me, yelling, blind with rage. Our young son, who had crawled quietly onto the floor behind me, was nearly stepped on in the chaos. My daughter, just a child herself, began silently picking up the dining room chairs he had thrown.

    No one cried. No one spoke. We had all learned to go silent.

    But in that silence, something inside me woke up.

    I saw myself in my children—quiet, afraid, coping. And I knew: if I didn’t break this cycle, they would grow up carrying the same invisible scars I had.

    That night, I made a promise to myself: This ends with me.

    The Healing Didn’t Happen All at Once 

    Leaving was hard. Healing was harder. But it was also the most powerful thing I’ve ever done.

    I realized I had been performing my way through life. Even in pain, I made everything look polished. I was afraid that if people knew the truth—about my past, about my marriage, about how little I thought of myself—they’d walk away.

    But what actually happened was this: when I finally allowed myself to be seen, I started to heal.

    What I’ve Learned on the Other Side of Survival

    Healing isn’t a straight line. It’s a process—sometimes slow, sometimes messy, sometimes unbelievably beautiful.

    Here are a few things I now hold close:

    1. You can’t heal what you refuse to name.

    For me, that moment came during therapy, when I finally said out loud, “I was in an emotionally abusive marriage.” It felt terrifying—and freeing. Until I gave it a name, it had power over me. Naming it took the first step to taking that power.

    For years I told myself it “wasn’t that bad.” But downplaying our pain doesn’t make it go away—it buries it. And buried pain finds a way to surface in our choices, our relationships, and our sense of self-worth.

    2. You’re allowed to want more than survival.

    I thought I should just be grateful to have a job, a home, healthy kids. But deep down, I wanted joy. I wanted peace. I wanted to feel like I mattered—to myself.

    For a long time, I believed wanting those things made me selfish. I had spent years making sure everyone else was okay, thinking that was my role. I was the people- pleaser, the fixer, the one who didn’t cause trouble. My self-worth was so low that even imagining a life where I felt fulfilled seemed like too much to ask. Who was I to want happiness?

    But wanting peace and joy wasn’t selfish. That was healing.

    3. Small, daily decisions matter more than big breakthroughs.

    Choosing to journal instead of numbing out with TV. Taking a walk after work to process my thoughts. Pausing before reacting in frustration. These choices weren’t dramatic, but they created steady change—the kind that lasts.

    Leaving my marriage was one bold decision. But the real transformation came from the everyday choices that followed: writing down what I was grateful for, saying no without guilt, and consistently reminding myself to honor my values of honesty and integrity—which I hadn’t done when protecting my ex-husband, keeping up appearances, and pretending everything was fine. Those were the moments that helped me reclaim my life.

    4. You’re not broken—you’re becoming.

    For a long time, I saw myself as damaged and thought healing meant changing into a different person. But I’ve come to see things differently. Healing isn’t about becoming someone new. It’s about removing what never belonged to you in the first place—shame, fear, silence—and uncovering who you were all along.

    I realized this while sorting through old journals, when I found an entry from my teenage years—full of dreams and hope. That’s when it struck me: she’s still in there. Healing helped me reconnect with that part of myself, not erase her.

    If You’re in That Quiet Place Right Now

    Maybe you’re carrying a silence too. Maybe you’re functioning, performing, doing all the things—and still wondering why you feel so far from yourself.

    Please hear this: You are not alone.

    You don’t have to have it all figured out. You don’t need a perfect plan. You just need a willingness to listen to that small, wise voice inside—the one that says this isn’t the end of your story.

    Because it’s not.

    And then, you have to honor it. Even if it’s with one small act. One honest conversation. One brave decision. That’s how the healing begins—not by knowing everything, but by choosing to move forward anyway.

    I know this because I’ve been there—waking up with a heavy heart, going through the motions, wondering if life would ever feel like mine again.

    But I chose to pause. To feel. To begin again. I hope you will too.

  • The Trauma in Our Tissues and How I’m Setting Myself Free

    The Trauma in Our Tissues and How I’m Setting Myself Free

    “I feel like I can see with my whole body,” I said to my peer after our last session exchange.

    As part of my ongoing growth and development as a practitioner, I regularly participate in somatic therapy exchanges with a small group of peers.

    On completion of our last session, I found myself sitting with a sense of a quiet, steady seeing, almost like sitting on the top of a mountain, rooted to the earth, not a breath of wind, and a 360-degree view of not just the world around me but of it within me, and me within it.

    It felt as though I had stepped into a deeper dimension of perception, where sight wasn’t limited to my eyes but woven into my body’s knowing.

    It was unfamiliar, but a place where I felt a deep sense of being able to rest. Completely.

    I came to her that morning wanting to work on the shock I felt I was still carrying from the day—twelve years ago—when I learned my partner had taken his life. I’ve done a lot of work over the years, but the impact of this moment in time was still untouched.

    As we prepared for our session, I felt a fluttering in my chest and a mild contraction behind my heart and upper torso.

    “I feel a little fear…” I shared with her, knowing that this was normal and the very reason I had yet to touch how my body had stored the impact of this day.

    Often the places we fear the most are exactly where we need to go.

    I recalled the memory of traveling down the small bitumen road leading to the gravel driveway of our family home. We lived on two acres in a beautiful community in semirural NSW. My dear friend, who unbeknownst to me had already been informed of what had happened, was driving, as I was five months pregnant and overwhelmed with emotion.

    That morning, we had gone to the local police station to report him missing. He had not been answering his phone and had not turned up at work that day. His closest friend had not heard from him, and neither had I.

    We all knew something was amiss.

    As we turned onto our property, we were met with a row of cars scattered outside the entrance. My breath caught in my chest, my eyes widened and darted, taking in the cars and the close friends walking toward me through the front door. The moment felt so surreal; I knew something was terribly wrong.

    There is a moment in time where our nervous system perceives what the eyes have yet to see. A deeper knowing that, much like an animal in the wild who can feel the storm before it arrives, braces itself against the danger afoot.

    I don’t know when that initial moment was for me. Whether it was when I spoke to his work and was advised he hadn’t turned up, when I went to the police, when my friend stood to take a private call while we were waiting for the police to contact us, or when we turned the car to drive down the little bitumen road, right before the tree canopy parted to expose the cars scattered outside my home.

    When it comes to shock trauma, the brainstem registers the shock before it has even happened. And the body, in response, braces.

    I was already bracing as I exited the car, tightening further as I met the eyes of my friend walking out of the front door, and then at the nod of his head, my world stopped and my body locked.

    I had shared with my colleague that morning that I felt like I was bracing. That in my deepest moments of meditation, I could feel a very deep clench. That sometimes I wake with a very subtle but palpable internal holding, a contraction deeper than I could touch on my own. I also shared that I felt this bracing was impacting my health.

    For many years, I have worked diligently on restoring my health. Spending thousands upon thousands. Recovering from severe biotoxin poisoning, chronic fatigue, and burnout from the trauma of the relationship, the trauma of his death, and all of the survival stress beyond.

    Though I have come a very long way, I know there is still a way to go. Peeling away layer by layer.

    Our session met one of those layers.

    Releasing trauma can often appear as a tremor. A tremble. It can show up in the arms, hands, legs, feet, or anywhere in the body, visible to another in its release. And it can also be held deep inside, in tissues that never see the light of day.

    Twenty-five minutes into our session, I felt a subtle internal tremble. It felt almost like an electric shock. A tremor that started in my cervical spine, just under the occiput, the back part of the skull at the base of the head where the skull meets the spine, and rippled to the bones protecting the back of my heart, and there it stopped.

    I had been sitting in silence with myself, noticing sensations in my body and allowing my body to direct me to where the bracing was. Sensing, feeling, and ‘being with’ all that arose. Offering simple, loving presence.

    It took all of three seconds from start to finish for this seismic ripple to initiate a wave through my body that was literally like a soul-level shudder—a deep unwinding pulse—reaching into the very fabric of stored experience so that it may unravel.

    It was sudden, potent, and gone in an instant. And then something unlocked, I took a deep breath, and I wept.

    I grieved in a way I had not yet done for what was lost that day. For him. For me. For my children. For his family. For the ripple effect of his choice.

    I cried an ocean of tears for days. Tears that were locked within the fortress of my body, held in place by years of survival, tension, and bracing.

    In my own attempt to manage the intensity of the event, my own vulnerability of being pregnant at the time, and all that came after it, I had braced against the news of his death and the aftermath. I had braced against the reality of mothering alone. I had braced against my breath. I had braced against all of it.

    Over the years, I thought I had worked through all of that, but deep down inside, I was still bracing.

    As I cried, I softened.

    The walls that once held so firm began to melt a little, and in their place, there was space. A vast, quiet openness where my breath could move freely, where my body no longer clenched against itself or life.

    I felt lighter. Not in the way of something missing but in the way of something finally released.

    I didn’t realize I was holding my breath until I could finally exhale.

    This is what I was holding. This is what I was not feeling. What I was unable to feel at the time because my body was primed to protect my unborn child. This was what my body had been orienting around for the last decade.

    Holding in these tears, holding in the shock, holding in the fear.

    This is where deep unraveling happens. This is why we work with the body.

    I can’t say that all was released in that session, but I can say that the earth cracked open enough for me to feel a space within my being that is unfamiliar and yet also feels very much like what a deeper part of me knows as home.

    In the days that followed, I moved differently. I breathed differently. I noticed the absence of a tension I had carried so long it had become invisible, woven into the fabric of my being. And with its release, even more presence to be with what is, rather than bracing against what was.

    This is what the body holds.

    Not just the stories, not just the memories, but the impact of them, the ways we shape ourselves around survival. And this is why we must listen, not just with the mind, but with the body itself.

    Because healing isn’t about erasing the past. It’s about unwinding from it.

    It’s about reclaiming the space within us that trauma occupied. It’s about finding breath where there was constriction, movement where there was rigidity, presence where there was absence.

    And ultimately, it’s about coming back to ourselves. Whole. Embodied. Free.

    As I continue on this journey, I find myself increasingly aware of how much of our lives—the obstacles we face and the emotional, health, and relational challenges we experience—are shaped by the events we have yet to truly feel.

    Trauma, shock, old wounds, and all that we hold in our tissues don’t disappear because we ignore them; they settle into our body, like dust gathering on the shelves of a forgotten room, firing the lens through which we see, live, and breathe, waiting for the moment when we are courageous enough to turn towards them instead of away.

    I recognize that the path of healing is not linear, nor a one-time fix or a quick release. It’s a constant process of coming back to the body, coming back to the breath, and coming back to ourselves. The layers that we peel back, slowly, patiently, hold not just pain but also possibility in their wake; and in the space after each unraveling, we move closer to the wholeness that resides within us all, buried beneath years of survival, and the quiet, fertile ground of presence.

    By listening deeply to our body and holding space for ourselves with compassion and presence, we give ourselves permission to unravel and heal. We make room for the truth of what happened, and in doing so, we make room for the truth of who we are beyond the trauma.

    I don’t know what the future holds or how many more layers I’ll uncover, but I do know this: A part of me is no longer bracing. That part is here. Present. With all of it. And in this presence, I find the gift of peace.

    And maybe, just maybe, that is where true freedom begins.

  • How My Mother’s Alcoholism Shaped Me and How I’m Healing Now

    How My Mother’s Alcoholism Shaped Me and How I’m Healing Now

    “The journey of the perfect daughter is not about perfection; it’s about finding the courage to be imperfect, to be human.” ~Robert Ackerman, Perfect Daughters

    Growing up in a home shadowed by addiction is like living in a house with no foundation. The ground beneath you is unstable, the walls feel fragile, and the roof could collapse at any moment. For me, this was my reality. My earliest memories of my mother’s alcoholism are tied to confusion and worry—a child’s attempt to make sense of an adult world filled with unpredictability and silence.

    Her moods were erratic, swinging from one extreme to another, I recall. I remember one night, she came into my room, woke me up, and told me not to worry, but she was going back to work. The way she spoke, her entire presence, was off. It wasn’t her usual self. I didn’t understand she was drunk. I just felt pure, childlike concern.

    This confusion was only the beginning. As I grew older, the challenges multiplied. The embarrassment of comparing my home life to my friends’, the isolation of a family that never spoke about the elephant in the room, and the lack of safety in my own home left me feeling utterly alone.

    I didn’t feel comfortable reaching out to any adult. My dad wasn’t approachable, and my mom wasn’t emotionally available. I felt like I had to solve everything on my own.

    The Roles We Play 

    In the chaos of addiction, children often take on roles to survive. For me, these roles became my identity. I became the peacemaker, mediating between my mother and younger sister. I became a second mother, guiding my sister in ways my mom couldn’t. And I became the “good daughter,” believing that if I loved my mother enough, I could save her.

    I thought that by loving her more, investing my attention in her needs, and avoiding confrontations, I could make her feel better. But it was an impossible burden.

    My relationship with my father also suffered. I blamed him for allowing my mom to continue her behavior and for not doing anything for us. He became the enemy, and I pushed him out of my life.

    The Long Shadow of Childhood Trauma 

    The impact of my mother’s alcoholism didn’t end in childhood. As an adult, I found myself repeating patterns in friendships and romantic relationships. I’ve struggled with codependency, boundaries, and trust issues. I’ve had manipulative partners and found myself drawn to selfish, narcissistic people.

    But my journey toward healing began when I hit rock bottom. I was drinking excessively, showing up to work after long nights out, and even driving drunk. I dated a partner who was emotionally abusive and almost physically violent—and my parents had no idea.

    A pivotal moment came during a surprise party my sister organized before I left to study abroad. I arrived hungover and exhausted, and when everyone shouted “surprise!” I had an anxiety attack. It was the first time I realized how many feelings I’d buried—sadness, frustration, anger, and underneath it all, a deep, overwhelming grief I had never allowed myself to feel.

    The Path to Healing 

    Healing didn’t happen overnight. It began with therapy—though my first experience was far from ideal. That therapist was deeply narcissistic, mirroring the types of people I’d been drawn to all my life. But I didn’t give up. I found another therapist, and she’s been my steady guide for seven years.

    Through our work, I learned that I was not alone and that I could reach out for help—and trust that help. I also learned to recognize what trust feels like, to move away from extremes, to distinguish love from codependency, and to take responsibility for my part in my experiences. At twenty-seven, I was finally ready to stop blaming others and take accountability—not just for my present, but for all the years I had abandoned myself. I began to reframe my past, not through the lens of a victim, but from the perspective of the self-aware adult I’d become.

    One of the most profound breakthroughs came when I decided I was ready to confront my mother. Preparing for that moment shifted everything—it marked the beginning of reclaiming my voice and stepping into my own power.

    Support groups like Al-Anon also played a crucial role. When I arrived at Al-Anon, I started crying within minutes. For the first time, I heard people speak openly—almost casually—about having a loved one with alcoholism. I had never experienced that kind of openness in such a “normal” environment.

    Listening to the speaker share their story, I realized I wasn’t alone. We were all carrying the same grief, frustration, and helplessness. In that room, I felt seen. I felt like I belonged.

    Through therapy, meditation, exercise, and books, I began to rebuild my sense of self. I learned to be with myself in a peaceful, serene way. I stopped looking at my mom as someone weird or lost and started seeing her as someone with a disease. I took off the impossible burden of having to save her.

    Surrendering to Hope 

    One of the most profound lessons I learned was the power of surrender. For me, surrender meant admitting I needed help—that my own resources weren’t enough to handle the situation I was facing at home. It meant being humble enough to admit that this was bigger than me, that trying to fix my mother was not only ineffective but was also destroying me.

    In my daily life, surrender meant walking away from arguments, especially when my mother was drinking, letting go of the exhausting mission to make her happy, and accepting that her happiness wasn’t something I could guarantee.

    There’s a phrase in Al-Anon that became my mantra: “I didn’t cause it. I can’t control it.” I surrendered my expectations of who I wished my mother would be and allowed myself to grieve the mother I didn’t have. That surrender saved my life.

    My journey is a testament to the resilience of the human spirit. When you choose to surrender, everything will start feeling better. It’s a leap of faith, and trust me, you’re not alone.

    Today, I’m still on my healing journey, but I’m no longer defined by my past. I’m learning to trust myself, set boundaries, and embrace my worth. My story is a reminder that even in the darkest moments, there is hope—and that healing is possible, one step at a time.

  • From Injury to Insight: A New Kind of Yoga Practice

    From Injury to Insight: A New Kind of Yoga Practice

    “Healing may not be so much about getting better, as about letting go of everything that isn’t you—all of the expectations, all of the beliefs—and becoming who you are.” ~Rachel Naomi Remen

    For years, yoga was my safe space—the place where I felt strong, grounded, and whole. My practice wasn’t just physical; it was my sanctuary, my moving meditation. So, when a shoulder injury forced me to change the way I practiced, I wasn’t just in pain—I was lost.

    At first, it seemed minor. A nagging soreness, nothing I hadn’t worked through before. I convinced myself that more movement would help, that yoga—my forever healer—would fix it. I stretched, I modified, I doubled down on my alignment. But the more I tried to push through, the worse it became.

    Eventually, even the simplest tasks—getting dressed, washing my hair—became difficult. That’s when I finally sought medical help. The diagnosis: shoulder impingement and frozen shoulder. A combination of overuse, aging (a humbling realization as I turned forty), and factors no one could fully explain.

    I asked the doctor how to prevent it from happening again. The answer wasn’t clear. There was no perfect formula, no guarantee. That uncertainty unsettled me.

    Surrendering to the Process

    Healing wasn’t linear. It was slow, frustrating, and at times, disheartening. I cycled through physical therapists, reluctantly took medication, and spent months modifying my movements. But the hardest part wasn’t the pain—it was the mental and emotional struggle of letting go of what my practice used to be.

    I grieved the loss of my old yoga practice. I felt betrayed by my body, resentful that the thing I loved most had, in a way, turned against me. And yet, somewhere in the frustration, I realized—this was part of my practice, too.

    Yoga isn’t just about movement. It’s about presence. Acceptance. Surrender.

    I started leaning into the lessons my injury was trying to teach me:

    • Ahimsa (Non-harming): I had to stop fighting my body and instead extend it kindness, just as I would for a loved one who was struggling.
    • Satya (Truthfulness): I had to acknowledge that my practice would change—and that wasn’t necessarily a bad thing.
    • Aparigraha (Non-attachment): I had to let go of my rigid expectations and open myself to a different, gentler way forward.
    • Santosha (Contentment): I had to find peace with what my body could do, rather than mourning what it couldn’t.

    The moment I stopped resisting, something shifted. My body didn’t heal overnight, but my perspective did. I started seeing healing as an ongoing relationship rather than a destination. I gave myself permission to slow down, to listen, to trust.

    Rebuilding with Compassion

    As I modified my practice, I discovered new ways to move that honored my limitations rather than fought against them. My yoga practice became softer, more mindful. I focused on breathwork, grounding postures, and gentle movement. I let go of the idea that I had to push myself to prove something.

    I also realized something deeper: healing isn’t just about getting back to where we were—it’s about growing into who we’re becoming.

    We all face moments where we’re forced to slow down, to reevaluate, to shift. And in those moments, we have a choice. We can resist and suffer, or we can soften and grow.

    If you’re navigating an injury, a setback, or an unexpected change, know this: Your healing doesn’t have to look like anyone else’s. You are allowed to grieve. You are allowed to feel frustrated. But you are also allowed to find joy in the process. To discover new ways of being. To trust that even in the slowing down, there is wisdom.

    Healing is not about returning to what was—it’s about embracing what is and finding beauty in what’s possible now.

  • How I Stopped Hiding Myself for Love and Approval

    How I Stopped Hiding Myself for Love and Approval

    TRIGGER WARNING: This post includes a brief mention of childhood physical abuse and may be triggering to some readers.

     “The person who tries to keep everyone happy often ends up feeling the loneliest.” ~Unknown

    It’s Christmas morning. I’m seven years old. I sit on the hardwood floor with my sisters, in my nightgown surrounded by crumpled wrapping paper. I grab the next present to open. I tear off the paper. It’s a ballerina costume with a pink leotard, tutu, and pale pink tights.

    As soon as I thank my adoptive parents, I leave the room with my new gift, keeping it hidden behind me. I get upstairs to my bedroom and stand in front of the mirror, rushing to get it out of the package and put it on, struggling to get the different fabrics to cooperate.

    When I finally get it on my body, I run back downstairs with a big smile, excited to surprise everyone and maybe even earn some laughs. My heart races with excitement. I enter the living room. My adoptive parents look at me. I scan their faces for smiles. The smiles don’t come.

    “What the hell did you do! You ain’t supposed to put it on yet!” Mom yells.

    My heart’s beating loud. Why are they angry? I can’t understand the mean words my parents hurl at me. Dad gets up from his chair and attacks me. When he’s done, my face is hot and my hair disheveled. I hang my head and go back upstairs to my bedroom to change out of the costume. I look in the mirror at myself. ‘I’m so stupid.’ I think. I will never misread them again.

    I was taken from my birthmother at ten months old and placed with foster parents who abused me, and despite this being common knowledge, they were allowed to adopt me.

    Adoptees, even without abuse from adoptive parents, become experts at adapting. We know our family arrangement came to be because our birth parents weren’t up for the task of holding onto us; the reason doesn’t matter because children can only point inward. Beneath the surface, many adoptees carry an unconscious belief that sounds something like this:

    “I am bad and unlovable. That is why I was not worth keeping the first time. If I can become whoever my adoptive parents want me to be, I will prevent being abandoned again.”

    So, adoptees learn to bend and shift, careful not to incite disappointment or anger from their adoptive parents. For example, I didn’t dream of being a dancer as a child. I’d never taken a ballet class or even expressed an interest in it. So when I opened that costume on Christmas morning, I saw it as a clue. My eagerness to be a show pony in a ballet costume was an instinctual reaction because it meant earning a higher approval rating from my scary adoptive parents. But obviously, I read it all wrong.

    This life-saving skill of adaptation permeates any relationship that poses a risk for leaving adoptees with a broken heart. It can become so pervasive that by the time adoptees enter adulthood, they’ve had little to no experience exploring their own needs, wants, or desires—because they’ve spent their entire lives becoming who the person in front of them wanted them to be.

    My husband and I gave our daughter a “yes day” a couple of years ago, where she created a list of fun things to do, and within specific parameters, we had to say “yes.” This involved her choosing our outfits for the day, a trip to Dave and Busters, a silly string fight, designing specialty chocolates at the Goo Goo Cluster shop downtown, and a candy buffet for dinner. My husband and I delighted in her joy that day.

    Later, when my daughter asked, “Mom, what would you want to do if you had a ‘yes day?’”

    I felt a burning in my chest, realizing I couldn’t answer her. And when an idea did come, like seeing a concert or dining at a specific restaurant, I knew I’d feel guilty for asking the rest of my family to join me because it wasn’t their thing. My inability to tell my child what I like was a powerful teaching moment, and a call for change.

    I began therapy in my early thirties, intent on resolving the thick layers of trauma and loss that created this barrier between the me that operated out of fear of abandonment, and my true self. Traditional talk therapy with a therapist specializing in trauma, EMDR, EEG neurofeedback, and accelerated resolution therapy slowly chipped away at that barrier. With every victory, I learn more about myself and feel more at ease in the world.

    Resolving trauma is dissolving shame. For me, shame has kept me from knowing myself and focusing solely on the happiness of the people around me for fear of being left or in danger if I fail.

    Loneliness is a consequence of being a chameleon who doesn’t know who she is. How can I expect genuine connection if I’m not allowing people to accept the real me? As a shame-filled person, I chose relationships with people who mirrored my low self-worth back to me. How can I expect genuine connection in relationships like that?

    Authentic relationships are a natural consequence of dissolving shame. Being seen, loved, and accepted for our true selves is the antidote to loneliness.

    For anyone out there who bends and shifts to maintain connection with the people they care about, ask yourself, “If I had a yes day, how would I spend it? Do the people in my life care enough about me to come along and delight in my joy?”

    If that question feels uncomfortable—if the people who come to mind would groan, flake, or dismiss it—I see you. I’ve been there. But healing begins with allowing yourself to imagine something different. Imagine being surrounded by people who celebrate and cherish the real you. Imagine what it would feel like to be loved that way.

    Because that kind of love is possible, and you deserve it.

  • Beyond Coping: How to Heal Generational Trauma with Breathwork

    Beyond Coping: How to Heal Generational Trauma with Breathwork

    “Healing doesn’t mean the damage never existed. It means the damage no longer controls our lives.” ~Akshay Dubey

    The realization came to me during a chaotic day at the Philadelphia public school where I worked as a counselor.

    A young student sat across from me, her body language mirroring anxiety patterns I knew all too well—the slightly hunched shoulders, shallow breathing, and watchful eyes scanning for threats that weren’t there. She responded to a minor conflict with a teacher as though she were in genuine danger.

    Something clicked into place as I guided her through a simple breathing exercise. The patterns I saw in this child weren’t just individual responses to stress—they were inherited responses. Just as I had inherited similar patterns from my mother, and she from hers.

    At that moment, looking at this young girl, I saw myself, my mother, and generations of women in my family who had the same physical responses to authority, conflict, and uncertainty.

    And I realized that the breathing techniques I had been teaching these children—techniques I had originally learned to manage my own anxiety—were actually addressing something much more profound: generational trauma stored in the body.

    The School That Taught the Teacher

    My decade as a school counselor in the Philadelphia School District shaped me in ways I never anticipated. Every day, I worked with children carrying the weight of various traumas—community violence, family instability, systemic inequities, and the subtle but powerful inheritance of generational stress responses.

    I came armed with my training in psychology, cognitive techniques, and traditional counseling approaches. Helping these children understand their emotions and develop coping strategies would be enough.

    In many ways, it helped. But something was missing.

    I noticed that no matter how much cognitive understanding we developed, many children’s bodies continued telling different stories. Their nervous systems remained locked in stress responses, and no amount of talking or understanding seemed to shift them completely.

    The same was true for me. Despite my professional training and personal therapy, certain situations would still trigger physical anxiety responses that felt beyond my control—particularly interactions with authority figures or high-pressure social situations.

    The patterns were subtle but persistent. My voice would shift slightly, and my breathing would become shallow. My authentic self would recede, replaced by a careful, hypervigilant version of myself—one I had learned from watching my mother navigate similar situations throughout my childhood.

    The Missing Piece

    Everything changed when I discovered therapeutic breathwork—not just as a temporary calming technique but as a pathway to releasing trauma stored in the body.

    While I had been teaching simplified breathing exercises to students for years, my experience with deeper breathwork practices revealed something profound: the body stores trauma in ways that cognitive approaches alone cannot access.

    My first intensive breathwork session revealed this truth with undeniable clarity. As I followed the breathing pattern—deep, connected breaths without pausing between inhale and exhale—my body began responding in ways my conscious mind couldn’t have predicted.

    First came waves of tingling sensation across my hands and face. Then tears that weren’t connected to any specific memory. Finally, a deep release of tension I hadn’t even realized I was carrying—tension that felt ancient, as though it had been with me far longer than my own lifetime.

    By the session’s end, I felt a lightness and presence that no amount of traditional therapy had ever provided. Something had shifted at a level beyond thoughts and stories.

    Bringing the Breath Back to School

    This personal revelation transformed my work as a school counselor. I began integrating age-appropriate breathwork into my sessions with students, particularly those showing signs of trauma responses.

    The results were remarkable. Children who had struggled to regulate their emotions began finding moments of calm, and students who had been locked in freeze or fight responses during stress began developing the capacity to pause before reacting.

    One young girl, whose anxiety around academic performance had been severely limiting her potential, explained it best: “It’s like my worry is still there, but now there’s space around it. I can see it without it taking over everything.”

    She described precisely what I had experienced: the creation of space between stimulus and response, the fundamental shift from being controlled by inherited patterns to having a choice in how we respond.

    However, the most profound insights came from observing the parallels between what I witnessed in these children and what I had experienced in my family system.

    The Patterns We Inherit

    Through both my professional work and personal healing journey, I came to understand generational trauma in a new way.

    We inherit not just our parents’ genes but also their nervous system patterns—their unconscious responses to stress, conflict, authority, and connection. These patterns are transmitted not through stories or explicit teachings but through subtle, nonverbal cues that our bodies absorb from earliest childhood.

    I recognized how my mother’s anxiety around authority figures had silently shaped my own responses. Her tendency to become small in certain situations also became my reflexive pattern, and her shallow breathing during stress became my default response.

    These weren’t conscious choices—they were inherited survival strategies passed down through generations of women in my family.

    The most sobering realization is that despite my professional training and conscious intentions, I had unconsciously modeled these same patterns for the children I worked with.

    This understanding shifted everything. Healing wasn’t just about managing my anxiety anymore—it was about transforming a lineage.

    The Three Dimensions of Permanent Healing

    Through both professional practice and personal experience, I’ve come to understand that permanently healing generational trauma requires addressing three dimensions simultaneously:

    1. The Mind: Traditional therapy excels here, helping us understand our patterns and create cognitive insights. But for many trauma survivors, especially those carrying generational patterns, this isn’t enough.

    2. The Body: Our nervous systems carry the imprint of trauma, creating automatic responses that no amount of rational understanding can override. Somatic approaches like breathwork provide direct access to these stored patterns.

    3. The Energy Field is the subtlest but most profound dimension. Our energy carries information and patterns that affect how we move through the world, often beneath our conscious awareness.

    Most healing approaches address only one or two of these dimensions. Talk therapy targets the mind. Some somatic practices address the body. Few approaches integrate all three.

    Breathwork is uniquely positioned to address all dimensions simultaneously, creating the conditions for permanent transformation rather than temporary management.

    Beyond Management to True Healing

    Working in Philadelphia’s schools, I saw firsthand the difference between management approaches and true healing.

    Management strategies—breathing techniques for immediate calming, emotional regulation tools, cognitive reframing—all had their place. They helped children function in challenging environments and gain more control over their responses.

    But management isn’t the same as healing.

    Management asks, “How can I feel better when these symptoms arise?”

    Healing asks, “What needs to be released so these symptoms no longer control me?”

    The difference is subtle but profound. Management requires effort and vigilance, while healing creates freedom and new possibilities.

    This distinction became clear as my breathwork practice deepened beyond simple management techniques to include practices specifically designed to release stored trauma from the nervous system.

    As this happened, I began noticing subtle but significant shifts in how I moved through both my professional and personal life—particularly in situations that had previously triggered anxiety.

    Interactions with school administrators became opportunities for authentic connection rather than anxiety triggers. Speaking at staff meetings no longer activated the old pattern of becoming small. My voice remained my own, regardless of who was in the room.

    I wasn’t just managing my anxiety anymore. I was healing it at its source.

    Practical Steps to Begin Your Own Breath Journey

    If you’re carrying the weight of generational patterns that no longer serve you, here are some ways to begin exploring breathwork as a healing tool:

    Start with gentle awareness.

    Simply notice your breathing patterns throughout the day, especially in triggering situations. Do you hold your breath during stress? Breathe shallowly? These are clues to your nervous system state.

    Practice conscious connected breathing.

    For five minutes daily, try breathing in and out through your mouth, connecting the inhale to the exhale without pausing. Keep the breath gentle but full.

    Notice without judgment.

    As you breathe, sensations, emotions, or memories may arise. Instead of analyzing them, simply notice them with curiosity.

    Create safety first.

    If you have complex trauma, work with a trauma-informed breathwork practitioner who can help you navigate the process safely.

    Trust your body’s wisdom.

    Your body knows how to release what no longer serves you. Sometimes, intellectual understanding comes after physical release, not before.

    Commit to consistency.

    Transformation happens through regular practice, not one-time experiences. Even five to ten minutes daily can create significant shifts over time.

    Breaking the Chain

    Perhaps the most profound lesson from my work in Philadelphia’s schools and my personal healing journey is this: We can break generational chains.

    The patterns of anxiety, hypervigilance, and trauma responses that have been passed down through generations are not our destiny. They can be recognized, released, and transformed for our benefit and those who come after us.

    I saw this truth reflected in the children I worked with. As they learned to recognize and release stress patterns through breathwork, they weren’t just managing symptoms—they were developing new neural pathways that could potentially interrupt generations of trauma responses.

    I experienced this truth personally, watching as my healing journey created ripples in my relationships and interactions.

    The anxiety patterns that had been silently passed down through generations of women in my family were being interrupted. The chain was breaking.

    Breathwork offers a profound gift: personal healing and the chance to transform a lineage.

    The chains of generational trauma are strong, but they’re not unbreakable. And in their breaking lies personal liberation and the possibility of a new inheritance for generations to come.

  • When Healing Feels Lonely: What I Now Know About Peace

    When Healing Feels Lonely: What I Now Know About Peace

    “Avoiding your triggers isn’t healing. Healing happens when you’re triggered and you’re able to move through the pain, the pattern, and the story, and walk your way to a different ending.” ~Vienna Pharaon

    I thought I had figured it out.

    For a year, I had been doing the “inner work”—meditating daily, practicing breathwork, journaling, doing yoga. I had read all the books. I had deconditioned so many behaviors that weren’t serving me: my need to prove, my need to compare, my negative thought patterns. My self-awareness was through the roof. I had hit that deep, deep place in meditation I read about in the spiritual texts. I met my soul.

    I had stripped my life down to the essentials: no coffee, no alcohol, no meat, no distractions. My morning routine was bulletproof: journal, read a spiritual text, do yoga and breathwork, meditate.

    I distanced myself from many—putting up boundaries to some of the closest people to me because they “didn’t understand.” I spent my days mainly in nature, alone, in so much stillness and presence. I had finally found peace. Or at least, I thought I had.

    And then I went to a silent retreat in Bali.

    I flew across the world, ready to spend eleven days in complete silence, fully immersed in my inner world. I thought it would deepen my peace, open me up to even more divine inspiration, that it would solidify all the healing I had done.

    I had no idea it was about to rip me open.

    For the first three days, I was in heaven. I was more present than I had ever been in my life. The sound of the river, the feeling of the breeze on my skin—it was intoxicating. I felt like I could stay there forever. I felt like I was home, internally and externally.

    But on day four, everything cracked wide open.

    Suddenly, the emotions I thought I had healed—the ones I had spent months working through—came flooding back like a tidal wave. It all started with comparison. Comparing myself to other people at the retreat. Comparing my body, my flexibility in yoga class, my skin, my beauty.

    I was so confused—I had the awareness to know this wasn’t “good.” I had the awareness to realize this was me defaulting to all these old thoughts and behaviors.

    My mind started battling itself—and then I dove right into the “worst” behavior I thought I had healed: judgment. Judgment of others and judgment of myself.

    What was going on?! Hadn’t I already done this work? Why was I back here again?

    More and more emotions started coming up. I felt so unworthy again, like I hadn’t done enough work on myself. Like this past year was done all wrong, like it was wasted. Like I misunderstood the assignment.

    And that’s when it hit me: I had mistaken solitude for healing.

    Those few months before the silent retreat, I had wrapped myself in solitude like a safety blanket. I had avoided anything that triggered me—situations, people, even certain thoughts. I had created boundaries—not just with others, but with life itself.

    I was at peace… but I wasn’t living.

    I had gone so far into solitude, into stillness, that I had disconnected from the very thing that makes life meaningful—other people. I had tricked myself into thinking I had found peace when, really, I had just found another version of control.

    But control isn’t healing—it’s just another way of trying to feel safe.

    Turns out, I wasn’t at peace—I was chasing again. And this time, I was chasing enlightenment. It looked different from my old pursuits—more noble, more spiritual—but it was still a chase. And I will say honestly (and not egotistically), I reached enlightenment. I know I did. I reached Samadhi, consciousness, pure bliss. But then I started chasing that state, trying to make sure I was always in it. And the only way I could stay in it was by being alone.

    That’s where the control came in. I thought I had relinquished my need for control. I thought I was free. And in some ways, I was. But in other ways, I was meticulously curating every single detail of my life to make sure I could always remain in that blissful state. Control had woven its tentacles into my spiritual practice, and I didn’t even realize it.

    I needed to be isolated, as much as possible, to maintain my peace. I had convinced myself that this was my purpose. That this was my highest path.

    But that also made life so… lonely. Yes, it was peaceful. But suddenly I realized I missed my friendships. I missed my family. I missed all the people who triggered the heck out of me.

    Because in complete silence and solitude, I saw the truth—what makes life “life” is being in relation to something or someone.

    The truth is, real peace isn’t found in avoiding life—it’s found in moving through it. It’s found in the moments when we feel everything, when we get hurt, when we love, when we mess up, when we forgive.

    That’s what life is. That’s what healing is.

    And go figure—it took complete silence to show me that.

    On my second-to-last day at the retreat, I sat by the river and watched a single leaf fall into the water. Those beautiful big leaves that look so thick and robust, so durable. The current swept it along, pushing it under rocks, pulling it back up, flipping it over, tearing its edges on twigs lodged in the riverbed.

    But here’s the thing—no matter what, the leaf kept moving. It got stuck every now and then, but somehow, it would dislodge—a bit more broken and bruised but still moving.

    And so do we.

    No matter how much life twists us, no matter how many emotions hit us like waves, we are meant to flow with it, not run from it. Not avoid it.

    What Silence Taught Me About Real Peace

    1. Solitude is a tool, not a destination.

    Alone time is valuable, but true healing happens in relationship—with people, with challenges, with the messiness of life.

    2. Emotions are a gift, not a burden.

    I thought I had reached enlightenment by avoiding pain, but real peace comes from feeling everything—joy, sorrow, frustration, love—and moving through it.

    3. You can’t control your way into peace.

    I thought if I just kept my environment “pure,” I could protect my sense of calm. But life isn’t about control; it’s about trust.

    Flow with life, even when it hurts. That leaf in the river reminded me—life will push, pull, and test you, but you are meant to navigate it, not resist it.

    So yes, silence is important. Solitude is powerful. But the work? The real work is out there. In the messy, beautiful, heart-wrenching, soul-expanding experience of being human.

    And that’s the lesson I carried with me—not just when I finally opened my mouth to speak again, but into every moment of life that followed.

  • Sometimes Not Forgiving Is a Powerful Step Toward Healing

    Sometimes Not Forgiving Is a Powerful Step Toward Healing

    “You should be angry. You must not be bitter. Bitterness is like cancer. It eats upon the host. It doesn’t do anything to the object of its displeasure. So use that anger. You write it. You paint it. You dance it. You march it. You vote it. You do everything about it. You talk it. Never stop talking it.” ~Maya Angelou

    My mother left when I was five. Dad told me that for a little while I stopped talking, which is hard to imagine because now I never shut up.

    Apparently, I disappeared into myself. The doctors called it selective mutism. Two years later, my father’s second wife, Trish, would try to hug me, but I froze, arms pinned to my side, rigid against her affection.

    When I was older and I asked Dad what happened, he said he and Mom had been having problems, so she went on a bird-watching cruise to the Seychelles. During a stopover, she met a rugged, bearded, successful world wildlife photographer in the lobby of an African hotel. Frank and Patricia fell in love and immediately left their spouses and kids.

    In time, my mother became a talented photographer in her own right. She and Frank traveled continents to capture award-winning photos of animals for National Geographic and the like. Together, they published beautiful coffee table books.

    In 2004, both Patricia and Frank died within a month of each other. Frank from cancer, Patricia in a fiery car crash. My sister told me state troopers found a blood-stained snapshot of all five kids inside Patricia’s wallet. The picture was of my three brothers she’d had with my father and my sister and me, who she adopted as babies from two different moms, years after she got her tubes tied.

    “Girls,” she told my father. “I need two girls.”

    Years ago, I looked up Patricia’s obituary online. I found one attached to a blog written by a fan. At the end of a glowing description of her renowned career was a mention of Frank and that she was “mother to three boys.”

    No mention of me or my sister. Whoever wrote the obituary decided we didn’t exist, or maybe they never knew we existed. My sister, who’d stayed in touch with Patricia, seemed okay with the omission. She insisted the picture in Patricia’s wallet proved she thought about us.

    “And your comment on the blog was mean,” she told me.

    “With all due respect,” I wrote in the blog comments, “Patricia left her five kids” (I’m her youngest daughter) “to go sow her wildlife photographer oats. So yes, she was a talented photographer, but she wasn’t a mother.”

    In one picture I found of Patricia and Frank online after they died, Frank had his arm around her in front of a small white tent in Africa.

    She was leaning her head against his shoulder, smiling and content. Her face was plump and ruddy and naturally beautiful. Her short, dark, curly hair was windblown, and she was wearing a tan photo vest, khaki shorts, and chunky hiking boots.

    In her former life, Patricia was a full-fledged Audrey Hepburn type. An upper-middle-class, small-town New Jersey suburbanite with cinch-waisted elegant dresses, black heels, and pearls. In one Polaroid, my mother smiled for the camera as she carried a paper-footed crown roast to the perfect holiday table set for her husband and five kids.

    I was two months old when my parents adopted me. I never once resented my birth mom for giving me up (I found her in 2016, and we’re close).

    When I was old enough to understand how hard it must be for a woman to give up a child, I felt sorry for my birth mother. I knew women who gave up their baby did it out of love and desperation. And that it probably ripped their heart out forever. I knew long before I knew anything about my birth mom that giving me away wasn’t personal.

    It was selfless.

    But mothers who roam the globe with a lover, who give birth to three boys, get their tubes tied, and then adopt two girls to complete the set don’t leave their children for selfless reasons.

    They leave because motherhood was a mistake. Because domesticity felt like prison.

    “The ugly ducklings” Patricia once told my father about me and my middle brother. Mike stuttered and, like me, wore thick glasses.

    When I was older, I’d drag information out of my dad about Patricia.  He never wanted us to know Mike and I were her least favorites. That we weren’t perfect enough.

    During my sophomore year in college, I sent my mother a short letter. “I never understood why you left the family. Please help me understand.” Then I told her what was going on in my life.

    “It was your father’s lifestyle,” she wrote back. “The drinking and fancy parties and spending too much money. It wasn’t you. We were fighting all the time. It wasn’t about you kids.”

    Except that when you leave your kids, it is about the kids.

    That was our only contact until my late twenties during my youngest brother Chris’s wedding. Patricia smiled awkwardly as we walked toward each other in the hotel reception hall.

    We stood in front of each other but didn’t hug. She smiled, looked nervous, and told me, “Look how beautiful you are!” For the next few hours, we chatted about the wedding, my job, and my husband, who sat next to me.

    Frank sat between us at our table. Polite but protective. Privately, I was furious at how nonchalant my once-mother seemed. Of course there was too much to unpack, and a wedding wasn’t the place. But Patricia acted like we’d simply lost touch.

    A few years ago, when my husband and I were talking about that day, he told me that at some point I whispered to Frank, “Tell Patricia I want nothing to do with her.” I couldn’t stand the façade for one more second. So I went silent.

    I don’t remember saying that. But I’m sure I did. Because if my mother had wanted to be in my life, when she got my letter during college, she would have said so.

    In 1998, when I became a mom, the resentment for Patricia I’d managed to mostly bury resurfaced with a vengeance.

    I was horrified that a mother would leave her children. I felt a maternal protectiveness with my own daughter so visceral and overwhelming that rage bubbled up for my own mother.

    I pictured my five-year-old daughter coming home from kindergarten. Getting off the bus and running to hug her dad. I pictured her giggling and holding her vinyl Blue’s Clues lunch box. My husband handing her gummy snacks and a juice box in the kitchen. I pictured him scooping her up and sitting her on the couch next to him. My daughter’s happy feet swinging.

    “Where’s Mommy?” she asks as she sips her juice box and her blueberry eyes sparkle.

    “Honey, Daddy needs to tell you something. Mommy is um, gone, and she’s not coming back. It’s not your fault, honey, really, it isn’t. You didn’t do anything wrong. But Mommy is, well, Mommy is confused even though she really, really loves you.”

    Years ago, I decided that I can’t do with my mother what therapists and clergy suggest when someone hurts us.

    “Work to forgive. It’s not about saying what they did was okay. It’s about letting go of anger and resentment. When you do, you’ll feel better. Stop giving over your power to bitterness.”

    But the abandoned five-year-old child in me refuses to forgive my mother. I could, but I won’t. Not because I’m consumed with anger. I’m not. Because forgiving, however that looks (journaling, prayers, letters to Patricia I never send), feels disingenuous.

    “I forgive you” feels like a lie.

    Over the years my hurt and anger toward my mother have shifted. Not to forgiveness exactly, but to a new understanding that only ambitious woman-turned-mothers understand.

    Because I was that mother.

    After I had my daughter, I left the workforce as a career professional, ambitious but constantly told daily during my pregnancy, “Once you see that baby, nothing, I mean nothing else will matter.”

    Three months after maternity leave, I went back to work part time. Six months later, I left for good.

    I’d been diagnosed with fibromyalgia and was racked with chronic body aches and brain fog. My babysitter and I were at odds, but mostly I left because I “should” be at home. My husband never pressured me. I pressured me. Judgmental parents didn’t help.

    During my mother’s era (the 1950s), after women graduated college, they got married and had kids. They never talked about their own needs. There were no mom group confessionals. Ambition and having an identity crisis weren’t things. Taboo.

    Women sucked up their angst and exhaustion with coffee and uppers, with martinis and Valium (“Mommy’s little helper”). Smile. Nod. Suffer.

    It wasn’t until the nineties that books came out about motherhood and ambivalence. About loving your kid but hating x, y, z. Suddenly the floodgates opened, and mothers got raw and honest. (Remember the book The Three Martini Playdate?)

    I struggled with being grateful but bored at home. With craving an identity outside of motherhood. Of course I loved my daughter. I went through surgery and months of infertility procedures to get her.

    My child was everything to me, but not everything for me. When I became a parent, gradually, a tiny part of me understood why my mother left.

    And in that, accepting my mixed bag of emotions softened my pain and rage.

    Unlike my mother, I’d had a thriving career and my own identity for over twenty years. But Patricia went from college to marriage to motherhood. She’d skipped over herself and who, it turned out, she wanted to be. Unburdened by domesticity, free to roam the world.

    I realized that if my mother had stayed, she would have resented her kids and the life she felt called to embrace. Her resentment might have been more damaging than the abandonment.  

    Still, forgiveness isn’t always the answer. Saying “I forgive you” has to feel sincere. It has to come from a place of genuine release. A willingness to see the harm and accept its wrongness, then fully let it go. Into the ethers, washed from our heart and psyche.

    My vision of my mother is less villain now and more a woman who should never have given in to society’s pressure to have kids. As soon as she got married, she pushed my dad to start a family, even after he told her over and over they weren’t ready financially.

    It’s ironic that after she died, she left a chunk of money to Planned Parenthood. She knew. Motherhood isn’t for everyone.

    Forgiveness is nuanced, yet it’s been taught throughout the ages as magical in its transformative powers. “Forgive, let go, and you’ll be free.” And more often than not, that’s true.

    But for me, I owe it to my five-year-old self not to completely forgive my mother. Gentle non-forgiveness is what I call it.

    Most of my destructive bitterness is gone. But if I’m honest, some anger still sits in me. Because I want it there. Protective. Righteous. But no longer seething. Anger wrapped in necessary truth. That my mother was selfish. That my mother did real damage.

    I guess holding on to some anger feels like I’m choosing to be an advocate for my five-year-old self. But mostly I think it’s to avoid the harder emotions of pain and rejection. And because letting go of all my anger feels fake.

    For me, being authentic sometimes means accepting that not all anger fades. And that it’s okay. (In fact, allowing anger instead of repressing it can actually be beneficial for our health, according to psychologist Jade Wu, so long as we don’t act aggressively.)

    In the wake of my mother abandoning our family, she left behind five broken kids, all of whom bear emotional scars. Scars that showed up in devastating ways. Addiction, cruelty, despair, loneliness, low self-esteem, hoarding, attachment issues.

    I know ultimately my mother needed to be free. That staying would have done more harm than good. But children aren’t puppies to surrender when caregiving gets too hard.

    There were dire consequences to my mother leaving to find happiness. Irreparable damage. I saw it. I felt it. Trust destroyed. And because of that, I can never fully forgive.

    “I pray you heal from things no one ever apologized for.” ~Nakeia Homer

  • Heal So You Can See That…

    Heal So You Can See That…

  • A Message of Love and Support We All Need to Hear

    A Message of Love and Support We All Need to Hear

    “When you can’t look on the bright side, I will sit with you in the dark.” ~Unknown

    There are moments in life when pain feels consuming—when it lingers, reshapes us, and forces us to confront parts of ourselves we’ve long avoided. Recently, I found myself in one of those moments.

    I was overwhelmed, unraveling, and isolating, trying to make sense of emotions that felt heavy. In that space, I wrote this message to a close friend—someone who has stood by me through my highs and lows, yet someone I now realize I haven’t always shown up for in the way they deserved.

    This is more than just a letter. It’s an acknowledgment of the weight we carry, the way we heal, and the importance of holding space for those we love.

    It’s a reminder that pain doesn’t need to be rushed, that healing isn’t about fixing but about remembering we were never broken to begin with. And most importantly, it’s a promise—to my friend, to myself, and to anyone who has ever felt unseen—that we are never truly alone.

    Here’s my message…

    You know, these past few days, all I’ve done is sleep, think, cry, and listen to music. I haven’t left the house unless it’s for work, and even then, I feel like I’m just going through the motions.

    I’ve been letting myself feel everything—choosing to sit with it—even though it’s terrifying. It feels deep and raw, and sometimes it pulls me into places so heavy, I wonder if I’ll ever find my way out. But strangely, in all of that darkness, it feels like something within me is shedding and peeling away. It’s painful, but at the same time, it’s healing. It’s the kind of pain that comes with growth, even when it doesn’t feel like it in the moment.

    I know this probably sounds heavy, maybe even overwhelming, but something triggered this—something connected to an old, deeply rooted wound for me—and it’s forced me to sit with emotions I’ve been carrying for a long time. The impact I’ve had, it’s hard to explain, even to myself, but I feel like something has shifted—in life and within me.

    Here’s what I’ve come to realize: Pain doesn’t need to be rushed. Healing doesn’t need to be rushed.

    Sometimes, we just need to let ourselves be in our feelings, even when it’s messy and hard. And what I’ve learned is that we can hold space for our sadness without letting it define us. By sitting with it and not running away, we give it a chance to teach us something about who we are, where we’ve been, and where we’re headed.

    I know sitting in it for too long isn’t healthy. But there’s a power in honoring your emotions, in giving yourself permission to feel what you feel without judgment. It’s an act of love and compassion toward yourself, a reminder that your pain is valid, your journey is valid, and you are valid.

    Without diving into the whole story just yet—which I promise I’ll share with you when the time feels right—I want you to know that I see you. I appreciate your patience with me through all of this, and I need you to know how much love I have for you.

    I know it hasn’t been easy for you. For a while now, there have been so many moments that have felt overwhelming, and many wounds have reopened and been re-triggered.

    If I could go back, I would’ve shown up differently in every single moment you trusted me with your feelings. I would’ve made sure you never felt shame for feeling the way you did. Instead of trying to fix it, I would’ve sat with you in the discomfort and reminded you that your emotions are not a burden and that you are worthy of love even in your hardest moments.

    I see now how important it is to let someone feel their feelings fully and to hold space for them without judgment or pressure. I wish I could’ve done that for you every time. But what I can do now is show you, moving forward, that not everyone will let you down. Not everyone will leave.

    My love for you runs deep. I see you. I see all of you—your strength, your softness, your beauty, even in the hardest moments. And I need you to know, without a shadow of a doubt, that you are loved. You are enough exactly as you are, and I am here for you. Always.

    I invite you to keep sharing your feelings with me. I’ll hold space for you in the way you deserve and remind you every single day that you are loved and seen. You don’t have to carry anything alone, and there is no rush to be “okay.”

    Take your time. Healing isn’t about fixing yourself; it’s about remembering that you were never broken to begin with. It’s okay to feel deeply. It’s a sign of your humanity, your courage, and your capacity to love. Be gentle with yourself. Compassion isn’t just something you give to others—it’s something you deserve to receive, especially from yourself.

    And no matter how heavy things get in life, remember, you’re not alone, and healing is not linear.

    I’m here, and I’ll keep showing up for you as you show up for yourself.

    I love you.

  • How My Dog Became an Unexpected Source of Healing

    How My Dog Became an Unexpected Source of Healing

    “The place of true healing is a fierce place. It’s a giant place. It’s a place of monstrous beauty and endless dark and glimmering light. And you have to work really, really, really hard to get there, but you can do it.” ~Cheryl Strayed

    My memories of my sister are much hazier than they used to be—somehow less crisp and colorful than before. But time has a way of doing that. Images of her that used to show up in bold, bright colors in my mind’s eye have slowly faded to black and white, with various shades of gray and silver popping in from time to time, almost as if to keep me on my toes and keep her memory alive.

    I can still remember her last days, the light slowly dimming from her eyes as she lay bound to her bed, no longer able to move or eat on her own, with feeding tubes in her nose and various devices surrounding her for those inevitable—and fear-gripped moments when she needed help breathing.

    Like the rest of my family, I would take my turn staying in her room, checking on her to make sure she was still breathing. It was always the same routine. With anxiety creeping into my chest, I would place one hand on her belly to make sure it was still rising and falling while leaning in close to her nose, listening for the soft sound of her breath. A sigh of relief would pass through me every time I heard her gentle exhale.

    The night she passed, I had just finished performing that very ritual, rising to leave only once I felt the repeated slow, steady rise and fall of her belly and the soft whisper of her strained breath on my face. I can still remember walking back into the family room and gratefully announcing, ”She’s okay.”

    Maybe it was mother’s instinct, but only moments later my mother rushed back into my sister’s room. Her sense of urgency took me by surprise since I had just left the room and everything had been fine. I assumed she didn’t think I could be trusted and needed to see for herself.

    It wasn’t long before I heard the sound of my mother’s screams through the thin walls of our small duplex. I knew right away what it meant—my sister had stopped breathing.

    For a long time afterward, I blamed myself for not having been in the room when she took her last breath, and for leaving her alone in those last few seconds. If I had just stayed another minute, I could have been with her. Instead, I had left the room right as she had been getting ready to leave the world.

    The months that followed were a blur of pain, confusion, and disbelief as I tried to make sense of a world without her in it. At ten years old, I was too young to understand how much my parents were hurting or how deeply my sister’s death affected them. I mistakenly thought their withdrawal and anger were because of something I had done. Maybe I was the one who had messed up—missed the signs that could have saved her night. Or maybe I was the one who they wished had died instead.

    Those thoughts became the foundation for years of self-punishment after my sister’s death. I found myself struggling with feelings of self-hatred and inadequacy, which often showed up as eating disorders, self-harm, and feelings of unworthiness.

    Survivor’s guilt and the belief that I was the “bad” daughter who didn’t deserve to live only added more shame and self-doubt that I couldn’t shake off. But as I got older, I learned to shut the pain—and the memories—out.

    Soon, I stopped thinking about that night altogether. I convinced myself that I had moved past it, telling myself that time really does “heal all wounds.” I couldn’t have been more wrong.

    It would take me decades to understand that time hadn’t actually healed anything. I had just pushed the memories so far down that they became buried under layers of guilt, shame, and unresolved grief, waiting to resurface when I was ready to face them.

    The truth is, time doesn’t heal all wounds unless we do the work to heal them ourselves.

    My own healing came in an unexpected way after years of trying to prove my worthiness through constant people-pleasing, overworking, over-committing, and deliberately taking on more challenging projects and activities, both personally and professionally, just to prove that I mattered and was deserving of my life. I still hadn’t forgiven myself for being the one that lived when a soul as beautiful, bright, and loving as my sister hadn’t.

    I finally realize now that it wasn’t even the rest of the world I was trying to prove my worth to—it was myself. And if it hadn’t been for my dog Taz, I’m not sure if I would have ever come to that realization.

    When I first rescued him, I was unknowingly bringing Taz into my life as yet another way of trying to prove I mattered. Having been severely abused and fresh off a major back surgery, he could barely walk when I first took him in.

    His (understandable) anxiety had created severely destructive—and, at least initially—fear- and pain-based behavior that made him particularly challenging. I can still remember countless friends saying to me, “You know you can’t do this. What are you trying to prove? He’s too much for you.” But my self-punishment game was strong, and their words only pushed me to try harder.

    For his entire first year with me, I would carry him around in his special harness like a suitcase, setting him down for short spurts so he could get the feeling of putting weight on his legs and paws and build enough strength to start walking.

    In the beginning, he couldn’t understand that he had to lift his paws and set them down again to walk, so he would drag them instead, scraping his paws until they were raw and bloody within seconds and prompting me to pick him right back up and carry him again. (I can only imagine what others thought when they saw my 5’2 frame carrying a seventy-pound pitbull around like a duffel bag!)

    That drill went on for months. Inside the house, I would bring him into the carpeted rooms and teach him how to place his paws—down on all fours and crawling along the floor with him as my other dog, Hope, did her part and pranced around showing him how she did it. Slowly, he started to understand. And even more slowly, he started to walk.

    A year later, he was running, which turned into sprinting a few months after that. Another three years after that, he was (cautiously) able to go up and down stairs. And seven years after he came to me, just when it seemed that he was at his strongest yet, he was diagnosed with a rare form of cancer.

    “He has hemangiosarcoma. The tumor is on his heart, and every pump is spreading it throughout his body. There’s nothing we can do. He has about ten days before his heart will stop pumping.”

    What had started as an emergency visit for his stomach issues had turned into a death knell for Taz.

    The thought of this being the end of his story, when he had already been through so much and finally made it to the other side, seemed unfathomable. In some ways, it was the biggest challenge I had faced yet, and I was determined to save him.

    I didn’t sleep the night of his diagnosis. Or most of the nights after that. Instead, I found myself waking up almost every hour, gazing at him sleeping by my side, tears gathering in my eyes, and wondering how I could save him—and what else I needed to sacrifice to keep him by my side.

    I initially failed to grasp that his illness was the beginning of my healing. And the darkness that would ensue was actually the beginning of the light that would start pouring into my childhood wounds.

    As the pain eclipsed me in those dark, late-night moments, I didn’t even realize what I was doing at first. What started as just trying to soak in every moment with him had triggered the very ritual I had performed for so long as a child. Only this time, it wasn’t my sister I was watching over—it was Taz.

    Every time I woke up and gazed at him throughout the night, I would place my hand on his belly to make sure it was still rising and falling and lean in close to see if I could hear him breathing.

    Just like that, I had brought myself right back into the unresolved trauma loop that I had buried and ignored so long ago. When the realization hit me, I immediately felt transported back to that night decades ago—to that last moment with her, the last time my hand had been on her belly.

    I understood then that I had never truly healed—I had only learned to suppress it. I also realized that the shame, blame, and guilt I had carried for so long had never really left me and were still huge parts of who I was and had been for decades after she died.

    All the unshed tears, anger, and grief that I had never processed came pouring out. I wept for hours. And every time I thought I was out of tears, a new stream would surface.

    That ritual lasted every night for thirty-four days. Courageous as ever, Taz had outlived the ten days he was given, and on the thirty-fourth day, my Tazzie Bear left me. Only this time I was in the room.

    Somehow, we both knew the time had come, and as he lay his head in my lap one last time, gazing lovingly one more time into my eyes and proceeded to take his last breath, I felt his soul leave his body. And somehow, an unexpected sense of peace seemed to have entered mine.

    That beautiful, amazing soul of his had taken my pain with him, and in the process, he had somehow broken the trauma loop I had unknowingly been caught in all those years.

    His death had helped me heal years of pain I didn’t even know I was carrying. As I sat there, holding him in his final moments, I realized that his presence had been the biggest gift I had ever received.

    For animal lovers, this next sentence will make perfect sense: Taz had been far more than my pet; he had come to me as a lifeline, guiding me into my next chapter of healing and self-discovery.

    Because of him, I had officially started a new chapter of my life. One that was free from the debilitating shame, guilt, and pain I had carried for so long. And in that quiet moment, I understood that healing isn’t linear—it’s a journey, often led by the most unexpected teachers.

    And I will forever be grateful that I was lucky enough to have him as one of my teachers.

  • Breaking Free: Healing from cPTSD and Reclaiming My Life

    Breaking Free: Healing from cPTSD and Reclaiming My Life

    “The wound is the place where the Light enters you.” ~Rumi

    In 2011, my world shattered. My mother passed away, and with her, the fragile scaffolding that held my life together. It wasn’t just grief. It was as if her death unearthed a deep well of pain I had been carrying for years.

    Looking back, I can see that I was living with complex PTSD (cPTSD), though I didn’t have the language for it at the time. cPTSD is a condition that often results from prolonged exposure to trauma, leaving deep emotional scars. It manifests as a constant state of hypervigilance, emotional numbness, and difficulty forming healthy relationships.

    What I did know was that my inner world was in chaos, and the external one soon followed. The grief triggered a flood of emotions that I couldn’t control or understand.

    In the months after her death, I unraveled completely. I blew up my marriage in what felt like a frantic attempt to escape my pain. I pushed people away, made reckless decisions, and sank into a despair that seemed bottomless.

    I was living through what some call the “dark night of the soul,” a period of profound spiritual and emotional crisis. At the time, it felt like I was losing everything, but in hindsight, it was the beginning of something much deeper. It became a journey into the core of who I was and a reckoning with the pain I had carried for so long.

    Finding the Root of the Pain

    When I finally sought therapy, I began to understand the roots of my suffering. Growing up, my relationship with my mother was complicated. She could be physically harsh, and there were no displays of affection or love. I don’t recall hugs or comforting words, and as a child, that left me feeling unseen and unworthy.

    Everything began to change when I was in my twenties and my mother was diagnosed with cancer. It was as if the illness softened her, and for the first time, I began to see a different side of her. She became a wonderful grandmother. She was gentle, patient, and loving in ways I hadn’t experienced as a child.

    When my mother passed, I was overwhelmed by a tidal wave of grief that felt far too immense for the relationship we’d shared. Even a friend remarked on it, leaving me grappling with a mix of confusion and guilt.

    But my therapist offered a perspective that changed everything. This grief wasn’t just about losing my mother. At its core, it was the raw mourning of a lifetime of unmet needs: the love, safety, and connection I had longed for as a child but never received. It was the ache of realizing that door was now closed forever.

    The cPTSD diagnosis was, in some ways, a relief. It gave me a framework to understand the hypervigilance, emotional flashbacks, and deep sense of unworthiness I had carried for so long.

    But understanding wasn’t enough. Despite the insights therapy gave me, I still felt trapped in my pain. It was like standing at the edge of a vast chasm, seeing the life I wanted on the other side but having no idea how to cross it.

    That’s when I met my yoga guru, a man whose wisdom became a bridge to healing. Through his teachings, I learned to hold my past with compassion, to forgive where I could, and to see myself as worthy of love and peace.

    The First Lesson: Be

    Working with my teacher, I was desperate for relief. I wanted him to give me a roadmap, a step-by-step plan to fix what was broken. Instead, he offered me something far simpler, and infinitely more challenging.

    “Be,” he said during one of our first sessions. “Just be.”

    At first, I didn’t understand what he meant. Be what? Be how? I was used to striving, fixing, doing. The idea of simply being felt foreign and, frankly, useless.

    But he was patient. He encouraged me to sit with myself, to notice my breath, my body, my thoughts, and my emotions without trying to change anything. In those early days, the practice felt unbearable.

    My mind was a whirlwind of guilt, shame, and grief. Sitting still felt like sitting in the middle of a storm. But slowly, I began to notice something. Beneath the chaos, there was a quiet stillness. A presence that wasn’t swept up in the storm.

    For the first time, I began to glimpse the part of me that wasn’t defined by my pain.

    The Second Lesson: Be With

    “Be with what arises,” my teacher would say. “Don’t push it away. Don’t cling to it. Just be with it.”

    This was perhaps the hardest lesson for me. My instinct was to avoid pain—to distract myself or numb the discomfort.

    But my teacher gently guided me to do the opposite. He encouraged me to meet my emotions with curiosity instead of resistance. One day, I told him, “I can’t stop feeling this sadness. It’s like it’s swallowing me whole.”

    He nodded and said, “Then be with the sadness. Sit with it. Let it show you what it needs to show you.” So I did. I sat with my sadness, my anger, my fear. I stopped trying to fix them or make them go away.

    And as I did, I began to notice something profound: the emotions weren’t as overwhelming as I had feared. They ebbed and flowed like waves, and when I stopped resisting them, they began to lose their grip on me. I realized that my suffering wasn’t caused by the emotions themselves but by my resistance to them.

    By being with them, I allowed them to move through me instead of staying stuck inside me.

    The Third Lesson: Let It Be

    The final lesson my teacher gave me was perhaps the simplest and the most profound: “Let it be.” This wasn’t giving up or resigning myself to suffering. It was acceptance.

    Not in the sense of liking or approving of everything that happened, but in the sense of allowing life to unfold without clinging to how I thought it should be.

    One day, during a particularly difficult meditation, I found myself flooded with memories of my mother. The grief was overwhelming, and I wanted to push it away. But my teacher’s words echoed in my mind: “Let it be.”

    So I did. I let the memories come, the grief wash over me, and the tears fall. And then, as quickly as it came, the wave passed. In its place was a quiet stillness, a sense of peace I hadn’t felt in years.

    Letting it be didn’t mean I stopped feeling grief or sadness. It meant I stopped fighting against them. I stopped clinging to the idea that I needed to be “healed” or “fixed” to be whole.

    I began to trust that I could hold space for my pain without being consumed by it.

    The Freedom of Letting Go

    Through these lessons—be, be with, let it be—I began to experience a freedom I never thought possible. I realized I am not my pain. I am not my past. I am the awareness that holds all of it.

    Healing wasn’t about erasing my trauma. It was about integrating it, making peace with it. I no longer had to be defined by the pain of my past.

    Lessons for You

    If you’re going through a similar storm, here are some insights that helped me:

    • Be present: Start by simply being with yourself. Notice your breath, your body, and your emotions without judgment.
    • Be with what arises: Allow your emotions to surface without trying to fix or change them. Meet them with curiosity.
    • Let it be: Accept life as it is. Don’t fight against it. Let things unfold without trying to control them.
    • Trust the process: Healing is not a quick fix. Be patient with yourself, knowing that in time, the storm will pass.

    The dark night of the soul wasn’t the end for me. It was the beginning of something much deeper.

    If you’re in the midst of your own crisis, remember, you are not your pain. You are the vast sky that holds it all. And within that sky, there is a peace that no storm can take away.

  • Life After Abuse: A Story of Hope and Healing

    Life After Abuse: A Story of Hope and Healing

    TRIGGER WARNING: This post deals with an account of domestic violence and may be triggering to some.

    Growing up, I learned early on how to be aware of the little things that spoke volumes. My mom wasn’t just an alcoholic; she was also bipolar, and I never knew if I’d come home to a mom who was cheerful and loving or to one who would say hurtful things and obsess over cleaning.

    I grew up in AA, surrounded by people trying to rebuild their lives. My parents were both recovering alcoholics, and while I didn’t fully understand it at the time, it made sense later in life. The environment made it easier for me to fall into drugs.

    When I was fifteen, my first experience with meth came at the hands of adults who, in hindsight, should have known better. At the time, I couldn’t understand why they would lead me down that path. However, as I’ve gone through my healing journey, I’ve come to realize that those individuals were deeply broken themselves. They were trapped in their own struggles, in a place of darkness and pain, and they simply didn’t know any better.

    For six years, meth controlled my life. My addiction led me into a toxic, abusive relationship with my now ex-husband.

    He was supposed to save me. He was my knight in shining armor, my prince, the person I thought would protect me, love me, and help me heal. He was once my best friend, someone I trusted more than anyone else. But all of that changed.

    I remember the first time he hit me. It was a moment I’ll never forget. I had broken his picture on purpose, trying to send some sort of message, trying to make him feel the anger and hurt I had inside me. But in return, he punched me in the face.

    I went down, stunned, but then I got up. I hit him back. He hit me again, and I got up again, hitting him back in an attempt to defend myself. This went on a few more times before I couldn’t get back up anymore. He stood over me, telling me, “Stay down, stay down,” and in that moment, I felt broken.

    It was the first time I truly saw how deeply our relationship was damaging me, but even then, I couldn’t see a way out. There was something inside of me that had already started to shatter, piece by piece. It was as if the very foundation of who I was was crumbling, but I couldn’t figure out how to rebuild it. I had spent so much time in survival mode that I couldn’t recognize the destruction.

    The abuse had taken its toll on me, eroding my sense of self, and I didn’t know how to escape the cycle. I had once believed in this person, believed that he would protect me, but in that moment, I saw that he was the very one hurting me. Yet, I was still stuck in the relationship, still hoping for a change that would never come.

    Trauma has a way of blurring the lines between love and pain, and in that moment, I couldn’t see that the person who was supposed to be my protector had become my abuser.

    It was a crushing realization, but at that time, I didn’t know how to fight my way out. I was trapped in a world of emotional and physical turmoil, and it felt like a prison I couldn’t escape from.

    I don’t know why I ever allowed it. I know that the person in that relationship was not me. The things I did and the things I allowed were not who I truly was. I was not weak because I was in that relationship, and I was not weak because I stayed.

    Abuse and trauma do things to you that you would never imagine. It’s not just the emotional scars that leave a mark—it’s physical, too. Your body becomes so attuned to constant stress, to the fight or flight that never stops, that it begins to break down.

    The tension, the fear, and the anxiety all build up and stay with you. Your heart races, your muscles tighten and stay that way, your sleep is restless, and your body is in a constant state of exhaustion. Trauma doesn’t just affect your mind; it takes a toll on your body, making you feel physically sick, tired, or overwhelmed without knowing why.

    You are so broken down, piece by piece, that you are just stuck. Every part of you—your body, your mind, your soul—becomes conditioned to expect pain. Your sense of self diminishes, and you start to believe that this is the way things will always be.

    But it’s not weakness. That’s strength. That is survival. The strength to keep going, even when every part of you is begging to give up.

    Trauma rewires you. It changes how you see the world and how you see yourself. It takes away your ability to trust, to feel safe, to love without fear. It leaves you questioning your worth, but deep down, there is a flicker of strength, a small voice telling you that you are more than the broken pieces. It tells you that you are worthy of healing, worthy of peace. And eventually, you start to listen to that voice, even though it feels so small. That voice, that strength, is what ultimately pulls you out of the darkness.

    Our relationship was destructive on both sides. His hands were violent, and my words were sharp, cutting deep into both of us. It wasn’t just the abuse—it was the shame, the hopelessness, and the feeling that things would never get better. But there were also moments of love, moments that reminded me of the three beautiful kids we brought into the world. They were my light, the reason I kept going even when everything around me seemed to be falling apart.

    I couldn’t bear the thought of them growing up in that environment, witnessing violence, and believing that it was normal. My son, only eleven, had to hit his dad with a broom to get him off me—it hit me harder than anything. It wasn’t just about me anymore; it was about their futures.

    If I stayed, I knew my daughters were going to experience the same kind of abuse. They would believe that they deserved it, that this was what love looked like. And my son—he was learning that this was how men treat women. The cycle was being set. It was a terrifying realization, and I couldn’t let it happen.

    That day, when my son stood up for me, it was as if I saw the future laid out in front of me—a future where my children, like me, would be broken.

    That was the moment I knew I had to leave. I knew that getting out was the only way I could protect them—and heal myself in the process. If I didn’t, I would be condemning them to the same broken, destructive life I had lived, and I couldn’t allow that. They deserved better, and so did I.

    We stayed together for twelve years, but eventually, my ex took the kids. I was too scared to fight for them, too broken to believe I could do better. For a long time, I carried the weight of that loss, feeling like I had failed them. But I’ve spent the years since working to repair the damage, to rebuild the trust, and to be the best mom I can be for them.

    After my ex took the kids, I spiraled into a place darker than I ever thought possible. My heart ached, not just from the loss of my children, but from the emptiness that consumed me. I turned to alcohol, a familiar crutch that numbed the pain for a little while. But the numbness never lasted, and the deeper I sank, the more I made terrible choices. My life became a series of bad decisions, one after another, and every one of them felt like a reflection of how broken I was inside.

    My ex-husband used my kids to hurt me. He told them I didn’t want them, twisting the truth to create more distance between us. He took any money I sent them, using it to make me feel powerless, like I had no control over anything, not even the small ways I tried to help.

    When they called to talk to me or I called them, the name “incubator” was what they saw on the phone—it was the name my ex had saved for me. Every time they called, or I reached out, I was reminded of how little I seemed to matter, how distant and cold I had been reduced to in his eyes.

    For a long time, I only saw my kids for six weeks in the summer. The summers were nice, but I didn’t have a car or money, and I couldn’t offer them experiences or fun. I wish I could’ve done more; I wish I could’ve been better for them. I wanted to give them everything, but I couldn’t. It was heartbreaking, knowing I was limited in so many ways, knowing my kids deserved so much more. I felt like I was failing them every single day.

    I finally reached a point where I couldn’t just keep wishing I had done better. I had to take action. I knew I had to work to rebuild the relationship with my kids and show them that, despite all the mistakes I made, I could still be there for them. I started finding ways to improve, to create a stable life, even if it meant small steps forward. I realized that as long as I was trying, I wasn’t lost. And if I could get myself to a place where I was better for them, then that was all that mattered.

    I was diagnosed with complex PTSD, and dealing with it has been a long and painful journey. I still deal with flashbacks and nightmares that take me back to moments I wish I could forget. There are times when I still don’t feel like I can make my dreams come true. I struggle with the feeling that I don’t deserve it, that I’m not worthy of a life beyond the pain I’ve known. Sometimes, I continue to live in fear, afraid of failing, of being stuck, of letting the past define me.

    But I don’t give up. I keep pushing forward. I started with therapy. I began looking inward, facing the things I’d been avoiding for so long. But therapy wasn’t enough. It wasn’t until I started seeking something deeper, something spiritual, that I began to feel like I was truly healing.

    I began exploring meditation, shadow work, and candle work, and these practices began to offer me more than just a temporary escape. They became tools to reconnect with myself in ways I had never imagined.

    Healing wasn’t just about working through the pain—it was about building a deeper connection to something beyond the physical. It was about tapping into a power greater than myself, learning to trust it, and surrendering to the process.

    These spiritual practices helped me find peace and clarity, but more than anything, they helped me rebuild my sense of self-worth.

    For so long, I thought I was just a broken, empty shell of a person. But I wasn’t. I was a strong, loving, and amazing person. I just had to find her again. And that’s what I’ve been doing—slowly but surely. It hasn’t been easy, and it hasn’t been quick, but with each step, I’ve been reconnecting with the woman I was always meant to be. And through it all, I’ve realized that I am enough, just as I am.

    I worked for years, digging into the deep, dark stuff. I thought it all stemmed from my broken marriage, but I soon realized it was much deeper than that—it was rooted in a lifetime of struggles, traumas, and wounds.

    It was years of healing, and there were times when I wanted to quit. The weight of it all felt suffocating, and the journey seemed too long to keep going. But I couldn’t quit. I had to heal for others—more than for myself. I had to show my kids that we could overcome anything, that we could build a new life despite everything we’d been through.

    And as I healed, I also worked on healing my relationship with my kids. I knew I had to be present for them, not just in the physical sense but emotionally and mentally as well. I made sure to show up as the mom they deserved, someone who could be there to listen, to support, and to love them unconditionally.

    The spiritual practices I had learned gave me the tools to create these deeper connections with my children, helping me become the mother I had always longed to be. With time, the bond between us grew stronger, and I began to see that the love we had for each other was unbreakable, no matter what had happened in the past.

    I got a job. I started paying my own bills. I dug myself out of the hole that I had created, a hole that was shaped by both my actions and what I had allowed to be done to me.

    It wasn’t easy, and it didn’t happen overnight. But each day, I became a little more independent, a little stronger. I took responsibility for my life, for my choices, and for the changes I needed to make. And though I still have moments where I struggle, I know I’ve come so far, and I’ve proven to myself that I can rebuild.

    And then, I went back to school. I knew I had finally figured out what I wanted to do with my life. I started working toward a degree in psychology, a field that had always fascinated me and a way I could help others the way I had helped myself.

    I realized that my own healing journey had sparked something inside me. It wasn’t just about recovering from my past; it was about using my experiences to make a difference in the lives of others. I knew this was my path, and it felt like everything I had been through had led me here.

    I will continue to work on myself, healing the parts of me that still need to be healed. We are always working to be better, always continuing to heal, and we are not alone in this world. So many people have stories like mine, stories of pain and survival, and I know we can all rise above it together.

  • Grief Has No Rules: Love, Loss, and Letting Go

    Grief Has No Rules: Love, Loss, and Letting Go

    “Grief never ends … But it changes. It’s a passage, not a place to stay. Grief is not a sign of weakness, nor a lack of faith. It is the price of love.” ~Unknown

    “Thank you for letting me know.” The moment I hung up the phone, the tears came. I was confused and caught off guard. Why was I crying over the death of my ex-husband?

    We’d separated six years ago. I had a new partner and hadn’t thought much about him in over three years. So why did his death hit me so hard?

    Big Girls Don’t Cry

    Growing up in Ireland, emotions weren’t something we talked about. Tears were for small children, not grown women. When I was upset, I’d hear the same phrase, “Big girls don’t cry.” It wasn’t meant to hurt me, but it stayed with me.

    I learned to swallow my feelings. Anger, sadness, fear—those were things you kept private. I thought strength meant holding it all in. But as I grew older, that kind of strength felt heavy.

    When my ex-husband died, all of it came rushing back. The sadness, the confusion, the guilt. And then the shame. Why couldn’t I just be stronger? Why couldn’t I pull myself together like I was supposed to?

    Grief and Guilt Collide

    I felt like I was failing. Crying didn’t just feel wrong—it felt like a betrayal. A betrayal of my upbringing, of the image I had of myself, and even of my current relationship. I couldn’t stop thinking: What if my partner saw me like this? Would he understand? Would he think I still loved my ex?

    The guilt weighed on me. But so did the fear. I wanted to go to the funeral, but I was terrified. What would his family think if I showed up? Would they see my tears and think I didn’t deserve to grieve? Would they think I was pretending?

    I wanted to hide. I wanted to run away from the emotions I wasn’t supposed to have. But this time, something inside me told me to stay.

    Reaching Out for Support

    I couldn’t carry it alone anymore. The grief, the guilt, the fear—it was all too much. For the first time in my life, I did something I’d always avoided. I reached out.

    I called my mum.

    At first, I hesitated. My instinct was to keep it together, to pretend I was fine. But the moment she picked up, the words spilled out. I told her everything. How lost I felt. How ashamed I was for crying. How afraid I was of what people would think if they saw me like this.

    She didn’t say much at first. She just listened.

    The Power of One Simple Truth

    Then, when I finally stopped talking, she said something simple. “It’s okay to feel this, you know. You loved him once. That doesn’t just go away.”

    Her words broke something open in me. I cried harder than I had in years, but for the first time, I didn’t feel alone in it. She stayed on the phone while I let it all out. She didn’t try to fix it or tell me to stop. She just stayed.

    That moment was a turning point. I started to see that grief wasn’t something to fight against or hide from. It was something I had to let myself feel. And asking for support didn’t make me weak. If anything, it gave me strength.

    Leaning on my mum helped me find my footing. I wasn’t over the loss—not even close—but I felt less trapped by it. For the first time, I could breathe again.

    Facing My Fears at The Funeral

    I arrived early at the church with my friend, my stomach in knots. The air felt heavy, like it knew I didn’t belong here—or at least, that’s what my mind kept telling me.

    A car pulled in beside us, and my heart sank. It was his sister. Without thinking, I slumped down in the seat, silently pleading for the ground to swallow me whole. What am I doing here? I wasn’t sure I could face their grief. I wasn’t sure I could face my own.

    But I’d come this far, and I couldn’t back out now.

    Finding Unexpected Comfort

    Dragging my feet, I walked toward the church door. Each step felt heavier than the last. I caught a glimpse of his brother standing near the entrance, and panic bubbled up in my chest. I almost turned and ran.

    My friend, sensing my hesitation, gently squeezed my elbow. It was a small gesture, but it steadied me. I kept walking.

    Then I saw her—his sister—standing at the church door. Her eyes locked with mine. There was no way out now. I braced myself, expecting a cold stare, a sharp word, maybe even outright anger.

    Instead, she stepped forward. And then, before I could react, she wrapped her arms around me. The hug was warm and full of love. It broke down every wall I’d built up in my mind.

    Finding Solace in Shared Memories

    Inside, the service was simple and poignant. The priest spoke softly, and memories of our life together floated through my mind—some good, some hard, all real. As the coffin was carried out of the church, I felt the tears welling up again.

    My friend placed an arm around my waist and gave me a little squeeze. For a moment, I considered pulling away, trying to summon that old stiff upper lip. Pretending I was fine. But I didn’t. I let the tears fall.

    After the service, the family invited me for a drink. It was an Irish funeral, after all. I hesitated, unsure if I belonged in their circle of mourning, but their warmth melted my fear. As we shared stories about him—some that made us laugh, others that brought tears to our eyes—I realized something profound. We had all loved this man in our own ways, and in that moment, our shared grief united us.

    Carrying the Sadness, Embracing the Joy

    Leaving the funeral, I felt a strange mix of emotions. The heaviness of loss was still there, but so was something else—a sense of lightness, even relief.

    The family’s kindness had reminded me of something I’d forgotten in my guilt and fear. I wasn’t just grieving a person; I was grieving a chapter of my life. My ex and I had shared 18 years together. Those years mattered. They shaped me into who I am today.

    A Beautiful Realization About Love

    At first, I struggled to reconcile those feelings with the love I have for my current partner. I worried that my grief might hurt him or make him feel less important. But over time, I realized something beautiful: love isn’t a competition. There’s space for both past and present love in my heart.

    I still feel sad when I think about my ex. Some days, it sneaks up on me—a song he used to love, a random memory, or even a quiet moment when the world feels still. But I’ve learned that sadness doesn’t mean I’m stuck or broken. It’s just a part of healing, a reminder of the love we shared and the lessons we learned together.

    Lessons Learned Through Grief

    • Grief Has No Rules: It’s okay to mourn someone even if your relationship wasn’t perfect or ended long ago. Grief is deeply personal and unpredictable.
    • Emotions Are Strength, Not Weakness: Feeling your emotions doesn’t make you weak—it makes you human. Suppressing them only makes the weight heavier.
    • Ask for Support: You don’t have to carry grief alone. Lean on those who care for you and let them help lighten your burden.
    • Grief and Growth Can Coexist: Mourning someone is also an opportunity to reflect on what that relationship taught you and how it shaped you.
    • Healing Takes Time: There’s no timeline for healing. Be patient and gentle with yourself as you navigate the journey.

    Grief isn’t something we “get over.” It’s something we carry with us, but over time, it becomes lighter. We make space for it, and in doing so, we make space for love, connection, and joy again.

    If you’ve experienced grief, know that you’re not alone. Share your story in the comments below or reach out to someone who can support you. Sometimes, simply being heard can be the first step toward healing.

  • How to Forgive That Earlier Version of You

    How to Forgive That Earlier Version of You

    “Forgiveness is an action, which your mind can never understand. Your mind’s sole intent is to balance the books. In issues of morality, it only wants to get even. Therefore, practice forgiveness every day if only in trivial matters. This is an excellent way of tempering the mind and empowering the heart.” ~Glenda Green

    Recently, seemingly out of nowhere, I had thoughts about a relationship that ended many years ago. I started to remember some things I had said, emotions I had felt, and things I had done. I cringed.

    What could suddenly make me think of those things now? I pondered it for a few minutes, then put it out of my mind. But when I had those same thoughts a few weeks later, I decided to take a deeper look.

    That deeper look took me back even further to another relationship now decades gone by. And I cringed some more. This time not just because of things I had said or done. This time I winced at the painful experiences I’d endured and the hurtful words others had said.

    Why this unexpected trip down memory lane?

    After much reflection, I concluded that those memories were surfacing now because I was still holding onto that energy somewhere in my body and energetic field. They were coming up now because they were ready to be released.

    For that, forgiveness for myself was required.

    I cringed at those memories because the person I am now, in this present moment, would not have said or done those things. Forgiveness was possible when I realized that the person I was then could not have done any differently.

    Here’s why: Our thoughts and actions are a function not only of our level of awareness but also the sum total of every assumption, belief, and experience we have had up until that moment. That past version of me was at a different level of awareness—one shaped by years of unprocessed abuse, anger, and trauma.

    The years of personal inner work I have done since that time, and the greater awareness that resulted, brought me to this current moment of forgiveness as the next step in my own evolution.

    It’s easy to beat ourselves up when we realize we haven’t completely let something go. I am certainly guilty of this. Many of us have done years of inner work, only to discover that a single issue could have multiple layers yet to clear.

    If we still have an emotional charge around an event or person from our past, we can start by forgiving the fact that we are still emotionally triggered by it.

    We can forgive ourselves for the role we played in that unhealthy dynamic. Then we can forgive that partner for the hurtful and destructive thoughts, words, and actions that occurred.

    Forgiveness does not mean condoning the actions of another. It also doesn’t mean forgetting what happened or putting a superficial coat of positivity on that person or situation.

    Instead, forgiveness is about accepting whatever happened and reclaiming peace for ourselves.

    Forgiveness is a gift we give to ourselves. We can forgive ourselves for not knowing better at the time. We can forgive ourselves for having carried the mental and emotional burden for so long.

    Those things, however unpleasant, happened for a reason. We gained valuable wisdom by having had those experiences. They shaped us as the people we are now.

    So, how do we forgive?

    Simply telling ourselves, “I forgive you” as a thought is often not enough. We need to believe that we deserve forgiveness and then feel that forgiveness, anchoring it in our body. The more senses we involve in this process, the better.

    Here’s a six-step process to release the stuck energy around forgiveness. For best results, go to a peaceful place in nature where you can take a walk.

    Step #1: Visualize the person or event as an energy you’ve been holding in the pit of your stomach. It is a hard, dense energy.

    Step #2: Begin your leisurely walk. As you walk, tune into this dense energy in your gut that represents that person or event that is calling for forgiveness. Feel it.

    Step #3: Now visualize the peaceful, vibrant, and loving energy coming from the natural world all around you—the sun, the wind, the trees, plants, and flowers. Breathe that energy into your body and feel it fill your lungs and nourish every cell. With a few more deep breaths, imagine that the healing energy from nature has filled your heart space as well.

    Step #4: Next, direct that loving, peaceful energy from your heart down into your belly. You can place a hand on your stomach to assist with this process. Visualize the loving energy from your heart and hand softening and breaking up those hard energies housed in your belly.

    Step #5: After a few minutes, as you continue walking, imagine that each step you take loosens the dense energy even more, allowing it to slowly move down from your belly and into your legs with each step. Continue walking until you sense that those particles of dense energy are completely out of your belly and are now at the bottom of your feet, ready to be released.

    Step #6: Find a place in nature to stop and remove your shoes. Place your bare feet on grass, soil, or sand. With your feet on the earth, visualize sending that energy from the bottom of your feet down into the earth, where it is instantly neutralized and composted. Give gratitude to the earth and to your body for assisting in this forgiveness and release process.

    This forgiveness practice is equally powerful—and important—when it is directed at yourself. Rather than bringing to mind a specific event or person from your past, you can visualize the person you once were, starting with ten years ago.

    Recall how you lived your life back then, including how you thought about yourself, about the people around you, and about the world at large. Notice what has changed from who you were then to who you are now.

    Forgive that earlier version of you. You did the best you could given your circumstances and level of awareness at the time.

    Visualize the energy of that former you moving down your body and out the bottom of your feet. Let nature take it for composting.

    Now breathe in more peaceful, healing energy from nature. Let it fill your lungs, your heart, and your belly.

    To conclude the practice, look around you with fresh eyes. Take in your surroundings as if for the first time. Feel appreciation for the stronger, wiser person you are now.

  • Healing Childhood Wounds: A Journey to Love and Connection

    Healing Childhood Wounds: A Journey to Love and Connection

    The drive on I-95 from the New England coast back home to Washington, D.C., was harrowing— construction zones, accidents, and rush-hour traffic. I was glad my husband was at the wheel.

    After spending the weekend visiting our daughter at college in Connecticut, I was ready to check out, so I scrolled through social media on my phone to mindlessly pass the time. But when I paused on a post from my favorite self-help influencer, Cory Muscara, I got something very different from the relaxation I’d been craving.

    I started following Cory several months before, after a friend had sent me a post of his about navigating significant life transitions. After my daughters left for college, I faced an empty nest and was about to turn fifty. To help with the changes, I immersed myself in all the self-improvement content I could find.

    Cory’s striking blue eyes and calm, steady voice captivated me. He was a former monk, inspirational speaker, and teacher of all things zen. In the post that caught my attention in the car, he filmed himself walking through a forest, a green hoodie pulled over his head. Since my husband was busy with work calls, the sound was muted, and I focused on the captions.

    One word caught my attention: fireball. I continued to read, engrossed with the step-by step instructions to overcome stored pain, break free from destructive patterns, and achieve freedom and inner peace.

    I’m great at following directions, but the concepts of letting go or surrendering frustrate me. I’d love to, but how? I hoped that Cory was about to deliver the answers.

    I was told to connect with my heart. I closed my eyes, took a deep breath, and felt the space my heart occupied in my chest. Next, I was to identify a barrier or obstacle I had been struggling with, something preventing me from achieving what I truly desire: love and connection.

    When I discovered the barrier, I should then imagine my heart flowing toward it, softening it, and then, as the barrier began to soften, I was to observe it unravel. At the very bottom of this would be a fireball.

    In Cory’s vernacular, it was the core wound. Google defines this as a deep emotional wound that can be traced back to a significant event in childhood. It can be caused by suppressed pain or emotions and can lead to a belief system about the self. Core wounds can be a result of unmet needs and can include messages like “I am not enough” or “I am unworthy of love.”

    Cory warned me not to get distracted by the fireball and to move toward the pain, look at it, and acknowledge it. I felt emotional pain as a memory took hold and began to replay over and over in my mind. And he was right: it was a fireball.

    I was around fourteen, and it was the end of a school day. I remember walking with my friends, heading to the bus stop. And then, I saw my mom in the carpool line. She had never picked me up from high school; she was driving her new red sports car.

    Growing up as an only child and a latchkey kid on the outskirts of a small town in Northern Arizona, my afternoons were often spent alone at home. My parents were involved in their careers and were active members of the community, often not returning home until late in the evening. My neighbors were mostly retirees, and the distance from town made it difficult to hang out with friends.

    I often wondered why my parents didn’t want to spend time with me. Was I unlovable?

    With all the pain and insecurity I felt every day, the sight of my mom waiting for me in the carpool line filled me with joy. Seeing her there, in her new car, I felt something I rarely felt: special.

    My heart surged. I couldn’t believe she had surprised me. I stopped in my tracks, not believing she was actually there. I told my friends I had to go and then ran as fast as I could to the car. I was out of breath when I climbed into the passenger seat.

    “Thank you for picking me up!” I said.

    My mom turned to me. “Oh, I’m not here for you, Jennifer. I’m picking up a client.”

    Before I could respond, she added, “I’ll see you at home.”

    Mom was a therapist, and the client was a student.

    I remember how I swallowed back tears and feelings of rejection.

    I walked to the bus stop. It felt like the longest ride of my life, and the walk home even longer.  Angry with myself for getting my hopes up, all I wanted to do was crawl into bed and pull the covers over my head.

    When Mom returned from work that evening, there was no mention of the incident.

    And now, thirty-five years later, I sat in the car and cried as I recalled this painful moment. I had found a fireball, and I was told to stay with it, but then what? Did I have to be stuck with the pain of this core wound, unsure of what to do next?

    This is when I realized that the girl on the bus so many years ago needed an adult to soothe her. I closed my eyes, imagined seating my fifty-year-old self next to her, and held her hand. I asked her to tell me what was wrong, and I listened with compassion. I sat with her until the pain subsided. Until our pain subsided.

    When I opened my eyes, I realized that an hour had passed since I had started watching Cory’s post. I was surprised my husband hadn’t noticed the tears that I had been too distracted to wipe away.

    I felt a mix of disappointment and relief. I felt sad that he wasn’t aware of my tears sitting so close to me, but the experience felt so personal that I didn’t want the burden of explaining it to him at that moment.

    Following Cory’s instructions had proven more effective than my past two years of therapy. In this short time, I had not only taken care of myself but had also become aware of the needs of that fourteen-year-old girl. I knew exactly what she needed to hear.

    It was up to me to heal her wounds.

    The girl on the bus couldn’t understand why a mom would dismiss her daughter so easily, but I was able to explain. I could see from what my mom had expressed to me about her childhood, growing up with an alcoholic mother and a traveling father, that she was so traumatized that she felt compelled to fiercely protect her heart.

    She didn’t allow herself to be curious about my emotional needs because she was conditioned to protect herself. My mother wasn’t capable of empathizing with me, not because she didn’t love me, but because of her own deep-seated wounds.

    I’ve tried to discuss this incident and others from my past with my mom, but every time a painful childhood memory resurfaced, she would inevitably ask, “Did I do anything right?” It’s clear that these conversations are not ones she is open to having with me.

    It took me a few days to tell my husband what had taken place during that ride. I told him about the wound and how it no longer felt painful, but I was still feeling raw, and I was worried that I wasn’t accurately explaining. However, as I described Cory’s steps and how I processed the memory until the fireball was extinguished, I became animated and excited to share this new tool.

    He was taken aback and said, “I can’t believe you had that experience in the car!”

    Then, I asked him if he had noticed my tears while sitting next to him. He responded, “No, I was focused on the road.”

    The truth is, much like my mom, my husband isn’t as attuned to my emotions as I would like. However, healing this childhood wound has empowered me in my relationships with him and others. I now have the confidence to express my emotions, and if I don’t feel heard, I make sure to speak up.

    Throughout this journey, I have come to understand that the solutions reside within us. We possess the ability to nurture the younger parts of ourselves and acknowledge our inherent worthiness of love. Perhaps, like me, you will experience healing by spending time with your younger self and addressing their pain.

  • 4 Lessons I Learned from Leaving a Toxic Relationship

    4 Lessons I Learned from Leaving a Toxic Relationship

    “It takes strength and self-love to say goodbye to what no longer serves you.” ~Rumi

    I promised myself at a young age that when I got married, I was not going to get divorced, no matter what! My parents had divorced when I was five, and I knew that I didn’t want to put my kids through what I’d experienced as a child who grew up in a “broken” family. I wanted my kids to know what it was like to live in a house with both their parents present and involved in their lives.

    So, when I found myself seven years into my marriage, sitting in a therapist’s office wondering if my husband and I were going to make it, I had no idea what I would be facing if I had to navigate life, let alone parenthood, without my husband. How does one break free from emotional and verbal abuse without it permanently affecting who they are as a person?!

    All I could think about at the time was my three beautiful girls, who deserved to have happy parents in a happy home living a happy life!

    From the outside, our lives looked that way, but our reality was nothing of the sort. The yelling, the name-calling, the threatening, the withholding, and the verbal and emotional abuse were taking their toll on all of us until one day, after five years of trying to make it work, I had had enough.

    The night I will never forget, almost twelve years into my marriage, we were all sitting at the dinner table, and like every time before, with no warning, a switch flipped, and the yelling began. But this time, I packed up my things and I left. And this would be the last time I would leave; after the three attempts prior, I was lured back with promises that everything would be okay and we would make it work, but this time was different. I didn’t go back.

    Okay, I was out; now what?! Little did I know that leaving would be the easy part. Some of the most trying and challenging times of my life happened after I was able to finally break free. But I didn’t know that learning how to love myself again and believe that I was worthy of good things was going to be the real challenge, especially after what I’d faced.

    The storms that happened once my marriage was over would shake me to my core. One particular time was when my middle daughter, only thirteen at the time, was able to find her way down to Tennessee from central Wisconsin without anyone knowing where she was or if we’d be able to find her.

    My daughter despised me for breaking up her family and wanted to get as far away from me as she possibly could, even if it meant entrusting strangers to drive her in a car for fifteen hours while they made their way to Tennessee. Waking up the next morning after she vanished and reading the “goodbye” note she’d left on her bed, I honestly did not know if I would ever see her again.

    To say I was in panic mode would be an understatement for how I felt during the next twenty-four-plus hours while we—my parents, my friends, my siblings, the police, and even strangers—attempted to find my daughter. I can think of no worse feeling in the world than that of a mother who is on the verge of or has just lost her son or daughter. I wondered, “How can this be happening? Haven’t we already been through enough?”

    Exactly twenty-six hours after my daughter had found her way into that stranger’s vehicle, I received a phone call from a deputy in a county in Tennessee saying they had found her. Thank you, Lord, was all I could think—someone is watching over us!

    I realized then it was time to figure out how to love myself again and heal from my divorce so I could be more present for my daughters.

    Are there things I would have done differently? Absolutely! But you can’t go back and change the past; the only thing you can do is learn from it and do your best not to make the same mistakes going forward.

    The best thing I did for myself was sign up for a subscription that gave me access to hundreds of workout programs I could do from home (since I was the sole provider of my daughters at the time). As I completed the programs, I saw improvements in not only my body but also my frame of mind, which pushed me to want to be better and do better with each one after that—not just for me but for my girls also!

    Being able to push through tough workouts and seeing that I could do hard things that produced positive results helped build my confidence at a time when I needed it most! This newfound confidence boost encouraged me to keep pushing forward, even in the eye of the multitude of storms I was facing, which allowed me to start to heal.

    The workouts were just the beginning for me. Ultimately, they led me on a path that would help me discover how to love myself again.

    When I left my now ex-husband, I had no idea what I would be faced with until I was finally able to break free for good. But now that I have been out and have been able to transform my mind and love my life again, I realize just how incredibly powerful some of these lessons that I’ve learned truly are.

    1. Forgiving is the first step to healing. 

    A lot of people believe that forgiveness means you are condoning someone’s behavior, but that is not at all what you are doing when you forgive. Forgiveness is intentionally letting go of negative feelings, like resentment or anger, toward someone who has done you wrong.

    Choosing to forgive when you’re ready means that you are making a conscious and deliberate choice to release the feeling of resentment and/or vengeance toward the person who has harmed you, regardless of whether or not you believe that person deserves your forgiveness.

    You forgive to allow yourself to move on from the event, which also allows you to fully heal from it.

    2. Mindset matters.

    Your thoughts shape your reality, so if you think you don’t deserve good things, you won’t be able to attract them into your life.

    When in a toxic environment, negativity has a way of clouding your judgment, which makes breaking free more difficult. But once you leave and start focusing on a growth mindset and optimism, everything changes. When you focus on the good, the good gets better. This is the foundation of how I rebuilt my life after breaking free from the toxicity of my marriage.

    3. It’s crucial to listen to your gut.

    Ignoring your intuition leads to situations you regret more times than not. Learning to trust my inner voice, the one that whispers to me when something isn’t right, has been my greatest guide to making better choices.

    4. Positive change starts with self-love.

    Self-love is not just a buzzword. It’s the armor you wear against people who try to break you down. It’s telling yourself that you deserve better, even if you don’t fully believe it yet, and taking action to create better, even if it’s just one tiny step.

    For me, self-love started when I left my abusive ex-husband and then grew when I started taking care of my body. Sometimes even the smallest act of self-care can help us feel more confident in our worth.

    If you’ve been in an abusive relationship too, remember—you can rebuild and thrive in a life you love!

  • Divorce: A Portal to Reclaiming My Authentic Self

    Divorce: A Portal to Reclaiming My Authentic Self

    “The only journey is the one within.” ~Rainer Maria Rilke

    Navigating life after divorce has been the hardest thing I’ve ever done, but divorce also contained the best gifts I have ever received. My whole world was shaken up and rearranged. The shake-up included a loss of career and becoming a mostly solo parent on top of the divorce.

    From the rubble of my old life, I got the chance to build something new, authentic, and fresh. Divorce was a painful portal to powerfully reclaiming myself and my life. Through the rebuilding process, I found strength and clarity in ways I never expected.

    Before my divorce, I felt anxious all the time, trapped in a constant cycle of wondering if I could be happier and if the problem was me, him, or us. I stayed in an agonizing limbo of “not bad enough to leave, not good enough to stay” for about five years.

    My husband at the time would ask, “Why can’t you just be happy with what you have?” The question hit me like a punch to the gut. Why couldn’t I? I was constantly questioning myself and my worth.

    Looking back on it now, I see that was the wrong question. My husband at the time was largely deflecting from the issues I was bringing to him and making it about me being perpetually unhappy as some kind of default. But it was true that I had inner work to do, and it was up to me to figure out what would make me happy.

    I tried everything to fix myself and the marriage—therapy, couples counseling, countless self-help books, and coaching. But the sense of loneliness persisted, especially around parenting, community, and spirituality.

    The key challenges that made my marriage deeply unsatisfying for me were money, sex, emotional connection, and identity. For the first three we didn’t share the same values and there was constant friction. Underneath all of that misalignment in the relationship, though, was the fact that my identity had been swallowed up.

    First in our company, which was his dream, but I worked tirelessly in it, and then in my role as a mom. But who was I, just for myself? That was the better question.

    Eventually, what gave me the strength to leave the marriage was simply giving myself permission to want what I wanted based on knowing who I truly was and believing that whatever was best for me was also best for everyone in my life. I believe all the models of self-help and self-care that I tried contributed to this realization.

    I had to believe that I could stand on my own, which was terrifying. But as I started taking small steps, each step, even the hardest ones, gave me the energy to keep going. I began to rebuild something real, authentic, and new.

    Of course, it’s impossible to distill the five-year-plus journey into easy steps or “hot” tips. But I want to attempt to narrow it down to the six key insights that got me through, in the hopes it can inspire others too.

    These are the six steps I took to use divorce as a portal to reclaim my authentic self.

    1. I gave myself permission to want what I wanted.

    For so long, I didn’t even know what I wanted. It was buried under years of trying to make everything work and thinking about what others wanted. It felt scary and uncomfortable to give myself permission to truly explore my desires, but once I did everything began to shift.

    I admitted to myself that I was ambitious in my own right, that I wanted my own business, and I wasn’t satisfied playing the key supporting role in the family business. I uncovered the secret longing I had for an exciting and equal romantic partnership where I felt seen and valued for the insights, fun, and hard work I bring to my relationships.

    Letting myself know what I wanted, taking those swirling locked-up longings from deep inside and forming them into solid words to be spoken out loud—that was the first step toward reclaiming my identity.

    2. I identified my core values.

    I took time to reflect on what truly mattered to me. Somewhere along the way I had merged values with my husband and his family. I needed to re-evaluate which ones were truly mine. This meant questioning everything from how I approached money to what emotional connection meant to me.

    My core personal values of wholeheartedness and adventurousness weren’t engrained in my career nor were they present in my day to day.  While there was nothing inherently dishonest about my life with my husband, our family wasn’t living in the deepest integrity that I longed for.

    When I was able to let go of the values that no longer represented me, there was room to discover my true values, which I had suppressed.

    3. I worked through old beliefs that were keeping me stuck.

    The old narratives that had kept me stuck in my marriage for so long didn’t go away overnight. It took time to unpack them and let go of the guilt, fear, and limiting beliefs that were holding me back.

    Particularly sticky was the belief that I was responsible for everyone’s feelings and coping abilities, even grown adults older than myself. Even after we separated, I felt responsible for how my ex was coping and the things he was choosing to do. But once I started working through these mental roadblocks, many of them newly emerging from my subconscious, I felt a sense of freedom I hadn’t experienced in years.

    4. I allowed myself dream big—even when it felt impossible.

    At the height of my separation, I was overwhelmed by tough decisions—parenting, finances, and the legal process. It felt ridiculous to even think about my dreams, but doing so gave me momentum. Dreaming big gave me a vision for a brighter future, one where I could live authentically. So my message for you is to allow yourself to dream, even when life feels heavy.

    5. I set boundaries—both internal and external.

    Learning to set boundaries, especially internal ones, helped me protect my energy and focus on rebuilding my life. Whether it was saying “no” to things that drained me or distancing myself from unhealthy dynamics, boundaries were crucial for me to maintain the new connection I had made with my authentic self. The new connection was tender and needed protection.

    6. I took small, empowering actions.

    Dreaming big was the most important step, but taking small actions was the only way to really feel like things were possible and manageable. Every little action created a ripple effect, surprising me with how much I could accomplish when I started small.

    For example, I wanted to become financially free, a multi-layered goal that would take years, so I started with a one-year goal to read six financial literacy books and make a budget. I committed to the small action of reading for five minutes a day and simply recording current expenses on a spreadsheet. I logged my progress in a daily habit tracker.

    For my big dream of finding an equal partner, I knew that I would need to be grounded and confident, so I committed to meditating ten minutes a day. There were other bigger leaps that had to be taken along the way of course, but those small daily habits really changed me. Now I read and meditate easily for hours a day, and I relish the time, but I remember when I first started how hard it felt to do even five minutes.

    —

    It took me years, close to a decade, to reflect on and finally see the steps I took to get to where I am today. I hope it doesn’t take that long for anyone reading this who is navigating divorce. Please use these and apply them to your own situation. I hope they serve as a reminder that even though the journey is hard, there’s immense strength, growth, and rebirth waiting on the other side. Go get it!

  • How to Ease Anxiety and PTSD: 3 Somatic Exercises to Try

    How to Ease Anxiety and PTSD: 3 Somatic Exercises to Try

    “The body knows how to heal. It just needs the proper conditions.” ~Peter Levine

    After ten major reconstructive hip surgeries and almost six cumulative years in a full body cast, I emerged from childhood into my teenage years. My start in life was quite different from those around me. My body would never be like everyone else’s, and I was living in the aftermath of trauma.

    I not only had a slew of trauma symptoms but was also deeply wrestling with my identity and had massive amounts of shame, depression, and social anxiety. As you can imagine, I had a hard time fitting in and connecting with others. Feeling comfortable in my own skin was something I never knew.

    The discomfort I felt was unbearable, and I knew the only way to feel better in life was to try to figure out how to heal and get to the other side. I held on strongly to the belief that healing was possible, so naturally I started with talk therapy.

    Therapy is great, don’t get me wrong, but it wasn’t providing the relief I was searching for. I quickly realized that talking about my experiences helped to broaden and balance my perspective on things, but it wasn’t changing how I felt in my day-to-day life. So I went on a journey exploring and studying many forms of healing. I delved into energy healing, breathwork, art therapy, tantra, and Yamuna body rolling and finally found somatic experiencing.

    With much trial and error, I found my way. Some things worked and others didn’t. I learned that there isn’t a ‘one size fits all’ when it comes to healing.

    Anxiety and PTSD symptoms are never fun, and they show up in very specific and different ways for each person. I’ve learned that anxiety is energy that is deeply held in the body, and the way most people try and manage it is to brace their body to try and stop it from happening. This pushes it deeper into the body.

    It’s important to slowly allow this energy to move. To do so, we need to soften the body and open the energy channels.

    I have found these three somatic tools to be quite effective. Maybe they will be for you as well.

    Before starting each exercise, I highly recommend you ask yourself, “On a scale of one to ten, how anxious am I?” Give yourself a number, and then at the end of the exercise see if the number has decreased.

    1. Slowly articulating the joint

    Starting with one foot, slowly move your foot in a circle ten times in one direction. Really focus your mind on the feeling of the ankle joint moving. Then switch directions.

    Do this for the other foot and ankle.

    If you are lying down on your back, you can do this again for the knee as you hold your thigh, slowly moving your lower leg in a circle ten times before switching directions. Then repeat on the other leg.

    If you are standing, you can place your hands on your knees and together slowly move your knees in circles.

    Again, remember to give your mind the job of focusing on the knee joints and feeling them move. This helps give the mind something to do while the body can move the energy that has been trapped inside of it.

    If standing, you will do this again, making hip circles ten times in both directions.

    After this, pause and notice how the lower body feels in comparison to the upper body. It’s crazy the difference you will feel.

    Next, you will do this with your wrists, making circles with your hands. You can do this one at a time or both hands—whatever you prefer.

    Then your elbows.

    And then your shoulders, continuing to do ten circles in one direction and then ten in the other.

    Lastly, you will do head circles in both directions.

    2. Deep breathing with a voo exhale

    A voo exhale? What is that?

    That is exactly what I would be asking.

    Deep breathing is sometimes helpful, and sometimes it isn’t. But if you try making a voo sound for the entirety of the exhale, it can smooth the chest and abdomen, where most of the anxiety is felt.

    So, for this exercise, you will place one hand over your heart and one hand over your belly and take a deep breath. On the exhale you will make a voo sound, all the way to the end of the exhale, similar to saying om in a yoga class. As you do this, think about making the voo sound from your abdomen, not from your throat.

    This is an indigenous practice that actually has scientific effects in calming the vagus nerve and the sympathetic nervous system. It moves people into their parasympathetic nervous system, which is the rest and digest part of your nervous system. Making different sounds has different effects on the nervous system, and for anxiety and PTSD, the voo sound is the most effective.

    Go ahead and try this for five cycles and see how this is for you. It can be really calming.

    3. Visual resourcing

    Resourcing is anything that is calming, supportive, or comforting for a person, and it can be done through many avenues. This includes things like talking to a caring, supportive friend, taking a hot bath, or using a weighted blanket.

    Visual resourcing is focusing on something visually pleasant. For some people this can be a sparkly or shiny object, and for others it can be watching the leaves gently blow in the breeze.

    Note that for some people, if they look off in the distance, it has an even greater calming effect, and that others might prefer looking at objects that are closer to them.

    Go ahead and look around you and find the most pleasant and pleasing thing to look at. Then hold  your gaze here and notice the effects this has for you.

    This somatic tool can easily be combined with the prior tool listed above.

    In Conclusion

    When we experience trauma and are wrestling in the aftermath of symptoms, life can feel daunting. Many people feel very discouraged and overwhelmed with where and how to start healing. But try and find the courage to get to the other side. Healing is possible, and it could be one of the most beautiful and sacred journeys you choose to go down.

    Trauma symptoms always have psychological and physiological components that happen simultaneously. So, if some of the mindfulness practices don’t work, see if you can find some relief and stabilization with somatic body-based tools.

    Wishing you so much love and grace on your journey to recovery.

  • The Simple Meditation Technique That Changed My Life

    The Simple Meditation Technique That Changed My Life

    “Stay in the moment. The practice of staying present will heal you. Obsessing about how the future will turn out creates anxiety. Replaying broken scenarios from the past causes anger and sadness. Stay here, in this moment.” ~Sylvester McNutt

    For two years, I studied and practiced meditation. I listened to podcasts, chanted mantras each morning, sat quietly while exploring my default mode network, and traversed Eastern mysticism under the guidance of a licensed clinical psychologist who taught me how to use deep diaphragmatic breathing to stimulate my vagus nerve and lower my resting heart rate. This helped me recover from panic attacks, which I started having as a result of existential dread.

    After a series of nights with intrusive thoughts about death and dying, and painful memories related to my childhood, I decided to learn how to meditate so my thoughts would bother me less.

    It’s important to examine our feelings and emotions in order to determine what to do with them. While meditating, as you nonjudgmentally observe your thoughts, the goal is to let the thought pass and then go back to the present moment with a mantra. However, after your meditation session is over, it’s also important to catalog for yourself if a thought or memory keeps surfacing, and what feelings or emotions might be present with that experience, so that you know what to work on in your personal development.

    For myself, I found that many of the childhood memories that kept surfacing during meditation were related to my mother. Not surprisingly, much of my early writing as a poet includes themes and ideas related to my mother and other family issues. It was only once I started to really tackle these memories that I realized that they were attached to painful emotions directly linked to my childhood.

    Once I gave myself the space I needed to examine my memories as artifacts from my life—ones to be accepted and not ones that I wanted to give power to—I was able to work through them and come out on the other side.

    In order to do this, I started journaling, speaking about my experiences more with trusted advisors and through my creative work, and keeping up with meditation practices, which I did judiciously for three to four hours every morning.

    One childhood memory that used to bother me a lot before I worked through it was from a time when I was about seven or eight years old. I remembered it vividly, as the memory would keep resurfacing each day.

    A friend of mine and I were sitting on the floor of my bedroom, talking, when my mother came into the room. She commented sternly about how my clothes weren’t put away yet, since she’d told me having my friend over was contingent on that.

    She then, without saying another word, picked up every article of clothing and proceeded to throw each of them at me while I was on the floor. My friend and I were speechless. Afterwards, when my mother left the room, my friend helped me pick them up.

    What I realized by nonjudgmentally accepting my memory is that this experience had become a trauma point for me, one that I carried with me into my adult life until I started dealing with the emotions that were hardwired into my brain related to the event.

    Only once I started meditating and kept seeing this memory resurface again and again—thereby noticing that I even had the memory and emotions in the first place—was I able to deal with the fact that this instance caused me to feel wronged because of how unfair it was. I felt humiliated. I felt ashamed. How could she have done something like this, I wondered?

    However, once I began naming my feelings one by one, I found that the bodily sensations and experiences of the emotions surrounding the memory began to fade. I even found the courage to speak with my mother about my childhood using nonviolent communication strategies as discussed in the book Nonviolent Communication, written by Marshall B. Rosenberg, PhD with a foreword by Deepak Chopra.

    The most rudimentary format of nonviolent communication entails communicating about conflict by saying, “When I hear you say X, I feel Y, because I need Z,” which makes the other person more likely to be able to receive your communication without being reactive or defensive.

    I found great success with this approach, and while my mother and I are not close by any means, this communication approach strengthened our relationship and my relationship with myself. Now, most, if not all, of my painful childhood memories are no longer traumatic for me, including the one about my clothing.

    This memory and the emotions that used to be attached to it are literally nonissues for me now, years later. And yet, the most important form of communication that I found for myself is the communication with the self, all brought on by a healthy meditation regimen.

    So, how does one meditate with the goal of nonjudgmentally observing one’s thoughts, letting them go, and returning to the present moment in order to be successful with processing painful childhood memories and to gain more self-awareness overall?

    The technique that my psychologist taught me is that, at the same time as doing deep diaphragmic breathing to stimulate the vagus nerve and promote inner calmness (eight seconds in, pause, then eight seconds out), it’s good to have an intention in mind that you can chant in your head as inner dialogue.

    He also suggested audiating for stronger results, or putting the mantra to music in your mind, which I found was even more intellectually stimulating and led to greater mental clarity.

    The idea is to try to clear your mind of all thoughts except the mantra, which you have going on repeat. I chose the mantra “Hamsa” for each breath, which means “I am that which I will become,” representing personal development.

    When my thoughts wandered while I was chanting “Hamsa,” as soon as I noticed this happening, I acknowledged the stray thought, gave it permission to exist in a nonjudgmental environment, and then consciously turned my focus again to my mantra while letting the thought go.

    Each time I went back to the original mantra, I was using the mental muscle of intentional focus to do that, which got stronger each time, just as a physical muscle would.

    Eventually, by using this technique of observing thoughts nonjudgmentally, letting them go, and returning to the present moment, you begin to master more control over your thoughts as you increase your self-awareness of those thoughts in the first place.

    Meditating this way gives you more mental and emotional clarity, which improves self-awareness, helps you get in touch with disempowering narratives and emotions, and gives you new pathways forward to reinvigorate experiences that can be dissolved or renewed in ways that work for you.

    In other words, when you give yourself permission to exist within yourself, to notice your own being nonjudgmentally, and to work through painful memories and feelings, even the very act of noticing your own patterns of thinking improves self-awareness in all areas of your life. This can help you move toward better ways of thinking and existing—a critical component for personal development. You can then begin to notice painful or traumatic memories in order to face them head-on, process them, and let them go.

    I found that after I was able to successfully process this childhood memory fully, I was healthier, stronger, and sturdier as an adult. I understood myself better and why I am the way that I am. I became more refined, had better inner clarity, and was able to tackle even worse memories and trauma points after that. I was able to have difficult discussions that I never thought possible with many people, using nonviolent communication techniques, spearheading me into a stable sense of self and personal discovery.

    While meditating and practicing deep breathing, if you notice uncomfortable thoughts and memories, it’s likely that those thoughts represent something from your past that’s worth working on so that you can process your life and let those things go. As you relieve yourself of those burdens, you’ll open yourself up to more pleasant thoughts about better things on the other side of those hills.