Yesterday, someone asked me what’s different now, on the other side of everything I’ve been through. The first word that came to mind was peace.
Just…peace.
Not that life doesn’t still offer up hard things, but they don’t shake me like they did for a long time. I feel different in my body now – like I’m finally living in my own skin.
I didn’t realize how much I lived on high-alert – until I didn’t. I’ve lived alone now for the last 6 years (first time in my life!) and I absolutely LOVE it. I wake up on a Tuesday and I do what I want, when I want, how I want, without feeling constantly braced for what might be coming.
That hypervigilance took the longest to let go of. When that original “surprise” shocks your system hard enough, your nervous system doesn’t forget. It locks down and stays ready, just in case.
Mine shook hard enough to land me a cancer diagnosis six months later – no history, no genetic components – 100% trauma. My gut knew what happened immediately…
But here’s the piece that’s most important: I stayed for five more years. 5 years + 2 weeks to be exact. There was a lot of shame rooted in that part. Gratefully, it was ultimately what took me to my deepest healing. (more on that later)
I’m not sharing this for sympathy or shock value. I’m sharing it because I want you to understand what emotional and psychological trauma actually does to a body, to a mind, to a sense of self – and how completely invisible it can be, even to someone who’s pretty damn self-aware. I didn’t know what I was dealing with or what was happening to me, and that altered me in ways that still surprise me.
I was extremely high-functioning, but inside I felt fractured – confused, unworthy, unsafe, constantly on guard, desperate. Me – the one who’s guided others back to themselves for 3 decades was completely lost and disconnected from who I was. It took a long time for me to trust myself again.
But I do now. More than ever. I dug in and did the work, and today I’m not only 100% cancer free, but I’m 100% unapologetically free to be ME!
So why am I telling you this? Because for several years, I resisted focusing this work on emotional abuse and betrayal, because it kept it too close. Too alive. It was still too triggering. But that nudge didn’t go away.
To this day, 9/10 clients I work with use those very words – emotional trauma, betrayal, narcissistic abuse – those and anxiety, feeling stuck, and not feeling like themselves. The trauma is lived experience, but so is the healing – and I needed both to build something others could benefit from as well. Because I get it. I’ve lived it – and I know how to come all the way back from it. That’s what this is all about.
And that’s what I want for you…
Peace. Power restored. A life that’s fully, freely, unapologetically yours.
