My Trauma Healing Journey

When I started my trauma healing journey, I could have never expected or even dreamed about where I would be today.

I lost my son in 2013 and thought my life was over. This is the biggest trauma to me a parent can face. After he passed away, I continued on with life saying all the time that I needed to continue on but at the same time not really believing it at my soul level.

After Devin passed away, it felt like the world was against me, that I had really ticked the universe off as it seemed like bad thing after bad thing kept happening in my life. It was really difficult for a very long time to see anything positive in life after Devin passed.

Then the day came, after being on bed rest for close to two years due to fibromyalgia and chronic pain, I knew it was time to make a decision as my health continued to deteriorate. I had to decide to let my health continue to deteriorate and it would probably be only months before I could go be with Devin or the harder choice of deciding to fight for my life. Obviously, when I weighed everything out, I chose to fight for my life as Devin never got that chance so how dare I even think about taking the easy route.

I HAD TO make the decision to heal. No one could make that decision for me. No one could force me to fight for my life. I had to choose to fight and I had to choose life. Making that decision to choose life and heal is one thing but doing what you need to do to heal is a whole new process that you really don’t understand when starting the process. The fact I didn’t truly see what was possible makes it even more amazing today. I never could have imagined choosing myself that day would get me here today.

For me, the healing journey initially was focused around Devin, I was doing it for Devin or so I thought. In reality, it was around me and me alone the whole time. I started the process gently by learning how to meditate and do daily affirmations. The path was slow as I was in such a bad place physically by that point that I needed to go slow and steady. I recognized that and so I took a gentle approach as that is all I was ready for.

I found myself for the first time in my life drawn to meditation and affirmations. I spent as much time as I needed to learn meditation and how it could benefit me. As my body was in such an unhealthy state, I learned to do meditation the way that worked for me, not necessarily how I was seeing it being done. I recognized, for example that I could not sit with my legs crossed as that was not an option. I could not sit normally either and so I did a combination of sitting and lying down to get started. As I progressed and learned how to meditate, I was able to get myself off the sleeping pills I had been on since I had a minor stroke at 32(so like 17-18 years). For me, learning meditation and how that helped, as well as the ability to get off the sleeping pills was so monumental for me. To be able to crawl in bed and listen to a meditation and fall sound asleep without medication was a huge win.

In this time, I also started researching affirmations and why and how to properly use affirmations in my daily life. Because my health was so bad at that time, I focused most of my affirmations around my health. So, for example, if I had problems with pain in my shoulder, I would look up the emotions around that and then create affirmations to work on that. I went through the affirmations over and over daily. I even started to make up songs that I could sing to myself whether I was sitting alone or going somewhere in a vehicle.

I monitored how I felt on those days when life got in the way and I would not do my meditation or affirmations. I had times were I slipped and would go days without doing them. I could feel how horrible I felt when I did that but until I chose to get back on track, I got to live in that negative place.

As I got more comfortable with that and could see the changes, I decided to take the next step in my healing journey. I spent a lot of time journaling and working through the pain and trauma that I had experienced, not just in losing Devin, but also every trauma that had happened in my life before that time as well as every trauma that had happened in my life after his loss. I would put meditation music on and just sit and see what would come up. When something came up, I would grab my journal and just let the words flow. Let it be whatever it needed to be in that moment.

As I sit and write this, I want to make myself clear. This sounds pretty simple, but it is always a choice. There is always going to be life happening around you, that is why it is easy to slip and fall a number of times. The point is, I had to choose over and over and over not to give up. I had to choose me. I had to choose me over any storms that were brewing in life at that time.

The other key point in my healing journey was reading about healing and that you should never push yourself too hard because emotional overload is a thing and is really easy to do to yourself when you are healing. But me, being the rock star I am, chose to push myself. At times, I definitely went over those limitations. It wasn’t that I couldn’t handle it but feeling way too much too quickly was definitely not fun. I definitely set myself back a bit longer on a few occasions. I did realize that these books I was reading, the training I was taking and others that I was talking too had experienced the same thing so maybe I should have listened. At the same time, the more I healed, the more addictive the healing became and I wanted to feel even better than I was already feeling. Especially after feeling peace for the first time. Oh my, what an amazing feeling. That is when I became totally hooked on changing my story, changing my life.

After working on gentle approaches to healing, I then started learning different trauma and limiting belief processes that would allow me to heal at another level as well as the ability to help others. I just continued to tackle one thing at a time and as some of the initial traumas would resurface, I would embrace the process and push forward. I would allow those traumas to be healed at a different level each time they came up. That was mainly because I was building that internal trust and was able to go deeper each time.

Along the way, I found a whole new level of love and trust in myself. As this love and trust built and grew, it allowed me to have even more trust in myself thus pushing myself further and further in my healing. Each week, I would look back and see how far I had come. I seen how committed I needed to be to get to where I wanted to be.

Then I found a new healing modality for trauma that was what I would call next level. I went back to the drawing board and really healed a lot of those traumas again but again at a different level. There is no way that you can go from where I was when I started to deep trauma healing. I needed to be ready for it. I needed to love and trust myself enough that I would allow myself to go to those closed doors and open them wide open and just embrace the healing. There were major tears shed along the way but each time after completing a healing, within a day or two I could see and feel the next shift forward.

It was not just about healing from Devin’s passing anymore,

• it was about healing from the abuse I suffered from multiple people as a child

• it was about healing from emotional abuse

• it was about healing from losing my little sister at the age of 13

• it was about healing the self-hatred within

• it was about healing the co-dependency I had

• it was about healing the fact that I had given my power over to everyone and everything in my life

• it was about healing the relationship I had with my inner child

• it was about healing the relationship I had with myself at all ages

• it was about healing from never feeling like I was part of my own family

• it was about healing from the thought process of never letting anyone into my bubble

• it was about taking the walls down that had been put up to protect myself from the trauma and pain I had faced in my life

• it was about healing from the trauma of my job

• it was about healing from the trauma of things that happened after Devin’s passing

• it was about healing from the trauma of my dad passing away

• it was about healing everything

• and most of all, it was about healing from my largest trauma in life, losing my beautiful, amazing son DEVIN

There were definitely times when I felt more vulnerable than I could have ever imagined, especially when I finally let my walls down. WOW, that felt scary for a week or two as I truly had nothing around me protecting me from the world and I could feel it. But I did it because I trusted myself and knew that it was what I wanted for me. Not for anyone else, just me.

Then this year as I approached the month that is always the hardest for me, the month of Devin’s birthday, anniversary and the anniversary of his passing, I chose to go into it with total love and trust in myself and no emotional safety barriers in place. Well, the universe took that and ran with it. The day before Devin’s birthday, I got the call that I knew would come one day. One of the MOST significant people in my life, my amazing, strong, beautiful, independent grandma was put into the hospital and was not doing well.

The day before Devin’s birthday is always so extremely emotional for me already, but this just added fuel to the fire. I got the call, had my little meltdown of tears and sadness and decided that I needed to stay on course for me and continue to embrace and feel what I needed to, not only for Devin but for grandma as well. I chose to not step backward into the self pity and sadness or putting that wall up again but step forward and trust this person I had worked so hard to become.

Grandma ended up passing away on Devin’s wedding anniversary and getting that text that morning was somewhat surreal to me. I never even considered taking a step back in my healing journey, though I did struggle when people would make comments like “well, she had a good life” or “well, she was 98”. I started to hand my power over to them and those comments, but I recognized it and stopped it. I needed to listen to my own inner self and know that I was allowed to grieve her, 98 or not. She was such an important person in my life and just because she was 98 did not justify that I was wrong to grieve her.

I attended her funeral and honored her by standing in my power and crying when I needed to but also providing my mom with support as she said good by to her mom. I came out of that day seeing the strength that I have within and no longer questioning it.

That is when I decided it was time to take that next step in my healing journey. It was time to shed the remnants that I was holding onto regarding my old self and truly birth the new me. As usual, I took this to a whole new level literally and jumped out of a plane at 13,000 feet.

There was no anxiety or fear leading up to or even at the time of the jump. It was about having total trust in this new version of self and knowing that the old self that I was holding onto for so long was no longer needed. She did not need to protect the traumatized scared person I was inside because that is no longer who I am.

As I jumped out of that plane and was free falling towards the ground at over 200km/hour, I allowed that old version of me to be completely shed away and fully embraced the new me. I have so much self love and trust within now that I no longer need to protect myself from life but embrace life to the fullest and just allow myself to fully live again.

As I walked away from the airfield that day, I allowed myself to reflect on where I was when I started this journey and where I am now. I know that no matter what life throws at me that I can handle it and work through it. I know that I can never be that person I was before and that is ok because this new version of me is pretty fantastic and for now, I am just embracing her and loving her.

If you are inspired to find your true authentic self and heal from your trauma, email me at [email protected] or reach out on Facebook as I would love to help guide you on your journey.