Making Space Within

I can’t remember when I first heard the expression “that which does not kill us, makes us stronger” but I know that it resonated with me…and it still does. I’ll never know exactly what Nietzsche went through to gain the clarity to write that but I trust on a visceral level that living through the traumas I experienced at a very young age helped to make me a stronger, wiser and more resilient person. That, however, is not the whole story.

Nothing about all the wisdom and resilience I gained from my traumatic experiences or how wonderful my life is now makes what happened to me when I was younger okay.
It wasn't okay.

I needed to honor all of the parts of me that went through those traumas and not expect them to appreciate the experiences in the way that I do from my present viewpoint. Trauma freezes us in time and place and so we may be operating from the perspective of a much younger self who dissociated (checked out, left their body) in order to survive. It was essential for me to accept the value of all of the choices I made, consciously and unconsciously, to preserve my life and my sanity.

I now have enough space within me to hold the truth of both points of view. Everything I have lived through in my nearly 60 years as a human has contributed to the happy and compassionate person that I am today. AND much of what I lived through was brutal, morally wrong and not OK in any way. And I do not believe that I am inconsistent in being grateful for all that I learned while also wishing that I hadn’t had to learn it that way.

On my journey to make peace with my history of physical and sexual abuse within my body and my spirit, I have worked with CranioSacral Therapy, Visceral Manipulation, Brain Technique, Acupuncture and other therapies and embraced an ongoing practice of Yoga and Meditation. All of these efforts have helped me to make space within me to hold emotions, thoughts and perspectives that may otherwise conflict with each other. I have developed a deep level of comfort in sitting with every kind of feeling and thus become a calmer and far less reactive person.

I have freed my Nervous System from the need to protect me from anything which I have already survived. When I say “It’s over and I’m safe”, it reaches into every conscious part of me while also showing me which parts may still need to hear that message. I can embrace the full scope of my history without holding onto the effort of living through it. And I can notice when I am holding old patterns of compensation and allow my body to tell its story and let go. I have learned how to listen to traumatized parts that have been frozen inside of me for years and how to integrate their wisdom and vitality into my present experience.

This process of feeling my way through my history is sometimes painful and often messy but each time rewards me with greater comfort and freedom in my physical body and spirit. Each time I open myself up to it, I gain more tools while also decreasing the level of my reservoir of old patterns of behavior and reactivity. I can now understand the connections between my emotions and the sensations in my body and how I interact with the world. And I’ve been able to untangle that from how I interacted in the past. This has freed me to trust myself to be a good mother to my sons, a successful therapist and teacher and a happy, contented person.

For over 30 years, I’ve used those same therapies to help clients bring awareness to and release layers of compensation and protection that they are still holding within their brains, bodies and energy fields. Twelve years ago, I developed a curriculum called Whole Body Decision Making to teach people tools and attitudes to do this work themselves.

In 2023, I expanded the curriculum to introduce Cultivating Unshakeable Therapeutic Presence, a series of classes offering Manual therapists, Social Workers and Psychotherapists the opportunity to elevate their practices to be safer, more efficient and more sustainable. I was born in the year of the Wood Dragon on the Chinese calendar. As we enter this year of the Wood Dragon, I am looking forward to embracing the challenges of offering my teaching to a wider audience. And I look forward to breathing fire into the conversation about working with trauma.