I am very fortunate that my mother and stepfather supported me through therapy on and off for years and when the method that I was choosing to figure it out how to heal even more and my next method was not covered by insurance they covered me. This was an on and off and in and out process that spanned about thirty years. It always helped and I continued to feel better, but nothing seemed to take me to the root of my cause. After a divorce, another failed relationship, an ugly bout with drugs and a stressful job I put myself back in therapy – this time EMDR. With a lot of trust building, I was ready to remember the cause of my pain. I did just that. I remember describing my year in retrospect with my therapist as “grotesquely beautiful.” I spent another year sitting in that pain and letting it move through me in the form of massive anxiety and panic attacks that were crippling. My mother sat with me on many of these days while I worked from the corner of my sofa. It was also during this time that I discovered Louise Hay and How to Heal Your Life. This was next level healing for me and the beginning of waking up even though this was unfamiliar to me at the time. Then a friend introduced me to Untethered Soul, by Michael Alan Singer, this made sense to me and I continued to explore the more spiritual and conscious ways of dealing with the trauma of my past. I continued to get better and yet still I knew there was more.

I came across a workshop called Sacred Body Language Translation and I had an immediate YES, which was very out of character for me. I went, again out of character for me. The women who led the workshop talked about consciousness and how our bodies quietly tell us what is going on. I was fascinated and volunteered for a reading. Answering the questions that came from the cues of how my body response to her questions. Repeating the “decrees” she gave me in the moment. A tremendous amount of feeling came in and a return of strength as I continued to repeat – I give myself permission to feel, God in me can love what I feel, Me feel me and the relief that followed was glorious. I remember sharing my experience with my mother the next day and I told her, “I don’t know what this is, but it is important work!” I dove in, hired one of the coaches and several months later attended my first retreat. What I was finding, discovering, and healing in me with the support was nothing shy of miraculous. I have now been playing with the Faith and Wellness community for five years. I knew from the moment that I attended my first workshop that this was my path to healing all of the trauma that I had experienced as child and how that trauma was continuing to show up in my life to support me in walking into my Greater Mission in Life, and My Mission is sharing, coaching and teaching other men and women that we can look at the pain and actually truly give ourselves permission to Forgive every transgression, touch, word not delivered unto us with LOVE.

In my own remembering of my childhood sexual trauma, and my slow down I have discovered that this experience also belonged to my grandmother. She never got to tell her own story and committed suicide at the age of 62. In consciousness we say when we are aware of a thing, we have power over a thing and with this awareness we have the power/ ability to make a different choice about how we see or feel an experience. My awareness was a holy instant when I chose to remember my power comes in being able to speak for me, for my grandmother and the millions of others who have yet to say or yet or even remember their childhood trauma, be it sexual or other. I can speak for them; I can speak to them and share with them that there is a way out of the pain and there is forgiveness on the other side. Forgiveness is for us and the single most gracious gift we can give ourselves is to lay down the blade of shame and hate for not only our perpetrator but even more Glorious is for ourselves.