About

When people would ask me how I survived the trauma of my childhood, I was always baffled.

I didn't have an answer for them because, in truth, I was existing, not living. I hadn't overcome my trauma; I was just living with the invisible scars. I wanted to have this great story of courage and triumph, but instead, it was a story of sadness, emptiness, loneliness, disconnection, anxiety, and despair.

I realized how deeply depressed I was when I went away to college. My freshman year could have been my last year on earth because thoughts of harming myself were a constant. I wasn't good at making friends, my grades suffered, and I was discovering that I was attracted to the same sex.

Time passed, and I transitioned into adulthood. I completed college, traveled, got a Master's degree, got hired at a prestigious company where I worked for over 14 years, bought a home, then another, and had a social life. From all outward appearances, I was a successful, confident young woman.

But on the inside, I was a mess. I struggled with my sexuality and relationships. I had panic attacks and didn't know how to connect with my emotions, much less handle them. I didn't know who I was or what I wanted out of life.

The effects of my sexual, physical, and emotional abuse resulted in approval seeking and people pleasing. This played out in two ways: I was a love and sex addict, but at the same time, I was afraid of intimacy from the fear of being engulfed and losing my autonomy. In addition, I desperately wanted to belong, be accepted, and be acknowledged as intelligent, put together, and successful, so I molded myself into someone I thought other people would love, approve of, and, more importantly, not abandon.

Through education and practice and with loving and encouraging support, I began to understand how the wounds from my past affected my everyday life. I learned that my emotions created my thoughts, my thoughts created my actions, and my actions created my results. Those results recreated the same emotions of pain, stress, grief, depression, hopelessness, helplessness, worry, anxiety, and shame.

Some of the life choices of trauma survivors like me are,

• choosing partners who mistreat, disrespect, or undervalue you or perhaps partners you can easily manipulate and control.

• repeating patterns of behavior you witnessed as a child in your relationships with your spouse, partner, or children.

• remaining in intimate relationships despite them being violent, emotionally unhealthy, or mentally or sexually unsatisfying.

• using sex, alcohol, drugs, shopping, eating, or television as a means of escaping or avoiding your pain.

• isolating and avoiding creating strong and deep bonds with others.

• putting yourself second because you only feel special, worthy, and approved of when you do more for others than you do for yourself.

• procrastinating and wanting everything to be perfect before you can do something.

Connecting with my emotions, holding space to process my long-buried pain, and recognizing and understanding the roots of these patterns of behavior were key in my trauma recovery journey. When I began to connect the dots between my past and my present-day results, I felt more empowered and committed to creating the life I desired, letting go of my attachment to others' validation and approval.

I'm now on a mission to empower, inspire, and support women in creating and living an emotionally healthy, vibrant, and fulfilled life because we all deserve to feel at peace, happy, satisfied, fulfilled, and complete within ourselves and our relationships.

Making positive changes in life can feel like the most difficult challenge. Having support is paramount during periods of transition. A supportive and healthy environment and the right network of friends, family, a coach, or a mentor will help propel you toward success.

As a Certified Trauma Recovery Coach and Mind Body Wellness Practitioner, I use personal experience and professional training in trauma recovery coaching, parts work, somatic therapy, life coaching, hypnotherapy, and aromatherapy to bring clarity, focus, and insight into and relief from the unique challenges adult survivors of childhood trauma face.

I work with my clients to release past traumas, connect with their true selves, experience emotional freedom, and live a fulfilling life using three foundational elements of what it means to be an empowered conscious creator:

Awareness

• Recognizing the impact: Awareness begins with recognizing the symptoms and understanding how trauma has manifested in one's life—whether through emotional patterns, physical symptoms, cognitive distortions, or relational dynamics.

• Understanding trauma's origins: It involves tracing and understanding the root causes, including events, conditions, and the cultural, familial, or societal context in which the trauma occurred and continues to be perpetuated.

• Identifying patterns: Trauma often results in repetitive behavior, thought, or emotional patterns. Awareness allows individuals to identify these patterns, understand their origin, and begin changing them.

• Linking past to present: Through heightened awareness, an individual can understand how past traumatic experiences influence their current perceptions, reactions, and behaviors.

Authenticity

• Rediscovery of self: Post-trauma, individuals might struggle with questions like "Who am I now?" or "Can I ever be the person I was before?" Authenticity in healing is about exploring these questions, peeling back the layers of defense mechanisms, and reconnecting with the core self.

• Validation of experience: Authentic healing doesn't downplay or dismiss the trauma. It honors and validates survivors' lived experiences, understanding that each person's response to trauma is unique, valid, and necessary at the time.

• Embracing vulnerability: From a trauma-informed lens, embracing vulnerability means allowing oneself to feel, process, and express emotions without judgment or shame, even when they reveal deep pain or scars.

• Rebuilding trust: Authenticity in relationships is about trust. Traumatic events, especially betrayal or interpersonal harm, can shatter trust. Healing requires rebuilding this trust, first in oneself and then in others, allowing for more genuine, open, and honest interactions.

• Counteracting shame with authenticity: Shame is a common residue of trauma. It can cause individuals to hide their true feelings or experiences. Embracing authenticity can be a powerful antidote to shame, allowing individuals to stand in their truth, no matter how painful or raw.

Alignment

• Disruption of alignment by trauma: At its core, trauma can shatter one's sense of self. The coping mechanisms and survival responses (like fight, flight, freeze, or fawn) that individuals adopt might serve them in the traumatic situation but can become counterproductive over time. These mechanisms might lead to behaviors and reactions that feel out of sync with one's inner beliefs or values.

• Reconnecting with the inner self: Alignment in trauma recovery often begins with recognizing and honoring one's true feelings and desires. This involves exploring and understanding the emotions and beliefs that may have been suppressed or distorted due to trauma.

• Integrating past and present: Healing doesn't necessarily mean forgetting or erasing traumatic experiences. Instead, alignment involves integrating these experiences into one's life story so that they don't dictate future actions or beliefs but are acknowledged as a part of one's journey.

• Aligning actions with values: As individuals process their trauma, they often engage in deep introspection about what truly matters to them. In this context, alignment means ensuring one's actions, choices, and behaviors are consistent with these rediscovered values.

• Continuous journey: Alignment is a continuous process. As individuals grow, evolve, and face new experiences, ensuring alignment between their inner world and external actions remains ongoing.

When you evolve beyond the limitations your past has placed on you, you feel inspired and committed to creating the life you desire, empowered and connected to your innate power to shift the trajectory of your life, and able to recognize and stand up for your values, enforce your boundaries, and feel decisive and ready to take action with a strong sense of purpose and direction.

In the words of Dr. Gabor Maté, trauma is not what happened to you. Trauma is what happened inside you as a result of what happened to you. Therefore, the challenges you may be experiencing in adulthood do not mean you are broken. You are having normal responses as a result of your experiences. 

Trauma destabilizes your sense of safety, disorients your sense of belonging, distorts your sense of worth, disrupts your ability to relate healthily, dysregulates your emotions, and disconnects you from your body and your Authentic Self.

Trauma recovery coaching works to restore safety and your Authentic Self and dismantle trauma's toxic effects.

I believe that in order to heal individually, a combination of three things is required, psychoeducation (an understanding of the emotional, psychological, biological, and relational aftereffects of trauma), deep self-awareness, and healthy relating.

Psychological, biological, emotional, and relational aftereffects of trauma

• Because trauma can alter brain and nervous system functioning, it may trigger an inherited predisposition for mental illness.

• The earlier and longer trauma is experienced, the greater the likelihood of impact on brain development and body chemistry.

• Trauma can impact one's emotional skills to relate to and engage with others which may result in a desire to isolate and disconnect from oneself, the world, and relationships.

• Prolonged exposure to overwhelming situations or inconsistency in or nonexistence of kindness, compassion, sense of worth, and acceptance in personal relationships can impair relationships with self, family, friends, romantic partners, parents/children, and professionally. This can bring challenges related to trust, self-worth, people-pleasing, co-dependence, vulnerability to predators/grooming, push-pull attachment, feelings of unsafety, and self-destructive coping mechanisms.

Deep self-awareness includes:

• Awareness of what you feel, when you feel it, and why you feel it.

• Awareness of your distress signals, triggers, and responses to triggers.

• Awareness of your survival strategy, fight, flight, freeze, fawn, feign death.

• Awareness of your survival coping mechanisms/adaptations and how they contribute to disconnection.

• Awareness of your inner critic, its protective purpose, and how it blocks your authenticity.

• Awareness of how your trauma personally affected you biologically, psychologically, relationally, and emotionally.

Healthy relating includes:

• Healthy relationship role modeling and communication that demonstrates kindness, compassion, and non-judgmental acceptance.

• Establishing trust through consent, active listening, and seeking clarity of worldview and personal experiences.

• Creating safety through normalizing trauma responses, emotional and physical attunement, regulating emotional reactions, and reinforcing and respecting boundaries.

• Supporting getting needs met.

• Safety, clarity, certainty, and dependability.

I believe that in order to heal communally, we must acknowledge that culturally, abuse has been normalized, minimized, overlooked, ignored, justified, and perpetuated generation after generation and that we must bring care, compassion, consideration, courage, and curiosity into our relationships.