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How I Began and Where I’m Headed
Why do I care?
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As a Child
I was raised in a small, rural town with three siblings. I didn’t see doctors, know about mental health, or talk about my problems. Growing up, I was surrounded by drug addiction, alcoholism, domestic violence, sexual abuse, and depression, along with a skewed worldview that normalized neglect in every sense. Walking on eggshells was something I learned how to do, and I did it well!
Despite being under-developed and struggling with anorexia and scoliosis, my very feminine features led me to be sexualized from a very young age. In an attempt to prevent that, I remember trying to be as masculine as possible. Putting my younger brother’s football pads on, I begged them to tackle me and learned to throw my best spiral. I even practiced going to the bathroom standing up, but none of my efforts worked.
Always very smart, I would read encyclopedias for fun and was even accepted into a “Talented and Gifted” program at school until my dyslexia reared its head in middle school. Given that asking for help was never an option for me, learning to navigate my learning disabilities alone brought on a wave of social dilemmas. I was frequently reminded that I did not know enough and never would.
I was tired. Tired of huddling with my younger siblings, feeling rage at the truth that no one was coming to save us. At the young age of 12, I was done. If I had to be the glue that held us together at such a young age, how could it ever get easier? Exhausted from it all, I made the decision to end my life. For 24 hours I sat alone in my room, staring at the crack of the door, desperate for someone to open it. If it opened, my little brain was convinced things might change. The door never opened, so I completely committed to the act that would finally bring me peace.
At that moment a knock sounded on the door and it opened to reveal my little brother with bed head and raggedy-footed pajamas, there to ask if I was ok. Suddenly things changed for me. In his facial expression and serious eyes, I saw the whole world. When I told him I was fine, he smiled and skipped back down the hall. “F*ck,” I thought, “I can’t leave them in this situation to do it alone.” Just like that, those boys became my why.
Developing a pride-based counter-identifying personality, I avoided my own need for attachment and took on the emotional responsibility for them. If ‘f*ck around and find out’ was a photograph, it would have been me throwing up two fingers at the world, vowing to make it a better place for them, but that’s not something that happened overnight.
At 18 I was locked out of my house and kicked out to fend for myself. One day I was in a store when a man I didn’t know approached me pretending we knew each other through friends. Thinking I must have forgotten about him, I continued the conversation, trying to recall having seen him, but failing.
As he talked, the man moved into my personal space and uncomfortably close. He put his arm around me and started nudging me toward the aisle and the exit. I noticed another man close by who nodded to the man with his arm around me.
Despite how mobilized I was with fighting every other demon in my life, my over-sexualization and abuse betrayed me. I froze. My brain failed me for a while until I remembered I had my phone in my pocket. Digging it out, I put it to my ear without dialing and pretended to be talking with someone who wanted me to come to them. I managed to slip out of the man’s arm and ran.
Later, watching the security footage playback and seeing myself frozen in fear as this man licked my neck and tried to move me to the store’s exit, I remember thinking how no one would believe I didn’t consent or know him. That was how I was groomed. Groomed to believe that I deserved every bad thing that happened to me.
Proving that what I was convinced of was wrong became my new why.
As an Adult
Due to my health I wasn’t supposed to be able to conceive or carry children. This message had been reinforced by multiple, heartbreaking miscarriages. Somehow, however, despite all the odds, I have since brought two remarkable and inspiring little humans into the world. Now they became my why.
But parenthood brought its own set of challenges. I found myself parenting my children the way I needed to be parented instead of the way they needed to be parented. I realized that I needed to reparent myself before I could be the parent my children needed and deserved.
As I worked on myself I learned that I cannot “save” anyone but me, no matter how hard I tried. I crashed into this lesson like running into a glass door when I tried to save my mother-in-law from alcoholism. She was my best friend and I tried everything I could think of to get her to stop drinking and recover, to no avail.
Then came the day when I’d had enough of her refusals and flaking out on me. We had a heated conversation and I yelled at her to go see a doctor, which she refused. I called my brother-in-law and asked him to go pick her up and force her to go. By the time he got there, she had passed away. I raced the hour or so it took to get to her place and arrived before the coroner had taken her away. Seeing my best friend lying there on the floor broke my heart. I didn’t save her. I’d sacrificed so much of myself trying to save her, but couldn’t.
In that sacrifice my marriage suffered. We were both fighting to break negative and dysfunctional cycles but without proper guidance on how to do so. Instead, we created negative cycles of our own. We were both miserable.
While I didn’t know it at the time, PTSD, depression, ADHD, anxiety, panic, and OCD (obsessive compulsive disorder) controlled every second of my life. All the coping mechanisms and strategies I’d learned in order to survive up to this point were sabotaging me in every aspect of my life.
I was desperately fighting to continue living for my husband and children; I tried everything. Lacking sleep, I was always tired but couldn’t stop moving. What little sleep I got was haunted by nightmares. I wanted them to stop. Wanted my brain to stop. To let go and sleep forever. My why was no longer working and I couldn’t understand.
My Recovery and Calling
One last time. I told myself I would try one last time. Only this time I would be my why. I made healing myself a priority and learned that neurobiology is my love language. As I learned more about what was happening to me and what I’d been through, I discovered the neurobiology of trauma and it opened to me a whole new understanding of what I needed to do.
I threw myself into learning and recovering. My young self needed reparenting and I worked hard to discover how to do that. Making my mental and emotional health a priority changed my life! Being my own why allowed me to become the person who could be a healthy and good wife, mother, sister, and friend. I became healthy.
As I recovered and learned more about neurobiology and trauma recovery, I developed a desire to learn even more and to share my education and insights with others. I wanted to help others try that one more time and find the peace and recovery that I found.
My work as a Trauma Recovery Coach is more fulfilling than I could ever imagine. No longer desperate to save or fix people and getting so much out of life that my cup is full and overflowing, I can coach people through the recovery process with the information and lessons I have learned. While I enjoy working with everyone, I most often work with men. Specifically, with those who distrust women and any sort of therapeutic process. There are differences in our biology, hormonal structure, and how our brains develop and function that I spend a lot of time researching.
With each client, I am inspired and grow a little more. Most importantly, I get to share the truth that recovery is possible and to hold the door open so people get to peak and see that there is “one more time” and that they can become their own why.
