From an early age, I struggled with a pervasive sense of disconnection, feeling like an outsider even within my own family. This profound sense of not belonging was a constant companion, steering me into a pattern of over-achieving, constant worry, and people-pleasing behaviors. My longing for acceptance and validation led me to prioritize others' needs before my own, often at the cost of my own well-being. My early experiences as a runaway and a teen single mom significantly impacted my sense of isolation. These challenges shaped my perception of belonging and self-worth, intensifying my feelings of emptiness. Even after seeking solutions, the feeling of disconnection persisted, especially in personal relationships.
I was sentenced to AA at the age of 20 due to some minor issues. At first AA was a blessing in disguise because it gave me community and support when I had none. It also forced me to acknowledge my tendency to overdrink. But even after years of sobriety and repeated step work I never experienced the freedom so many people speak of. I sought doctors and therapists throughout those years, and was diagnosed with depression, anxiety, and ADHD at one time or another. I was prescribed a cocktail of pharmaceuticals over the years, including but not limited to, Wellbutrin, Adderall, Pristiq, Cymbalta, and Celexa. The medications brought on severe side effects, including insomnia and leg spasms. My doctors insisted they were not connected to the treatment, overlooking my concerns. I was treated as if I was drug seeking by the doctors and by the AA community. But I couldn’t get past the fact that I felt the symptoms were simply being replaced by new symptoms caused by the medication's side effects. Feeling that my concerns weren't taken seriously, and that my body was rejecting the many medications, along with feeling the judgment of the community for my need for meds I began feeling hopeless.
No matter what I did, in those rooms I still managed to find myself in the same types of toxic relationships I grew up with and found myself reflecting the patterns of neglect and self-sacrifice I had always known. So by my mid 30’s I decided to leave my husband I met in the program and the program itself. I was sick and tired of being sick and tired, sober. I was tired of working on myself.
At first my career began to take off, I bought a new home, and I earned my yoga teaching certification, which opened the doors to a new community. Things were finally starting to feel normal. I wasn’t on any medication and I was enjoying life. I was traveling with work and seemed to be able to drink socially. I really felt as though I was finding my place in the world. Unfortunately this too had a short shelf life. After a few years, the honeymoon period ended, the stress of the social engagements, the constant peer pressure to drink, and the demands of the job started to take hold. Once again, I was feeling the same disconnect and found myself in the same hyper-vigilant state of over achieving and feeling incredibly disconnected to those around me. I didn’t understand it and I did have a couple of questionable nights that made me rethink my decision to leave AA, so I returned. This time I also returned to the doctor and was diagnosed bipolar and was put on anti-psychotics. At the time it made since because of the levels of intensity and hyper vigilance that I had learned to perform in. However, it didn’t take long for the same side-effects to kick in and the same responses from the doctors. And once again I found my way into another toxic relationship in the program within a couple of years. I had even found myself unexpectedly single and pregnant again at 40. Almost exactly 20 years later with a 20 year old daughter and one on the way, and I didn’t feel any different than the first time I walked into those rooms at 20 years old. I could not even continue the medication due to my pregnancy. History repeated itself in the most dramatic way.
Shortly after I found out I was pregnant, the pandemic hit which brought even further isolation and a sedentary lifestyle from working from home and round the clock to keep up with the demands of the lowered interest rates. This led to a high risk pregnancy, pre-eclampsia, and pelvic floor prolapse. Which resulted in the need for an early emergency induced delivery, causing me to be on an epidural for 18 hours because my legs spasmed even with the induction drugs. An epidural isn’t meant to last that long and led to hyper mobility in my SI joint, relentless chronic pain, and multiple surgeries after delivery. However, I had to wait months to have these surgeries due to the pandemic and my ability to heal was extremely prolonged and only exacerbated the issues and the pain. The pain meds did nothing to assist, so I didn’t take them for long.
By this point, I had been without meds for some time and isolated from any type of community. I returned to work early from my maternity leave because of the extreme demand, and was working insane hours the next 18 months. I felt like a cog in the machine. My body had suffered some immense trauma and I was desperate to heal and to find a new norm. I knew I wasn’t willing to try the same things I had tried before because history has already shown me, it wasn’t for me. This time I returned to therapy outside of the program's recovery community and was diagnosed with PTSD, but the process was slow.
My saving grace was that I was seeing an in-home chiro on a regular basis and confided in her one day about how I was feeling and how desperate I was. She told me about ketamine therapy and how her veteran husband had some incredible success from it and referred me to his doctor. The treatment, though strictly clinical, opened a door to unexpected insights about myself and my core spiritual wound that happened as a child. This was the beginning of a journey that would lead me to explore further into entheogen therapy, ultimately guiding me to an ayahuasca ceremony. The ceremony was an enlightening psycho-spiritual journey that opened pathways to consciousness that allowed me to put the pieces of my life and trauma together in ways I never could before. It allowed me to see the abuse from my childhood and how it repeated throughout my adult life.
This healing process was challenging but transformative, offering me a clearer understanding of the source of my pain, my past, and the possibility of a better future. One of the many take-aways from these sessions was the realization that what was once labeled as multiple mental health conditions was actually the trauma my body stored but my mind couldn’t remember. How because I was never able to heal I continually attracted the same situations and relationships over and over again. It explained why I had such incredible trouble during my pregnancy because of the sexual trauma I carried in my womb space. Trauma occurs when the present moment overwhelms the mind's capacity to process, leading to storage of the experience within the body.
These experiences led me to hire an integration coach where I learned that suffering is just pain without meaning. I continued to educate myself on multiple ways of relieving my pain and suffering through other modalities. I learned how to be with my pain and understand what it was trying to tell me. How to go into the body, face and release the trauma. I learned how to be comfortable in the uncomfortable and give my pain the meaning it required, so I could move on.
Before this process I was constantly on edge, guarded, and hyper-vigilant. My experiences with entheogens guided my path to uncover and confront the trauma, somatic practices such as focusing has helped me to be with and console the trauma, and sound therapy has helped me to transmute the trauma, raise my vibration, and bring my body into coherence so that I can attract something different into my life.
After such a profound experience I decided to take a sabbatical from my position as Director of Fulfillment for a national mortgage banker, a role that demanded both my expertise and a dedication to leadership and mentoring. I marked the start of a new chapter in my professional life by becoming a certified trauma transformation coach, certified sound and shamanic practices holistic therapist, and deep diving studies of various somatic practices. Drawing from my personal experiences and the profound impact of holistic healing, I now specialize in trauma and addiction recovery coaching, offering the guidance I once desperately needed. My shift from struggling with deep-seated trauma to now living a healthy new chapter in life shows that change is within reach for anyone.
I'm here to support and guide individuals through the practices that have made all the difference for me. With a heartfelt mission, my aim is not only to help PTSD/CPTSD survivors, but also business owners and high achievers to regulate their nervous systems and rewire their subconscious programming through evidence-based practices. Having mastered the holistic tools for facing a variety of challenges, I'm committed to sharing them with anyone in need of true healing.
