Game-changers Come In Many Forms

If there has been one consistent thing in my life, I would say that I have ALWAYS been gifted with phenomenal teachers and mentors. When I was in my twenties as a young and wide-eyed yogi, I was introduced to a man that spoke with charisma and humor. He had the rare ability to hold my attention, but my favorite thing about him was as if he knew what I needed to hear. He was bold in his delivery, and he spoke the truth. To this day, he is one of my favorite teachers, Dr. Wayne Dyer. I'll never forget what he said. "The difference between illness and wellness is the spelling.' illness begins with "I" and wellness begins with we.

I never forgot it; it is one of those quotes that have lived in my solar plexus for years. I understood it then in my mind but not at the level of my soul or the way I do today.

Trauma doesn't happen because we go through hard things; trauma happens when we go through hard things alone.

As a teacher and coach for over 23 years, I can't even begin to count how many times I have heard someone apologizing for their tears or feeling shame or disappointment about not constantly feeling happy.

Many of us never really learned how to accept, feel or process things like anger, sadness, fear, rage, disappointment, and grief. So every time we say, "I don't want to feel this," or whenever we think what we are feeling is wrong, we recreate and expose the trauma of what it is to abandon our bodies and ourselves when we feel these parts of our hearts.

One definition of trauma is disconnection from ourselves. We disconnect from ourselves because we feel it's too painful to be ourselves.

Game-changers come in many forms, and the game-changer I want to talk to you about today is my experience of spending a year and a half in trauma therapy, specifically brainspotting.

I say all the time that one of my favorite people to have spent time within 2020 and 2021 was my trauma therapist. She and I barely talked. Of course, we did a little bit, but mostly she sat with me and witnessed me while I felt all the things I needed to feel but couldn't alone or didn't know how to or didn't have the skill. She would always say, Diana, your brain will heal when you finally let yourself feel this, and she encouraged me to scream, cry, feel sadness, rage, or whatever it was, and she made me feel like I was normal, that it was ok and she always understood. She validated my journey; she never tried to end it. I didn't notice immediately, but she eventually taught me how to be with myself in the most authentic way. She taught me how to feel, and she taught me how to love myself truly.

Love isn't the absence of all the other emotions; it's the inclusion of all of them.

xo,

Diana